Monkey and Me (3 page)

We know what's coming.

“Jim! Don't!” Mum warns him.

But he puts on his mad face which cracks us up. Then he starts. “What do we want?”

And Mark and I shout back: “Each other!”

“And when do we want it?” he yells.

“Now!”

And we all give high fives. And then he does it again because Mum looks fit to die but he won't stop until she joins in.

“What do we want?”

“Each other!” we shout back and even Mum joins in – she has to or he'll keep on doing this until someone calls security.

“When do we want it?”

“NOW!”

Then Mum's also laughing.

“You're certifiable, you are, Jim Matthews,” she tells him.

“Well, I'd have to be, coming to the shops on a Saturday with you lot.”

It's just one of those moments. It's called magic.

I think being stuck up there on an old fire escape that was about to fall four stories into broken rubble might have been what Dad meant about being scared. What he never mentioned was the embarrassment of being rescued. I was never really frightened, but it was extremely embarrassing. Dad reached down and grabbed me and put me over his shoulder – like a sack of coal. And when we got down to the ground there was an even bigger crowd. I closed my eyes tight. That was the only way I could stop everyone gawping. The police said something about trespassing, Dad told them I was only a lad and they said something about at least no one was hurt. Dad was agreeing and said that he'd take me home.

I didn't listen to the funny remarks and laughter from the crowd. If you close your eyes tight enough it can affect your hearing.

I think that's called turning a blind ear.

Of course they took me to the hospital – because of the nose bleed – and this set Mum off because of the whole smelly antiseptic hospital thing. I think she just got scared. And I got fussed over and everyone clucked and cooed like I was a chicken or a pigeon who'd hurt itself climbing out the nest. There was nothing wrong with me but Mum and Dad hovered outside the examination area whispering to the doctor. People whisper in hospitals with doctors because it's impolite and embarrassing to let everyone know what's wrong with you. Dad did his arm-hugging thing with Mum and that seemed to calm her down.

You know how it is when things frighten you and someone hugs you and says, “There there, it'll be all right pet,” or “chuck,” or “sweetheart…” they might even use your name once in a while… well, that's how it was with Mum.

Anyway, Mum took the rest of the day off to stay home with me. There would be a lot of unhappy customers at Sainsbury's. Checkout 14 is very popular.

I'd been sick before I went to bed. I think it was the
double-thick chocolate sponge pudding with custard that did it (Mum gets a discount) but Mark scoffed more than me and he was all right. But as I drifted off to sleep I was busy scoring the winning goal for Liverpool against Chelsea. Steven Gerrard passed a long curving ball, Gobby Rogers was defending for Chelsea – how did he make the team? – and he was coming at me like a National Express coach on the M6. I could hear the crowd roaring, “Beanie, Beanie, BEANIE!” It was a wave of sound and I was riding it like the Silver Surfer. Gobby Rogers snarled, like he always does, and as I jigged left, he stuck his foot out – that would be a foul and we'd get the penalty. Typical Rogers. Can't think further than the end of his foot. I didn't want a penalty. I wasn't going to take a dive. I tapped the ball with my ankle, it bounced over him and I followed it. Rogers was sliding away into touch and there were no red shirts in the box, only Mr Forsyth, our Head Teacher who for some reason was playing goalie and looked more agile than I'd ever seen him. There were no strikers anywhere. Chelsea players swarmed at me. “Beanie! Beanie!” The crowd roared. It was deafening. I don't know how I did it but I got through the defenders.
It went quiet. Everything slowed down. Just me and Mr Forsyth, who never took his eyes off the ball as he crouched in defence. For some reason I noticed he'd got really knobbly knees.

The muscles in my leg tightened, I balanced my weight with my arms, head over the ball – I mentally thanked Steven Gerrard for showing me how to strike the ball like this. But I couldn't kick it. Something was holding my leg. Mark's voice came from the other side of the penalty area. He thought he had a clear shot. He didn't. But he kept yelling at me. “Jez! Jez! Come on!”

With superhuman effort I kicked the ball. It started off low, gained height and then the fade I'd put into the strike made it curve, ever so slowly, above Mr Forsyth's outstretched hands. He couldn't get to it. The glare of the lights blinded me for a few seconds, the faces in the crowd froze, and the ball dropped behind him. It had to be a goal, it had to be…

“JEZ!”

Someone's switched the floodlights off.

Mark was tugging at my foot. “Wake up,” he whispered. “Come on.”

He pulled me out of bed and I followed him to the window. Maybe I was still asleep. I could hear the crowd still singing the Liverpool FC anthem:

“When you walk through a storm,

Hold your head up high,

And don't be afraid of the dark.

At the end of the storm,

There's a golden sky,

And the sweet silver song of a lark…”

But now it sounded like there was only one voice.

Mark pulled the curtain back a bit and put a finger to his lips. We looked down into the back garden. Dad had a can of beer in his hand, and he was singing to the moon, except there wasn't one. It was raining. Mum always tells us not to hang about in the rain. You can get cold, and that can lead to bronchitis and then pneumonia and then…

“What's he doing? There wasn't a match tonight,” I whispered to Mark.

“Shush,” was all he said.

“Walk on, walk on, with hope in your heart… and you'll never walk alone… you'll… never… walk alone…”

Dad slumped onto the grass. Mum always says
you get piles if you sit on wet ground. Then we heard Mrs Tomkinson shout, “Shut that flaming racket up!”

He threw his beer can over the garden fence. It wasn't very aggressive, because Dad isn't.

“He's had a few,” Mark says quietly. I looked at him. He looked worried. We'd never seen Dad like this before.

Then Mum came out. “Oh, Jim. Come on, love, come on.”

Dad looked really sad. I thought he'd got rain in his eyes. She sat and put her arms around him. “Don't… it's all right, love. It'll be all right.”

She hugged him like she hugs us but this was different. Then she gave him a little kiss on his head and held him to her. Like he was a little boy. They both sat in the rain holding each other.

I think Dad misses Michael Owen.

And he knows he's never coming back.

In a way I'm relieved that the Sweet Dreams Sweet Factory wasn't a secret germ warfare establishment because I'd probably have bubonic plague by now and that would mean going into hospital again and I've been there a lot – and that would upset Mum even more. I am disappointed that she isn't any kind of secret agent, though she questioned me like I was a spy. Why was I out there? Why was I trying to save the building? What did I think I was doing? Didn't I know I could get hurt doing that sort of thing? Didn't I think she had enough to worry about?

She was really upset and kept going on and on, and when she has one of those turns the best thing to do is to just keep quiet. Besides, she asked all those questions without even taking a breath, so I couldn't have said anything anyway. Though in fairness she never mentioned the stains on the carpet. Mark sat across the table with his eyes screwed up, glaring at
me, waiting for me to crack under the pressure and tell everyone that the Sweet Dreams Sweet Factory, soon to provide housing for hundreds of new kids who will start gangs of their own, was our secret headquarters. But I didn't crack.

You'd have thought that would make me a full gang member, resisting interrogation like that, especially as Mum had tears in her eyes. Skimp and Rocky thought I was awesome, so I didn't tell them I was really quite scared, there's no point in destroying people's illusions. That's called bursting their bubble.

Mark doesn't have a bubble.

“You were irresponsible!” he yelled. “If you'd have fallen and got mangled in all the metal then it would have made headlines in the local paper –
Mashed-up Boy was Secret Gang Member.
And then the whole gang would have been dragged into it and we'd all be grounded for ever because parents always think the worst when they hear the word ‘gang'.”

I could sense another vote coming on. And even though Skimp and Rocky thought I was one step away from joining the X-Men, Mark could convince them to take away my probationary status.

“Beanie did all right,” Rocky said. But I could
tell he was just being nice in front of me – after all, he is the gang's 2IC and second-in-command has to carry some burden of responsibility.

“He was striking a note for freedom,” Skimp added.

“No, he wasn't,” said Mark, pointing a finger at me while he looked aggressively at Skimp. “He was trying to be a martyr. That's what he always does. He's always the centre of attention.”

That was news to me. I thought martyrs were burned at the stake and that Simon Cowell was the centre of attention in our house, though Mum says he should be burned at the stake. I didn't see any connection with any of that and my protest at Sweet Dreams. Maybe if I'd fallen and got impaled on the old iron railings that would have made me a martyr and everyone would have rallied around and saved the old place. Then it occurred to me, out of nowhere, just a burst of light in my head, that Mark, who got new trainers for his birthday, had really wanted my Number 8 shirt.

“You can have my shirt if you want.”

“What?”

“I said…”

“Put your coat back on! Mum'll kill me if you catch cold. I don't want your stupid shirt. That's got nothing to do with anything.”

“I'll have it, Beanie,” Rocky said.

“No, you won't!” Mark said, stepping between us. “Our dad got him that and it cost an arm and a leg. Jez! Put-your-coat-on! Do as you're told.”

For some reason everyone was upset that day.

“I was only trying to save our headquarters,” I told him. “I thought that if I did that I could be a fully paid-up member of the gang.”

Skimp and Rocky looked away as if they didn't know what to say. Skimp opened his mouth but Mark glared at him – and Skimp closed it again. Maybe he was just yawning. Hanging about for hours on end can be pretty tiring.

Mark looked at me. “I'm sorry, Jez, you'd better go home. I can't risk you doing another stupid stunt and getting hurt. Mum and Dad would give me too much grief,” he said, putting his hand on my shoulder, like he was saying goodbye for ever. “And besides you can't keep up.”

“I'll try harder.” I was getting a horrible feeling in my stomach. I think it's called desperation.
I didn't want to be left out of the gang.

“He could go up front,” Rocky suggested. “That's what they do on army patrols. Slowest man sets the pace.”

Mark might be my brother but I think Skimp and Rocky are the only friends I have, and Pete-the-Feet, of course, who was running like a greyhound after a rabbit. He's like that. Ultra. Greased lightning, though in truth lightning can't be greased, that's fairly obvious, it would never be able to stay up there and grip the clouds, would it? We'd have lightning falling out the sky like icicles all the time.

Pete-the-Feet can run faster and further than anyone we know. He started training when he was very young, running away from his stepdad, who used him as a punchbag. And Pete-the-Feet is so tall and skinny one good thump could shatter him like glass. Best to run when you can.

“I've got it!” he gulped after a big spit to clear his lungs. He looked as though he'd run a marathon.

My mind spun for a moment. Was he a plague carrier? Is that what he'd got?

Everyone watched him. He had a mad look in his eye, not that that's too unusual. Sometimes after
he's been running his hair smothers his face and gets stuck with sweat so he looks a bit like the Abominable Snowman and all you can see are these two black eyes peering out – like a scared creature peering through bushes. I think Pete-the-Feet hides in there when it suits him. His feet help him escape, his hair is his secret den.

Then he uttered the words that could scare anyone to death. “The Black Gate.”

Mark miskicked the ball. I've never seen him do that before. It caught Rocky on the side of the head and for a minute I thought he was going to thump Mark. Rocky can be a bit aggressive at times.

“You're off your head!” Skimp said.

“Nobody goes in there!” Rocky told him.

“I know. That's the beauty of it. No one will know where we are. It's the perfect HQ. We don't have to actually go into the house, there's a few old ruined buildings in the grounds.”

The Black Gate. You might as well suggest we dig up a grave in the cemetery and climb in the hole with the dead, even that wouldn't be as scary as going into the Black Gate.

Pete-the-Feet can run fast but his brain tends
to lag behind a bit. A bit like a relay race.

“Just under the fence. That's all we have to do. There's a least half a dozen acres and we don't have to go anywhere near the house,” he gabbled.

Everybody knows that there are creatures in there that can sneak out the grass, fall out a tree, jump out the dark, snatch you from the bushes, and then drag you screaming into the Black Gate – which is what the old country house is called. It was a couple of miles beyond where all the other houses had been built. It had been sold off years ago but there was some kind of legal stuff that stopped anyone buying it and redeveloping the site. There's a huge sign over the old iron gates:
Dangerous Building – Condemned – Keep Out
. Along the top of the old walls are strands of barbed wire to make sure no one can get in, but you wouldn't want to because everyone knows there's something inhuman in the Black Gate. People have heard screams and sounds of someone moving round inside, but when the police investigated they didn't find anyone – or anything.

Definitely haunted then.

And obviously by a creature with fangs and claws – a throwback mutation that could have been
created when the sewage works blocked up last year and spilled into Millbrook's Farm. It flooded five acres of King Edward potatoes with disgusting stuff which stank for months – but it gave the farmer a bumper crop. I've never eaten spuds since then. Not even Mum's beyond excellent thick-cut home-made chips. Can you imagine what she'd be deep-fat frying? Sealing in all the goodness, she used to say. I don't think so, Mum.

“You're off your head,” Skimp said again.

“Well, we could always leg it if it got too scary,” Pete-the-Feet replied.

He would say that, wouldn't he?

“What? And leave us for bait?” Rocky pointed a finger at him.

“No one's ever got out of there alive,” I told them.

“Don't talk rubbish, Beanie,” Rocky said.

“No one's ever died in there,” said Mark.

“That's because no one knows how many people have gone in and never come out,” I tell them.

I'm not sure even Pete-the-Feet could run fast enough to escape the ghosts and sabre-toothed monsters, whose teeth are probably all gunged up with the remains of anything that walked or crawled
in there. Kimberley Morris says her brother went in and hasn't been heard of since – but everyone knows he really got nicked for stealing cars and is in prison. Still… you never know. She and her mum and dad have never visited him. So maybe he's not – in prison I mean. Or alive.

I hear myself say words that make no sense to my brain… I don't know where I get these ideas from sometimes. Like climbing up onto the Sweet Dreams Sweet Factory top floor, or the time I tried to balance across the old stone bridge and fell in the canal, or when I climbed the tree and the branch gave way and I broke my wrist – and that started a lot of problems. Hospitals! But even they aren't as frightening as the Black Gate. You'd have to be two spanners short of a tool set to even think about going in there… but the words fell out my mouth. It was so cold all the letters froze in the air and you could have hung them on a clothes line.

“I'll go inside. I'll do it. I will. You'll see.”

“You're going home,” said Mark. “It was a mistake letting you join the gang.”

“He's only a probationary member,” Skimp reminded him.

A gang member is a gang member even if he is a probationary. That's called semantics. I'd have mentioned this, but Mark would say I was just being a know-it-all clever-clogs.

Rocky had a strange look on his face. I've seen him like that when we go round his house – he's got a great collection of war and horror movies which we're not supposed to watch. It's a bit like him drooling in front of a sweet shop. There's something very needy about Rocky.

“Let him do it,” he said.

“No way!” said Mark. “I'm not getting grounded for the rest of my life because Jez gets devoured by some creature from a hidden tomb in Black Gate's cellars.”

“I want to do it! And you can't stop me.” There were all those words dangling in front of my face again. Where did they come from? But I had to show Mark and the others that I didn't need looking after all the time.

Skimp nodded. “I think Rocky is right. Beanie should go in if that's what he wants. Then, if he doesn't come out, we'll know it's true about the monster. But if he does come out alive then everyone
will stop picking on him because we'll be witnesses that he dared to go in.”

Suddenly Mark was wrestling Skimp to the ground. “He's my brother! He doesn't have to prove anything!”

Rocky and Pete-the-Feet pulled him off.

“Yes, I do,” I said. “I'm not scared.” And this time the air from my breath held the words like angels dancing on a cloud.

It must have been cold because everyone froze in that moment. They all looked at me. And then Rocky broke the silence. “Me neither.”

“Nor me.” Skimp.

“All right. Let's do it.” Pete-the-Feet.

We all looked at Mark. This was a command decision. His whole future as a possible world leader was in the balance.

“We'll go in as far as we can,” Mark said.

“And Beanie?” Rocky asked. “He should go in first. It was his idea.”

“He stays behind me.”

And the way Mark said it everyone knew there wasn't going to be any argument.