Pandaemonium (23 page)

They’re all gathered - everybody - in a tight circle, seated on the ground with their lunches digesting inside them. With the landscape rolled out beneath them it feels to Heather like they’re on a separate plane, higher than the world, detached from their normal reality. Blake chose his moment well. If they can’t talk about this here, then they may never talk about it at all. His voice is mellifluous but natural, infusing the atmosphere with calm. He speaks softly but audibly over the breeze, without resorting to that elevated priestly register all men of the cloth could slip into: he wants them to know he’s talking with them, not at them.

‘We’re all feeling loss,’ Blake continues. ‘We’re all feeling pain. We’re all feeling shock. We’re all feeling anger.’

Heather can’t help but glance at Kirk, and notes that she is not the only one. His arms are folded and his face is stony, hard-set, determined not to betray any emotion.

‘And all of that is right. All of that is what we need to feel, in order to get through this. We need to feel it, but we need to express it too, because you’d be amazed how many of us here think we’re the only one nursing a particular feeling, or harbouring a certain thought. It’s only once it’s out in the open that you discover you’re not alone. Just say what you need to: it’s why we’re here. Don’t worry about what anyone thinks of you for saying it either: this mountain is like an extension of my confessional. What gets said up here does not come back down the hillside with us. Anyone who casts up anything spoken here today will be committing a grave betrayal of us all.’

Rocks looks across to the other side of the circle: all the heads are down, bowed more sincerely than during any prayer, hiding reticent faces. This could be the longest silence this lot has collectively engaged in throughout their entire school careers.

It stretches beyond a full minute, all of them left to their own solemn contemplation as the cold wind gusts about their ears. Father Blake offers no prompting, no pressure, though the longer it goes on, the harder it will be for anyone to go first.

Then a voice breaks the deadlock, just a few feet to Rocks’ right. It’s wee Caitlin, which might surprise some but not him. His money was always on it being one of the quieter, more dutiful ones that contributed first; the one time the loudmouths keep it zipped.

‘I was there,’ she says. ‘In the hall, putting my chemistry folder in my locker. I can remember that that’s what I was carrying. I can remember this sudden rise in a lot of voices, and seeing Andrew pushing Matthew. They both banged into the lockers right beside me. I can remember it really clearly. But then after that, it’s like a curtain comes down inside my head. I was there. It happened right in front of me, but my mind won’t let me think about it. All I can think about is . . . Andrew’s mum and dad . . . I’m sorry . . .’

Caitlin fills up and can’t go on. No one seems prepared to fill the void, keeping her grief in the spotlight. Rocks feels for her, wishes somebody else would wade in, one of the teachers maybe. Then to his own surprise he finds himself speaking, just saying something to bail the lassie out.

‘I was there too, and I wish I had the curtain thing Caitlin’s talking about.’ He’s aware of Kirk’s head coming up, flinching in astonishment and, no doubt, dismay. Fuck him, though. He’s helping nobody with this bottled-up shite. ‘I was on the other side of the hall when Dunnsy went for Matt. I started making my way over. I was gaunny pull Dunnsy away and calm him doon, but when a fight starts, there’s always a swarm, and I never got there in time. Then I remember the swarm just melting away. It was so quiet. I don’t know if it really was quiet or if it’s just like my memory of it has no soundtrack and I see it in silence, no voices.’

Rocks can picture it all again as he speaks. He trembles, suddenly colder, like his body has just switched off whatever force-field was protecting him from the climate on top of a highland hill in December.

He catches Kirk’s eye. The big man is looking at him like he can’t believe he’s doing this, like just talking about it is a fucking betrayal.

‘I was scared,’ Rocks says, as though in answer to Kirk. ‘Or I thought I was scared, but it was mostly shock. Scared wasn’t what I was feeling right then. Scared is what I’ve been feeling ever since. I used to think nothing that bad could really happen to you. You read about stuff, you see some horrible things on telly or the internet, but it never seems real. I know we’re made of flesh and bones, but—’

He has to cut himself off. Despite Father Blake saying they ought to talk about whatever they need to, it feels wrong to articulate this. He doesn’t feel he has the right to describe what he saw. You can’t share this out. You can’t ask anyone else to carry it.

He’s seen a lot of blood at school. Who hasn’t? If there’s a fight, chances are somebody’s getting their nose burst, and he’s seen some bad ones. Dished out some bad ones, if truth be told. He was amazed and, to be honest, not a little ashamed when he saw how much Tommy Lafferty bled when he battered him in third year, but it was only blood, only fluid.

Barker didn’t just stab Dunnsy, though: he gutted him. Rocks saw intestines, ribs and fuck knows what else spilled out on to the polished grey floor tiles. He learned a truth right then that he can never unlearn.

‘We’re just meat,’ he says. ‘So fragile. Since then, I’ve found myself jumping back at the kerb when cars go by too fast. My mum asked me to chip some potatoes and I couldnae do it because I got freaked out holding the knife. I’m amazed any of us make it this far. I’m amazed we got here as a species.’

He looks at Kirk again, and this time Rocks is the one glaring an accusation. Can’t you fucking see this? he’s asking. Kirk looks away, down between his feet, maybe just a little humbly.

Rocks has nothing more to say, but he doesn’t feel self-conscious in the next silence; he feels wide open but not vulnerable. He catches Caitlin’s eye and finds a look of teary solidarity.

‘We’re fragile, but we’re also precious,’ says Radar. ‘That’s why it’s so fuckin’ unfair.’

Guthrie flinches, but gets a warning shot from Blake.

‘Dunnsy wasnae even seventeen yet,’ he goes on. ‘Fuckin’ Barker took away everything, not just took Dunnsy away from us, but took away everything he’d ever be. It’s just so fuckin’ . . . forever, man. No second chances. No saved games.’

‘That’s what I can’t get past either,’ ventures Dazza. ‘I keep expecting Dunnsy to walk into a classroom.’

‘There’s a school of thought in quantum physics that says he has.’

It’s Adnan who speaks, eliciting a glare from Dazza warning that this better not be him just geeking out at a time like this. But Adnan’s not trying to be facetious or inappropriate: he thinks some of them may genuinely find this comforting.

‘It’s known as Many Worlds theory. In a parallel universe, Dunnsy is still alive and we never came here on this trip.’

‘Oh, come on,’ Dazza says irritably. ‘Load of shite. This is serious, Adnan.’

‘So am I. This isn’t whacked-out fringe stuff. More physicists accept the existence of parallel universes these days than deny it. It’s one of the possible implications of the quantum uncertainty principle. At every quantum juncture, the universe splits, creating an infinite number of parallel universes. Right here, where we sit, we are co-existing with infinite, slightly varied versions of ourselves and our world, and in one of those - in many of those, in fact - Dunnsy never died and we’re doing something else of a Saturday lunchtime. There’s more evidence to suggest this than there is to support the existence of Heaven or Hell.’

‘So where, physically, are these other universes?’ Rosemary asks, suddenly wanting to get analytical now that her religion has been challenged. ‘I mean, I’ve heard you ask where Heaven is when the universe is so huge. Where, then, is this multiplicity of universes?’

‘It’s right here. They’re all right here in different waveforms. But it’s like our perception is a radio and we can only tune into one frequency. We can only follow one branching path of our own reality.’

Dazza feels his hackles fall. He actually likes the sound of this: that he’d be better thinking of Dunnsy living out his life the same as the rest of them than thinking of him in Heaven, which has in recent years started to sound more and more like just a consoling thought for the living rather than a reality for the dead.

Guthrie’s natural inclination to go on the defensive at Adnan’s dismissal of Heaven and Hell is derailed by the tantalising nature of what this alternative offers. In another version of reality, he left his office a few seconds earlier, a few seconds later, never encountered the fourth years, and got there in time to intervene.

Deborah feels a shudder as she thinks of the parallel universe in which she pressed Send and shared that photo. She’s ostracised, in lesbian hell, maybe looking at expulsion and even the sex-offenders register. One click, a no to a yes, a zero to a one, that’s all it would have taken to split her universe into two vastly different paths.

‘Is this maybe why we can feel people once they’ve gone?’ asks Michelle. ‘Or why we sometimes say we feel like someone walked over our grave?’

A number of heads nod, a murmur echoing approval of this suggestion.

‘No,’ answers Matt, silencing it. ‘There’s complete decoherence. We can’t interact with branching parallel paths.’ He says it flatly, typically oblivious to the fact that he’s slamming a door in the face of their hope. That’s Matt for you, Adnan reflects: can’t get a word out of him for ages, then he chooses to voice something that would have been better left unsaid.

‘But you said last night,’ Ewan appeals to Adnan, ‘if we could move in the fifth dimension we could travel between universes.’

Adnan shakes his head, wishing he could tell him otherwise. ‘Ironically, if we could access higher dimensions, we could reach the furthest points in space, but we couldn’t reach the parallel version of our own reality that’s right alongside us. Once it’s gone, it’s gone.’

There’s silence again after he says this, leaving Adnan feeling like it’s his fault. He lifted them for a moment only to drop them again, albeit with a lot of help from Matt. Thus he’s un accustomedly grateful when Rosemary wades back in.

‘That’s why Heaven is a much better concept,’ she says. ‘Because even Adnan would have to admit that there is a possibility that we can reach there and be reunited with our lost loved ones. Whereas there’s no possibility of seeing them again in the worlds he suggested. Is that right?’

Adnan nods. He tries to be magnanimous and offers a little smile, but he’s always uncomfortable giving up concessions to faith-heads. This is partly because he feels it’s never reciprocated, but more so because it’s like giving money to a junkie: you know they’re just going to use what you gave them to make their problem worse.

‘Well I just hope there’s a Hell so that that wee cunt’s paying properly for what he did. Fucker got off lightly.’

It’s Kirk who speaks. Of course. Guthrie says nothing, reading it astutely. Kirk looks like he
wants
to be challenged, so that he can further rev up his moral indignation.

With Guthrie not biting, Kirk directs his stare at Blake, all but demanding a response. Blake just nods.

‘Look, I’m not here to sell you some Jesus Juice on this,’ he says. ‘I could tell you how forgiveness will help you deal with this in the long run, but nobody’s ready to hear that, not at this stage. We’ve all seen those front pages and we’ve all used those words: evil, beast, monster. But those words don’t tell us anything. What Robert did was monstrous, nobody could ever deny that.’

‘Here come the trendy excuses,’ Kirk mutters.

‘There’s an important difference between excusing and comprehending, Kirk,’ Heather intervenes. ‘You say it’s no excuse, that’s your right, but Robert’s upbringing is an inextricable part of what happened. This was someone who had known nothing but violence since he was brought into the world.’

‘Evil breeds evil,’ says Kane. Pain multiplies.

‘I prefer to think of evil as simply an absence of good,’ offers Blake. ‘Like darkness is an absence of light. As I’m sure Adnan could tell us, darkness is the more prevalent state of the universe. Chaos is the natural state. Second law of thermodynamics: entropy always increases. Order always decays. All nature is war, Darwin said. The natural state of the universe is for things to consume other things, and not just biological life. Stars devour other stars, galaxies devour other galaxies. Good is us rising above natural savagery, and in doing so we burn like stars, illuminating the dark. But we can only burn for a finite time, so we have to burn as brightly as we can.’

‘Robert will go to Hell, though, won’t he, Father?’ asks Bernadette, seeming to need assurance in the face of all this moral equivalency.

‘Bloody right,’ blusters Julie, proving the power of religion to bring people together: acid-dripping bitch-queen and God-bothering dweeb united in their desire to mete out eternal suffering. ‘And Satan doesn’t give time off for good behaviour.’

‘I don’t believe in Satan, Julie,’ Blake replies softly. ‘There are no demons with horns and pitchforks and pointy tails, and there is no “presence” of evil manipulating men. I believe in . . . I have faith in God. The God within us.’