Raven Summer (9 page)

A week later there’s another video. A man walks up some steps in a barn. A hood is put onto his head. A noose is put around his neck. A trapdoor opens and he plummets to his death.

Then there’s a hand scribbling blood-colored ink onto white paper.

Then Mum’s calling from downstairs.

“Liam! Phone call for you!”

A woman’s voice, urgent.

“Is that Liam? Liam Lynch?”

“Yes.”

“You’re a friend of Crystal’s?”

“Yes.”

“Forgive me. I’m Crystal’s foster mum. I’m Marjorie Stone. I’m contacting people she might have been in touch with.”

I know what’s coming. I watch the baby. She’s in a high chair at the table, with a bowl of mashed-up vegetables in front of her.

“She’s disappeared, Liam,” says Mrs. Stone. “Night before last. Wasn’t in her bed yesterday morning.”

Mum’s eyes ask:
Who is it? What’s happening?

“And her friend,” says Mrs. Stone. “Oliver, the Liberian
boy. Him as well.” Her voice catches. She’s crying. “She hasn’t been with us long. It happens all the time, kids running off from foster homes. But she’s young. Have you …”

I see the police car through the kitchen window. It’s coming down the lane. It pulls up outside the house.

“Have you heard anything?” says Mrs. Stone. “She likes you, she talked about you. Has she been in touch?”

“No. No.”

Mum goes to the door. I watch PC Ball and WPC Jenkins coming, straightening their bulletproof vests.

“But you’ll tell us,” says Mrs. Stone. “If she does get in touch, you’ll let us know.”

“Yes. Of course.”

I put the phone down. The police officers come into the kitchen.

“Hello, son,” says PC Ball. He winks. “Found any bairns recently?”

I ignore his joke.

“That was Crystal’s foster mother,” I say to Mum. “She’s run away. With Oliver.”

“So what do you know?” says Ball.

“Me? Nothing.”

“He hardly knows them,” says Mum.

“Seems they knew him, though,” says Ball. “Very fond of him, they were, by all accounts, so here we are.” He takes a notebook out of his pocket. “So. Where d’you think they might have gone?”

“I’ve no idea.”

He shrugs.

“None at all? They said nothing, talked about nothing?”

“No. Nothing.”

“Ah, well. Worth a try, eh?”

He crouches beside the baby. She coos and smiles. The baby laughs and holds out a fistful of mash. Jenkins laughs.

“Funny how things happen round you,” she says. “Foundling babies, runaway orphans, escaped asylum seekers. What’s next?”

“It’s like that with some folk,” says Ball. “They attract stuff. Other folk—a life of peace and quiet and nothing at all.”

Mum puts a cup of tea into his hand.

“You’ll let us know, if anything turns up?”

“Course he will,” says Mum.

“That’s good.”

They swig their tea. We hear Dad moving about upstairs, hear the printer whirring. Ball raises his eyebrows.

“Writer at work, eh? It must be great, having a dad that’s a famous writer.”

He holds his pen over his notebook, turns his eyes to the sky, pretends to write as if inspired.

“Ahem. I wandered lonely as a … Sorry.” He closes the book. “Mind you, if I do ever get round to writing some of the things we’ve seen …”

“Bestseller stuff,” says Jenkins.

“Aye. Bestseller stuff in ordinary town streets, bestseller stuff in peaceful villages. All looks peaceful and lovey-dovey till …” He pauses, looks at me closely, points to my cheek. “Had an accident, son?”

I touch the faint thin line there.

“A hawthorn tree,” I say.

“Ha. Fun and games, eh? I thought you looked like you’re enjoying the summer. Look how brown he is, eh?”

“Like a berry,” says Jenkins. “And look at that hair. Like a wild boy.”

“It’s great, isn’t it? You be wild while you can, son. The real world’ll be at you soon enough.”

He straightens his vest. They head for the door.

Ball turns and looks at me a last time.

“You won’t keep it to yourself. If there is some news.”

“Course he won’t,” says Jenkins. “He’s a good citizen, this one. Aren’t you, son?”

“Yes,” I say.

“Course he is,” says Ball. “There’s no trouble in a nice young citizen like that.”

They go to the car, drive back towards the village. The sun glints off the little police car with the shapes of bulletproofed police officers hunched inside.

“You’ve really heard nothing?” says Mum.

“Nothing.”

She holds the baby’s hand. She waves it.

“Bye-bye, nice policeman. Bye-bye, nice police lady.”

Nothing strange about it.
Kids are always running off from children’s homes. Asylum seekers melt away. The world is full of tales of children lost in a big and scary world. They’re the tales we tell to Alison before she sleeps.

Once there was a girl called Little Red Riding Hood….

One day a pretty little girl called Goldilocks set off walking through the trees….

Hansel was the brother and Gretel was the sister and they lived with their mummy and their daddy beside a big dark scary wood….

The news appears on TV for a moment—There’s a girl called Crystal and a boy called Oliver and they disappeared in the night
—then it fades, as all news stories fade.

I climb into the chestnut tree in the field beside the school.
I climb higher, higher. I spend an afternoon in it, scanning the countryside that leads to Newcastle. I see the military road and the Roman Wall stretching away towards the west. I see the chapel of St. Michael and All Angels on the ridge above the village. If they come, that’s where they’ll come from. I imagine them coming down through the fields, coming down on the footpath that runs alongside the wall. I’d know them immediately, the white girl, the black boy. I see nothing. Late afternoon I climb down, go home.

Mum’s at the back door smoking a cigarette and swigging a big glass of wine.

“Hello, son,” she says, but her mouth’s all pursed and her eyes are bitter.

“What’s up?” I say.

“Everything! Art.”

“Art?”

Dad’s behind her with a coffee in his hand.

“Your mum’s just back from the gallery,” he says.

A few of her framed photographs are leaning against the kitchen wall.

“I’ve been ditched,” says Mum. “They don’t want my work anymore.”

“Yes, they do,” says Dad. “You’ve still got four or five in there.”

“I don’t want them there! I don’t want our lovely baby and our lovely son—”

“The
skin
of our lovely son.”

“Whatever. But I don’t want them hanging next door to that …”

Smoke seeps out between her teeth.

“That what?” I say.

“That … filth! That disgusting trashy … Yuck! Yuck yuck yuck!”

She glugs her wine. She drags on her cigarette, then flings it away.

“They have hung the most disgusting stuff on the walls….”

“It’s not even in the main gallery,” says Dad. “It’s that old warehousy place where they put all the weird stuff.”

“Hangings!” says Mum. “Hangings and beheadings and stonings that turn out not to be real hangings and beheadings and stonings. Knives and blood and axes everywhere. Pigs’ heads and beasts’ hearts and snapped bones and crushed skulls … Ugh! Ugh!”

“So is it art?” says Dad.

“It’s filth. What kind of pleasure can you get from watching it? What kind of twisted mind gets pleasure making it?”

Dad sips his coffee.

“Maybe it’s not about pleasure,” he says. “Maybe they’re showing us how horrible the world is. Maybe they’re exploring the nature of reality and illusion, truth and lies.”

“Maybe they’re just getting off on their own sordid tastes.”

Dad shrugs.

“And maybe it’s showing that we’re all just a kind of meat in the end.”

She glares at him.

“I’m not meat! You’re not! Liam’s not! Alison isn’t!”

She glares at him, lights another cigarette. She glares at him again when he says she should put it out. She jabs him in the chest.

“Stop telling me what to do, mister!”

He sighs and looks at his watch. Time to head upstairs again.

“Who they by?” I ask.

“Nobody that’ll put their name to them,” says Mum. “They’re by somebody that goes by the name of the Gnat. The
Gnat!
And they’ve put warnings about the content on the gallery door.”

“What does whatsisname—Jack Scott—think of them?” says Dad.

She spits breath.

“Jack precious Scott! Oh, he thinks they’re new and strange. He thinks they fit the times. He thinks they’re at the cutting edge!”

“Maybe they are. Maybe they’re exactly what people are looking for.”

“People! Sickos and weirdos and people that like murder and mayhem and that’s got not a clue about art.”

“Maybe that’s most people,” says Dad.

Mum screams, short and sharp. She clamps her hands across her ears.

“I don’t want to think that. I
can’t
think that.”

“But maybe it has to be thought. Maybe that’s exactly why there’s murder and mayhem. Because we love it. Because the desire for it is deep inside us.”

“It’s not in
me
!” says Mum. She jabs him hard in the chest again. “It’s not in
me
!”

We all go to see.
We leave Alison with little Mrs. Bolton along the lane. We go to the gallery. It’s got corrugated walls and a corrugated roof. The lights are low. There are video screens on the walls. I see the videos I know, or segments of them. The pig’s head, dripping blood, is sawn off time and again.

One video just shows a torch moving through a dark space, the beam rising and falling, going away, then coming back again, like it’s searching, like it’s playing Spotlight, until it rushes towards the camera, shines right towards the viewer.

“Gotcha!” says a growling sinister voice that I know straightaway. Then there’s a hand thrusting a knife towards you.

Other videos show a firing squad. Easy to see that the bodies are stuffing and straw, that the hooded heads are pigs’
heads or sheep’s heads or footballs or turnips. Easy to see the clumsy video cuts where real bodies are replaced with false.

“Maybe that’s part of the point,” says Dad. “Brutality’s a game. Bodies are stuffing and straw. Human heads are pigs’ heads.”

“
Mine
isn’t!” snaps Mum. She reaches out and cradles my head in her hands. She cradles Dad’s head. “And yours isn’t. And yours isn’t.”

There are hidden speakers with crackling voices, voices from radio reports of long-ago wars. Whispered accounts of ambushes and torture and abductions in the night. The noises of bullets and bombs and low-flying aircraft. Screams and howls and terrified appeals for mercy. Laughter and scorn.

It’s like walking through a nightmare.

In the hanging video, the victim climbs the steps, is noosed, then drops, then climbs the steps again as if rising from his death, is noosed and drops again, again, again, again.

“So?” says Mum as we stand together watching it.

“Horrible,” says Dad. “But hypnotic, you have to give it that.”

Mum turns away.

“And it makes you think.”

“Think of what?” says Mum.

“Of … Sisyphus,” says Dad. “It makes you think of Christ on his cross.”

“So you’d have it on the wall?”

“No. But—”

“But nothing. It’s voyeuristic trash. Anybody could do it! Anybody with a camera and a computer and a twisted-enough brain!”

The victim drops again. He climbs the steps again.

A voice from the wall repeats and repeats, a soft persuasive voice:
Imagine anything. Yes, we can imagine anything…. Imagine anything. Yes, we can imagine anything.

Mum screams again, clamps her hands over her ears again. She leaves.

Imagine anything. Yes, we can imagine anything….

Dad laughs, shakes his head.

“That’s what I say, isn’t it?” he says.

“And it’s true,” I say.

The victim drops again.

“Tell you what else I say,” says Dad. “If you can imagine doing something, then you can do it.”

We turn to leave the room.

Gotcha!
snaps Nattrass.

We go out again into the city streets.

“I feel …
defiled
,” says Mum.

Dad takes her hand.

“What about loveliness?” says Mum. “What about beauty? Where’s the stuff that’ll touch the heart?”

The tent’s blue canvas.
It’s down by the fire pit. I sleep in it night after night. I light fires in the pit. I put up a little camping table and a camping stool. I light a camping gaz lamp and I read down there. I keep my knife Death Dealer with me. I look at the stars. I wait for Crystal and Oliver. I know they’ll come. I’ll be ready for them.

When I was small, when I first started sleeping out, Mum asked me, “Will you not get scared?”

“Of what?” I asked.

Dad raised his hands like claws and rolled his eyes.