The Beasts of Upton Puddle (8 page)

Joe's mum glanced at Aunt Rose.

Aunt Rose lifted her magazine.

“Heaven? Honestly, Joe, I really don't know.” She released a breath slowly. “Joe . . . is this about your father? Is that what's on your mind? It's been almost three years now since he passed away.”

Joe remembered those days all too well. His father's death had been so sudden; road accidents usually were. With no chance to prepare, no chance to say good-bye, and so much left undone, nobody in the family knew how to handle the grief. Joe's mum almost had a breakdown. If it weren't for Aunt Rose, she probably would have. Joe took the longest to recover, and he knew his mum believed he never had.

But it wasn't his father's death that was on his mind. “No, this isn't about Dad.”

“Then what brought this on?”

“Nothing, really.” He looked at the carpet again.

“Come on. Something's obviously shaken you up. Can't you tell me?”

Joe thought before answering. “Promise you won't laugh?”

“Joe!”

“Well, Mrs. Merrynether has this . . . pet, and it's really ill. I think it might die, and it started me thinking. First I wondered if animals go to heaven; then I started thinking about if heaven was actually a real place.”

“Why would I laugh at that? Some of the greatest thinkers who ever lived have been arguing over that since the year dot.”

Joe shrugged. “It's just that some people might think it's a stupid idea that animals go to heaven when they die. I mean, can you imagine how many flies there'd be? Or where they'd put all the dinosaurs?”

Joe's mum smiled. “I suppose if heaven
is
a real place, it would have to be pretty big, wouldn't it? But I don't think that'd be a problem for God, would it?”

“Yeah . . . So do you think it's a real place, then?”

Aunt Rose rustled her magazine and cleared her throat, a look of mild concern on her face.

“I'd like to think it is.” His mum shrugged. “It'd be a pointless life without a heaven, wouldn't it?”

But Joe saw a different answer in her eyes. “I suppose so.”

Monday came. It was the second Monday since Joe had discovered some fairy tales are real.

A trifle more than seven days.

A little over one hundred seventy-two hours.

Ten thousand three hundred fifty-eight minutes.

Six hundred twenty-one thousand four hundred eighty seconds.

Or thereabouts.

Joe stared through the huge white clock on the wall, vaguely aware of the second hand as it began a new minute.

Only another five hundred seven thousand seconds to go before he could find out if Cornelius had recovered.

Ninety-nine . . . ninety-eight . . . ninety-seven . . .

An eternity. Perhaps he could risk going there one afternoon after school. Joe turned the idea around in his mind, thinking about what he would say to his mum about why he was home late again. Hopeless. It wasn't going to happen. He'd have to wait until Sunday.

Seventy-three . . . seventy-two . . . seventy-one . . .

All Joe could hear was the relentless ticktock of the clock, which was indifferent to the torture it inflicted. Something wasn't quite right. It shouldn't be this quiet.

“The wheel is still turning,” said Mrs. Conway, “but it would seem the hamster died at the beginning of the lesson.”

The sound of the clock was replaced by a scattered sniggering, and it took a few more ticks of the second hand before Joe remembered where he was.

Mrs. Conway stood next to her whiteboard, arms crossed, her pristine white jacket complementing a red blouse. Her expression reminded Joe of a startled lemur's.
“Have you been with us for
any
of today's lesson on matrices, Copper?”

Joe glanced around.

Thirty students stared back, all clearly waiting gleefully for what they knew would be a futile answer.

“Sorry. Can you repeat the question, Mrs. Conway?”

A voice hissed behind him. “Sorry. Can you repeat the question, Mrs. Conway? Prat!”

The last word provoked stifled snickering from either side.

“I heard that, Duggan. One more smart remark comes out of that foul hole you call a mouth, and you'll be back in detention—tonight!”

“Geek!” came another attack in an even quieter whisper.

The sharp end of a pencil dug into the back of Joe's neck, causing him to cry out.

“Duggan! That was quite uncalled for, and I
am
able to read lips, you know. Detention!”

The class continued without further incident.

When everybody shoved each other outside for break, Joe knew if he switched on his mobile, a threatening text message from Kurt Duggan would be waiting for him. He also knew his daydreaming would not go unreported; his mum had already been hearing reports from his teachers.

“Dead,” the ape-faced bully whispered as he muscled ahead through the crowd.

Once out of the classroom, Joe had nowhere to go except through the double doors that opened into the school yard. Sure enough, there was Neanderthal Kurt Duggan leaning against the wall, accompanied by his three sneering minions.

“Oi! Brain boy!”

With his gaze directed firmly on the tarmac, Joe strode ahead, trying to blend in with the rest of the dispersing herd, pretending he hadn't heard a thing. He knew exactly what would happen. The same scene had played out time and again on every boy labeled a brainiac. The hunting ape-men would circle the flock, looking for the weakest victim, and then close in so the alpha male could draw first blood.

“Where you going, Copper?” One of Duggan's lackeys blocked Joe's path.

The other two closed in like velociraptors as Duggan strolled forward.

Joe said nothing. He studied Duggan's face, hoping to find something in the bully's features that would distract him from the fluttering in his stomach. Nothing.

The cold grey eyes stared back at him from underneath a caveman ridge. “I got another detention coz of you.”

Joe stayed silent, knowing the slightest tremor in his voice would betray any illusion of composure. A few stragglers from the herd watched from a distance, and he knew they were waiting for the inevitable.

“D'you think that's fair, geek?”

Joe shrugged. Inside he felt the adrenaline surge, and
it was hard not to run away.

Duggan's hands balled slowly into fists, and a series of images flooded Joe's mind. The manticore leaping and roaring, the great Beast howling in the woods, and Mrs. Merrynether staring at him with eyes of fire. The memory of her words flashed in his head like a floodlight in a cavern:
There comes a time in a person's life when that choice to be special hits them square between the eyes. It's a wonderful moment but a terrible moment too. Most people look away and go back to their boring lives, frightened of what might happen, but some people . . . some people seize that moment and see life for what it really is
.

Another opportunity to seize the moment.

With a speed that shocked him, Joe planted his fist squarely in Duggan's left cheek. There was a moment of slow motion as Joe saw a snapshot of the bully's contorted face. The rubbery lips twisted into a bizarre crescent shape, and his ape-man eyes squeezed shut from obvious pain.

Joe's jaw dropped. He could hardly believe what he'd done. He'd been told many times most bullies were cowards and if someone stood up to them they'd show their true colors. Joe hoped more than anything that was true.

A dull ache throbbed through Joe's hand, and he stifled the urge to cry out, not least because of the stunned silence that had settled in the school yard.

The hush was broken by one of Duggan's meatheads. “Woooo, Duggan, it's an uprising.” He grinned.

Duggan did not turn out to be the whimpering wreck that Joe had desperately hoped for. Instead, the face that had squinted in pain mere moments ago now twisted with rage.

The tribe exchanged excited looks while the rest of the school watched with wide eyes like a troop of nervous monkeys sheltering in the high branches of a tree.

With a nod to the others, Duggan grabbed Joe's hair and waited. One of his henchmen removed his tie and used it to blindfold Joe.

Joe was dragged away in darkness.

“We're going to be late back from break today,” grunted Duggan. “Go and tell Edmonds to have our cover story ready for Lardy. That fat sod'll come looking for us otherwise.”

For several minutes, Joe bumped into corners and railings, stumbled up steps and across what seemed like a field, guided by the unsympathetic hands of his executioner, taunted by the whoops of the other apes and the pounding of his heart. Finally he was thrust through a set of double doors into an area that stunk of stale cigarette smoke and spilled beer.

Somebody yanked the tie away from his eyes, and Joe saw a burnt-out classroom occupied by a gang of kids much older than him. Under the glare of naked fluorescent lights, several faces stared at him through a haze, some smirking, some frowning, but most looking uninterested.

“This one got brave,” Duggan said, releasing Joe's hair and then jabbing the back of his head. “Gave me a slap right in front of the whole school.”

Two boys and one of the girls laughed.

“Oh, funny, is it? Perhaps I'll use wiener boy here for a bit of practice before I start on you, eh?”

The kids stopped laughing, and Joe wondered how a boy at least three years their junior had such influence. It was true that Duggan was well-built for his age, but that wasn't enough to gain a reputation as the school kingpin.

Joe glanced around him. The fact that he'd been blindfolded meant they were trying to keep this place a secret, yet it was obviously somewhere within the school building. Clarkdale School was not very big, so the hideout could not remain concealed for very long. On one of the benches a deck of cards was surrounded by cans of lager and a pile of money. On one of the doors numerous darts hung on a dartboard. The charcoaled walls were covered with blisters and peeling paint, and the windows were boarded up. There'd been a fire here.

This was the old chemistry block that had been gutted by last year's blaze, no doubt.

“You're going to get such a beating,” Duggan said, pushing his face into Joe's.

“Do I get a final request?” Joe asked.

The question roused a howl of belly laughs from the others, followed by a whistling chorus from
The Great
Escape
. From the back of the room, a lanky kid rushed forward and shoved a cigarette in his mouth.

“I believe it's the custom for a condemned man to have a final smoke, what?” he said like an English gentleman. “May I give you a light, old chap?”

Deciding he had nothing left to lose, Joe rolled the cigarette inside his mouth with his tongue, chewed on it, and then opened his mouth, allowing the mangled paper and tobacco to drop to the floor in soggy brown pools of saliva. The whole time, he looked at Duggan.

“Hey! That was a perfectly good smoke,” said the lanky kid. “When Duggan's done, I'll give you a good pounding myself.”

Duggan glared. “Five minutes ain't enough time for you to take the sort of punishment I'm gonna dish out to you, Copper. Tell you what,” he said, putting the tie back round his neck and tightening it into an impossibly small knot, “I'm gonna let you go now, but when that last bell rings today, you'd better know I'll be waiting right outside those school gates. And then we'll have all the time in the world, won't we, geek boy?”

“No problem.” Joe beamed, realizing Duggan was stupid enough not to remember he'd still be on detention while Joe was safely strolling home.

Duggan gave him the briefest of confused looks before barking at one of his cronies to drag Joe back to the main school yard.

“What about the blindfold?” Joe asked.

Duggan pursed his lips and shot a glance at the tie he'd just tightened. “Just close your eyes. If you open them, I'll know, and then I'll be waiting by those gates for you every day for a whole month. Got it?”

“Got it.” Joe smiled, though inside he was still fighting back his fear.

Duggan glowered at him, then waved dismissively at nobody in particular. “Just get rid of him.”

Joe clamped his eyes shut as two grinning apes grabbed his arms and dragged him out of the room. After a few minutes of stumbling, Joe was dumped in the school yard. He puffed out a huge sigh as the school bell signaled the end of his nightmare. But Joe knew his relief would be short-lived. Duggan's long list of detentions would be enough to prevent a monumental battering outside the school gates for a while, but sooner or later, it was bound to happen.

Joe shrugged, massaged his aching knuckles, and joined the herd shuffling into the classrooms.

Argoyle Redwar lumbered through the animal block, though he did his best to make it look more like marching. He lifted his flab-swaddled chin and clasped his hands behind his back while casting a haughty gaze on his nervous employees. Behind him, armed with her notepad and pen, Ms. Burrowdown trotted in his shadow.