Fallow Read online

  I hadn’t liked that, the mums telling us off.

  ‘Paul,’ said Mikey. He was coming out of the loch and I could see his legs, pink with watery blood. He was nodding to the road.

  I twisted around on my boulder to see Duncan’s van pull into the passing place beside us. Mikey was smiling up at him and waving. Launching myself up from my seat, I crossed the beach and plunged into the water myself. I waded towards Mikey and held him by the arms.

  ‘He’s coming for you,’ I told him.

  ‘He’s not,’ he said. ‘He’s just driving home.’

  ‘You saw them all up at the field. You saw that, didn’t you? The Toad, the police car? Duncan knows about you.’

  I could hear the van’s door opening and closing behind me. Mikey’s eyes were moving between me and Duncan.

  ‘Do you understand?’ I said. ‘He knows. They all know. They all know what you did and they fucken hate you for it.’

  Mikey shook his head. He rubbed at his nose.

  ‘Hey,’ shouted Duncan.

  I ignored him.

  ‘Tell him there’s something wrong with your legs,’ I said. ‘Ask him to help.’

  Mikey looked at the sky.

  I got so close to him I could smell the sweat on his face. ‘They fucken hate you Mikey. Do you understand? They want to take you away and put you inside and this time you’ll be away for even longer. Do you understand?’

  He said something so quiet I couldn’t hear.

  ‘What?’ I hissed.

  ‘I didn’t even do anything,’ he whispered.

  ‘Aye,’ I said. ‘Aye you fucken did.’

  Duncan was at the shore, twenty feet away. ‘What’s going on lads? Did you see what happened up at the site? The Toad called the cops! Can you believe that?’

  ‘Mikey’s hurt,’ I shouted. ‘I think something bit him.’

  ‘Bit him?’ shouted Duncan. ‘Seriously?’

  ‘Aye, I think so,’ I said. ‘See the blood? Can you give us a hand, mate?’

  ‘Jesus. I mean, aye, of course.’ He began to wade into the water, coming towards us.

  ‘All right?’ I whispered to Mikey.

  ‘All right,’ he said.

  Duncan was near. ‘Ach,’ he said. ‘That’s not too bad. Looks like you’ve scraped them or something.’

  ‘Come and give us a hand to get him back in,’ I said.

  He came towards us and looked at us both and put his hands on Mikey, smiling.

  Mikey reached over and got him by the head and neck and I pulled his legs out from beneath him and we held his body and pushed and carried him out into the deeper water. He was thrashing and spluttering and saying, ‘What? You fucken…’

  We held onto the body and helped it down into the loch, the dark green loch. We held onto the neck and head and arms and made it be under the water. The body’s fingertips broke the surface and I could feel the kicking legs disturb the water on my shin hairs. The body looked surprised. Its eyes were open and full of whites and the mouth was moaning, bubbles of air breaking free like floating pearls.

  We held the body until the water held it by itself.

  Out in the middle of the loch the king eel awoke. It opened its eyes and uncoiled.

  7

  We drove home in our wet clothes. Mikey had lost his jeans in the confusion of getting back to the van and getting away, so he sat beside me in the front, slumped right down in his seat, legs bare and knocking. Already it was dusk. Duncan had made the van look like an easy drive but it wasn’t. I struggled to move it around even the shallowest bend in the road.

  I was on fire though. Nervous energy powered me and it felt superb. I chewed, despite having nothing in my mouth. I played high-tempo beats on the dashboard with my fingertips. I drove into the oncoming dimness and all I knew was the magic of possibility. The only thing spoiling the mood was my brother.

  ‘I know what you’re thinking,’ I said, fiddling with the van’s controls to make the lights come on.

  ‘Aye?’

  ‘Aye, I do. You’re thinking about what just happened. You’re sulking about it.’

  I was focused on the road, but I could tell he was scowling.

  ‘I’ve said it before pal but it was a matter of survival. That fucker knew. He worked it out. Maybe he didn’t work it out himself, maybe his bitch pal told him, but he knew. Why else would he be coming looking for us like that? It was self-defence.’

  ‘Hm.’

  ‘And now look at us! We’ve got freedom. We can go wherever we like. Anywhere. Find a new place every single fucken day if we feel like it.’

  ‘What about the house?’

  ‘The house is a goner. We head back and sort some stuff out and then we fuck off. They knew we stayed there, that Fia dropped us off remember? They’ll come looking for us there next.’

  I looked away from the road for a moment. Mikey was staring at me and he wasn’t sulking anymore. He was thinking.

  ‘It’s really the best possible outcome as far as me and you are concerned,’ I added.

  ‘But what about going home? What about Mum?’

  ‘Listen pal. That’s our primary aim. That’s aim numero uno. And believe me, I’m monitoring the situation. That’s at the – what’s it? – at the forefront of my mind. I’m monitoring it constantly. But until then,’ I said, sweeping a hand over the dashboard, ‘absolute freedom.’

  We crested a hump in the road and the wee house was below us, glowing in the dark valley.

  ‘All right,’ said Mikey. ‘If you say so.’

  I smiled. ‘That’s a boy.’

  We’d done our best to push Duncan out into the water. He’d floated though, so I’d scooped up some of the larger rocks from the loch’s floor and stuffed them into his pockets and down his jeans. It wasn’t ideal. The nice thing about having the man buried out the back was that you knew where he was. You could even go out and visit him, if you wanted to. I was concerned about Duncan washing up on shore in the future, but we’d be long gone by then.

  I sent Mikey into the house, telling him to pack us some clothes and whatever food was left in the fridge. Once he was inside I checked the glove box. The cash was there. I thanked my lucky stars and did a hasty count. There was more than I had thought. A fair bit more.

  I crossed the road and leaped into the fields. I paced through the darkness in the direction of our old camp. A foul reek escaped from the inside of the tent as I opened it. All of our dirty clothes, stewing in the sun for days. I thought about the best way to get what I needed back down. ‘Fuck it,’ I said, and set to work pulling the poles out. I threw them away and gathered the tent up by its door, slinging it over my back like a sack.

  I came down the hill towards the house, checking up and down the road for anyone coming. We were safe. I threw the tent-sack into the back of the van and then went to find Mikey.

  For some reason the television was on. It was the only source of light in the whole place. He wasn’t in the kitchen, so I ascended the Ramsay ladder. No sign of him up there either. An open suitcase on the bed though.

  I tracked him down in the garden. He was sat on the slabs with the dog between his legs. It was burrowing into his oxters and elbows and opening its mouth to beg for affection.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Saying hello to Doris.’

  ‘You think you have time for that?’

  ‘It’ll just take a minute.’

  I stood in the doorway and watched him, sitting like a teddy bear, holding the dog by the snout and running his hands along her twisting spine. She was enjoying it, even I could see that. She took a look at me. I looked into her eyes and all I could see was black, wet circles.

  ‘Right,’ I said, coming down the step and across the slabs. ‘That’s enough. Put it in the run.’

  Mikey looked up at me. ‘Aren’t we taking her?’

  ‘Eh? No, we’re not taking it. We’re not carting around a fucken mutt. That’s the last thing we need.’
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  ‘Well we can’t just leave her. She’ll starve.’

  ‘Stick the dog food in with it. That’ll keep it going till someone comes.’

  ‘What if no one comes? What if she starves?’

  I growled in frustration. Every time I worked things out for us this idiot would put obstacles in my way. He didn’t appreciate the work that went into looking after him and his daft head.

  ‘Put it in the run,’ I said.

  ‘No.’

  I asked again and he didn’t respond, so I crossed the slabs and ripped the dog from Mikey’s grasping hands, jerking it up by the collar. Holding it aloft, I marched across the garden to the back fence. The dog’s tongue was extended, its eyes were rolling. Mikey shouted. I held it up by the collar and its body dangled and swung. Its front legs were going up and down, as if it was climbing an invisible ladder or grovelling for scraps.

  ‘See what happens?’ I said to the dog.

  ‘Let her go,’ shouted Mikey.

  I launched it over the fence into the wild. It hit the earth with a sharp yelp and rolled to its feet. It looked back at us. Mikey was at the fence by then, holding onto the wood.

  ‘Fuck off,’ I shouted, making a cone of my hands. ‘Get lost.’

  The dog yelped again, thumping its front paws on the grass. Please, it was saying.

  ‘Get away Doris,’ said Mikey, reluctantly.

  He pointed out into the wilderness, into the mountains. The dog put its ears back and cocked its head. I kicked the fence as hard as I could and the impact reverberated along it, twanging and shuddering. The dog took off into the night, its black and white coat flickering like a cartoon as it merged into the dark, bit by bit. I saw it plunge into the mazeish network of burrows that covered the land.

  ‘There,’ I said. ‘That’s another thing off our minds. Let’s get a move on.’

  Mikey climbed up onto the fence and bellowed across the great expanse between the house and the mountain, ‘Goodbye Doris!’

  We went inside and locked the back door for a final time. I stuffed as much of the man’s clothes as I could into the suitcase and Mikey swept everything the fridge and freezer held into black bin bags. It all went into the back of the camper with our balled up tent.

  ‘Right,’ I said. ‘That’s us then.’

  Mikey leant against the van’s side. ‘Are we off?’

  I nodded and then looked back at the house. I thought about the nights we’d spent there. I imagined the place swarming with our germs, surfaces thick and clotted with our hairs and smudgy fingerprints. I thought about my DNA clogging up the drainpipe.

  ‘Give me a second,’ I said.

  I jogged up the path and back into the wee house. I found the turps in the cupboard beneath the kitchen sink. Room by room I squirted the bottle over everything. It stank. A foul oily odour. At the front door I made a ball of cigarette papers and used my lighter on it, throwing it onto the hall carpet once it was alight. A sheet of fire sprung up, covering the floor and descending into the kitchen and through into the living room. I closed the front door and ran to the van.

  Mikey was waiting for me in the front. We sat and watched as the house caught, a crazy orangey brightness ascending through the windows. Cruel chemical smoke came billowing from the chimney and the doors and we took that as our cue to leave. I started the van’s engine and pulled it out into the road.

  We left the dying house behind and drove down into the village. We passed the pub and the butcher shop. I thought about putting the butcher’s windows in but I didn’t have anything heavy to hand. We passed them by.

  You escaped by my good grace, I told the butcher. The only thing that saved you was my benevolence.

  I saw him in my mind, prostrate before me.

  Once we were free of the village limits I glanced at Mikey.

  ‘Where to then?’ I asked.

  ‘Where is there?’ he said.

  I thought about it. Where could we go? There was a whole country at our fingertips – the cities, the highlands too. We could drive to the far north, see the wild tropical looking beaches they had there. We could drive to one of the towns and spend a bit of Duncan’s cash. We could take the tiny capillary roads up into the raw mountains, I guessed about a hundred miles north of us. See the true heartless centre of the country.

  ‘All sorts,’ I said. ‘What kind of thing do you fancy?’

  ‘Maybe someplace fun?’ he ventured. ‘Have a bit of a laugh?’

  I nodded. ‘Hm. Maybe.’

  I checked the clock on the dashboard. One in the morning. One in the morning and I wasn’t a bit tired. Even after the running through fields all evening, even after struggling with Duncan in the water. I felt satisfied, full, like I’d just finished a rich, nourishing meal that my body was using to produce good, clean energy.

  Mikey was less sprightly. His eyelids were heavy and shiny and his head was nodding. Eventually he gave up and slept where he sat, leaning forward, suspended by his seat belt. The van’s movement rocked him left and right.

  ‘Lazy bastard,’ I muttered, with no contempt.

  We drove through a series of villages, all of them similar to the first one. The same cobblestoned squares, the same pubs, the same shops. At perhaps the third or fourth I parked up, spying a phone box across the road. I darted across that village’s central square, past the dry copper fountain that was the centrepiece.

  I fed the phone the rest of the change from my pocket and dialled. The lower windows of the phone box were warped and toffee-coloured from historic arson attempts. A low buzzing was coming from the light above me. The phone took a long time to be answered.

  ‘Hello?’ she said.

  I gripped the receiver. ‘It’s me.’

  ‘Paul,’ she whispered. ‘It’s Mum.’ Her voice was rich and heavy, full of sleep and yawns. Even those three words put an ache in my head.

  ‘I know,’ I said.

  ‘Are you coming back yet son?’

  ‘No.’

  She sighed. ‘Why are you doing this to me?’

  ‘I’m saving this family,’ I told her. ‘It’ll all be over soon.’

  ‘Is there anything I can tell you to make you change your mind?’

  I shook my head, closing my eyes. ‘It’s not about my mind,’ I hissed. ‘It’s about Mikey.’

  With my eyes closed I could see her, sitting on the arm of the sofa in her dressing gown, her fist opening and closing on her thigh. I saw her hand, loose-skinned and veiny.

  ‘Why are you phoning?’ she asked.

  ‘I wanted to tell you we’re moving on. You won’t find us in the old place.’

  ‘But I didn’t know where you were before.’

  I thought about it. She was right. ‘Well,’ I said. ‘Never mind that then.’

  I went to replace the receiver but she began to protest. Bringing it back to my ear, I heard her say, ‘Wait. Wait.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘When are you going to phone next?’ she said.

  I looked around. ‘Hard to say.’

  ‘If you wanted, I could arrange to have someone here when you call back. A professional you can speak to?’

  ‘A professional?’

  ‘If you want.’

  I replaced the receiver and stormed from the box. I slammed the van’s door shut behind me. A professional! Here I was, in a car with one of the most infamous child killers in the country and my own mother was wanting to get me a professional. Meaning a shrink, a quack, a fucken brain doctor. They’d want to make me remember all the things I could from being a bairn and tell them about it.

  And how did you feel, Paul, they’d say, when you fell off the climbing frame at nursery school and got concussed so bad you were off school for weeks? How did that make you feel Paul, that brain fucken injury? Were you pleased or annoyed about how your blood started kicking in so that you couldn’t control yourself? That when Scott Soutar told you your brother was a mungo it made you hold onto Scott Soutar’s hair and
make his face smash against the tarmac again and again?

  I tried to close my eyes, as I sat in the front of the van. Tried to relax and calm myself down, get the blood flowing normal again. It felt as if I was in a rollercoaster, creeping upwards towards the apex, the excitement and the dread churning my stomach. Breathed deep through my nose. I said, ‘Ah,’ out loud.

  Mikey woke up with a sniff. ‘Where are we?’

  I said, ‘Nowhere.’

  ‘How come we’ve stopped?’

  ‘I needed a rest.’

  ‘Right.’

  Mikey asked for permission and then slid down an alleyway for a piss. I was calm by the time he came back. We looked at each other and nodded with grim smiles.

  ‘So,’ he said.

  ‘Aye,’ I said.

  We drove on.

  We kept going out of the village and the lightless country swallowed us up.

  The ghost rattled on the window and Mikey snored. Through bleary, sleep-thick eyes I saw it press its pale features against the glass, its palms too, with fingers splayed. I was dreaming. I was dreaming of a ghost. More amused than scared I watched it move between the van’s small windows, gawking into each one and running its knuckles down the pane.

  I snorted and shook my head. The ghost noticed the movement and scuttled around to the window nearest me. It was waggling its ghost head and drumming those knuckles and I sat up on the sofa bed, my elbows behind me. It wasn’t a ghost. It was a man with a mop of white blonde hair and the palest skin I’d ever seen.

  ‘Christ,’ I said, hauling myself up.

  The man slapped on the glass, excited, nodding. I did my best to stand up in the van’s back. The man made a let-me-in gesture with his hand.

  I shook my head.

  He nodded his.

  ‘Piss off,’ I muttered, squeezing through and parking myself in the driver’s seat. I watched as the pale man hurried round to the front of the van. See how you like this, I thought, starting the engine as he planted his hands on the van’s bonnet. The whole vehicle rattled from the effort the engine made and the pale man laughed, a wet smile breaking his stubbled face. He was enjoying this.