Daylight Saving (20 page)

“I wouldn’t want to be you,” I said.

He frowned and lifted the knife.
She must have got away,
I thought.
I’ve saved her.
He sank the knife into my stomach, and I felt the red-hot pain deep in my gut. For a moment, it didn’t seem to matter, but then I saw that Lexi had returned. She was meters away. She came back because she cared about me. We cared about each other, and that — it seemed — was our downfall.

“Daniel, no!”
she screamed. He pulled out the knife and turned, got to his feet, and left me behind. He was gaining on her before they were even out of my sight. I knew he was bound to catch her.

I was in a bad way; there was a metallic taste in my mouth, and I could barely feel my legs. The cold from the ground crept into my skin. But the adrenaline had kicked in, and I was able to stand. I limped deeper into the woods. I could hear them up ahead, hear her breathing and the cries of panic between.
I’m going to see it,
I thought.
I’m going to see him kill her.
I couldn’t bear that. I heard a sudden swipe and crack, and the sound of a body hitting the ground. I felt the force of the blow echoing through the woods. There was no more panic in me, just a huge sadness; a sad acceptance that this was what men were like. I ran in the direction of the sound. Soon, through the trees, I could see a dark figure standing with a body at his feet. I kept running toward him, this standing figure. It was my father.

I had prior experience with hallucinations, of course. And that was when I
didn’t
have a hole in my stomach. But there was no doubt that this was my dad. I knew the shape of him even in the dark. As I staggered closer, his features became clear. He was holding a seven-iron golf club, and the man lay writhing at his feet. “Daniel?” he said.

“What are you
doing
here?” I said.

I could see that he was shaking. He looked down at the man. “I was looking for you, Daniel. But then this guy comes bolting out of nowhere, chasing the —”

“Where is she?” I shouted.

“Who? The girl?”

“Where is she?” I was screaming, delirious, spinning around looking for Lexi.

“She ran off. Look, she’s OK.
He’s
not going anywhere, is he?” Dad said, pointing to the man, who was flat out now. Twitching slightly. A sticky blackness in his hair. It was too dark for Dad to see my wounds. “Why is it so bloody
cold
?” he said.

I didn’t answer. I heard rustling in the woods, and I set off after the sound. “Daniel, come back, for God’s sake!” Dad said.

“I’ve got to go,” I said, but then I stopped and turned. “How can
you
see them?”

“You what?”

“How could you see them? Him. And Lexi.”

“Well,” he said, “the moon’s quite strong, and you soon get used to the dark.”

“No, I mean . . .” I thought of what Lexi had said, about a special sensitivity. About good mindsight.
Surely not,
I thought. “Forget it,” I said. “Just stay there. With him.” There would be time for questions later.

“Daniel, wait,” Dad said. But I didn’t wait. I ran.

I was crying, but I didn’t know what the emotion was. I’d never felt it before. I looked down at my watch. It was 1:47. I was getting weaker, but I didn’t care. Soon enough I could see her up ahead, leaping over the stumps and the ferns, dodging between the tree trunks, her blue dress shimmering. I tried to call her name, but I couldn’t get the breath to do it.

She was laughing. I chased her as I had done that night when we jumped the fences. And — like that night — I never caught up.

A few minutes later, we left the pine forest and were surrounded by beeches and oaks, the ancient trees of the old forest. We circled the lake, and eventually I arrived at the clearing I had come to know so well.

When I got there, she was nowhere to be seen. I looked around at the burnt-out cooking pit and the red sand that had fallen from my shoes before.

“Lexi!” I called. I looked up and saw her in the tree, walking carefully, arms out, along the solid branch that overhung the water. She turned to me.

“Thank you, Danny boy,” she said.

She sprang from the branch and sliced through the surface of the water, almost without a sound. I watched for a moment, but when she didn’t reappear, I dived in after her. For a few moments, everything was dark and swirling with loose soil. I fought to keep the rank water out of my nose and mouth, and then I began to settle. The old rhythm returned. I felt my body sinking.

One. And.

Two. And.

Three. And.

I opened my eyes, and I knew I was deep. The water was luminous and green. Blood corkscrewed up from the wound in my stomach, like smoke. The blood looked dark and slick in the green water.

I could see her. She was far deeper than me, far deeper than I believed the lake to be. She sculled with long, slow strokes down toward the bottom, where the light was changing color. Eventually, as I got closer, I could see the source of the colored light: it was Lexi’s front door, sunk into the earth. She was moving through the beams of luminous water, toward it. I could see the shadows of figures behind the glass, the red glass and the blue.

I couldn’t go any deeper. My breath was almost gone. I stopped swimming and allowed the water to pull me up. When I broke the surface, I could hear the giant clock smacking out the hour. It was, finally, two a.m.

The frost was gone from the forest floor. Dad was close to where I had left him, but he looked scared.

“Daniel, you’ve got to stay with me now, OK? I can’t have you running off again.”

He took me by the shoulders and examined me. “What’s that?” he said, looking down at my bloodstained T-shirt. “Are you cut? Did he cut you?”

“No,” I said. I lifted the T-shirt to reveal the smooth, unblemished skin beneath. All the wounds were gone, and I knew they were gone for good. “It must be his blood, or something.”

“Where’s the lass?” he said.

“Couldn’t find her,” I said.

“There’s something weird going on here. What aren’t you telling me?”

“Nothing. It’s —”

“That fella I hit,” Dad said. He looked disturbed, afraid to say it. “He’s
gone.
”

I nodded.

“No, Daniel. You don’t understand. He didn’t get up and run off. He just, well. It’s stupid. He just . . .”

“Vanished.”

“Aye,” Dad said. He glanced about him at the stern uniformity of the pine trunks. “I tell you what. I’m not happy with this. I’m not happy with this, at all.”

“Did he disappear around two o’clock? When the gongs sounded, over at the festival?” I asked.

“Dead-on,” Dad said.

“Dead-on,” I said quietly. “Listen, Dad. It’s best if you don’t mention any of this to the people from Leisure World.”

“It’s too late. I’ve already called them.”

I was tired of running away, and it didn’t matter to me what some fool from a sports camp said about my mental health. Dad was a bit more wary of speaking to the officials, after what he had done, but I think part of him just wanted to get back to civilization. We saw the white beams of their flashlights raking the forest well before we emerged onto the all-weather fields. The Leisure World vans were soon joined by a couple of police cars, and we were taken into a small room in the huge administrative building. It was a strange place to be at two thirty in the morning, with the ghostly emptiness of an office at night.

While the police put out search teams for a missing girl and an injured man, we were questioned by Officer Bracket, a tall, straight-backed woman from the local force, and the ridiculous Evans. I didn’t speak. I didn’t give them Lexi’s name. I pretended to be in shock. Even after the violence of the last few hours, I felt so peaceful, imagining Lexi diving toward the glass in the door. Dad, however, couldn’t hold his mouth.

“I’m just telling you what happened,” he said.

Officer Bracket nodded and scribbled in her notepad. “And how did you know that your son would be in the pine forest?”

“It’s down by the soccer fields, isn’t it? He’s a big fan of soccer.”

I stared at Dad, but he wouldn’t meet my eye.

“This is all nonsense,” Evans said. “Safety and security is our number-one concern here, and there’s no way we’d allow this . . .
man
you speak of onto our premises.” He turned to Officer Bracket. “I wouldn’t trust anything Mr. Lever says. He’s been drunk for most of his time here at Leisure World. He has obstructed our attempts to secure the safety of his son, of whom he has been neglectful. And he has abused our staff, including me —”

“That’s because you’re a tosser,” Dad said. “And if you don’t shut up, I’ll —”

“Gentlemen,
please,
” Officer Bracket said. “You both need to cool down. Mr. Evans, you and I are going to go out into the corridor and have a little chat. Mr. Lever, you and Daniel keep each other company in here for a moment.”

Evans exited with Officer Bracket, and Dad sighed. “I just feel like poking the little swine in the eye,” he said. “But I won’t.”

For a moment there was silence in the room.

“Dad,” I said.

“Yes.”

“
A big fan of soccer
?”

He smiled. “Aye. I hope they don’t give you a ball and ask you to prove it.”

“Leisure World is massive, Dad. It couldn’t have been a coincidence that we ran into each other. How did you
really
know I’d be there?”

“Your girlfriend told me.”

“What?”

“That lass. She came up to me outside the cabin the other night. After you and me had argued about . . . you know, Tash. She’s a strange girl, Daniel. She was wearing a big red coat and she had her hood up so I could hardly even see her face.”

I thought back to that night, the flash of red I had seen moving toward our cabin. The last time she’d worn the coat. Lexi had been late to meet me. I should have guessed

Dad continued with a frown: “She nearly scared me to death. I was having a cigarette. Don’t tell your mother.”

“What did she say?”

“Said you might be about to do something stupid on Saturday night. Told me to look for you down by the all-weather fields.”

“And you didn’t talk to me about it?” I said.

“I thought she was talking nonsense. A young lass comes up to you like that, starts spouting on . . . Well, I never gave it a moment’s thought until you went missing. I figured it must be the place where you and her hung around.”

“So why didn’t you tell that to the police?”

“Didn’t want to get the two of you into trouble. I couldn’t tell
them
you were going to do something stupid, could I?”

My head was spinning.

“I’ve got some questions of my own, Daniel,” Dad said.

“Maybe we should talk about it later,” I said.

Dad whistled and shook his head. “Well. I don’t really understand what happened out there tonight,” he said. “First it was freezing cold, then it suddenly gets warmer. And that fella! I hit him pretty hard, but I just can’t account for where he went. I don’t even know if I
killed
the poor bugger.”

“You shouldn’t have any sympathy for him, Dad,” I said. I paused, but I had to say it, because it was true. “You did the right thing.”

A few moments later, Officer Bracket came back in with Evans and an unexpected guest: my mum. She came straight over and threw her arms around me. She was wearing her blue wool coat, and the smell of it made me cry. “You OK?” she asked.

I nodded.

She turned to Dad. “Are you?” she said.

“Oh, aye,” he said. “Not a scratch.”

“Thanks for calling me,” Mum said to him.

Evans marched over. “Mrs. Lever,” he said in his old patronizing voice, “I think it would be best for you and your family if this whole embarrassing mess was wrapped up as soon as possible.”

“It’s not embarrassing for us, Mr. Evans. How about I call the press, and then we’ll see who’s embarrassed,” Mum said. She stood and turned around. “Let’s talk to the national papers about invasion of privacy and you masquerading as some sort of social worker.”

“Your boy has damaged our property. He threw stones at a security camera.”