Submersion (36 page)

‘Are you Joshua?’ I managed, hoping I was right, hoping a name might make him think I wasn’t the enemy.

It worked, at least it did for a second or so.

‘Ethan,’ he muttered, momentarily startled by my address. ‘I’m Ethan.’

And then he was gone.

Faster than I could imagine, clattering down three separate flights of stairs, clanging like a can, and just as light on his feet. Ethan. Ethan. My second cousin, by a quick calculation. One of my secret cousins. After the rattle of his descent, I heard another noise and realised to my horror that he was taking my boat. Instinctively, I began my own hurried descent, not really thinking about what I would do when I got there. But reaching the bottom, I tripped on last of the steps, falling under the water again. Coming back to the surface after a minute or two of struggling in the wet, I realised I was too late.

He was gone - and the boat I’d stolen from school with him.

I wondered exactly what I had done.

I came here looking for clues, following a trail I was certain I was meant to follow and had unleashed something into our city as a consequence. Someone – yes, someone. But he’d been locked up. There had to be a reason. What if it was a good reason? What if I had done something terribly foolish, terribly dangerous?

Then came another realisation – I was stranded. I had no way of getting home. And worse – Mother had no idea where I was. I began to wonder what she might be thinking, how worried she would be. I had gone to school – and now I was missing. Vanished. A familiar story. A family story. And thinking all that, I began to cry. Began to sob, as the dirty water swirled around me, the icy air nipping at my ears. Began to sob and fear the very worst.

I was lost.

Like Elinor.

Lost in the water.

I don’t remember them coming.

Don’t remember the rescue.

Don’t remember the return to home.

I do remember the cold, creeping further and further beneath my protective suit, shrivelling my skin, breaking my bones with its cruel freeze. Shutting me down, lap by shivering lap, as small waves of stagnant water slurped over my unmoving body.

A voice brought me back, calling me up from the long, dark, cold tunnel I had slipped to the end of. A voice not usually welcoming that spoke as if it couldn’t have been keener to have me back.

‘Thought I might have lost you,’ it said, accompanied by eyes that sparkled just as keenly. ‘Couldn’t have your mother coming back to that.’

I squinted, taking in the room. I wasn’t home. I was at my great-aunt and –uncles’, in their spare room, with the cupboard of tinned food and Great-Uncle Jimmy’s car toys that were not to be played with. The cupboard where I found those birth certificates – Joshua and Ethan’s, my great-aunt’s secret twins.

‘Are you feeling warm enough?’ she asked me, in the softer voice I wasn’t used to.

I nodded. I could feel a heaviness over me – a quilt and several blankets – and my skin was humming with heat. Inside, deep inside, I could still feel myself in that water, still sense the endless fear that at any minute the rest of the floor might dissolve like sand, or the coldness of the river road might snap my thin bones.

‘Good, you gave us quite a fright, Billy. Disappearing like that.’

An obvious question popped into my head.

‘Where’s is Mother?’

‘Still out with your Uncle Jimmy. Gone to check your house, get a few things for a night or two. They are checking on your Aunt Agnes, too, as she’s not answering her telephone. It’s lucky that Jimmy was having one of his clear-outs, otherwise we might never have worked out where you were. Might never have found you.’

I must have creased my forehead with a question, for she spoke as if I’d asked one.

‘He couldn’t find his keys to the shop, so went in search of the spare ones – found them missing. Then your mother rang – frantic! You’d runaway from school, she said. You weren’t at that old man’s place, either. No answer at your aunt’s. Were you with us, she wanted to know? I don’t think we’d have checked at our shop if you hadn’t been a bit clumsy.’

I noticed Great-Aunt Penny had something in her hands – a white envelope.

‘When you keep something hidden, when you are terrified about someone finding it, you know exactly where you left it. Exactly.’

My expression became puzzled.

‘The wallet these were kept in was the wrong way round, and one box of the cars had shifted to the right, just by an inch. So, I knew someone had been in there. Didn’t take much guessing that it had been you. I knew instantly what you’d found, what you’d read. Curiosity killed the cat, you know.’

In my half-conscious state, I wondered for a minute if this was a genuine threat. Whether any second, my Great-Aunt would exact her revenge and a pillow would come down heavy on my face, snuffing out my lights for good.

‘Am I in trouble?’ I managed, my voice a crackled whisper.

‘Not tonight,’ she said, suggesting I might be off the hook whilst I recovered. I made a promise there and then to make my recuperation a long one. ‘But there are a number of questions that need answering, young man.’

With that, my great-aunt stood up, coming off her knees. I was laying on a made up bed, so she had been right down on the floor. She grabbed a chair back to steady herself. I realised she was about to leave me and felt a little shaky. I didn’t want to be left.

‘Is he still out there?’ I asked.

It had the effect I desired.

‘Yes,’ she said and I heard a quiver in that usually rigid voice. ‘He’s still on the loose.’

‘Is that a bad thing?’

‘Yes, young William, it is a very bad thing.’

I knew I was pushing it, asking my next question, but I wanted to understand. Further, I still didn’t want to be left alone.

‘Why?’

There were two likely outcomes here – the aunt I knew and disliked would return and tell me to
mind my own business
with the harsh voice she reserved for me and me alone, or this defrosted, more fragile replacement would remain in the room and fulfil my needs.

‘There’d be no fooling you with a little white lie, would there Billy? You know too much already,’ she said, turning back to me. She grabbed the chair she’d used to steady herself and turned it round, closer to me. She sat down. ‘An inquisitive boy, aren’t we? Poking about where we shouldn’t be. Learning things that adults have purposely – with good intention – kept away from you. So, I’ll tell you. But we won’t speak of this again, you understand? Not to each other and not to anyone else. You hear me?’

I heard her. ‘Yes,’ I croaked, feeling a throb in my throat. A sore lump was developing there.

‘Right, here goes,’ she puffed, taking some breaths in and out, readying herself; stalling, if she’d asked for my opinion. She didn’t. ‘I was very young when I had Joshua and Ethan. It was before I met my Jimmy.’ I’d never heard her refer to him like that –
my Jimmy
. It was the closest I’d heard to affection in her voice. ‘I was on my own, not long out of school and deeply ashamed. Mother didn’t want me to keep them, said I had to get rid of them. Do you know what that means, Billy?’ I nodded; yes, I knew exactly what she meant. ‘But I couldn’t imagine that. Mother said I couldn’t stay with her – I either
got rid of it,
or I left home.
It
– we didn’t know it was twins, not at that point. So, I did the latter – but your grandmother, my elder sister, had her own family and home by then, so I stayed with her. I met your Uncle Jimmy not long after they were born and it never bothered him, though I still felt my mother’s scorn and I think that imbedded a little shame in me that I’ve never been free of. Having children out of marriage, that wasn’t something I could ever accept, even though that’s exactly what I’d done. I always had a sense I’d be punished for it, sooner or later. And, when the boys were ten, I finally was.

‘Have you heard of the
takings,
Billy?’

I had, I nodded, pulling the covers up over my chin, her words further cooling the room.

Taken.
Wasn’t that what my aunt had said about Elinor? She’d become one of the
taken.
I thought of Tilly Harrison, too, and her tale of children being taken from school.

‘The authorities took them out of school one day. Denied it, of course. The boys had gone missing, was the official story. Truanting, they claimed. I knew it wasn’t true – they were good obedient little boys. But I didn’t suspect the school or the authorities – I just assumed it was God, finally punishing my sins. They were dead somewhere, and my punishment was to never find out how or why. And that was how it was for a long, long time.

‘Eventually, the truth came out – someone with a conscience in the authorities spilled the beans. Do you know what that truth was Billy?’

I shook my head.

‘The schools had been testing all the children. Testing their abilities on all levels – intelligence and strength. And they helped the authorities take the very best and test them further. The authorities kept the very intelligent ones and put them to work in secret laboratories. Times were desperate, Billy. Very desperate. We were running out of things – fuel, food, all natural resources petering away. Nothing was working. So, they took bright young minds in the hope they would invent solutions under the glare of bright lights and the intensified lens of a microscope. And it worked – to an extent. Certain things came to light and the death of our planet was slowed down. Just a bit.

‘Know what they did with the children when they were finished?’

I shook my head.

‘No? Sent them back to their families. Know what they did with the children not smart enough? Never took them in the first place, usually. Know what they did with my beautiful twins?’

There was a new edge to her voice, a fragility had crept in - an emotional instability that unnerved me.

‘They lost them, Billy,’ she said in almost a hush; spoken with just breath, her words hardly audible. ‘They lost them, Billy. They would have been thirteen when the authorities were finished with them. I’d have only lost them for three years. Instead, I lost them for a lot longer. But back then, all I knew – all we all knew – was that they were missing. I still thought they were dead. And even if I hadn’t, I had no idea where to start. In those early days of the takings, we had no idea whatsoever who was involved. No idea what had happened or where to start looking. Who to ask questions. That’s why the taking went on for so long – we lived in blind ignorance, trusted the very people who were, in truth, ruining our lives. Who were stealing our children. Can you imagine anything worse, Billy?’

I shook my head again. No, no I couldn’t. All of a sudden, I wanted this to be one of Tristan’s macabre tales – one of those stories that gave me nightmares and made Mother furious. My great-aunt’s account was far worse and I was certain Mother would have silenced her had she been present. But Mother was still out there, with Great-Uncle Jimmy.

‘Well, let me tell you a bit more, Billy. It turns out my boys were of different ability. Very different. Ethan, my beautiful Ethan – he was the smart one. Very smart indeed. So, they carted him off to their laboratories and put him to work with test tubes and Bunsen burners and the rest. You know what they are, Billy? No? Well, let’s just say, they are handy equipment. Stuff needed to help save the world. And Joshua? I bet you’re wondering about my Joshy? Yes. Well, Joshy was of a different calibre altogether. Not as smart as Ethan, but very strong. Very brave, and he came in handy in a very different way. Yes, he was very brave, my Joshy.’

For a moment or so, Great-Aunt Penny was lost. Something had distracted her from her determined diatribe. A memory, maybe? A shadow fell across her face, as she remained diverted. Unsure if it was the right thing to do, but sensing that I had to do something, I asked her a question.

‘What happened to him?’ I asked simply, and my great-aunt’s beady, accusing look returned, giving me a glare that said
what are you doing there?

‘What?’ she questioned, then she softened slightly, as if my recent ordeal had just come back to her. ‘What was that, Billy?’

‘Joshy,’ I answered, but then corrected my overfamiliarity. ‘Joshua. You were going to tell me about him. About what happened to him?’

‘Yes,’ she said, her face blank and for a second I thought she might hold back. That maybe she’d lost her momentum and her brief reflection had brought it all to an end. ‘Well,’ she began and then something happened that I hadn’t seen before – my great-aunt began to cry. Not out loud, but, as she began to speak again, as she completed her tale of what had happened to the other twin, tears streamed down her face, catching on her lips, her voice cracking. ‘Oh, yes, my brave Joshy. You see, they took some of the less smart children away for other reasons. They weren’t supposed to. Whilst the authorities were quite happy to take intelligent children, the others were supposed to be left alone. But some were tested for strength – for their endurance.’ She paused, eyeing me, checking I understood where she was heading. ‘They tested their endurance to pain, Billy. That’s what they did to Joshua. And they found that he could withstand quite a lot. So, he disappeared too. I lost them both, Billy.’

She paused again and I took a moment to catch up, to put the story together, to make sense of it all. So both boys had been taken from their home when they were ten – one for his intelligence, the other for his ability to withstand pain, for his strength. And, once the truth of what the authorities had done came out, unlike other children, they were not returned. They were lost, missing, gone. And yet Ethan had returned – hadn’t he? Ethan,
beautiful Ethan
, who had been kept in the attic room of the abandoned shop.

‘Ethan was at the shop,’ I said and my great-aunt nodded, solemnly, holding up a hand:
give me a minute,
the gesture said. I waited a short while and she spoke again.

‘Yes. We got Ethan back. Just Ethan. Eventually. Too many years after he’d first been taken. And it was too late by then. He was damaged, Billy. Not safe.’

‘Not safe?’ I echoed, feeling that the extent of what I had done – of what I had unleashed – was about to be revealed.

‘Attacked people. Badly, seriously, I’m ashamed to say. Went for Ronan with a knife.’

‘Grandad Ronan?’ I exclaimed, partly to be certain, partly to claim his familial standing.

‘Yes, your Grandad Ronan,’ she conceded, understanding my need to make the connection. ‘Quite badly. Quite seriously. He’s lucky to be alive, but we kept it in the family,’ she added, admitting Grandad Ronan inside our ancestral circle again. ‘No police involvement. So, in return, we kept Ethan safe in the shop. Out of harm’s way. Locked up for his own good.’

I had a question, held back, but a
go on
from my great-aunt encouraged me further.

‘Isn’t there somewhere he can be looked after?’

‘Like a special home?’