The Fearful (6 page)

Although Jenny was managing to grow up that bit more easily than Tim – or so it seemed from his point of view. While he was inheriting their father's life and duty, she'd made new friends, she was doing well at school, was making her way in the world. And Tim did his level best not to resent her.

‘He was getting at me too. Vic Stones's hotel affects the whole family.'

‘I know that, don't I? I'm not stupid.' He slung his bag over his shoulder.

‘Where are you going?'

‘As far away from Roddy Morgan as I can get.'

Sarah was hesitant. ‘We'll come with you.' She looked pale with what she'd just witnessed.

But Tim shook his head. He strode away, trying to ignore the shaking in his legs.

Life was getting far too difficult. He had too much to think about and he couldn't focus on all of it at the same time. His head was stuffed full with things he had to give attention to, and remember, and concentrate on.

He had to keep his dad happy; he had to prepare for his birthday; he had to pretend with Sarah; he was going to get done for not finishing his homework; and now he was on the run from Roddy Morgan. It was like trying to juggle too many balls, and sooner or later one was going to fall. He just wasn't clever enough to keep them all in the air at the same time.

The morning dragged. His elbow ached surprisingly painfully and flowered into a dark bruise. There was a small part of him that was kind of proud of what he'd done and he naively wondered if people might see him in a slightly different light because of it. Maybe give him a hint of credibility. Perhaps make them think twice before having a go next time?

He avoided both Jenny and Sarah at break (Roddy Morgan too, obviously) by staying inside to make a half-hearted stab at his homework, but couldn't concentrate properly. It wasn't just because of those balls he was trying to juggle in his head, but also the feeling that something had changed today. He'd known his family were outsiders, but he'd never understood quite how despised they were by the likes of Roddy Morgan. And ‘despised' was the only word he could come up with.
He remembered feeling that hot hatred on the back of his neck as Roddy had shouted at him. He tried to get his head around the fact that it was because of the Mourn – a legend; a story.

By lunch he was beginning to panic about still not having finished his homework. He ate quickly and alone in the dining hall, wanting to get to the library as soon as possible. English was the first lesson of the afternoon and he wanted to have something, anything, to hand in.

The shepherd's pie the dinner lady had slopped onto his plate wasn't particularly appetizing so he left most of it. He took his plate to scrape it into the waste bucket, but the large black bucket wasn't in its usual place next to the cutlery racks. So he left the dirty plate on an empty table on his way out. No one was allowed to take their bags into the dining hall; they were chucked down by hungry, rushing students, heaped in the cloakroom with a dinner lady supposedly standing guard. Tim dug his holdall out from underneath some others and headed off towards the library.

As soon as he set foot outside he spotted Roddy Morgan waiting for him. He pretended he hadn't noticed, but walked quickly.

Moutonby High was an uneven mix of the old girls' grammar school his mum used to attend when she was fifteen and a stuck-on boxy block built in the nineties. Tim had always found it irritating and ugly that the old and new bits didn't match. In his mind it didn't look like the modern architect had even bothered to take a glance at what was already here before shoving the most boring and
unimaginative brick cube on the end. He had English in that cube and didn't want to have to walk past the windows if, by chance, Mr Wing was in his room, but it was the shortest route to the library. And he wanted to get to the library before Roddy could get to him.

He reckoned he was less worried about his English teacher than about Roddy, so cut straight across in front of the new block, face turned away from the windows just in case, and headed for the footpath that led towards the library. He was halfway there before he realized something was wrong.

The handle of his bag was slimy, sticky in his grip. He'd been too concerned with Roddy to properly notice until now. He had the holdall slung over his shoulder and it stank something horrible.

He dropped it quickly. His hand was covered in a brown gunge from where he'd held it. The bag's zip wasn't done up all the way; it too was covered in dark slime, and he immediately realized someone had been messing with his bag. He dropped it to the ground. Brown gunk was all over it.

He looked closer.

Gravy?

With a feeling like his belly was going cold and slowly deflating he crouched down and pinched the slimy, greasy zip between a tentative finger and thumb. He pulled his bag all the way open.

It was full of leftover food slops. Half-eaten burgers, beans, custard, chips, apple crumble, carrots, but mostly mince, mashed potatoes and gravy. And now he knew why the waste
bucket in the dining hall had been missing. His schoolbooks and folders were swamped and filthy.

‘Think of it as a donation,' Roddy Morgan said from over his shoulder. ‘You know, for the Feed tomorrow.'

Tim was quick to turn and get to his feet.

Roddy's nose was purple and blue with a bruise that could have been the mirror image of Tim's elbow. But not just that: his top lip had a nasty cut and when he spoke Tim could see one of his front teeth was jaggedly broken.

‘It's my offering,' he said. ‘I have to give the Mourn some feed so it'll save Vic – that's the way it works, isn't it?' He leaned forward to look into the bag. ‘Hmmm, yeah, nice. The Mourn'll love it. Nice bit of shepherd's pie. Bet it doesn't get that kind of thing very often.'

Tim didn't know how to react; his head was blank.

Roddy glared at him.

Tim had been expecting a fight, not this. ‘I didn't mean to break your tooth,' he said.

‘I walked into a door.'

‘What?'

‘As if
you
could break my tooth. I walked into a door.'

‘I thought . . . This morning, when I – you know? I thought—'

‘Shut up. I walked into a door.'

Tim backed up a step. ‘If you say so.'

‘I do. You couldn't have me in a fight. Are you saying you could have me?'

Tim didn't know what he was saying. ‘Just leave it, then, okay? I got you, now you've got me back.'

‘You didn't get me.' Roddy's eyes were slits.

Tim picked up his bag again. He wasn't even worrying about the mess inside just yet, reckoning the best thing he could do was get away as quickly as possible.

‘I could have you any time, Monster Boy.'

Like an action replay of that morning, Tim started to walk away.

And Roddy was at his ear. ‘Try it. Try it again and see what you get.'

Tim wasn't trying anything again; far from it. He turned to face Roddy with the idea of placating him. But Roddy went for him anyway.

He was knocked to the ground with the bigger kid's full weight on his back. He let his bag go to save his fall and the grit of the paving slabs bit into his palms. ‘Get off!' He tried to twist round, tried to get up. Roddy jabbed him twice with a solid fist in his side, wrenched his arm up at his back. ‘Get off me!'

‘You're a freak of nature, Monster Boy. You and your family are all
freaks
!' But that wasn't enough; Roddy suddenly had a better idea.

Tim heard his black holdall being dragged across the ground and knew what was going to happen next. He struggled and squirmed, but Roddy was on him with his full weight.

He felt the thick, cold contents of his bag being poured over his head.

Roddy laughed like he might bust a kidney or something and jumped up off him. Tim was able to sit up, but that only let the mess run down his collar, drip down his
brow and his cheeks. The crowd was quick to gather and Tim felt their laughter like blows to his head.

‘Now
you're
feed,' Roddy told him, laughing the way an empty stomach rumbles. ‘Get the Mourn to lick you clean. Now you know what the feed feels like!'

Tim slowly stood up. Roddy jumped back from the splatter of leftovers that hit the pavement. Kids were actually running the full length of the footpath to see what was happening, to join in the fun. There were faces at classroom windows.

He had to get to a toilet to try and clean himself up. He felt empty – no anger, no tears. Just empty. The absolute humiliation of it left him drained and cold. He would have preferred a beating. This was the worst kind of childish humiliation – it was something little kids would do and it made Tim seem like the littlest kid of all.

He wanted to go home but didn't know how he could let his parents see him looking like this.

He tried to wipe his face clean with his sleeve, much to the delight of everyone else. He reached for his bag. His schoolbooks were tipped on the ground and he gathered them up even though they were ruined. Everything was ruined.

ANOTHER CHILL MORNING,
with a thin wind carrying spits of icy rain. The dozen or so people standing in Mourn Home's garden all looked chubby with bulky layers to keep out the cold. They were waiting for Bill, for their Mourner's weekly words of reassurance. Some of them clutched plastic bags full of offerings. They stood with their backs to the tall house and shuffled their feet, pulled their collars up higher, pushed their hands deeper in their pockets and silently faced the dark water. Every one of them wondered if something in the water was silently staring back. Most of them believed it was. The steep, tree-lined sides of the valley and high hills enclosing them made the grey slice of sky overhead appear to be only as large as the lake at their feet – the lake reflected the sky, the sky reflected the lake.

When Bill appeared he was struggling with the heavy sack of feed. Everybody parted to let him through to the Mourn Stone, where he did his best to gently swing the awkwardly bulging sack off his shoulder and balance it on top.

The stone was a rectangular slab of granite, standing just over a metre tall and maybe half a metre wide. It was the main focus for the weekly Feed. Weather-pitted and coarse,
it stood so close to the water's edge that after heavy rain – such as there'd been this past week – the lake lapped around its base. And Bill was wearing wellingtons this morning.

‘Thank you all for coming,' he said, lifting his voice above the wind. ‘It's an unpleasant morning and I know you probably had to dig deep to make the effort, so thank you for that. I'd like to begin by—'

He hadn't managed to balance the sack quite right; the awkward bulges inside tumbled over each other and it rolled, flopped over the edge of the narrow stone. It hit the wet ground with a hefty
splush
.

Tim, who was standing with Jenny to one side of the group, knew why the sack was so heavy this morning and what those bulges were. Inside was half of Mrs Kirkwooding's dog, Marshal. Not that he was sure which half; he just knew his father was feeding some of the dog this morning and saving the rest for next Saturday – for Tim's birthday and Carving celebrations.

Bill apologized to those standing close enough to the stone to have been splashed and fought with the sack to get it up on top again. Sarah's father stepped forward to help him.

Tim glanced across at Mrs Kirkwooding. Wrapped up in a heavy coat, with her scarf tight enough around her thin throat that it might throttle her, she stood as stiff and solid as ever. She parted the cold wind like a concrete pillar. Maybe as heartless as one too? No, she was just doing what she thought was right and dutiful. Just the same as everybody else who'd dragged themselves out of their cosy beds to stand here and shiver this morning. They were the Fearful.

‘I think I'd better start over,' Bill said with a small, self-conscious tug on his beard.

Tim noticed Sarah was watching him – again. She was standing with her mother in the middle of the group and he was able to pretend he was looking beyond her to his father at the Stone. But she kept glancing over her shoulder at him every so often as if making sure he was still there.

He'd been avoiding her. She'd rung five times last night and once this morning before coming to the Feed. He was annoyed that she hadn't got the message, hadn't realized he'd been ignoring
everybody.
Jenny had; she was good like that – it was one of the decent things about being a twin. She knew him well enough to suss out something was going on inside his head and it was best to steer clear. He'd just needed, absolutely, to be alone. He'd been licking his wounds.

He'd gone straight to the boys' showers next to the sports hall and cleaned himself up as well as he could. He'd been laughed at, pointed at, goggled at. And after making everybody's day superbly entertaining and particularly memorable, he'd slunk off home. The only luck he'd had was that both Bill and Anne had been out and didn't know he was skipping school for the afternoon. Jack Spicer had seen him – he'd been down by the lake – but neither of them had acknowledged the other. And after washing his clothes as well as he could in the bath, he'd been able to barricade himself in his room.

Of course he'd run through the obvious emotions – self-pity to hatred to desperately needing,
craving
revenge. Again
and again he'd gone over what he could have done,
should
have done. If he was able to smash Roddy's nose and teeth one minute, he should have been able to finish the job the next, surely? He could have fought harder. He should have fought back. Roddy had made him look so stupid and small.

Amongst all of this, like the snake hidden within a coil of rope, was the special bitterness reserved for his father – for all of these people here today in fact. He couldn't help thinking the legend was due its fair share of the blame, could he?