The Fury (7 page)

Brick sat at the top of the basement steps, his head in his hands, flinching every time he thought he heard a noise from below.

He felt empty, completely and utterly drained. It had taken all his strength just to make it up the stairs. Shortly after getting out of the basement he’d found a steel rod in the pavilion – it looked like one of the electrical poles from a dodgem – and had managed to wedge it tight between the door and the wall. He’d packed everything he could find around it to lock it in place, praying that it would hold up against the onslaught from the other side. It had, so far. Lisa had spent the best part of three hours battering the door, each attempt growing weaker and feebler until the sound of her body hitting the wood and metal was no louder than a gentle slap.

It was the noises
in
between
the crunches that had turned his stomach, though, that had made him think he was going to go insane sitting there in the darkness. Brittle snaps, something wet that accompanied her steps, shuffling flaps that he imagined were her falling and trying to get up again, some of which went on for ten, fifteen minutes at a time.

And worst of all were the groans and snarls, noises that could have come from a wounded animal in a trap if it wasn’t for the half-words buried in the mess. The only one he could recognise was his name, spat out again and again in panting, wretched screams until he had to clamp his hands over his ears and blot them out with cries of his own.

At 10.53 the attack on the door had stopped. Brick had pressed his ear against it, hearing jagged, even breathing. Lisa was asleep, or unconscious. That’s when he’d made his way up the stairs. He knew that was the exact time because he’d had his crappy Nokia on his lap ever since, 999 thumbed into it but the call button unpressed. He’d been on the verge of ringing for an ambulance about a hundred times, but something had stopped him – the thought of what the paramedics would say when they got here, them and the cops. They’d see a girl beaten half to death, a broken nose, a snapped ankle and God only knew what else; a girl who’d almost killed herself trying to break out of a locked basement in an abandoned theme park. And when Brick showed them his single injury, the teeth marks in his eyebrow, they’d just say she’d done it in self-defence.

And, of course, Brick had one of
those
faces. Everybody hated him.

But that alone hadn’t stopped him calling for help. After all, if the police arrived and Lisa was still going mental then they’d know for sure this wasn’t his fault. No, it was a voice in his head, a good voice for once, saying
She’s going to be fine, she just went a bit crazy, that’s all; give her a few hours and she’ll be better
, over and over, too convincing to ignore. The voice had to be right; give her some time and she’d be okay.

Something else in his head started to argue but he drowned it out, pushing deeper into his hands. His eyebrow was burning – he’d actually had to pick Lisa’s missing tooth out of his flesh, the incisor still gripped in his palm – and he could barely open his swollen right eye.

He looked down into the pool of liquid darkness that sat at the bottom of the steps. There was a fine silver gauze hanging from the skylights but it didn’t have the guts to go anywhere near the basement. He could just about make out the crack of candlelight under the door, unbroken ever since Lisa had stopped moving. He’d thought about going back down, seeing if she was okay, but his body had mutinied, refusing to obey a single command from his brain.

What
was
his plan? He didn’t know. He just wanted to curl up and sleep, to wake the next morning in his own bed with a text from Lisa saying
soz, wnt hpen agn
. But he was too wired to sleep, his body aching all over from the fight, the adrenalin now a spiked ball in his stomach and lead weights in his arms.

There was a soft noise from below. Brick cocked his head, his heart once again in overdrive. At first he thought he’d imagined it, but sure enough there was another sliding sound, then a scrape that could have been fingernails on wood.

She was awake.

Brick didn’t move, afraid that if he so much as breathed too loudly it might set her off again. The stripe of golden light split into two, then into four, then disappeared altogether as Lisa pressed herself against the door. He could hear breathing now, wheezed, desperate. There was a rattle as she tried the handle, the metal pole holding.

‘Brick.’

Her voice was an old woman’s, his name misshapen, the ‘B’ barely there and the ‘r’ now a ‘w’. It was spoken not with malice but with fear.

‘Hel . . . hel me.’

His stomach dropped into his feet, his heart following. He stood, swaying.

‘Help me.’

‘Lisa?’ he said, his own voice high and broken. The shuffling noises grew louder. He could hear her scraping the door.

‘Let me go, Brick,’ she said. ‘Please, I’m hurt. I just want to go home. Let me go, I’ll do anything. Please.’

Brick ran a hand through his hair, feeling the tears coming again, echoing Lisa’s which rose from the basement. He took a step down, gripping the railing like he was descending Everest.

‘Please, Brick,’ Lisa cried. ‘I’m scared, why are you doing this?’

‘I’m not,’ he croaked, taking another step. ‘You attacked me, you
bit
me.’

‘I didn’t,’ came her reply, choked almost beyond recognition. ‘I didn’t do anything, just let me go, Brick. I won’t tell anyone, I promise.’

Tell anyone
what
? What did she think had happened? What if she didn’t remember? What if she honestly believed he’d attacked her? He realised he was halfway to the next step, his leg hovering. He pulled it back.

‘Brick!’ she screamed, rattling the handle harder now. ‘I’m bleeding!’

That did it, breaking through his need for self-preservation. What if she was bleeding badly? What if she was
dying
? So what if he got arrested, questioned? He hadn’t attacked her, they’d do lie-detector tests or something and find that out. It was Lisa, he couldn’t just stand here and let her bleed to death in the basement of Fursville’s derelict PAV LIO .

‘Okay, I’m coming, just hang on,’ he said as he walked unsteadily down the steps. He dropped into the darkness, careful not to trip. Lisa’s sobs grew louder as he neared, the scrape of her nails on the door setting his teeth on edge.

‘Hurry,’ she said. ‘Bleed . . . hel . . .’

He reached the corridor below, crouching down to try and locate the metal brace. From behind the door Lisa’s words were getting weaker and he imagined her lying in a pool of blood, trying and failing to get up on her broken leg. There was a grunt, a desperate breath.

‘Brick . . . let . . . e . . . o . . .’

‘Hang on,’ he said, grabbing hold of the bar with both hands. ‘I’ll be there in a minute.’

Her words were now meaningless clumps of sound pinned between pig-like snorts. Brick paused, angling his head again. That short delay probably saved his life.

Lisa threw herself at the door, so hard that the top corner pinged open a crack despite the bar. She screamed, then again, pounding relentlessly, driving Brick up the stairs on all fours. This time he didn’t stop at the top. He ran blind down the pavilion corridor, her banshee-like shrieks giving chase.

Cal was woken by his phone, the machine-gun sound effect calling him up from a dream about Georgia and prison cells. It spun apart before he could catch hold of it, dissolving into the warm morning light. He reached out groggily, fishing on his bedside table until he found it. The text was from Megan.

What happened 2 u yesterday?!?!?!

It took him a second to remember yesterday, and when he did he sat up in bed frowning. They’d left him, all of them, run off and deserted him at the library. He’d ended up walking home, even though it took about forty-five minutes rather than ten on the bus, getting more and more annoyed with them the later it got. By the time he’d stormed in the front door, ignoring his mum and going straight to his room, he’d been properly pissed off.

He yawned, then wiped the sleep from his eyes, blinking the phone back into focus.

You all left me
, he started writing, then after a moment’s consideration he wiped the screen clear and replaced it with,
Got bored, went home
. He wouldn’t let them have the satisfaction of knowing they’d got to him.

He dropped the phone onto the table, folding
himself
back under the duvet. He couldn’t be arsed with the thought of school today. There was the next Inter-form Cup match at lunch but he knew he’d have to spend it listening to the jeers of his mates.
Poor Callum, did we scare you off? Aw, diddums, did Mummy make it all okay?
No, better let them sweat it out, make them think that maybe he’d decided not to play any more. Let’s see them win 3–1 against 12H without their star midfielder.

His mum would let him skive, no problem. She was a big softie, all he had to do was give her his best puppy-dog expression and she’d give in to him. His dad – the only potential obstacle to his plan – was away on one of his endless business trips in Spain.

To be honest he wasn’t actually feeling all that well anyway. His head was weird, like it was stuffed with cotton wool, that faint
thump-thump
of a headache still breathing against his skull.

He rolled over, stretching his legs and looking at the window. The light that seeped in past his curtains was thick and honey-coloured and he could already feel the heat of the morning pressing in from outside. It was going to be another flawless day. Too good to spend in bed, he decided, headache or no headache. Better to stockpile his sick-day points, use them later in the year when it was hammering it down outside and the streets were ice rinks.

Besides, he had his weekly kung fu class this evening and he really didn’t want to miss that. He was going for his advanced-level Choy Li Fut grading in a few weeks and he still hadn’t mastered everything he needed to.

He checked his phone again to make sure Megan hadn’t texted back, then clambered out of bed. There was an
Inbetweeners
episode he’d only managed to get halfway through last night and he flicked it back on, listening to it as he brushed his teeth in the sink in his room. He got changed then opened the curtains, a shaft of pure sunlight bathing him like he was Bruce Almighty or something, being embraced by the finger of God. Man, he
loved
summer.

Cal headed downstairs, making a brief detour to the bathroom before strolling into the kitchen.

‘Morning, Mum,’ he said, yawning again, slumping down on one of the stools around the breakfast bar. His mum stood in the corner by their huge double range, a pan bubbling on the hob. She made him an egg every morning whether he wanted it or not. This morning was a definite ‘not’, the milkshakes from last night still somewhere down there playing tag in his intestines.

‘I said morning,
Mother
.’

She didn’t reply. Cal left her to her cooking, turning to the paper on the table and idly scanning the TV guide. Behind him, the pan rattled and clanked like an old car.

The machine-gun noise went again from inside his pocket and he whipped the phone out. Megan again:
A-hole, we didn’t no where ud gone
.

What was she playing at? They were the ones who had left. And if they’d really not known where he’d gone then why hadn’t they texted him while he was walking home? He punched the phone back into his pocket, feeling the hangover from his mood last night start to grow.

Something popped from the stove and the smell of burning filled the kitchen. Cal got up, walking over.

‘Earth to Mum,’ he said. ‘You’re burning the house down.’

The pan on the stove had boiled dry, two eggs inside oozing out of their blackening shells, the whole thing shaking so much it looked ready to take off. Cal grabbed the handle and lifted it from the gas, slamming it down onto another hob.

‘What the hell are you doing, Mum?’ he asked, turning to her. She still hadn’t moved, her bleach-blonde hair concealing her face. And she smelled funny, older somehow.
Oh Jesus, she’s had a stroke
, was Cal’s first, heart-stopping thought. He reached out, pulling her hair back so he could see her face, and the touch made her jump – not just flinch, she literally jolted so hard her whole body came off the floor, like she’d had an electric shock.

‘Mum?’ Cal asked. ‘What’s wrong?’

She turned her head, slowly, her eyes taking a moment to find him. They were bloodshot and streaked with yellow. They weren’t his mum’s eyes. Cal took a step back, suddenly cold, his hand sliding along the kitchen counter, knocking a half-block of butter to the floor. The sound of it landing seemed to snap her back to attention. She tilted her head, her brow furrowing, her eyes swimming back into focus, once again her own.

‘Mum?’ Cal asked.

‘Yes?’ she said. A phantom smile danced over her lips.

‘Nothing,’ Cal said, bending down and picking up the butter but never looking away from her. ‘Are you okay?’

She nodded like a puppet on a string. Then she seemed to remember where she was, picking up the saucepan with the eggs in it and giving it a shake.

‘Oh, these are no good, shall I make you another?’

The way Cal’s stomach was churning he didn’t think he’d ever eat again.

‘I’m okay,’ he said, retreating towards the kitchen door. For some reason he didn’t want to turn his back on her. ‘I’ll get something at school.’

‘Your lunchbox is on the table,’ she said, opening the metal bin and hammering the upside-down saucepan against it like she was chopping firewood. The noise was deafening.

Cal grabbed the Tupperware container, almost tripping over his feet in his hurry to get out of the room. His mum watched him go, beating the pan against the bin in purposeful, even strokes that he could hear long after he’d closed the front door behind him.