Twisted Winter (7 page)

Thinking that made Brad sit up in his seat and look out for little Rhys, sitting two in front of him in his old yellow anorak, hunched up as usual. No doubt thinking of all the fun Brad was going to have when they reached that bend in the lane, halfway between his cottage and the farm, where no-one could see what you got up to. Oh how Brad looked forward to that bend in the lane!

Leesers Cottage
, it was called, probably something from the mashed-up Welsh that got used round here, but of course his dad always called it
Losers
, and the name had stuck now, even in the village. They'd always been losers, from way back, folk who lived in that cottage. Stock got sick, crops failed, bankruptcies; one lot of losers moving out and another lot moving in. Then that story of the girl drowning herself. That was a long time ago, way before anyone could remember, but they still told the story. No-one knew why, but she drowned in the lake,
down the Cae. The Cae his father wanted to have, only the old witch wouldn't sell. Just her and that Rhys, now, the current lot of losers. A hippy, Dad called her, with her long drippy hair and wooden necklaces. Only a bit of land left to Losers Cottage now, a few chickens and a few vegetables, what sort of a living was that? And whatever had happened to their old man? Walked out, his dad said, couldn't take being stuck with a witch like her, and that fool of a lad. Sometimes, she'd be at the mouth of the lane waiting for her boy as he got off the school bus, and there'd be nothing Brad could do about it. But mostly she worked, four days a week in the community centre in Llanwen. Brad's mother had never had to go out to work a day in her life. She knew what being a farmer's wife meant: stay at home, look after your menfolk, be there for lambing and haymaking, the important stuff. Not sitting all day on your backside in a stupid office, earning pennies.

With any luck, Rhys's mum wouldn't be there today at the lane, and Brad could plan what to do. Oh, you could have such fun without leaving a mark! He knew exactly how far to bend back an arm before
it would crack and get you into real trouble, how long you could put pressure on a throat before the kid turned blue, how tight to make a Chinese burn. And, daft kid that he was, Rhys never even fought back, skinny little runt, with that pale face and big frightened eyes. Fact was, Brad was even doing him a favour, showing what it meant to be a man. Better find out now rather than later it was muscle-power got you where you needed to be in the world, muscle-power and making folk afraid of you, that was what counted, not book-learning.

And then there was all the fun you could have without laying a finger – that was the best. Suppose a fox got into your chickens at night – not that Brad could probably have achieved that, but he
said
he knew how, and the lad went paler than ever. Or that time he grabbed the lad's homework – all that neat writing! – and shoved it into a cowpat in the lane. And then how the lad had whimpered, really whimpered, when that old cat he was so fond of had come along, and Brad had said all the things he could do to it. Mind, he never would, really, the way the ugly mog had scratched him only time he tried to pick it up. Maybe he could set the dogs on it
one day – Patch could be proper vicious, specially if you gave him a kick to egg him on – but probably it'd be too much trouble. Plenty of other things he could do to the lad without getting scratched to ribbons first.

The bus came slowly to a halt at the foot of Rhos Lane (see, even the lane was named after his dad's farm; it wasn't called Losers Lane, now was it?) and George the driver called out, “All right, lads?” Only Brad and Rhys got out here, half a mile of un-made-up road the school bus couldn't go up, though his dad managed perfectly well with his tractor and quad bike. That was another thing Rhys's mum was on about, couldn't he get the road made up, all that mud and ice in the winter, but his dad said, why should he? Let her pay for getting it tarmacked, stupid cow, if she was so keen.

Brad grinned at George as he stood up in the bus. Rhys stood up too, and with a wave of his arm, Brad generously let him get off the bus first; you'd think they were best of friends the way he behaved towards the lad in public.

“Mind how you go now,” said George as he always did, and Rhys and Brad tumbled down the steps of
the bus onto the grass verge and then on to the muddy lane. They stood and watched as the bus trundled off down the road and into the distance. After the warm fug of the bus, the December air was like an icy slap in the face; you could almost feel your eyelashes freezing up. This morning's heavy frost hadn't even melted, and the whiteness shimmered on the hedges and in the meadow, everything colourless and chill, only a few hawthorn berries blood-red against the grey. A river of ice ran down the edge of the lane; it had been there for days.

Then Brad turned to Rhys and said with a grin, “Aw
right
, kid?” Fact was, he hadn't quite decided what he was going to do to the lad today, but he had a few ideas, and by the time they got to that bend in the lane he'd have worked it out.

Rhys was already walking away. Brad called out after Rhys's narrow hunched-up shoulders, “Awright, then? Ready for some fun tonight, are we?”

Usually, this made Rhys cower even more and try to scurry away. But today something odd happened. For Rhys suddenly stood stock still in the lane, straightened his shoulders and turned to face Brad.

“You've got a big mouth on you, you know that, Brad Williams?”

For a moment Brad was so surprised that he went silent. What the heck did the lad think he was up to? Then he gathered his wits together, put his best menacing face on, and advanced on the kid. “You what?” he said, quietly. Always best to be quiet at first, like his dad always went when he was working up to get really angry.

And now he had to show that Rhys. And he wasn't scared of
him
, not one bit. He moved forward, slowly, baring his teeth like old Patch when you got him into a corner. “You
what
?” he repeated.

Rhys started walking backwards, head still held up, staring Brad straight in the eyes.

“I said, you've got a big mouth on you, and one day you're going to run out of things to scare me with.”

Brad was almost silenced, but of course he wasn't really. “Oh yes, am I? You know, you're going to be really, really sorry you said that.”

Still Rhys walked backwards, facing him. For some reason Brad was finding this disconcerting.

And then finally Rhys turned, and started to walk quickly up the lane, his yellow anorak glowing
against the grey. For a moment, Brad didn't know how to react, then common sense kicked in and he ran and caught him up. For a few yards the boys walked alongside each other, silently, as though they were mates.

Then they turned into the bend, the hidden bend where no-one could see what you got up to.

On the left, far as you could see, were Williams' fields, fat and flowing, going on right up into the misty hill, a few Texels grazing peacefully, dingy against the silvered grass.

On the other side, falling down to the stream and the lake that gleamed at the foot, was the Cae, left useless by that woman, just overgrown with wild flowers in the spring, the one bit of land round here that wasn't Williams', and damn well ought to be, it wasn't right. Dad had offered her money, maybe not enough, but he wasn't going to pay the old witch more than it was worth. He was waiting, and one day, maybe when she was poor enough, he'd hit the right price and buy her out.

And then buy that miserable cottage of hers, and pull it down, or turn it into a holiday let, get fools from the cities to stay there at exorbitant rates, Brad's
mum could do all the cleaning and whatnot, look after it, money for old rope…

It just wasn't right that folk who didn't deserve it should hang on to property other folk could make something out of.

Brad clamped his hand now on Rhys's shoulder, feeling the paltry little bones of shoulder blade and arm beneath his meaty grip. For he had an idea now, something that would make the kid really squirm, really wet himself.

“You and me,” he said, softly still, “you and me is going for a little walk.” And he turned the unresisting lad right round to the metal gate that led down to the Cae. He undid the gate with one hand, shoved it open with a clang.

The grass was slippery and made them both skid a bit, but Brad's force overcame that as he impelled Rhys downwards, their footsteps making a green trail in the frosty grass.

And at the foot of the meadow, clumps of reed and water grasses, and the still gleaming surface of the lake. Frozen it was, too, a light skim of ice stretched over the top, and below you could see depths of a weird green blackness that seemed to go down for
ever, though he knew that the lake must only be a few feet deep.

For no reason at all, Brad felt himself shiver. And now he remembered, surely there were other stories about the lake, as well as the girl who drowned herself there. What were they? His gran had been full of them, but he never listened to her much anyway. But now fragments of those stories came back to him. Unexplained things, folk who wouldn't go near, folk who'd been and come back changed, folk who got bad dreams. He couldn't remember details now, but still enough to make him feel like a goose just walked over his grave.

Still, he wasn't going to let the lad see that. “Awright now,” he said. “And what about you going for a little swim?”

And he grabbed the back of the boy's puny neck, and pushed him forward, into reeds and frozen mud. Of course he wasn't going to do it straightaway, had to get a bit of fun first, had to make the boy really afraid, so that he'd get the most out of the thing when it really happened.

“Cold and wet down there,” he hissed into the boy's ear. “Wonder how long you'd last without breathing?
Minute? Half minute? Not long, anyway, and they'd find your body there tomorrow morning, poor lad, must have gone down there on his way home, and slipped, couldn't nothing be done, that's what they'd find.”

The boy jerked his head upwards suddenly, almost dislodging Brad's hand. “They'd find two sets of footsteps leading down,” he said. “That's what they'd find.”

This wasn't going right, not right at all.

But you didn't stop Brad Williams just like that! “Cold and wet,” he went on, “and filthy tasting too, I bet, wriggly things swimming right into your mouth, couldn't stop them, could you?”

The kid was still squirming, and somehow managed to twist himself again, flinging his head back. “You'd be surprised what I can do, Brad Williams,” he gasped. “Always called my mum a witch, didn't you, well, you see just what a witch's brat can do!”

And from somewhere the little runt found a way of pulling right out of Brad's grasp, and uprighting himself, so that it was Brad who stumbled and almost slipped into reeds and mud.

Just because the ground was so slippery, that's all it was. He'd get his balance again in a minute.

But he didn't. Almost as though his legs wouldn't move, he was stuck there on the muddy slippery edge, trying to stop himself lurching right forward into the lake…

…the icy surface, that now seemed to have got thicker and more shining, the black depths almost glowing beneath it. Then something seemed to break through, just below the glassy surface…

Bloody hell! It was a
girl
! A girl's face looking right up at him out of the water, flattened beneath the ice.

He could see open dark eyes, the dark hole of an opened mouth, the whiteness of her skin, and the dark tendrils of hair that floated and waved beneath the surface.

Almost as though she was trying to cry out under the ice. But the face didn't look scared. It looked… angry.

And suddenly he could feel something on the back of his neck, the boy's bird-like claw holding him tightly and then pitching him forward.

He threw out arms to stop himself, but it was no good. Something seemed to come up at him right
out of the water, something long and wavy like an octopus's tentacle, only this had a girl's hand at the end…

And it gripped him around the back of his neck, harder than anyone had ever held him before, and pulled him down.

He could feel the cold coming off the icy surface as he fell, feel the impact as his face smashed against it, and amid shards of icy cold was pulled further and further down, so that the shock of the freezing water hit him with a great smack in the face. Then below that and below still, and because he hadn't had time to take a breath before he was pitched in, he knew that he wasn't going to be able to breathe for much longer.

His lungs hurt, his chest, his head pounded, his ears drummed. As his mouth opened, he could feel the foul taste rushing in and wriggling things rushing in too…

And her face, that white open-mouthed face just below his, and now she seemed to be laughing.

His arms, still above the ice, flailed uselessly on the hard glassy surface. Something seemed to be holding his legs in a vice.

His head was bursting. His eyes were going to pop out of his head, his heart had swelled to a huge size, and then there was just blackness, blackness and pain, and he felt his whole consciousness starting to go and the life was being pulled from him…

Then suddenly it was all over. The force that had been holding his legs down now tugged him out, so that his head came juggling and lurching out of the ice, and the brightness flooded his eyes.

He fell face down on the wet grass while the water gushed and bubbled out of his mouth, his nose. He was sick, throat-raspingly sick all over the grass. Then at last he managed to sit up, trembling all over.

He stood up, slowly. He looked around. The kid was standing there, looking at him thoughtfully, swinging his school bag, a few feet away. He said, “You really didn't ought to have done that, Bradley Williams.”

Then he was off, hurrying up the hillside slope to the big metal gate.