One Night (9 page)

Eve ran through the alley. 

She remembered this sensation from her childhood. The thrill she’d got from playing dangerous games, games so risky that sometimes they went too far and toppled from excitement into fear. Rabbits had been good but her favourite had been Knock Down Ginger. She and her friends would walk to a random street where nobody knew them and each pick a house for one of the others. The trick was to pick the scariest looking place possible, one that looked like the owner was a serial killer. The girl whose turn it was then had to ring the doorbell of the house and get away without being seen. The sense of anticipation when she was walking up the path to the front door would make her heart race and her mouth go dry. In the moment before her finger pushed the bell the feeling would intensify. Nothing else would matter, not school, not her mum nagging her, not Emma Davies having better toys, nothing. Not even dad's death. There was just her and the bell. The action of actually pushing it always filled her with joy. The deliberate decision to do something wrong, to rebel against what her mum told her she should do. At the point she rang the bell she was her own person, making her own decisions. Taking her own risks.

Then o
ne day the door had opened while the bell was still ringing.

It was summer, the day so hot that when she sat on a wall to eat her ice cream the bricks burned the backs of her bare legs making her squeal. Eve was with her friends Rachel and Claire. They'd spent the long school holiday day in the park, playing like the kids they were one minute and pretending to be teenagers the next. On the way home they agreed to play the game. It was Eve's suggestion, something inside her said that there wouldn't be too many
more days as carefree as this one had been.

They chose a stre
et they'd never played in before. It was one that was on Eve's way to school and which she usually walked down quickly. The houses there just felt more run down than the ones in the surrounding streets. There was an air of neglect, a palpable sense of desperation that even as a child she had picked up on. Looking back as an adult she wondered what it felt like to live there. What did it mean to wake up every day in one of those houses with the dirty grey concrete walls and the tired mismatched paintwork?

There was one house even creepier than the others. The front garden was so overgrown that the rusting car sitting in it was almost completely obscured by the grass and wee
ds that had grown up around it. Eve thought it looked like the carcass of some fearsome creature that had died and been forgotten in the jungle. One of the front windows of the house was boarded up, another was cracked and filthy. A sheet hung behind the glass in place of curtains.

The three girls played rock, paper,
scissors to decide who should pick first. Claire won and chose Eve. It was obvious which house she'd point at. She still made a show of it though, twirling round three times before finally stopping with her extended index finger indicating the creepy house.

"That one," she said with a smile.

Eve was sure she heard something rustling in the overgrown garden as she walked up the path. The long green grass lay over the slabs in places, tickling her legs as she approached the house. She kept her eyes cast downward, watching where her feet fell. Each brush of the grass against her skin felt like the lick of a snake's darting tongue or the whiskers of a rat.

When she reached the door she didn't wait to savour the moment, she just wanted to get back down that path as quickly as possible. She jabbed at the bell and heard the harsh metallic sound of it ringing inside the house. It wasn't the soft
bing bong of the doorbell at home, this sounded more like an alarm.

She never knew if it was just bad luck or if the owner of the house had seen them from upstairs and was waiting for her. The moment her finger was off the button the door flew open. The man inside was old. His long white hair hung limply down the sides of his head, plastered to his scalp with grease. One of his eyes was swollen shut and afterwards she wondered if there was an eyeball in the socket at all. She dreamed about it that night, that and the other eye which was big and bloodshot and stared at her madly. She stood there frozen in shock and he darted a wrinkled old hand forward and grabbed her left wrist. She screamed and tried to pull away from him, twisting her arm in his grip.

“Got you,” he said. “Got! You!” He repeated the words, louder each time, squeezing her wrist harder and harder. He was wearing a shirt stained with paint and food that gaped open to reveal the top of his chest. It was covered in a coarse white hair, the pink of his skin visible through it in places.

Eve screamed again and pulled harder, his hand slipped down her wrist a little and she leaned into him and then pulled away with all her strength. In that moment she was close to him she smelled him. A mix of paint, tobacco and stale sweat. There was another odour too, one she didn’t recognise, musky, animal and sour. That
desperate pull worked and she fell free, tumbling back onto her bottom on the hot concrete of the path. As she landed she heard the rustle again and turned her head in the direction of it. She fully expected to see an adder coming at her through the grass but there was nothing.

Th
e man shouted something, a word she didn’t understand, harsh and filled with anger. Eve scrambled up and away from him, charging back down the path to her friends who were standing terrified in the street. Her wrist burned from his touch and she rubbed it as she ran, realising that something was missing. She turned and saw him still standing on the doorstep, her small pink Barbie watch in his hand. When he noticed her turn he held her gaze and smiled. She thought that he would spin and go back into his house but he didn't. Instead he called to her.

"You want it back don't you?" he said. She nodded. "Then you'll have to come and get it."

Eve never knew what would have happened if she’d gone back to claim the watch. Nothing good, she was sure of that. Claire and Rachel grabbed her hands and they ran back down the street away from the creepy house and the man, back towards the normality of their own streets and their own homes.

She’d never told anyone about that day. The three of them talked about it later and agreed that it should be secret. It was the kind of thing that would give their parents an excuse to stop them from playing on their own.

Eve told her mum that she’d lost her watch in the park and her mum believed her. She didn’t like lying to her, especially now it was just the two of them, but sometimes it was just simpler. Every time she did it she found that it had become that little bit easier and that she felt less guilty about it. Mum wasn’t coping so well since dad had died, so she was helping really, wasn’t she? 

Looking back that day felt like the end of her childhood, or the beginning of the end at least. It was the year that dad died and mum started losing it. The next year Eve had traded dolls and games for boys.

The memory had carried her nearly as far as the end of the alley. She’d lost herself in it and the running. She couldn’t hear Joel, she suddenly realised. His footfalls behind her had stopped. She turned and looked back into the darkness. He was nowhere to be seen.

Joel wasn't a fighter; he had the skills for it but not the appetite. As a kid he'd been involved in too many fights to believe they ever really solved anything. In the children’s home the violence seemed non-stop at times: the bullying, the put downs, the scuffles and the out and out brawls. The ever presence of it had encouraged him to learn how to fight himself. It wasn’t just something that was socially useful like being able to play football, it was a survival essential.

He’d learned at first by observation, watching the older kids fight. Boy and girls alike. And then when he needed to he’d put the things he’d learned into action. He could still remember that day, the first time he’d really fought back,

He’d been picked on before but never too badly. He kept himself to himself so it was mostly crimes of opportunity rather than anything more premeditated. Sweets being stolen, that kind of thing. That changed when a new boy moved into the home. He was nine, two years older than Joel and he instantly had it in for the smaller boy. Maybe he felt like he wanted to make an impression as he was new. Maybe he was just mean.

On his first day there he pushed Joel off his chair in the dining room and poured a cup of squash over him. Joel got up and went back to his room and cried until his chest hurt.

The next day it happened again. Almost. After they’d finished eating the boy came up to him again. Joel saw him coming and stood, facing the boy as he walked up to him. The older boy was six inches taller than him and much heavier; his chunky frame dwarfed Joel’s skinny one.

Joel had seen other kids fight many times and he’d realised that a big part of victory was surprise. If your opponent didn’t expect you to do something they couldn’t guard against it. That was why the boy had been able to push him off his chair. Joel hadn’t expected it.

So when the boy walked up to him he knew he had to be the one who made the first move this time. He held the boy’s eyes as he got closer and closer, waiting for the right moment. The whole time Joel’s hand was gripping the corner of the grey plastic tray on the table in front of him. When the boy was close enough he swung the tray. His plate and cutlery flew off it and crashed to the floor. The tray rose, angling up at the end of Joel’s skinny arm. The edge of it struck the other boy on the temple and he fell to his knees his hands over his face. Joel saw blood oozing from between his fingers. The other kids all saw it too; he heard a few gasps and then the sound of one of the supervisors running over to find out what had happened. Everyone at the home left him alone after that. For a while at least.

Joel hadn’t wanted to fight that day but he was glad he had. Sometimes it was just necessary and standing in the alley he knew this was one of those times.
As he waited he looked closely at the three men for the first time. Until now they'd been pretty much indistinguishable from each other aside from the bats. Up close it was a different story.

The unarmed one actually looked the most dangerous. He had the lean muscular look of someone whose muscle was earned not gym bought and he moved with a grace that suggested he was in complete control of his body. Joel worried that he’d underestimated his opponents when he’d glanced at them running earlier. He’d thought he could handle them but now he wasn’t so sure.

Batter one had the stocky look of a rugby player. He was clearly strong but he moved slowly and awkwardly. The last of the trio moved in the showy way of someone who had learned to fight by playing video games. He was young and fit looking but Joel could tell he was all front.

As he'd expected the narrow alley meant that they had to come at him one at a time. The video gamer stepped forward first. Joel saw now that the baseball bat he was carrying was completely clean of any marks. That either meant it was new or the owner only had it for show. Joel hoped it was the latter.

The man held the bat out in front of him, pointing at Joel with it, using it to keep a distance between them. Joel was tempted to make a grab for it, rip it out of the other guy's hands and even things up a little. He didn't though, it would have been a risky move and he knew he didn't have the luxury of making a single mistake. The guy was big and Joel didn’t fancy getting into a tug of war over it. As soon as his guard was down all three of them would be on him. If one got in a hit that floored him they’d find the room to crowd around him and it would all be over. He knew his best chance was to take it slowly and wait for them to make a mistake.

As it turned out he didn't have to wait long.

The guy tired of jabbing at him with the end of the bat after a minute or so and decided to take a swing. Joel knew that the problem with a weapon as big as a baseball bat was that it wasn’t instant. You had to swing it back so that you could swing it forward. As soon as his opponent started the backswing Joel threw himself forward. The guy reacted quickly, starting to bring the bat forward again before it was fully back. He was too slow, Joel was inside his swing. He went in low, arms at his sides and wrapped them around his attacker’s torso, gripping tight and pushing the man back. At the same time he brought his head up sharply, driving it hard into the masked face. He felt the nose crumple and released his hold; letting the guy stagger backwards dazed. Joel took one quick step forward and kicked the man between the legs with all his strength and then retreated again. The man went down hard and the other batter stepped forward. He'd learned from his friend and had his bat raised to his shoulder ready to take a swipe at his target. Joel took a couple of steps back as the thickset man advanced on him, buying himself some time. As soon as he stepped within range the guy was going to take a swing and if the bat connected with the weight of the guy behind it Joel knew he'd be done for.

His eyes searched the floor of the alley for anything he could use but there was nothing, just the usual crisp packets, fag butts and coke cans.

It was a standoff. The guy wasn't going to swing unless Joel got closer and Joel couldn't do anything until he swung. He started talking, because that was all he could do.

"You don't seem as much of a dickhead as your mate,"
he said and nodded at the moaning lump on the floor.

"He's not a dickhead."

"He fights like one," said Joel. He saw the guy tense up around his shoulders and arms. The fact that he’d got a reaction was interesting. He watched the man’s body language as he continued talking.

"Oh, he really is a mate of yours?"

The guy didn't say anything, just stood there tensed. The balaclava meant there were no facial expressions for Joel to read but he could tell he was getting to him.

"Not a mate then? Your brother!"

The guy was still silent but he tilted his head ever so slightly.

Joel carried on, working the man like a boxer wearing his opponent down with body shots.

"Younger by the look of him. Your little brother come out with you and look what happened to him. I bet it was his first time wasn't it? That explains why he fought like a twat."

The guy stood there looking big and saying nothing. He was pretty good at both.

Joel carried on. "Did he beg you to come out tonight? Did he beg you to have the first go at me? I think I broke his nose you know, felt like it..."

The guy stepped forward and swung.

His hands tensed a fraction of a second before he made the move, telegraphing it. Joel jumped back and the bat sliced through the air an inch in front of his nose. The man had put all his power behind the blow and now he was started he couldn’t stop. The bat continued past Joel and smashed into the wall of the alley. The vibrations of the blow travelled all the way up the bat to the batter’s hands and he swore, dropping it. Joel jumped forward and kicked him in the left knee, driving the toe of his shoe into the kneecap. He followed it up with a punch to the guy’s rounded belly and then another to his jaw. The man stepped back, raising his hands defensively in front of him, trying to buy time to clear his head. Joel stooped and grabbed the fallen bat, he swung it up from the ground, between the other man’s clenched fists, and into his chin. It connected solidly and the man’s head snapped back.

Before he could fall to the ground the last of the trio had pushed past him; the first guy’s bat was held in his hands. Joel was still bent over, struggling to get himself fully upright
again when the man swung at his head.