Sea Change (4 page)

At the end of
the alley, standing perfectly still, was a large black dog. It
looked at John. He stayed completely still. It was the dog that he
had seen before, he was sure of it. Maybe it was just allowed to
roam the village at night, he thought. Or maybe it was the old
man's dog, sent here to find me, to track me down, to leap snarling
at me and—but the dog turned around, and walked away around the
corner, making no sound but the gentle rattle of its pads on the
stone.

John waited for
a moment or two, but it did not reappear. He walked around the
corner, and there in front of him, stood the dog. It looked at him,
staring up into his eyes in the way that a dog should not.

"Good dog,"
John said, his voice broken and hoarse. "There, boy."

The dog took a
step forward.

John took a
step backward.

"No boy, go
home. Go on, go home."

The dog took
another step forward. John did not dare run again, even if he could
have found the energy. He was sure that if he ran the dog would
chase him. Still facing it, he backed away, heading back down the
alley the way that he had come in. The dog stood motionless and
watched him move. After a while, John reached the corner, and he
turned and headed out onto a narrow street. Which way was the
sea?

The buildings
seemed to tower all around him and he could not get his bearings.
He could hear the gentle crash of the waves, but the sound seemed
to come from everywhere and nowhere all at the same time. Then
above the sound of the sea he heard a click click click and saw the
dog again, not coming out of the alley after him, but trotting down
the street towards him. It must have gone round the far end of the
alley and made its way round, John thought. This made his mind up
for him, and he walked away, looking back over his shoulder every
pace or two. The dog stood still in the middle of the street,
watching him. Its coat was as dark as the night. The next time he
looked, it was gone again.

Deep breath,
deep breath. John chanted to himself, the words losing all meaning
but providing comfort in their repetition. He kept his gaze
straight ahead as he walked, not wanting to look at the shadows on
either side of the road, for fear of what he might see in them.
Then a shadow appeared in front of him, the dog back blocking the
way. A passage led off to the right a metre or so in front of it.
He could have walked around the dog, the street was wide enough,
but its presence filled the road in a way that its body didn't.
There was no way that John was going to attempt walking past. That
left only two options: go back the way that he had come, or risk
the narrow passage, the passage that was so dark that John could
not see more than a little way into it.

Maybe this is
what the dog wanted, John thought, maybe it had done its job,
herding me along, and at the end of that passage would stand an old
man, as dry as sticks, with a voice like poisoned honey. But the
dog seemed calm, and there wasn't the suffocating atmosphere of
menace that he had felt when he spoke to the old man, a dense fear
that sucked all the life from the air. The dog sat still, watching
him.

"You want me to
go down here," John said. "But I don't know why you want me
to."

It did not
move.

"I could walk
back up the street."

The dog sat,
and stared. It dawned on John that even if he did go back, sooner
or later he would turn a corner and there it would be again,
sitting there, waiting for him. He either had to confront it now
or—he turned and walked straight into the passage, his throat
tightening, his stomach a roil of heat and acid. The walls
narrowed, the passage darkened, and then it turned and suddenly
there was light again, and John walked out from in-between the
walls and onto the road a few metres from his sister's house. He
looked back along the passage, but the dog had not followed him. He
ran the last few steps to the house, up the long steps, and then as
he turned the door handle and pulled open the door onto a beautiful
light and warmth, John turned back to the street and quietly said,
"Thank you." He did not see anything, but he thought that he heard
the distant click of claws.

Laura was still
wrapped up in her accounts. She said thanks to John for posting her
letter without really raising her head. John sat on the sofa in the
small living room, legs curled up into himself, arms wrapped round
them, wondering whether he was going mad. Everything inside the
house was sharp and real, everything that had happened outside was
blurry, like a dream. The rough fibres of the cheap cushions on the
couch scratched at his skin. The air smelt of garlic bread, and the
perfume that Laura wore. He could hear her at the table, the
scritch scratch of her biro on paper, the tap of her fingers on the
calculator, an occasional puzzled muttering. Then he would think
about what had happened that evening, and there was a wall of glass
between him and the events, like a half-remembered dream, a story
that he had once read that had really happened to somebody
else.

He could not
just sit there, but neither could he think of anything that he
wanted to do. In the end he just told Laura that he was tired, and
was going to bed, because he could think of nothing else to do, and
because the comfort and security of his bed was the only sanctuary
he could think of. When Laura looked up and asked if he was all
right, he thought about telling her. Then he tried to form the
words in his mind, and he knew how ridiculous it would sound, so he
just mumbled something about being tired out after so much walking
that day, and that he was going to go to bed and read. She smiled
at him, said, "I'll try and not disturb you when I come to bed,"
and went back to her work. John creaked up the stairs to bed, but
he did not sleep.

He twisted and
turned, hands clutching at the duvet, pulling it tight around him,
keeping out the world. Every so often he pulled back the edge of
the curtain and looked out. He saw nothing except an empty street,
but the night itself felt charged with fear and menace. Every time
he looked, John vowed, that it was the last time. He was afraid of
what he might see. But then after a few minutes he would feel
temptation rising, a desperate need to look out of the window and
to reassure himself that there was still nothing there. Although he
was afraid of what he might see, he was also afraid of what he
might not see, moving through the night, moving soundlessly along
the street like the endlessly restless sea.

He heard the
old man's last words in his head, he heard the offer to bring Alex
to meet him, and he was back in that ordinary corridor, on that day
that started just like any other ordinary day.

As John was
thrust face first into the darkness of his locker for the third
time, hands grabbing him by the hair, shoving at his back, he heard
above the jeers of Parker's little gang the sweep and thud of the
door to the outside opening and closing.

Please let it
be a teacher, he thought. Please, please, please. But it wasn't,
because the hands did not immediately let go and dust him down,
patting him apologetically like friends having a laugh, and also
because John knew life never turned out that well. He was held in
suspension, while the new arrival was considered.

"Get lost
freak," Parker said. "Can't you see we're busy?" Laughter.

"I want to get
something from my locker." It was Alex. Oh, you idiot, John
thought. Go, now. But another part of him thought: stay, stay. Let
it be you, not me.

"I need to get
somefing fwom my locker," Stevens said in a baby voice. Titters.
"You heard, get lost, mentalist." Hands still held John pressed
into his locker, but it was almost casual now, their attention
focused elsewhere.

"Shut up."
Parker. His voice was low, silky, sent shivers down John's spine.
"He says he needs to get something from his locker. So let him get
it." Silence.

Then there was
a shuffling of feet, as Parker and the others let Alex past.
Silence again.

Then there were
light, hesitant footsteps. Oh, you idiot, John thought, Alex, why
do you always bring this on yourself when the rest of us spend all
our time trying to avoid it? For a moment, John was almost brave,
and drew breath to shout to Alex to run. But he still felt the
hands on his back and tangled in his hair, and he could still see
nothing but the grey metal of his locker, inches from his face, and
he resented Alex. He had the chance to get away, the chance that
John didn't have, but didn't take it. He wanted this to happen, so
let him get it. So John bit his lip and tried to breath quietly,
become part of the furniture, become irrelevant.

They let Alex
walk to the end of the corridor, where his locker was. Then John
was banged into his locker one more time, hard, he heard Parker
say, "Run away, little boy, this doesn't concern you," and the
hands let go and there were footsteps, lots of footsteps. John
stepped back into the light, skittered towards the door to the
world outside. Alex was standing at the end of the corridor, his
locker not even open yet, defiant, staring at them all. Then he
turned his stare onto John. He was not pleading, was not begging
for help, did not even look scared. Instead, he just gave John the
stare. The same stare he gave everyone. The same stare that
everyone hated. The same stare that got him into situations like
the one that he was now in.

It drilled to
the core of John and said: I know you. Said: I know what you are
going to do now. Said: I know everything. Said: I don't care.

John hesitated
by the door, forgotten as a different drama was played out. Stevens
turned and half-saw him there, said, "Hey", as if to attract the
attention of the others, but they were moving in on Alex now, a
circle tightening, constricting, fists twitching, and Alex's body
cowered but his eyes still stared. Stevens gave John an
unmistakable look: we'll have you for afters, and John thought we
don't even need words any more, only glances and stares, and then
his nerve broke and he crashed through the door and out into the
gorgeous fresh air, so cool and clean. He ran around the old block,
over to the other side of the school, and straight into a figure
that bounced him off and said, "What the hell do you think you're
doing?"

John stood,
chest heaving, staring at Mr. Allison. The man was shaped like a
barrel, taught geography and games, smelt of BO when the weather
got warm, and supposedly had been sent out of the army because he'd
had some kind of breakdown.

"Well? It's not
a damn race track. If you put in as much effort on the sports field
you might not end up last all the time. Slow down boy, slow down.
Catch you running like that again and I'll have you doing laps of
the pitches for an hour after school, see how much you like running
then."

I could tell
him, John thought. I could tell him and he would go over there and
stop it. But then what would follow would be as inevitable as the
sun rising. One of Parker's wannabe altar boys would see the
teacher coming and grab their chance to ingratiate themselves by
warning the others. The boys would stop whatever they were doing to
Alex, and by the time Allison walked in, there would be nothing but
studied nonchalance and the sound of Alex crying. Alex would not
tell the teacher what had happened. Others would stay silent out of
fear, but Alex would stay silent because he viewed the teachers in
the same way that he viewed Parker and his friends, the same way
that he viewed everyone. Parker would explain that Alex had fallen,
had an accident, and Allison would rant and rave and maybe get them
running cross-country until they were sick on their trainers, but
unable to prove anything, he would be powerless.

And then they
would come looking for whoever had told the teacher. They would
take each moment of pain that they had experienced and pay it back
ten times over. It was inevitable. A fact of nature. How the world
worked. John knew that there was no escaping it.

"You look like
a goldfish, boy, standing there, opening and closing your mouth.
Too much time in front of your X-Box, not enough time out
exercising. Got something to say boy, or are you just blowing
kisses?"

John shook his
head, looked at the ground. Mr. Allison walked off, trailing a wave
of sweat behind him. In the locker corridor, things happened.

John took the
long route around the back of the science block, and into his
classroom. No one stopped him on the way. After an hour of English,
he had two hours of biology. Alex was in the same biology set as
him, but he was not in the class. He was not in the class, he was
not in the school, for after Parker had finished with him, he had
picked himself up off the floor and walked away, out of the
corridor, out of the yard, out of the school altogether.

If the old man
could bring Alex to him, John did not want to meet him. And if the
old man could do such things, John did not want to meet him again
either. He curled up under his duvet, and thought to himself over
and over again: he's just some weirdo out to frighten me, just
because he says such things doesn't mean that he can do them, it's
nothing, it's nothing. But at the same time, a voice inside him
said: but how does he know? And what does he want?

Alex did not
come back to school that day, and he never would again, because he
walked home, fed his fish, and then walked back out again and
jumped from the road bridge above the river, a tiny figure dropping
through the air like a dying crow, visible for a moment and then
lost in the turning eddies of the black water that flowed towards
the sea.

In the early
hours of the morning the rain came, tapping on the window like
liquid fingers, and eventually, without meaning to, John slept.