Alex Grecian - The Yard

He came to a wide intersection and stopped. The sky was growing brighter and the fog was burning off. It would be harder to run and hide in the daylight. People would see him, shirtless and dripping, tattered fabric wrapped around his feet, and they would stop him. And if they didn’t listen to him, they might take him back to the bald man. They might think that the bald man was really Fenn’s father like he said he was.

But he recognized a building across the street. It was a warehouse department store, specializing in tartan weaves. A big restaurant jutted from the side of the store, the street-facing wall a single huge piece of bowed glass. Fenn’s mother had taken him and his sisters there for tea one day more than a year ago. It had been a treat, a rare day out, and Fenn remembered the window, remembered the wonder of it: a single pane of glass so big and yet somehow curved. Food had been served on fine china, the platters pearly and nearly translucent, nothing like the dishes used at home. The tiny cakes they ate were fresh and moist and sweeter than anything Fenn had tasted in his life. That day they had walked to the store and walked home after tea, burdened with heavy shopping bags filled with sundries for the house.

Fenn was in his own neighborhood. Close to his real house.

The store was closed this early in the morning, but Fenn could see a shopkeeper moving around behind that magical window, readying the place for today’s business. A donkey carrying sacks of brick dust trotted past Fenn. The dust would sell for a penny a quart and be used to clean knives and ironwork. A peddler trudged beside the donkey, leading it to the first stop on his daily rounds, and he didn’t even glance in Fenn’s direction.

Down at the other end of the street, a newsie was shouting out the morning’s scandal while waving the latest tabloid over his head. “Cop killer at large!” the boy said, his voice much deeper and louder than seemed possible for his size. He couldn’t be very much older than Fenn. “Is the Ripper back?” the boy shouted at nobody in particular.

Fenn took a moment to orient himself and then crossed the street, away from the other boy and his frightening speculation. Fenn picked up his pace as he passed more little shops and houses that he recognized. Ahead, he knew, was his own house, maybe three or four blocks away.

“Here now, what’s this, then?”

Fenn stopped, his heart in his throat. He turned just as a meaty hand grasped his shoulder. A constable with a bushy orange mustache glared down at him from under his high blue hat.

“This’s a respectable neighborhood, little man.”

“Sir.”

Fenn could barely breathe.

“Where’s yer master?”

“I don’t have a master. My parents are waiting for me.”

“Ye look like a sweep’s boy to me.”

“No, sir.”

“Don’t talk back, boy.”

“No, sir. Sir, I need help. Somebody’s after me. He’s gonna hurt me.”

The policeman drew back and released Fenn’s shoulder.

“Don’t be playin’ games with me now, son.”

“No games, sir.”

“What’re you sayin’?”

“There’s a man and he took me to his house and he tied me up and I think he’s gonna hurt me if he finds me again.”

The policeman stared down at Fenn for a long moment. Then he reared back his head and laughed. It was a deep booming roar of a laugh that made Fenn’s chest bone vibrate. Finally, the policeman wiped his eyes and settled his hat low on his forehead.

“Aw, get along home with ye, then,” he said.

“But, sir, I need help. Please.”

“I’m bein’ patient with ye, boy, but don’t test me. Ye’ll be gettin’ somewhere fast, either yer home or the workhouse, ye make up your mind right quick about it.”

The policeman raised his hand as if to hit Fenn, and the boy backed away a step. He ducked, but the blow didn’t come.

“If I see ye about when I come round this way next, it’s the workhouse fer ye, and that’s a promise, boy,” the constable said. He turned and ambled away, returning to his neighborhood patrol.

Fenn blinked back tears and sighed. Behind him was a high wooden fence, painted green long ago, faded and peeling and nearly grey in the half-light. He clambered up it and dropped to the other side, out of sight of the street, and of the policeman, should he turn back around. Fenn hunched his shoulders and trotted alongside the fence, headed again in the direction of his parents’ home. It didn’t matter whether the policeman believed him, Fenn’s father would believe and would protect him from the bald man. And when the bald man was caught and put in prison, the unhelpful policeman would be sorry and maybe even apologize to Fenn.

Birds began to chirp in the treetops that lined the street and a dark hansom chugged past Fenn, unseen on the other side of the fence. Rainwater slished off the wheels and heavy beads ran like dew off a monstrous black beetle’s back. The cab rolled past and turned the corner.

Fenn cut through an opening in the fence and sprinted to the end of the block. He was on his own street. The solid block of brownstones lined the street ahead, queued up in a row that led right to Fenn’s front door. He could see the windows on the ground floor, twinkling with gaslight. His mother was awake and no doubt cooking breakfast for Fenn’s father and sisters. A door opened at the far end of the block and Harriet Smith stepped out on her stoop. She was far away, but he could see her yellow pigtails. Another door opened and another child, young Robert Harrison, emerged onto the street. Fenn hated Robert Harrison, but he had never been so glad to see anyone in his life. Robert and Harriet waved to each other and ran into the street, already picking up a game they’d clearly left off the previous evening. It was still too dark out. They didn’t see Fenn and he was afraid to call out, afraid the policeman might still be nearby.

He untied the bits of pajama shirt on his feet and left them in the road. He could run faster barefoot and he didn’t care about the pain anymore.

He ran past the first house on the corner, joined to the next but more squat, a dwarf beside a stone giant. To his right, the black hansom cab sat idle, the horse sniffing the morning air, the coachman hidden in a blanket of shadow. The cab looked familiar and Fenn slowed as he drew near. The hansom’s windows were covered by dark curtains and Fenn saw one of them move.

Realization dawned and Fenn swallowed hard. He had to pass that cab to get to his door. He decided to put everything he had left into one mad dash down the street. He was too close now to do anything else.

T he bald man sat in a hansom cab on Cheyne Walk watching the passive expanse of brick and iron, an entire block’s worth of one building divided up into multiple homes. The patter of rain eased and the sky began to turn a pale shade of pink. Children emerged from their townhouses and resumed the previous evening’s play without benefit of grass or trees. They raced here and there, shrieking and whooping, making ingenious use of hoops, balls, and sticks.

The bald man had sat in this same spot many times before, watching the children. He liked to single out the most beautiful or charming of them and concentrate on him. Or her. Today a pretty blond girl, thin and graceful and calm, directed a playmate in his effort to keep a metal barrel hoop rolling along. Ordinarily, the bald man wouldn’t have been able to tear his eyes away from her and her fetching pigtails, but this morning he was there for a different reason. He had already selected his ward and had lost him. Now he was waiting for Fenn, certain that he would return here to his first home, the home he’d had before the bald man had rescued him from this perfect ordinariness.