Luke Delaney - The Keeper

‘What do you mean?’ Sam asked, looking up from her daisy chain, peering into his brown, almost black eyes.

‘Nothing.’ He suddenly leaned forward, his lips pursed, but she bent away from him.

‘What are you doing?’ she said, still smiling, but more anxiously now.

‘I wanted to kiss you. That’s all.’

She watched him as he looked away and stared at the ground, a sense of pity and friendship overwhelming her resistance. She knew what the other children at school did to him, physically and emotionally tormenting him whenever a teacher wasn’t there to stop them or sometimes even when there was, but she had never joined in. By befriending him she had risked her position as one of the popular kids, one of the in-crowd; her friendship had been enough to confer on him a degree of protective cover. All the same, his attitude towards her did concern her a little. From the very first time she had spoken to him, just a week ago, when she had intervened to stop a group of boys from tearing his school books to pieces, his intensity towards her had seemed … unnatural. She’d told herself it wasn’t surprising — clearly she was the only friend he’d ever had. Her parents and older relatives had always been amused and charmed by her natural instinct to protect the innocent, embarrassing her with tales of when she would rescue writhing caterpillars from attacking ants or free moths from the spider’s web, and now she had Tommy — another insect to be saved from the ants. She leaned close to him and quickly kissed him on the cheek.

He looked up, joy and fear etched on his face, confusion and excitement, his lips swelling with the blood of embarrassment and desire. He’d never felt quite like this before — a stirring in the very pit of his stomach; a tightening feeling in his groin. He knew what to do next. Some of the older boys at the children’s home had made him watch their secret DVDs. He knew what men were supposed to do to women — especially when they loved them — the older boys had made that very clear. He leaned towards her and kissed her on the cheek. To his pleasure and surprise she didn’t pull away, so he kissed her again and again, moving across her cheek to her beautiful red lips, the taste and warmth of her skin firing through his entire body like electricity, making his heart pound out of control, his breathing reduced to tiny gasps.

She giggled nervously, placing a hand on his chest as his lips searched for hers, probing and slipping on the side of her face. She tried to twist away, but felt his hands slip under her armpits and begin to hold her in place, pulling her closer to him. She pushed hard at his chest again with both hands, the increasingly fraught struggle making them over-balance and fall sideways on to the grass, his lips never ceasing their search for hers.

‘No, Tommy,’ she managed to say. ‘Stop it, please. Stop it, Tommy, you’re hurting me.’ She felt a hand slide under her top and grope her chest for breasts she didn’t have yet, his jagged fingernails clawing at her soft skin. And then he was on top of her, his hand pulling and tugging at the buttons and zip of her jeans, her hand pulling at his wrist, tears beginning to seep from her green eyes as she fought to free herself from him. But the madness had made him too strong and she felt his powerful thin fingers push themselves into her knickers pressing hard on her crotch. ‘Stop, Tommy. Please, you have to stop.’ But he didn’t, a single finger pushing its way inside her, the pain and shock electrifying her body, making her do the only thing she could think of doing.

Her shrill scream ripped through him like a bullet, freezing time as he became totally still, his eyes wide and round, misty with sexual desire that he knew now would never be fulfilled. For that second nothing in the world existed except the two of them, locked in their grotesque embrace. He felt her lungs filling with air, watched her mouth spread wide open, every muscle in her body tense as she prepared to shatter the very air around them with another scream. The horror of the situation punched him in the chest and shocked him to action before the scream could leave her mouth, his hand clamping over the opening in her face that threatened to destroy him once and for all.

She blinked mechanically as she realized what was happening, the tears being pushed from her eyes and rolling down her temples and disappearing into her hairline. ‘You shouldn’t have done that,’ he told her. ‘You shouldn’t have done that. I … I … only wanted to prove to you that I love you. You want me to show you that don’t you?’ She tried to shake her head, to show him she didn’t, that she just wanted him to go and never speak of this again to anyone, but it was too late — too late for both of them.

The silhouette loomed up behind him, the sun glaring into her eyes making it impossible to see who it could be, but suddenly the weight of Tommy’s body was no longer on her as he appeared to be flying backwards through the air, the angry voice of an adult breaking through her hypnotic nightmare — the voice of her father. ‘Get the fuck off my daughter, you little bastard. What the fuck d’you think you’re doing?’ She watched her father raise his hand to strike the boy and despite the horror of a few seconds before she couldn’t let him.

‘No. Don’t hit him.’ Her father looked at her silently, the rage in his heart making her words sound distorted and unclear, but her pleading eyes told him what she was saying, begging him to spare the boy who had tried to violate her. ‘Please,’ she asked. Her father lowered his hand and stared at Tommy as if he was filth, stared at him the way he was used to being stared at. Then he dragged him from the garden and through the gate that led to his car, her voice following them all the way. ‘Please don’t hurt him, Daddy. He didn’t mean to hurt me,’ as she tried to defend him through her confusion and shock, despite her feelings of revulsion.

Her father spun on her, his finger raised to her face. ‘You wait here till I get back.’ He grabbed Tommy by the back of his neck and pointed his face back at his daughter’s. ‘Take a good look at her, son, because it’s the last time you’ll ever see her. Understand?’

The boy said nothing as he was pushed into the boot of her father’s car, the slamming of the lid bringing darkness and fear as they drove the short distance to the children’s home. Then light rushed into the boot, blinding light, as strong arms pulled him from the car and pushed him along the path to the entrance. Her father made sure all the staff and children knew what he’d done, that he didn’t want to press charges, so long as the boy stayed away from his daughter. No need to get the police involved, the staff at the home could deal with it — just so long as the boy stayed away.

But Thomas Keller couldn’t stay away, no matter how hard he tried, because he loved her and knew she loved him too. Every chance he had, he watched her, followed her home from school, hiding in the darkness. But he was young and clumsy and her treacherous parents saw him. This time the police were involved. They came to the children’s home and spoke to him — warned him that a Crime Report had been created and that he was shown as the suspect for the harassment of one Samantha Shaw, but that he was lucky this once, the parents just wanted him warned off. If he stayed away, they’d say no more about it. He would have to change schools of course, but that could be arranged easily enough.

He suddenly sat bolt upright in his filthy bed as he remembered agreeing to stay away from her. But he hadn’t stayed away — how could he? She was his religion. His god. How could he stay away?

And so he’d learned to be more careful — to make the shadows and darkness his allies. He’d learnt to blend into his surroundings, like an urban chameleon. And he watched her — he went on watching her for years.