John Marsden - Incurable

Like I said, the sun was out, but we were dancing in the dark. Except that the darkness was the mystery of what was happening now, and what would happen in the future. Who was this man? Why was he doing this? Would we still be alive in one minute, in five minutes, in a couple of hours? The questions were in my head instinctively as I ran through the trees, even though I had no time to formulate them, and certainly no time to think of answers.

I set out after Gavin. He was the leader of this dance. I had a sudden wave of fury that he was deaf. If he’d had hearing, this whole thing could have been resolved ten minutes ago. I would have shouted to him, ‘Go to the footballers!’ But he hadn’t figured that out, and because he was deaf he couldn’t hear it from me. All I could do was chase him, and at the same time try to keep myself alive.

The man chased Gavin too. I’m not sure if that was a logical thing to do, because I was closer. If he was going to kill Gavin, then the smart thing would be to kill me as well, and it didn’t really matter who he got first. But logic had gone out the window. I guess his primary target had always been Gavin. His focus was still on him, and he was gradually adjusting to my being in the picture.

So we both chased the little lonely lost boy. He reached the end of the park and turned left along the footpath for about fifty metres, while I prayed that he would keep going into a more public area, or that a whole crowd of people would suddenly emerge so he could run right into the middle of them. Where was everybody? It was a Saturday morning for God’s sake! I guess they were shopping or at sport or sleeping in. They were probably the three choices for the teenagers. Plus it wasn’t a very nice day, so that probably kept people away.

To my horror Gavin did what I suppose he could be counted upon to do: the worst thing possible. He turned left again and raced into the thickest patch of trees, the wildest and most remote corner of the park.

By then, the man was ahead of me. We had hit the footpath at different angles, and his had been better than mine, so if I had run the adjacent and the opposite, he had run the hypotenuse. Life’s just all triangles. His route brought him out about ten metres ahead of me, onto the concrete. Suddenly I was in the weird position of chasing the guy with the knife, not knowing what I would do if I caught him. I probably would have caught him too. But I didn’t dare to. I’m fairly strong, but I didn’t think I was strong enough for him. If I tackled him from behind, I might bring him down. He might knock himself out on the footpath. But there was no guarantee of that. He could just as easily roll over on top of me and stab me to death. He could hear me coming, turn, and let me run onto the knife. Even as we ran, I was terrified that he would turn suddenly and I would be onto the knife before I could stop myself. The gap wasn’t really as close as that. But if he turned and came at me, it would be a close thing. I would have to go left or right, or turn around, and in doing any of those things I would lose a split second, and he would be so close then that I wouldn’t have put a dollar on my own chances.

But he didn’t turn around. He wanted Gavin.

The cruellest thing of all happened then. A car came along the road. I thought it was unlucky that there was only one. He was going the same way we were, and I didn’t hear him until he was fairly close. By then we were near the point where Gavin had plunged off the path. I had a terrible choice. Should I swerve onto the road and force the car to stop? If I did, by the time the driver got out and I explained what was happening, the man with the knife would have plenty of time to run into the trees, find Gavin, and kill him while I was still out on the road talking.

I could wave my hand to stop the car and at the same time keep running. Or I could ignore the car and concentrate on the man and Gavin.

With only a second to choose I waved my hand and veered, so that I was running along the edge of the gutter, trying to get the best of both worlds.

The car drove right on past. I had a glimpse of the driver, and he was talking on his mobile phone. He didn’t even see me.

The man with the knife chucked a hard left, and went into the trees. I had to follow. It was dense in there, pretty really, like a European forest, or so I’d imagine, never having been in one. It was very quiet. The ground was sodden with dead leaves, and I tried to see any possible Gavin tracks, where he might have left the little bitumen path and headed into the trees.

Again, I didn’t know what to do. Should I follow the man? Or should I go off on a different tangent and look for Gavin myself, and gamble that I would find him before the man did? If I followed the man and he found Gavin, he could have killed Gavin by the time I caught up with them. One violent stab to the heart would be all it took. Even if I threw myself on them before he had stabbed, what guarantee did that give? What hope did I have of holding his arm, of wrestling with him, of overpowering him?

Yet it seemed impossibly cold and heartless to leave him and go in a different direction.

As I thought about this, the man did what I had feared while we were running along the street. He turned suddenly and came straight back at me, at full speed, with the knife held in front of him. He wanted to run me through. I had another perfect mental photograph of his face. His eyes were so narrow that they might as well have been closed. His top lip was drawn back from his teeth, which made his teeth look like fangs. I think he was totally focused on killing me, and no other thought was in his mind, except of course the other one that said, ‘Kill Gavin.’ I could sympathise with that as there were moments when I’d felt the same way, but this man was taking it too far.

I swerved left, leaving the path. Right away, though, my legs were slowed by wet leaves. There were lots of conifers in this part of the park, but a lot of deciduous trees too, and they had shed leaves big-time. I was panting like crazy by now, and thinking that surely Gavin, even Gavin, could hear my fear, and then I had a quick thought about his terror, the special fear that comes with silence. The feeling he must have, hiding behind a tree and not knowing whether the man might appear beside him with knife raised. For Gavin, there would be no warning. Unless he could smell the man. But surely if he was smelling anything right now it would be my fear. People say cattle and dogs can smell fear. Maybe Gavin could do the same. If so, the smell of me must be filling his nostrils and overpowering his sense of smell, because I was terrified. This whole thing was totally inexplicable to me, and I guess that added to the fear. ‘May fears always have names…’ That’s from a poem I once read. This fear had a name, it was ‘man trying to kill us with knife’, but I needed more information. Who the hell was he? Had Gavin done something terrible to him? Surely not. I know I whinge about Gavin all the time, and it might give a false impression of him, because the truth is that he’s a pretty sweet kid in many ways. He really loves animals, which made the whole thing with Mark’s neighbours’ cat so hard to understand, but he loves people too, only they don’t always give him a chance to show it. If you saw the way he hangs around Homer, and his constant attempts to guess what Homer might want when he’s doing any work at my place… he gets him tools and holds the other end of things and rides on the back of Homer’s bike without a word of complaint (he hates riding on the back of my bike). If I cook something, all he wants is to take pieces outside to feed to Homer, even more than he wants to eat it himself. And of course he never gets any argument from Homer on that one.