Nicola Barker - Darkmans

What was that?

A club?

— poorly fashioned cudgel… and he was brandishing it–

Uh…

— quite menacingly, high above his head.

Fuck!

Kane quickly shoved back his chair, almost upsetting it, to prevent a sudden succession of shadow blows from raining down upon him.

‘Fleet!’ Elen shouted. ‘ Enough! ’

Kane slowly righted himself, wincing. Straight ahead, in the doorway, stood the boy, his small hands held high and intricately knotted. Behind him? A precariously angled table lamp.

‘Holy shit !’ Kane gaped. ‘Where the hell’d you learn how to do that?’

The boy opened his mouth to answer, but before he could, Elen had dashed towards him, grabbed his fingers and rapidly untangled them. ‘You know you shouldn’t…’ she began, and then, ‘ Fleet! What on earth… ?’

She pushed the boy aside and strode into the room beyond, where the lamp was about to topple from its perch on a large pile of cushions. She caught it, switched it off, unplugged it, and placed it down, gently, on to the carpet.

Fleet watched her, impassively. ‘Did I do bad, Mummy?’ he asked. She scowled over at him. ‘I’m afraid you did, Fleet. Yes. Very bad.’ The boy’s face crumpled. ‘I didn’t mean to,’ he said.

Elen didn’t relent. ‘You know that you’re not allowed to play with the light fitments or the electrical sockets…’ He shook his head. ‘But I didn’t know, Mummy. Honestly .’

She shoved her hair, brusquely, behind her ears. ‘Well you know now. You mustn’t ever do that again, do you hear me?’

Elen re-entered the kitchen and the boy trailed along behind her, still looking crestfallen.

‘I don’t understand you, Fleet,’ she muttered, ‘usually you hate touching electrical things…’

‘Is Mummy upset?’ he wondered.

‘Yes. No . Just surprised… shocked . And she doesn’t want you to do that again, all right?’

‘It was only fun ,’ the boy muttered, grabbing on to her skirts and tugging at them.

‘Fun for you,’ she yanked the skirt from his grasp, ‘but not for us. You frightened poor Kane. You gave him a shock.’

The boy gazed at Kane, unrepentantly.

‘It was a great trick,’ Kane conceded, with a shrug.

The boy half-smiled. Elen did not. ‘You gave us all a bad shock,’ she reiterated.

‘Okay.’

The boy sniffed then yawned (already thoroughly bored of his mother’s strictures). He grabbed a hold of her skirts again, ‘ Slœpan , Mama,’ he wheedled.

‘ Schlafen ,’ Elen promptly corrected him.

‘What?’

The boy stared up at her, frowning.

‘ Schlafen ,’ Elen repeated.

‘But that’s what I just said , stupid!’

Elen’s mouth tightened.

Kane idly watched on, observing the tip of the boy’s head, the angle of his jaw. A pale face, a round yet oddly girlish face. Handsome, but with a touch of something…

Uh…

‘If you’re tired, Fleet, then you should go to bed.’

‘No.’

He shook his head.

‘But of course you must.’

‘ Can’t .’

He stamped his foot.

‘But it’s nearly bed-time anyway…’

‘ No . Shut up !’ he squealed.

Elen remained perfectly calm.

‘I’ll heat you a nice glass of milk…’

‘ No! I won’t! I don’t want to sleep,’ the boy yelled, ‘I want to stay awake, just like you do, and like Daddy does.’

Kane’s gaze shifted back to Elen again, to see how she would react. She glanced up. He noticed — with some surprise — that her pupils were tiny — like pin-pricks.

The boy began grizzling.

Elen gently stroked his curls, then reached down and grabbed a hold of his hand. The boy suddenly unleashed a violent shriek. He sprang back, shoving the hand she’d tried to take under its opposite armpit, bending his knees, howling.

She gazed down at him, shocked. He howled again, even more dramatically. Kane stood up. ‘I should go,’ he murmured.

Elen was kneeling down, now, struggling to untangle the boy’s arms. Finally, she managed it. ‘You’ve got a cut,’ she said, ‘on your hand. Stop wriggling. Let me take a proper look…’

Kane peered over at the boy and saw it. The long scratch. The nasty tear.

He peered down at his own hand, then took a quick step back.

Elen glanced up at him.

‘But what about your foot?’ she asked, through the boy’s pathetic keening. ‘And your jumper?’

‘It’s fine…’

He continued to back away from her, suddenly struggling to…struggling for…

Can’t…

Uh…

Trapped

‘I can always…’

‘Come and see me at the surgery,’ she nodded, hugging the boy to her. ‘Ask Beede for the number.’

‘Thanks for the vodka,’ he gasped–

Throat tightening up

— clutching (out of sheer habit) for the phone in his pocket, his keys, lunging clumsily for the door–

Must—

Get—

Need…

Uh…

— wrenching at the lock, then exploding — like a frantically resurfacing man-mole (its scrabbling claws unleashing a chaotic fountain of pebbles-roots-bugs-dirt…

Ahhhhh! )

— into the rich, deep pile of the navy night.

‘Forgive me. What awful timing. I should’ve thought to ring ahead…’

A startled-looking Daniel Beede addressed this awkward apology to an exquisitely set dining table and the four people surrounding it (while trying — and failing — to back his way out of the room into which he’d just that moment been unsuspectingly led).

‘ Nonsense! ’

The tall, dark, vivacious woman who was entirely responsible for luring him there grabbed a firm hold of his arm and patted it, reassuringly. ‘This is just perfect. In fact you couldn’t have timed it better. We’d catered for six, then poor Cheryl’s blind date got the jitters and stood her up at the last minute…’

Cheryl (an attactive, well-adjusted forty-nine-year-old woman) lifted an obliging hand to mark herself out from the other diners.

‘Hi. That’s me…’ she smiled, winningly (apparently perfectly willing to embrace the myriad of comic possibilities engendered by having been recently snubbed by a man she’d never met) ‘…and no, for your information, he wasn’t actually blind.’

The entire table tittered.

‘Just extremely short-sighted, eh ?!’

The man to her right nudged her, cruelly (again, the titters). As he nudged he accidentally pushed a side-plate into her wine glass.

Clink!

‘ Tom , you oaf ! Watch the crystal !’ Beede’s companion hollered, good-naturedly. Beede winced.

‘Doesn’t care if I break it, mind…’ the nudger complained to the fragrant but slightly worn-out blonde on his other side, ‘just doesn’t want to upset the caterer . A complete, bloody she-devil. Made Pat disinfect the refrigerator before she’d even deign to unpack the food from her van into it…’

‘What’s she got?’ the second, rather more portly but equally expensively tailored man at the table enquired.

‘Funny little hatch-back. A Citroën Berlingo . It’s parked out the front.’ ‘Of course…’ the second man snapped his fingers, in recognition, ‘I think I saw it as we pulled up.’