Seeing Dead

Copyright © 2024 by Edgar D Jackson

First published in Great Britain in 2024 by IolandaPress

Paperback edition published in 2024

eBook edition published in 2024

The right of Edgar D Jackson to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

PBK book ISBN: 978-1-3999-8622-9

Typeset by Raspberry Creative Type in Edinburgh, Scotland

‘When I think of you, I think of the ocean.’

Prologue

WHEN CHARLIE WENT

Charlie’s disappearance, truthfully, took place over the course of one year. It started on the morning of the fifth of September, 1988. Charlie woke up. He brushed his teeth and hair, as he usually did. He crept downstairs, careful not to wake his mum and dad, as he usually tried. He made his toast, ate his toast. Loaded his bag, shouldered his bag. Then he finally made his way towards the bus stop. The only unusual part was that he didn’t make the bus stop.

There was nothing about the street to suggest he wouldn’t. The cars were all the usual cars, parked in the usual way – parallel to the kerb. The air was still the same, laced with a late-summer fog and festering with salt from the ocean, which sat on Gealblath’s doorstep just one mile outward. Mrs Forsythe was in her garden, her polka-dot skirt folded under her knees as she dug at the flower beds. Charlie waved. Mrs Forsythe waved back. Her gloved hands were caked in soil, and her reddish-grey hair was already beginning to go sticky with sweat.

A few steps further and still nothing was new. The Thorntons had their kitchen window wide open, as they usually did. The voice of Gary Numan was crooning out of a muffled radio perched atop the windowsill. Two doors down from them, Mr Goldman was performing his morning skin routine, crumpled over in his porch chair and rubbing ferociously at his ankles. The pain of his gout always got him up early, so he would sit and spend twenty minutes scrubbing goo into his sore and swollen feet, hissing angrily to himself in a way that made Charlie pick up his pace and stare down at his shoes. On the other side of the road, Mr Striker was making his usual trek down to his expensive seaside cabin. He used to work at the local power plant, but since its closure in 1985, he’d spent most of his time lounging away his life at the beach. Lunchbox in one hand, the morning’s post in the other, he wore a slappable smirk that suggested he wanted everyone to know just how very well his early retirement was treating him.

This was the way it had been every day. Everything in the street remained the same. None of the players had changed. None of the scenery. It was like a painting on a wall. And there, where the path began to dip, the bus arrived at the place the bus normally arrived. It would be there for two minutes only, and so Charlie began to jog. He spotted his friend sitting near the rear window and an empty seat beside him.

The fact that there remained an empty seat would soon become a fact that haunted the town he lived in.

CHARLIE COOPER

WHITE MALE, 12 YEARS OLD, 4’7" TALL, 39kg, BLONDE HAIR, BLUE EYES

That was the first police report.

The first witness statement was given by Mrs Forsythe: ‘Chirpy kid. Just like every morning. Always walks with a wee strut, that one. Like he’s going somewhere. My kids were the same. That age, you’re going everywhere.’

Alfie Percival conducted the search. He was a recently appointed detective who was just glad there was something to get him out of the dingy, smoke-filled office for a day. He became slightly less glad when that day turned to two days, then three, then onwards to a week, then two, to the point where his dingy, smoke-filled office started looking like a luxury five-star suite. At first, he liked the respect that came with the job. The looks on the street, the nods, the occasional cigarette packet on the house – unfiltered Raffles, he liked the thick stuff. But after two months, the respect was gone and the looks had turned sour.

‘You not found that boy yet?’

‘He’s not up your arsehole, you know.’

‘You take any longer, you’ll be finding nothing but skull and bone.’

‘What are you lot doing down the station? Measuring cocks?’

Two months more and Charlie’s disappearance continued. From absence of body to absence of hope. Alfie quit the job altogether. He left Gealblath in the dust and felt decidedly bitter that the residents seemed to have expected him to pull Charlie out of some magic hat and take a bow. He was no magician, and this was a vanishing act even Houdini would have struggled with. So Alfie vanished to the south of England, to Cornwall, where a whisky on the rocks was waiting to etch away the picture of Charlie from his head.

For Gealblath, that picture remained for months after the case fizzled out. It was plastered along the walls, flickering in the wind on utility poles, stapled to the wood of the ‘Welcome to Gealblath’ sign. A small boy parked in front of a blurred blue background. Grinning hard. His eyes looking left of camera and a great big

MISSING

hanging under his torso. They couldn’t get rid of the memory with a whiskey on the rocks. They had to look at the posters day after day, week after week. Only one was ever taken down and that was just because someone had penned a speech bubble over Charlie’s head that read: ‘THA-THA-THA-THAT’S ALL FOLKS!’

A respite did finally come in the late winter, however. The clouds were low in the town and the cold wind whipped up the seawater, thinning the posters with salt until the boy was just a faded silhouette. From that point on, the image of Charlie could be forgotten. He became, then, just a muted conversation around a dinner table. He became a few passing lines in a pub at midnight. He became a shake of the head and a ‘tsk’. He became a ‘shame’. He became a ‘poor kid’. He became a ‘make sure you’re home by dark’. For a small while. Until the conversation changed to some other, more palatable subject.

Then there was nothing.

Charlie’s mother, Mrs Cooper, eventually left the town, spurred on by her very public breakdown after finding a poster of her son covered with a poster for a missing cat. But Charlie’s father stayed. For some reason – of which the residents of Gealblath were never really sure – the initial phase of the investigation was focused on him. Nothing was ever found to warrant an arrest, but Gealblath was convinced there had to be substance to it. They followed their noses and the smell surrounding him turned sour. Until time passed and there were other things for their noses to crinkle at.

Come late summer, exactly one year after Charlie’s walk to the bus stop, it became clear that every inch of the boy had been emptied from the town in which he’d lived. The disappearance was complete. On the street beside his house, all the cars were parked in the same place. Mr Goldman was grumbling to himself and applying his cream. Mrs Forsythe was digging up some worms in her garden. Duran Duran was blaring out of a kitchen window this time. One mile eastward, Mr Striker was sitting outside his cabin to enjoy the rare glares of the sun, watching as some children gathered together to throw stones into the water. He allowed himself a content sigh and the others upon the beach seemed to do the same. Everything was as usual as it had been one year before, and it was clear that Gealblath liked it that way. Normality is important to the human psyche, and a wound left open too long drains blood. If forgetting a lost child paved the way back to a comfortable life, then Gealblath would let a thousand children be forgotten.

And, as it goes, that was how it ended. If the beach was any indication of Gealblath’s mindset, then it was utterly and perfectly usual. One child was simply gone. But no one noticed that anymore. After all, it was easy to overlook one less stone being thrown into the water.

1

TEN YEARS AFTER

The words were written in red and underlined in black.

The message was seen by about fifty Gealblath folk, young and old, before finally being witnessed by its intended recipient, Marty Evans. He had to get through a small crowd first. Fifteen school children let Marty through, some with sneers, others with frowns. Sporadic. Like a heart-rate monitor.

‘Marty Evans is dead! Marty Evans is dead!’ some of them chanted, but Marty didn’t listen to them. He was more concerned with Gealblath’s new billboard. The words were written on the wall of a wooden castle in the park and some of the spray paint had trickled between each log, so it was messy. It made him feel sick to look at it. His face turned pale and for some reason his eyes started to water. Gealblath Secondary School was located right next to the park, and every child would walk past the castle in the morning to get there. This was no joke. This was a public declaration. And the worst thing was, Marty knew who’d written it.

Despite his being dead, Marty’s day played out as usual. He went to class. He put his hand up a couple of times. He answered two questions. One of them was correct. One of them was wrong. Not that he cared. His head wasn’t in class, it was still in the park, staring up at those big spindly letters. DEAD! He spoke to some kids, hoping by chance they hadn’t seen the castle, all to no avail. Of course they had seen the words and naturally they asked him about it. He became a school celebrity, but not the good kind. He hadn’t punched the school bully. He hadn’t done a grind down the stair rail like Luke McLevin last term. He was dead. Simply that. Dead Marty.

The day went on and the clock continued to tick, speeding its way up to the dreaded chime. Lunch-time. Lunch-time was break time, and break time was dead time. Or so Marty predicted. That was when he would have to come face to face with his apparent demise. He just hoped it was quick and painless. Though he knew he didn’t have to worry too much about that. He was the weediest kid in his year. Killing him would be like killing a fish – easy, no resistance. He just hoped he wouldn’t flop around on the floor too much before his head was kicked in.

After a few hours of Marty inanely hoping lunch might be cancelled this Monday, the bell finally rang, and the kids bolted in the direction of the lunch hall. The only one walking was Marty. The lunch hall was loud when he arrived. When he walked through the doorway he quickly caught the gaze of a fellow ninth-year, a nice one, one he had talked to in science class that one time. She waved and mouthed, ‘Marty Evans is dead!’, pointing at him with a bony finger to assure Marty Evans that he was Marty Evans and that he was dead. Marty took a step backwards and hit into a wall of pudgy flesh and cotton. He turned to see the face of Rory Keeling staring down at him. Eleventh-year. Newly appointed street artist. His face was as ugly as ever, with freckles covering his cheeks and nose in specky mountain ranges, and his under-chin seemed to ripple a bit when he spoke.

‘Did you get my message, Weed-kid?’ he asked.

Marty nodded, taking a step back into the lunch hall. Lots of the children around him had stopped, eyeing the two of them like they were in a safari park. Marty. The zebra. Scrawny, toothless, and largely ineffective against an enemy. Rory. The enemy. Big, strong, and hungry for blood.

‘You’re dead,’ Rory said, reaffirming the message in case Marty had misunderstood what it meant. But Marty had understood just fine. Dead meant dead, and he was about to be it, unless he said something fast.

‘Is this about what happened with the new girl? I didn’t do anything, I only…’ Marty stopped, realising that nothing he could say could stop a bully as thick-headed as Rory. Resistance was truly futile. It was today. Or tomorrow. Or the next day. His fate was unescapable, and he would have to meet it with as much vigour and punctuality as the park’s billboard suggested.

The enemy raised a fist. The spectators held their breath. Marty imagined some of them with binoculars, cameras, and hats with corks hanging from the rim.

Ready for the show, folks? Just watch this.

* * *

One month before Rory’s fist landed, a car pulled up to the kerb of the park. It was a jet-black American Lincoln. New looking, windows tinted; the three ninth-years had never seen anything like it before. Marty sat with his two best friends on the climbing frame, his eyes squinting against the harsh light of the morning sun.

‘Who’s in it, do you think?’ pondered Mike.

His large arse was overhanging the pole on both sides. Marty glanced at it fearfully, awaiting the snap that was bound to happen one of these days.

‘The first minister?’ suggested Teddy. He sat above Marty, wobbling to and fro, his coordination so terrible that he’d tumbled face first into the wood chips at least twenty times in the last two years. Clearly enough to cause some severe brain damage, if his last comment was anything to go by.

‘Right,’ said Marty. ‘The first minister visiting Gealblath Secondary School. What’s he doing, brushing up on some algebra?’

‘He could be giving us some kind of award or something. First ministers do that sometimes.’

Mike wiped his nose in his ongoing battle against the freshly mown grass. Compared to the rest of Scotland, Gealblath always had hot summers. There was an almost intangible, lingering warmth year-round, even when it felt cold. No one could really explain it. No one really tried to because no one ever complained. Even Mike had accepted the fact that hay fever was just a part of his life. Something he would have to suffer if he wanted to avoid a typical Scottish summer.

‘What kind of award would he give this place?’ he questioned.

Marty thought about it. ‘Award for the best drawing of a penis in a toilet cubicle?’

‘Have you seen that too?’ Mike laughed and his belly seemed to vibrate a bit. Marty glanced at the pole again. ‘Apparently, George Anderson sneaked into school during the holidays. It’s pretty good, to be fair!’

Teddy nodded. ‘Must be, if the first minister’s here.’

‘No, Teddy. Just to be clear, it’s not the first minister.’

At that moment, the door of the Lincoln opened. All three of them turned to see who would exit. To Teddy’s disappointment, it was not Scotland’s first minister, but a girl. She looked about thirteen years old, which meant she must have been in their year, and she was new. Her hair was mousy, tangled at the back, and her uniform was kind of worn and baggy. To her chest, she was squeezing a rumpled, grey backpack. She stood and gazed around the park for a few seconds, her eyes resting momentarily on the three boys. Then she turned back to the car, said a few words, pushed the door shut, and headed towards the school. Marty watched the new girl go, oblivious to the hand which was slowly wrapping itself around his right shoe.

‘GOTCHA!’

The hand pulled hard, and the next thing Marty knew he was in the dirt, spitting out woodchips and looking up into the green eyes of Rory Keeling.

‘You alright there, Weed-kid?’

Teddy and Mike clambered down the poles, fearful that they were about to meet the same fate.

‘Unbelievable,’ said a boy called Ross Baines, popping up behind Teddy and stuffing a wet finger into his ear. ‘You tubes look like you’ve never seen a girl before. I knew you were paedos.’

‘Bugger off!’ Teddy squealed and attempted to swat him away.

‘Ah, the Teddy Bear’s sensitive!’ Ross gave him a couple of slaps on the cheek, then began sucking on the previously inserted finger. Of all the bullies in Gealblath Secondary School, Marty found Ross to be the most repellent. He grimaced as he watched him.

‘We’re not paedos,’ Mike stuttered. His voice was high and shaky, as it tended to become when he felt his life was in immediate danger.

‘Sure you’re not, Chinky.’

Ross halted his sucking act and decided to mimic Mike’s accent instead. His Chinese ethnicity had always caused him problems in the school corridors, but no one demeaned him as much as Ross Baines.

‘Nah, I don’t blame you,’ said Rory. ‘She’s hot as hell. Definitely my type, right, Weed-kid?’

Marty pulled himself to his feet and shrugged. To tell the truth he’d always seen Rory’s type as a bit thinner with more of a creamy peanut butter filling, but he wouldn’t tell him this. He valued his teeth more than that.

‘Sure,’ he said instead.

Ross patted Rory on the shoulder. ‘Hell yeah, big guy, I’d have a go on her.’

‘How d’you mean, have a go on her?’ asked Teddy, quite earnestly.

With a bellow, Ross leaped back over and grabbed him by the shoulders, causing Mike to cower once again while Teddy clamped his hands over his ears.

‘Let me tell you something, Teddy Bear, when a girl and a boy like each other very much, this…’ Ross revealed his index finger to the four of them. ‘Goes like this!’

With a flourish, he stripped away Teddy’s hands and began penetrating his finger in and out of his left ear.

‘HEY! HEY! GET ORRRRFFF!’

‘Just gonna have to see what happens,’ said Rory, ignoring the ‘whoops’ and ‘wees’ of Ross and the yells of his victim. ‘You gotta get the new girls early, Weed-kid. C’mon, Ross. Let’s leave these tubes to finger themselves.’

On his command, Ross stopped attempting to locate the brain of his victim. ‘Remember that little lesson, Teddy Bear. It might come in handy one day, if you get lucky.’

And then they were gone, leaving Marty covered in dirt, Teddy with a decidedly sore ear, and Mike with a slight dampness in his pants.

‘Why the hell would two people who like each other stick their fingers in each other’s ears?’ asked Teddy.

Marty sighed in response, rueful at the poor start to yet another miserable term. Although in all truth, imagining the confusion between Teddy and his future girlfriend was enough to keep his spirits up. For this moment, anyway.

The next two weeks played out much as Marty had expected. School happened. Marty went to it. He hung out with Teddy and Mike. He avoided Rory and Ross. He learned what he wanted to learn, and he ignored everything else. He ate the school lunches, he skived the school sports. Everything was as it had always been. The only new thing was the new girl.

She didn’t create much of an impact at first; she sat at the back of classes, doodling furiously in a notebook with her mousy hair covering the majority of her face. She didn’t speak. Even when the teacher asked her something, there would simply be a shake of the head, and the teacher would move on. The only subject she seemed to excel in was Art, and that was because she practised so much doodling in all her other lessons. The other girls found her weird. She didn’t attend PE, but sometimes they would find her in the changing room alone, complaining that her shoes were too tight and she had blisters growing between her toes. It seemed the only person she liked to talk to was herself. Until she began talking to Marty.

It started in the lunch hall, exactly fourteen days after Marty had spotted her getting out of the American Lincoln. He stood in line, food tray in hand, whistling the Ghostbusters theme tune to himself. He was just nearing the end before he noticed that one whistle had become two. The new girl was standing in front of him, her head dipped, evidently deaf to the fact that the original whistler had stopped. Marty leaned forward and tapped her on the shoulder.

‘Hello.’

He spoke quietly, but the word was enough to make the new girl jump halfway towards the ceiling. Her tray flew into the air, sending glass and cutlery spiralling over the tenth-years behind her.

‘Shit! I’ve been knifed!’ One of them grabbed his scalp. ‘I’ve been knifed! Oh shit, I’m bleeding!’

‘You’re not bleeding, ya dafty!’ said one of his friends.

The scrawny boy fell to his knees. The teachers looked on nonplussed. One took another bite of his sandwich.

‘I’ve been knifed! A knife hit me in the head!’

‘What, you mean this spoon?’ Another boy bent over and grabbed a small dessert spoon from the floor.

Then the whole lunch hall was laughing. A few sixth-years rushed to surround the felled student and mimicked him with squeaky voices.

‘Help! I’ve been spooned! I’ve been spooned!’

Marty turned and saw the new girl dart past the gathering mass of school kids, dodging in and out of them before disappearing through the nearest door.

‘A spoon attack,’ one of the teenagers cheered. ‘We haven’t had a spoon attack in years, not since the spoon massacre of 1985!’

Another rush of laughter arose around the lunch hall, but Marty ignored it. He turned towards the exit and began running after the fleeing girl.

When he found her, she was sitting in the school corridor, slouched on a bench beside a row of lockers. Her head was in her hands and her fingers were trembling a bit. For a minute, Marty thought about leaving her to it. Judging by the last thirty seconds, he was inclined to agree with the status the new girl had imposed on herself. Weirdo. Keep away. Hazardous. But then she opened her eyes, and all options of leaving were robbed.

‘Hello,’ said Marty, wincing slightly in case his greeting should cause another incident. To his relief, it didn’t.

‘Hi,’ she said back, her voice barely audible.

Marty lowered himself onto the bench. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you.’

‘You didn’t scare me,’ she responded. ‘It was my fault.’

‘No, it was mine. Most people have that reaction when I try talking to them. That was nothing. I caused a pretty big pile-up on the motorway this one time.’

The new girl blinked at him, then stared down at her feet. Marty noticed she was shoeless. Her toes scratched lightly against the school floor, unclipped and slightly dirty.

‘Why aren’t you wearing shoes?’ he questioned.

The new girl hesitated. ‘They’re too small for me. They hurt. So I took them off.’

A few beats passed between them. I guess she thinks that’s a normal thing to do, Marty thought to himself.

‘What’s your name again?’ he asked tentatively.

‘I’m Amee,’ the new girl replied. ‘With two E’s.’

‘That’s cool. I’m Marty. With one Y.’

Amee looked up at him. ‘Hello, Marty.’

Marty fixed onto her eyes, staring into the irises which were a dark and clean blue. They were unlike any he’d seen before. It was almost like they had a depth, like you could touch them and they would ripple. In a flash, her gaze shot back down to her feet and Marty fidgeted, his heart rate increasing. He was becoming increasingly aware that the new girl was actually quite pretty up close.

‘I’m sorry about what happened back there,’ he said after a few seconds. ‘Do you wanna go and get some food?’

‘No thanks,’ Amee responded. ‘I’ve got some peanut butter sandwiches in my locker.’

‘Oh cool.’

The new girl looked at him seriously. ‘I like peanut butter.’

Marty nodded in mutual agreement. ‘Same. Peanut butter is good. You wouldn’t have thought it, you know, peanuts going into butter and stuff. It sounds kind of disgusting, but it’s actually good. I was surprised.’

There was a slight silence. Marty cleared his throat and leant back, feeling a bead of sweat begin to trickle down his temple. He couldn’t remember speaking to a girl being this hard before. But then again, he couldn’t remember the last time he’d spoken to a girl. With lines like that, I wonder why.

‘So,’ he said, swiftly changing the subject, ‘you like Ghostbusters too? I’ve watched it loads. Must be, like, twenty times.’

‘One hundred and sixteen for me.’

Marty blinked. ‘One hundred and sixteen? Jesus, I wouldn’t watch any movie that many times, not even my favourite.’

‘It’s not my favourite.’

Another silence ensued. Amee lifted a finger to untie a knot in her hair, then found another, twirling around the tangles until they frizzed about her shoulders.

‘You look like him,’ she mused.

‘Look like who?’ Marty asked.

‘Venkman.’

Marty sat up straight, un-creasing his shirt with a tug. Venkman was without doubt the coolest character in Ghostbusters, which meant that, in a very loose way, Amee had just described him as cool. It wasn’t anything to write home about, but so far this was the best interaction he’d had with a girl since that nurse gave him a lollipop after his measles jab. And to think it had started with a boy being knifed by a spoon.

‘You know,’ he began, but something stopped him.

A voice called down the school corridor. ‘HEY, WEED-KID!’

Marty felt himself slump into a black hole as he spotted Ross and Rory strutting towards him.

‘Are they your friends?’ asked Amee.

‘Absolutely not,’ replied Marty.

Rory stopped at their feet, his stature casting a large, fat shadow onto the pair of them. ‘Weed-kid and the weird kid. Did you forget our little talk, pal?’

Marty shivered. There was something unnerving about Rory calling him ‘pal’. It was like a lion sweet-talking a piece of meat before stuffing it into its mouth. He didn’t answer.

‘So you’re talking to people now?’ said Rory as he turned to Amee. ‘Trust me, you don’t wanna talk to this guy. He’s a tube who hangs out with other tubes.’ A few seconds passed while Rory awaited her reply, but Amee gave him nothing. ‘Listen, the other girls might not like you, but I reckon you’re a cool enough bird, once you cut loose a bit.’

Marty had to hold himself back from laughing. He’d thought his attempt at conversation was bad, but if this was the way Rory – who had apparently kissed ‘like thirty girls’ – went about swaying a female, maybe Marty wasn’t so bad after all. Rory kicked at her foot and Marty watched as she finally opened her lips.

‘Slimer,’ she said simply.

‘What did you just say?’

‘Leave her alone,’ said Marty.

‘Look at that,’ Ross laughed. ‘The weed-kid gets all tough around the new girl. Found some balls, have you?’ He reached down and grabbed Marty’s crotch. ‘Shit, Rory, I can’t find them!’

Marty struggled away from him, and Rory laughed.

‘You need balls to impress a girl, I’m afraid, Weed-kid.’

‘Yeah and apparently you need a brain to talk to one,’ replied Marty.

‘What is that supposed to mean?’

‘I’d say use your head, but we’d be here all day.’

Ross grabbed Marty’s shoulders and lifted him to his feet. ‘Don’t let him talk to you like that, big fella!’

Marty tried to pull away, but Ross’s grip was too strong; instead, he could only turn his neck in time to spot Amee racing down the corridor and out of sight. Just the three of them were left in her wake, soon to be two if the retraction of Rory’s fist was anything to go by. Marty closed his eyes, questioning how he had gone from his first conversation with a pretty girl to certain death in just a few seconds. But before he could figure it out, another voice came from behind them. It was bored, croaky, and nasal, but most importantly, it was an adult’s.

‘Having fun?’

The words landed with a graceful thud and Ross darted off immediately. Rory, on the other hand, had clearly had too many puddings to follow him. His face dropped and he turned to the teacher. He wasn’t much to behold, Marty thought. He stood just twenty feet from them, his bearded face worn and tired and his hair thin and loose on the scalp, with strands of it splaying out at the back as if he’d just been rubbing his head with a balloon. His clothes were a sad sight too. He was dressed in a frazzled tweed jacket with brown rippled chinos, and his collar was unbuttoned, leaving a tie to flop uselessly on a blue pinstriped shirt. Marty recognised him as Mr Cooper, though he’d never actually been in one of his classes.

‘I take it you’re Rory,’ said Mr Cooper. ‘Your reputation precedes you.’

‘It’s Weed… Marty, sir. He was bullying a girl, the new girl.’ Rory put a hand on Marty’s shoulder and pushed him towards the teacher, as if he was some kind of peace offering.

The teacher squinted, taking Marty in, examining. ‘Bullying? Bit weedy for a bully, isn’t he?’

Rory shook his head. ‘Sometimes the weediest ones are the worst. They use words, sir.’

Mr Cooper hummed in agreement, and despite his predicament, Marty nearly hummed too. He had to hand it to Rory, that was a pretty profound psychoanalysis of his own kind.

‘Thing is, Rory…’ Mr Cooper took a few steps towards them, his hands travelling behind his back as if he was about to give a lecture. ‘I know you’re an arsehole.’

Rory’s mouth dropped open, and his two chins suddenly became three. The teacher stared into his dumbstruck face.

‘Since I can see your tonsils, I guess you didn’t know that?’

‘I…’ Rory stammered. ‘I didn’t think teachers could –’

‘What? Tell facts? That’s actually what we’re paid to do.’

Rory gathered himself, straightening his spine and puffing out his chest. It was done in an effort to look tough, Marty guessed. But really it just looked like someone had pumped him up with too much hot air, like you could prick him with a needle and he’d disappear with a ‘SHIT!’ and a great big pop.

‘You can’t talk to me like that. You’re a teacher. You can get fired.’

‘Huh,’ the teacher pondered. ‘But the only way I know you’re an arsehole is because I’ve been told you’re an arsehole. By other teachers. Lots of other teachers.’

Rory’s face turned a deep crimson. ‘Well, they’ll get fired too. I’ll tell – I’ll tell the headmaster.’

‘The same headmaster who called you a wee shite in a staff meeting yesterday?’

Marty laughed, and Rory turned to him, his eyes literally watering with fury.

‘You dare to laugh at me? You’re dead, Weed-kid.’

‘No, he’s not,’ Mr Cooper responded. ‘In fact, if you lay one more finger on him, I’ll make sure to get you expelled. You got that?’

Rory glared at him incredulously, every inch of his world falling apart around him. Marty couldn’t believe this was happening. It felt too good to be true, like one of those dreams you never want to wake up from.

‘You can go now,’ the teacher finished, and Rory didn’t wait for another invitation. With one more furious glance at Marty, he turned on his heel and chugged defeatedly down the corridor.

‘Woah…’ Marty muttered.

‘To tell the truth,’ said Mr Cooper, ‘the headmaster didn’t call him a wee shite; that was a lie. He called him a fat shite. But I thought that was a bit harsh.’ He stuffed his hands in his pockets and cleared his throat. ‘Okay. You. With me.’

A few minutes later and the pair of them were in Mr Cooper’s office. It wasn’t like an ordinary office, Marty thought. When he imagined a teacher’s office, he imagined something clean, pristine, kept. That was the word. Kept. This teacher’s office wasn’t kept. This teacher’s office was unkept. The floor had blue carpeting, but it was torn and rough. His desks and bookshelves were chipped and splintered, and a bucket-load of books and stray papers littered both. Some had even found their way to the floor, along with a few ties and jackets. Marty sat in the centre of the office, his legs dangling in the air. Sitting in front of him, behind the unkept desk, was the teacher in question. His eyes were glued to some kid’s homework. They seemed about as weathered as the room surrounding him. Faded hazel, with a faint greyish tinge staining the bags underneath. He seemed old, but Marty knew he wasn’t. Probably early forties. The years had gone by, but it was life that had aged him. The clothes didn’t help, Marty supposed. If he had to place him, he’d put him in the 1940s. A professor of maths. A man outside of his time. Perhaps that was why he looked so tired.

‘Didn’t your mother tell you it’s rude to stare?’ Mr Cooper’s gaze remained fixed on the homework as he spoke.

‘You said I shouldn’t talk.’

‘That’s right.’

‘So what else is there to do but stare?’

‘Not stare.’

‘Look, I was just talking to the new girl. Rory was lying. Rory always lies. He’s…’

‘An arsehole?’

Marty shrugged. ‘Yeah.’

‘True, but that’s not why you’re here.’ Mr Cooper put down the homework and stretched out his arms with a slight yawn. It seemed to take effort, as if his bones were as crumpled as one of the paper balls that lay discarded on the floor.

‘So why am I here?’ asked Marty.

‘Because you were talking to the new girl. The new girl doesn’t talk to anyone.’

‘Well, she talked to me.’

‘Why?’

‘Because I was nice to her, I suppose.’

Mr Cooper pushed himself away from the desk and pointed his chin up towards the ceiling. ‘I see,’ he sighed.

Marty waited for a few seconds. The office had gone so quiet that he could hear himself picking his nails, a habit he’d had since he was about five years old. His dad used to assure him that if he carried on, there wouldn’t be any nails left to pick. But Marty had decided that was stupid.

‘So,’ he mumbled, after deciding the quiet was too much to bear, ‘why am I here?’

The teacher kept his gaze fixed on the ceiling, slowly massaging the bags beneath his eyes as if he was trying to urge some life into them. Some colour, maybe.

‘Do you like reading?’ he asked.

‘Uh, yeah, I guess so.’

‘You can read then?’

‘Yes,’ Marty responded defensively.

‘Just checking. You never know with kids at this school.’

‘I’m not Rory. I can read. Why?’

‘She likes reading too. The new girl. I saw her reading a book by the lockers. Lost amongst kids these days. Now it’s all movies and video games. Pretty soon you’ll be bringing them into parks. Playing Space Invaders in corridors.’

‘I’m pretty sure she likes movies too, sir,’ said Marty.

‘Good illustrator as well,’ Mr Cooper continued. ‘A little too enthusiastic, it seems. I saw a few confiscated works of hers in the staff-room. They all came from one book, so I assume it’s a favourite of hers.’

Marty shrugged vaguely. ‘What book was it?’

The teacher made a funny squelching sound with his lips, then drummed his fingers on the table. ‘Stick with her. It’d be good for the new girl to have a friend around here.’

‘I’m not sure she wants to be friends anymore, not after what happened.’

‘Try all the same.’

Marty frowned. ‘Why do you care?’

‘Because that’s what teachers do. They teach. And they care. Now leave, let me get on with my work.’

And just like that, Mr Cooper flicked Marty away, as if he had been nothing more than an annoying fly buzzing about his office.

‘FAT SHITE?!’

Teddy pulled on his abnormally large backpack, which was twice the size and twice as heavy as anyone else’s. It gave the impression it was crammed full of textbooks and schoolwork, but Marty knew it was just filled to the brim with Warhammer models and paint tubs. Teddy and Mike would take them out during break times and colour them studiously, while Marty was left to sit and literally watch the paint dry.

‘That’s what he said,’ Marty replied.

Mike wiped his lip with a wet sleeve. It was pretty much the only thing he could do in the summer. Around this time of year, his nose would warp into a red, weeping ball in the middle of his face. Every now and again it would vibrate with a great big APOUUUUFFF!, to which Mike would respond with a gargled ‘ooohhh’ and pop a tiny white tablet onto the tip of his tongue. Marty had to feel sorry for him. Teddy, on the other hand, found it remarkably funny. One summer he’d even gone to the effort of creating a comic book based on his friend’s struggle as a birthday gift. He named it: Mighty Mike and the Battle of the Pink Flowers. Mighty Mike was on the cover, one hand strangling a gigantic plant and the other wiping his nose with a tissue. It was creative, Marty had given him that.

The three of them stepped down onto the pavement, their ties loose and their shirts untucked, heading home now that the first miserable day back at school was over. Out of the corner of his eye, Marty found himself watching out for a cool black American Lincoln.

‘I wish I’d been there,’ Teddy beamed.

‘What about Rory though?’ Mike’s voice was hardly audible amongst the snot and saliva that was clogging up his sinuses. Sure enough, by the time he’d finished the sentence his nose had capitalised on it with a loud APOUUUUFFF!

‘Ooohhh.’

‘What about him?’ asked Marty.

‘Oh yeah!’ Teddy trotted a few steps to keep up with them. ‘You mug him off in front of a girl he likes, and then Mr Cooper mugs him off in front of you – he’s gonna be pissed.’

‘Mr Cooper said if he tries anything on me again, he’s gonna be expelled.’

‘Holy shizer…’ Mike wiped at his lip again, the news of Rory’s predicament evidently cheering him.

‘Why d’you think Mr Cooper was so easy on you?’ asked Teddy.

‘There wasn’t anything to go hard on; I hadn’t done anything apart from nearly getting my head exploded by Rory’s fist.’

‘That’s weird. I’ve heard stories of how hard he used to be on kids. I guess he changed after everything that happened to him.’

‘What happened to him?’ questioned Marty.

‘You know, like, ten years ago, when his son died. I heard a teacher talking about it once.’

Marty’s eyes widened in shock. He forgot to turn the corner, walking into Mike with a bump and an APOUUUUFFF!

‘Ooohhh.’

‘His son died?’

‘Yeah.’ Teddy nodded. ‘Or he went missing at least; they didn’t find him. Maybe it made him mellow, maybe that’s why he’s looking out for you.’

At that moment, an engine rumbled past them, and the three boys turned to see a black American Lincoln shoot down the road. The wheels churned up some rough yellow dust, which swayed and dispersed in the afternoon breeze. Marty kept his eyes on the car, silently contemplating the girl inside; the look of her face, the colour of her eyes.

‘I’m not sure it’s me he’s looking out for,’ he said.

Then they continued walking.

2

THE CABINET

The bell woke him up. It began as a distant crackle in the back of his skull, but as he got closer to consciousness it got louder, shaking the foundations of his dream like it had two hands on his shoulders, willing him back to life. He had been with Charlie, walking through seawater at Gealblath Beach. They were following the tide as it went out.

‘How far can we walk, Dad?’

‘As far as the tide lets us.’

One hand was holding the other; a smaller, softer one.

‘What’s that?’ Charlie’s eyes were on the land beyond the sea, sitting in the distance like a paper town; twinkling lights and tiny ash-grey chimneys weeping smoke, a silhouette like in the old movies.

‘That’s Derling.’

‘Will the tide let us go there?’

‘Course it will.’

‘No way,’ Charlie laughed as he stepped towards it, the water kicking up underneath his shoes.

‘Yeah way. But only if everything is in its right place. And the moon is with you. Then the tide will let you go anywhere. Derling, Norway…’

‘No way!’

They laughed together. Then, once the laughter had subsided, Charlie looked up towards his father and his father looked down at him.

‘Dad,’ he said.

A faint hum started and the sea began to ripple.

‘Yeah Charlie, what’s up, kiddo?’

The lips moved, but nothing came out. He could just capture the look on Charlie’s face, like he was scared. Like he was holding his hand too tight, or not tight enough. The hum grew louder and Charlie slipped away along with the dream that had surrounded him.

Then life again. David Cooper jolted up in his chair with a grunt, taking a few moments to adjust his eyes to his office. Paper was still strewn across the floor and books still littered corners, stacked unevenly, thick then thin, climbing the walls like a staircase. The walls trembled against the tone of the bell, and David ran a hand through his ever-thinning brown hair, turning his chin up towards the ceiling as he waited for the ringing to stop. That was the fourth time he’d fallen asleep at work now. It was getting bad. And each time he drifted away, Charlie was there waiting for him, his little face looking up at his dad’s, distorted by time and drunken memory. The first questions he asked himself were always the same. Had he got it wrong? Were the eyes the right colour? Was his hair the same length? He could check with photographs, David supposed. But all the photographs were locked away in the attic, gathering dust for over ten years now. That had been his choice. Like liquor, tempting yourself with memories could open up a new black hole, far deeper than the one before. So deep it could be impossible to climb out of. They were just pictures anyway. Colour on the page. Like the town of Derling on the distant shore, they were unattainable, and something unattainable was untouchable. What good was a black hole for that? If the face was wrong then the face was wrong.

The clatter of the bell halted, and the sound of scattered footsteps arose in its wake. Voices squeezed through the cracks of the office door and filled the room with a buzz of excitement. The day was over. Time for screams, for cheers, for hushed gossip churned from the depths of the school corridors. Ryan snogged who?! Matilda did what?! I like him. I like her. Confessions and adorations admitted, the children on the outside of the dome looking back in like they would never come back. Some strode towards their homes with smiles, others with frowns. Some examined the hours been and spent, others left them on the scrap heap to swelter. Easy enough to do when you were a kid, of course, and bad days could be made better with leftover apple pie and a kiss before bedtime.

David stood and strode to the window, squinting against the sun, which was disappearing into heavy cloud now. It was hateful, in a way, to watch the children move with so much life and vigour, with eyes that could hardly stay open in the light of the afternoon. But then, David knew why that was the case. He knew why he was so tired, and he knew why he couldn’t sleep at night. The problem did have a solution. It just so happened that the solution was worse than the problem. Both of which were in the bathroom of David’s flat, screwed tight to the wall, locked and secure and doing nothing to harm anyone. The medicine cabinet.

In all three hundred and seventy eight days of knowing her, liking her, maybe even loving her, Gerri Hartman had never asked him about it. She didn’t keep medicine. Not for physical deficiencies, not for mental ones, not for anything. Gerri didn’t get sick. A throat lozenge a day for a week in the winter, perhaps, if he remembered correctly. And David would remember a thing like that. Others wouldn’t, not even Gerri herself, but he would. It was why he liked her, he supposed. In a perverse way. In a way even he did not understand. Gerri does not get sick. Keep her. But then, just like that, an infection. Fungal, between the toes, and the damn pills were needed. Pain and a lot of it, first in the feet but then creeping its way up. A headache too, just above the ridge of the nose, throbbing and constant. Tiredness, also. Of course tiredness, it came with infection, but the pain stopped her sleeping. And so, just like that, from nothing to something. Three separate afflictions at once. And Gerri Hartman asked about the medicine cabinet.

‘I know what you keep in there,’ she had said four nights ago, rubbing her chin up against David’s buttoned chest. She was talking about the antidepressants. ‘I know what you keep in there, so you don’t need to lock the door when you go inside the bathroom. And you don’t need to lock the cabinet. It’s not something you need to do.’

‘Do I lock the cabinet?’ David had said back, but of course he knew he did, and he knew exactly where the key was. A small thing, it fit snugly in his pocket. Every pocket at that.

‘Yes,’ she’d replied, balancing her chin on him. ‘You do.’

David remembered how she had looked then. Her eyes hazel and bloodshot. Her face full of pasty smudges where she had dabbed her sponge, then switched to her finger, wiping delicately, then furiously, over one side of the nose to the other. The result was imperfect, but she didn’t seem to mind. Or she didn’t seem to notice. She had stared at him intently, her breathing fast with the fever and her mind on the pills that lay strewn across the coffee table. She had then asked him a question, one she tended to ask when she thought she knew the answer.

‘What are you thinking?’

David was thinking about his arse. The pain, specifically, as he hopped onto his bike and rolled up his tweed sleeves in the heat. It was four p.m, and every child had successfully departed the school grounds, leaving David to retire alone. No conversations, no confrontations, just the way he liked it. It had been ten years since Charlie’s case, and eight years since his reappointment at Gealblath Secondary School. But still, that reappointment had caused ripples across the community. The father of a lost child, the father who had been investigated; how could he possibly come back and pretend everything was normal?

‘He’s a danger to the children.’

‘He has anger issues, always did.’

‘He beat his wife. I’m sure of it.’

‘His son too.’

‘I don’t want him near my kids, not after what happened.’

‘He should be locked up. They were looking at him. They knew it was him.’

‘They didn’t find anything.’

‘I’m sure they tried.’

It had died down. Soon enough the children grew up and their parents stopped caring. They allowed the story of Charlie to fade into the past, but even a healed wound leaves a scar; a spectre of pain that serves an unpleasant, constant memory. David was that pain. He was everything Gealblath had tried so hard to forget. Only he wouldn’t leave. He had lived in Gealblath nearly all his life, and he wasn’t going to be driven out by some thick-headed detective and his simultaneously brainless investigation.

David twisted the ignition and pulled on his backpack of books, which clung loosely to one shoulder. He kicked his feet off the ground and winced. For fifteen years now, his bike had been violently shoving its way up into his backside. He’d got it when he was twenty-nine. A slick, red Honda Shadow. It was cool then, and his youthful buttocks could take it. But now, at forty-four, he had to pay for it every day. The saving grace was that at the end of the day, he knew exactly where he was riding it to.

The tavern was lit up in deep red, yelling out to a world of dry and balding middle-aged men. GIL’S! Just that. Just GIL’S! A simple name for a simple place. The bar had had a previous life as a makeshift American diner, but the small town in East Scotland wasn’t quite ready for the American takeover. It was soon adopted by drunkards wanting a moment’s respite from their wives. Funnily enough, not many people wanted to travel out to the middle of nowhere to join them, so it now lay decrepit in the middle of woodland, miles away from anyone or anything. If you stood on the porch and looked closely through the trees, you could spot the lights of the nearest neighbourhood, but they would slowly become blurred the longer the night went on, until the reality of the outside world turned into a soft fuzz, indecipherable and irrelevant. Just as it should be.

David parked the Shadow, turned off the motor, and relieved his butt cheeks from the torture of the hard leather. For a few moments, he simply stood and breathed, his eyes landing on a pit of water that was nestled beside the pub. David thought of it as a pit because he couldn’t bring himself to flatter it. It wasn’t an ocean, a loch, a swamp, a creek, or any other natural form of water. It was just a pit. And it stank. It stank of piss, shit, and rotten… something. David didn’t want to say fish, because he knew what rotting fish smelt like, and it smelt