The Chalk Man Read online

  “You’re right,” Mum said calmly. “Peaceful protest is not illegal. But intimidation, harassment and threats most certainly are. I hope you will be taking this matter seriously?”

  PC Thomas snapped his notebook shut. “Of course. If we can find the culprits, you can be sure they will receive the appropriate punishment.”

  He stood up, the chair squeaking noisily across the tiled floor. “Now, if you’ll excuse me.”

  He walked out of the kitchen. The front door slammed.

  I turned to Mum. “Doesn’t he want to help?”

  Mum sighed. “Yes. Of course he does.”

  Dad snorted. “Maybe he’d want to help more if his daughter wasn’t one of the protesters.”

  “Geoff,” Mum said. “Just leave it.”

  “Fine.” He stood up, and he didn’t look like Dad for a moment. His face looked all hard and angry. “But if the police don’t deal with this, then I will.”

  —

  Before school started, we all got together properly for the last time. We met up at Fat Gav’s house. We usually did. He had the biggest bedroom and the best garden, with a rope swing and a tree house, and his mum always kept us well stocked with fizzy pop and crisps.

  We lolled on the grass, talking crap and taking the piss out of each other. Despite my deal with Mr. Halloran, I told them a little about my encounter with Metal Mickey’s brother. I had to, because if he knew about the chalk men that meant our secret game was ruined. Of course, in my version, I fought heroically and got away. I was a bit worried Sean might have told Metal Mickey, who would take great delight in contradicting me, but it seemed that Mr. Halloran had put enough of the frighteners on Sean for him not to say anything either.

  “So your brother knows about the chalk men?” Fat Gav said, giving Metal Mickey an unpleasant look. “You’re a real blabbermouth.”

  “I didn’t tell him,” Metal Mickey whined. “He must have just worked it out on his own. I mean, we drew loads. He probably saw us.”

  He was lying, but I didn’t really care how Sean had found out. The fact was, he had, and that changed everything.

  “I suppose we could always come up with some new messages,” Hoppo said, but he didn’t sound very enthusiastic.

  I knew how he felt. Now someone else knew—especially Sean—the whole thing was spoiled.

  “It was a pretty stupid game, anyway,” Nicky said, flicking her hair.

  I stared at her, feeling hurt and a bit annoyed. She was being weird today. Sometimes she got like that. All kind of moody and argumentative.

  “Nah, it wasn’t,” Fat Gav said. “But I guess there’s no point doing it anymore if Sean knows. Besides, it’s school tomorrow.”

  “Yeah.”

  A collective sigh ran around the group. Everyone was a bit subdued that afternoon. Even Fat Gav wasn’t coming out with his usual bad accents. The blue sky had faded to a murky gray. Clouds shifted restlessly, like they were getting impatient for a really big downpour.

  “I should probably get going,” Hoppo said. “Mum wants me to chop some logs for the fire.”

  Like us, Hoppo and his mum had a crappy real fire in their old terraced house.

  “Me, too,” Metal Mickey said. “We’re going to tea at my gran’s tonight.”

  “You lot are bringing me down, maaaan,” Fat Gav said, but it was kind of halfhearted.

  “I should probably get back, too,” I admitted. Mum had bought me some new school stuff and wanted me to try it on before tea, in case any of it needed adjusting.

  We stood and, after a pause, Nicky stood, too.

  Fat Gav collapsed dramatically onto the grass. “Go on then, go. You’re all killing me.”

  Looking back, I think that was the last time we were all together like that. Relaxed, friends, still a gang, before things started to splinter and crack.

  Hoppo and Metal Mickey headed off in one direction. That left Nicky and me to head off in the other. The vicarage wasn’t that far from our house and sometimes Nicky and I would walk back together. Not often. Usually, Nicky was the first to leave. Because of her dad, I guess. He was pretty strict about timekeeping. I got the idea that he didn’t really approve of Nicky hanging around with us at all. I guess we didn’t think too much about it, though. He was a vicar and, in our eyes, that was explanation enough. I mean, vicars didn’t really approve of anything, did they?

  “So, erm, you all sorted for school?” I said as we crossed at the lights and walked back past the park.

  She gave me one of her grown-up looks. “I know.”

  “Know what?”

  “About the parcel.”

  “Oh.”

  I hadn’t told the others about the parcel. It was too complicated and messy, and felt kind of disloyal to Mum and Dad.

  As far as I could see, nothing much had happened about it, anyway. The policeman didn’t come back and I hadn’t heard about anyone being arrested. Mum’s clinic had opened and the protesters continued to circle outside, like vultures. “The police came to talk to Dad.”

  “Oh.”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’m sorry,” I started to say.

  “What are you sorry for? My dad’s the arsehole.”

  “He is?”

  “Everyone is so frigging scared to say anything because he’s a vicar—even the policeman. It was pathetic—” She broke off and looked down at her fingers, four of which were wrapped in plasters.

  “What happened to your hand?”

  She took a long while to reply. For a moment I thought she wasn’t going to. Then she said, “Do you love your mum and dad?”

  I frowned. It wasn’t what I had expected her to say. “Of course. I guess.”

  “Well, I hate my dad. Really, really hate him.”

  “You don’t mean that.”

  “Yes, I do. I was glad when your dad punched him. I wish he’d hit him harder.” She stared at me, and something in her gaze made me feel a little cold inside. “I wish he’d killed him.”

  Then she flicked her hair over her shoulder and stalked off, walking in a quick, determined way that left me in no doubt that she didn’t want me to follow her.

  I waited until her red hair had disappeared around the corner and then I trudged wearily down the road. The heaviness of the day seemed like it was squatting on my shoulders. I just wanted to get home.

  When I walked in, Dad was making tea; my favorite, fish fingers and chips.

  “Can I go and watch some telly?” I asked.

  “No.” He caught my arm. “Your mum’s in there with someone. Go wash up and come and have your dinner.”

  “Who’s she with?”

  “Just go wash up.”

  I walked out into the hall. The living-room door was ajar. Mum was sitting on the sofa with some blond girl. The girl was crying and Mum was hugging her. The girl looked kind of familiar, but I couldn’t quite place her.

  It wasn’t till I’d used the toilet and washed my hands that I realized. She was Waltzer Girl’s blond friend, the one I had seen protesting outside the clinic. I wondered what she was doing here and why she was crying. Perhaps she had come to say sorry to Mum. Or she was in some kind of trouble.

  As it turned out, it was the latter. But not the sort of trouble I imagined.

  —

  They found the body on a Sunday morning, three weeks after school started.

  Although none of us would admit it, going back to school after the summer holidays wasn’t as bad as we made out. Six weeks of holidays was great. But having fun, finding stuff to do, could get a bit exhausting.

  And this summer holiday had been a strange one. In a way, I was glad to put it behind me and get back to some normality. The same routine, the same classes, the same faces. Well, apart from Mr. Halloran.

  He wasn’t my teacher, which was kind of a shame but also a relief. I knew a bit too much about him. Teachers should be nice and friendly, but they should also be a bit apart. Mr. Halloran and I shared a secret now and
, although that was cool in one way, it also made me feel awkward around him, like we had seen each other naked or something.

  We saw him around the school, obviously. He was there at dinner and sometimes he would be on break duty, and one day he taught our class when Mrs. Wilkinson, our usual English teacher, was off sick. He was a good teacher. Funny, interesting and really good at making the lessons not boring. So much so that pretty soon you forgot how he looked, although that didn’t stop the kids giving him a nickname from day one: Mr. Chalk or the Chalk Man.

  This Sunday, nothing much in particular was going on. Which was fine by me. It felt good to just be bored, like normal. Mum and Dad seemed a bit more relaxed, too. I was upstairs in my room, reading, when the doorbell rang. Right away, like you do sometimes, I knew that something had happened. Something bad.

  “Eddie?” Mum called upstairs. “Mickey and David are here.”

  “Coming.”

  A bit reluctantly, I padded downstairs to the front door. Mum disappeared into the kitchen.

  Metal Mickey and Hoppo stood, with their bikes, on the doorstep. Metal Mickey was red-faced and bursting with excitement. “Some kid has fallen in the river.”

  “Yeah,” Hoppo said. “There’s an ambulance and police there with tape and all sorts of shit. Wanna come look?”

  I’d like to say that, at the time, I thought their enthusiasm to see some poor dead kid was ghoulish and wrong. But I was twelve. Of course I wanted to look.

  “Okay.”

  “C’mon, then,” Metal Mickey said impatiently.

  “I just have to get my bike.”

  “Hurry,” Hoppo said. “Or there won’t be anything left to see.”

  “See what?” Mum poked her head back out of the kitchen.

  “Nothing, Mum,” I said.

  “You seem in a big hurry to see nothing.”

  “It’s just some cool new stuff in the playground,” Metal Mickey lied. He was always a good liar.

  “Well, don’t be long. I want you back for lunch.”

  “Okay.”

  I grabbed my bike and we sped off down the street.

  “Where’s Fat Gav?” I asked Metal Mickey, who usually called for him first.

  “His mum said she’d sent him to the shops,” he said. “His loss.”

  Although, as it turned out, it wasn’t. It was Metal Mickey’s.

  —

  There was a cordon around part of the riverbank and a policeman stopping people getting too close. Grown-ups stood in groups, looking concerned. We stopped our bikes near a small crowd of onlookers.

  Actually, it was a bit disappointing. As well as the cordon, the police had put up this big green tent-type thing. You couldn’t really see anything.

  “D’you think the body is behind that?” Metal Mickey asked.

  Hoppo shrugged. “Probably.”

  “I bet he’s all bloated and green and fish have eaten his eyeballs.”

  “Gross.” Hoppo made a gagging noise.

  I tried to push the image Metal Mickey had created out of my mind, but it refused to budge.

  “This is crap,” he sighed. “We’re too late.”

  “Wait,” I said. “They’re bringing something out.”

  There was some movement. The policemen were carefully shifting something from behind the green screen. Not a body. A bike. Or at least what was left of it. It was twisted and buckled, covered in slimy weeds. But the moment we saw it we knew. We all knew.

  It was a BMX racer. Bright red with a black skull painted on it.

  —

  Every Saturday and Sunday morning Sean and his BMX racer could be seen—if you were up early enough—tearing around the town, delivering papers. However, this Sunday morning, when Sean had gone outside to get on his bike, he found it was gone. Someone had stolen it.

  The year before, there had been a spate of bike thefts. Some older kids from the college had been nicking them and chucking them in the river, just for fun, for a prank.

  Perhaps that’s why it was the first place Sean went to look. He loved that racer. More than anything. So when he saw the handlebars sticking out of the river, caught on some broken tree branches, he decided to wade in and try to get it, even though everyone knew that the current was really strong and Sean Cooper was a pretty weak swimmer.

  He almost made it. He had just about got the bike out of the tree branches when the weight caused him to stagger and fall backward. Suddenly the water was up to his chest. His jacket and jeans were weighing him down and the current was so strong, like dozens of hands trying to drag him under. And it was cold, too. So frigging cold.

  He grabbed at the tree branches. He cried out, but it was still early and not even a lone dog-walker was passing by. Maybe that’s when Sean Cooper started to panic. The current wrapped itself around his limbs and began to pull him away, downstream.

  He kicked out hard to try to make it back to the shore, but the shore was getting farther away and his head kept going under, and instead of inhaling air he was inhaling stinking brown water…

  —

  I didn’t actually know any of this. Some I found out later. Some I imagined. Mum always told me I had a really vivid imagination. It got me good grades in English, but it also gave me some pretty full-on nightmares.

  I didn’t think I’d sleep that night, despite the hot milk Mum made me before bed. I kept picturing Sean Cooper all green and bloated and covered in slimy weeds, like his bike. Something else kept going around in my head, too, something Mr. Halloran had said: Karma. What goes around comes around.

  “You do bad things and they’ll come back eventually and bite you on the backside. That boy will get his one day. You can be sure about that.”

  But I wasn’t sure. Sean Cooper might have done bad things. But were they that bad? And what about Metal Mickey? What had he done?

  Mr. Halloran hadn’t seen Metal Mickey’s face when he realized the bike was his brother’s or heard the awful, wailing cry he made. I never wanted to hear that sound again.

  It took both me and Hoppo to stop him from running over to the tent. Eventually, he was making such a scene that one of the policemen came up to us. When we explained who Metal Mickey was he wrapped an arm around him and half walked, half carried Metal Mickey to his car. After a few minutes they drove off. I was pretty relieved. Seeing Sean’s bike was bad. Seeing Metal Mickey like that, all crazy and screaming, was worse.

  “You okay, Eddie?”

  Dad pulled up my covers and sat on the edge of my bed. His weight felt heavy and reassuring.

  “What happens when we die, Dad?”

  “Whoah. Well, that’s a big one, Eddie. I guess nobody really knows, not for sure.”

  “So we don’t go to heaven or hell?”

  “Some people think we do. But a lot of other people don’t think heaven or hell exist.”

  “So it doesn’t matter if we’ve been bad, then?”

  “No, Eddie. I don’t think how you act in this life makes any difference after you die. Good or bad. But it does make a big difference while you’re alive. To other people. That’s why you should always try to treat them well.”

  I thought about that, and nodded. I mean, I suppose it was a bit of a bummer if you spent all your life being good and you didn’t go to heaven, but I was glad about the other one. Much as I hated Sean Cooper, I didn’t like the thought of him burning in hell forever.

  “Eddie,” Dad said, “what happened to Sean Cooper was really sad. A tragic accident. But that’s all it was. An accident. Sometimes things happen and there is no reason. That’s just how life is. Death, too.”

  “I guess.”

  “So do you think you’re ready to go to sleep?”

  “Yeah.”

  I didn’t, but I didn’t want Dad to think I was a baby.

  “Okay, Eddie. Lights off, then.”

  Dad leaned over and kissed me on the forehead. He hardly ever did that now. Tonight I felt glad of the tickly, musty brush of his beard. T
hen he flicked off my main light and the room filled with shadows. I’d got rid of my night light years ago, but that night I kind of wished I still had it.

  I laid my head down on the pillow and tried to get comfortable. Distantly, an owl hooted. A dog howled. I tried to think about happy stuff and not about dead, drowned boys. Stuff like riding my bike and ice cream and Pac-Man. My head sank farther into the pillow. Thoughts drifted into its soft folds. After a while I wasn’t thinking about anything at all. Sleep crept up and pulled me into darkness.

  —

  Something woke me again, suddenly and sharply. A rat-a-tat-tat kind of noise, like a shower of rain or hailstones. I frowned and rolled over. It came again. Stones, at my window. I hopped out of bed, crossed the bare floorboards and pulled aside my curtains.

  I must have been asleep for a while. It was properly dark outside. The moon was a slash of silver, like a paper cut in the charcoal sky.

  It provided just enough illumination for me to see Sean Cooper.

  He stood on the grass, near the edge of the patio. He was dressed in jeans and his blue baseball jacket, which was torn and dirty. He wasn’t green or bloated and fish hadn’t eaten his eyes, but he was very pale, and very dead.

  A dream. It had to be. Wake up, I thought. Wake up, wake up, WAKE UP!

  “Hey, Shitface.”

  He smiled. My stomach rolled. I realized, with an awful, sickening certainty, that this wasn’t a dream. It was a nightmare.

  “Go away,” I hissed under my breath, fists clenched, nails digging into my palms.

  “I’ve got a message for you.”

  “I don’t care,” I called down. “Go away.”

  I tried to sound defiant. But fear had a tight grip on my throat and the words came out more like a high-pitched squeak.

  “Listen, Shitface, if you don’t come down, I’ll have to come up there and get you.”

  A dead Sean Cooper in the garden was bad but a dead Sean Cooper in my bedroom was even worse. And this was still a dream, right? I just had to go with it till I woke up.

  “Okay. Just…just give me a minute.”

  I grabbed my trainers from the bottom of the bed and tugged them on with trembling hands. I crept over to the door, gripped the handle and pulled it open. I didn’t dare put a light on, so I felt my way along the wall toward the stairs and inched down sideways like a crab.