Harry Butler looked after his CD discman like it was the most precious thing in the world. Actually, it wasn’t like it was the most precious thing in the world. As far as he was concerned, it was the most precious thing in the world. He didn’t know any other twelve year olds that had one. Not any of his friends at Crown Temple school, and not anyone else in his family. He had never had a birthday present so extravagant before, and he thought he knew why he had such an indulgence this time.
Six months prior, on a Butler April morning, Harry’s father had been driving to work. He had just joined the motorway that connected their home in Warrington to Manchester where he worked in an office (Harry never knew exactly what it was he did in the office all day, and if he was honest, never really wanted to find out seeing as how working in an office was the antithesis of enjoyment and job satisfaction to him). They didn’t know if it was the morning sun reflecting off Newley wet roads that had hampered his visibility, or if he had chosen the wrong moment to attempt to tune his car radio or change a cassette tape. The testimony from the lorry driver that had had ended the life of David Butler at precisely 8.45am on a clear Tuesday morning was that the Astra had just drifted from middle lane into the slow lane, directly in front of him, giving him no time to break or attempt any type of evasive manoeuvre that wouldn’t have endangered multiple other road users. He did his best to pull the large articulated vehicle, he had said, over on to the hard shoulder, but it hadn’t been enough, and the result was that there was very little left of the car that Harry used to sit in the back with his friends to be taken to the cinema or bowling or even the dentist. It had been a closed casket funeral and Harry hadn’t been invited. His mum had turned up at the school, which was alarming in itself as in all the seven years Harry had been there, he didn’t think his mum had ever just turned up during the day. He had been learning about Cromwell and his role in instigating the English Civil War - bored to tears and casting his gaze out the window as Mr Thyme (or Mr Older-than-thyme as he was known to the children) droned on and on about the Petition of Right. He had caught sight of a familiar car pulling up at the school gates - his Auntie Sue’s Cavalier - and what appeared to be Auntie Sue herself accompanying his mother across the school playground. The Assistant Head had knocked brusquely on the door and entered before Mr Older-then-time could cease his flow. He whispered into the ear of the old history teacher before nodding over at Harry. He sat there, suddenly too hot in his seat, his face no doubt a deep scarlet as the rest of the class looked over to him. He wondered if it was something that he had done wrong.
“Ah, young Mr Butler, I believe you are requested to join Mr Soloman here as he takes you to the Head’s office.”
Hary opened his mouth to speak, and promptly shut it again. He remained seated, the eye’s of his classmates still brining into him. Finally, he found his voice, even though it sounded like someone else. “Will I take my bag and my stuff?” He asked.
Mr Soloman - whom Harry quite liked after attending a private tutorial in his office the previous year in order to understand maths better - said nothing but merely nodded again. Harry returned the nod and followed him in silence down the wide corridors of the old building to his Head’s office. He had never been there in all his time at school, and had begun to think he would leave school in a couple of months without ever having seen the interior.
As it was, the inside was nothing to write home about. Not that he needed to write home, seeing as his mum was sitting right there, perched in the edge of a bright orange plastic chair. She was so close to the edge, harry was worried it might tip forward, and he had no idea how she managed to keep her balance. Her face was drawn and pinched and she turned to look at him sharply as he entered. His Auntie Sue was sitting next to his mum, with a similarity pinched expression on her face. His mum was there years younger than his Auntie Sue, but right then, they could have been identical twin sisters. His mum seemed older all of a sudden, heavy crates at the corners of her mouth and around her eyes. They sat in from of the cheap melamine coated desk of the Crown Temple head teacher, a young man whom Harry had only ever from a distance at assemblies. He smiled at Harry as he entered, but the smile didn’t seem to quite match up with the rest of his face to the extent that it seemed as though it had been placed there by mistake, like a game Harry had owned as a young child wherein he had a load of blank face outlines and a operate set of features allowing him to compose his own faces. The room smelled of damp and he noticed a thin black line of dirt running along the inside of the single paned window. There was condensation on the inside of the glass. The smell of stale cigarettes hit him right away before he saw the ashtray in the centre of the desk between his mum and auntie and the head teacher. A thin line of pale smoke was still rigid from one of the buts. It had lipstick on the filter, and his mum was the only one out of the two women who was wearing lipstick.
I didn’t know she smoked.
“Harry, come in. Sit down, please,” the head asked.
Harry stayed standing. Mr Soloman was behind him and for some reason Harry didn’t want him to leave, knowing that he was there have him more security for some reason, even though he didn’t know why he would have needed it.
That was how he found out his father was dead. The man who only the weekend before had sat down with Harry and began to explain the rudiments of Hero Quest to him, a board game that Harry had been gifted the Christmas before. His father said he used to play it himself with his father when he was younger and had always wanted Harry to be able to experience it with him. The intervening months had passed by all too quickly and it was only because the rain was relentless that weekend and there was nothing on the television that Harry had looked under his bed for something to do. He had exclaimed when he saw the box there, having forgotten all about it even in that short space of time. The delight on his father’s face when he took it into the living room was unmistakable and even though the rugby game on the television still had eleven minutes to go, his dad had turned it off and turned to Harry, motioning him toward the coffee table.
Harry’s mum was out with his Auntie Sue for shopping and lunch, so they had spent hours that afternoon. He little figures were so detailed, and Harry had chosen to play as the Barbarian, as his father had deemed to take control of the “dungeon”. Harry caught on quicker than he had expected, but they still hadn’t been able to finish the game before his mother returned and his father had to start making that nights dinner.
“Next weekend buddy,” his father had said. They had left the board game set up on the coffee table, much to his mother’s consternation.
Harry’s first thought was that they would never get to finish the game. He would never know how it ended.
He knew his mum couldn’t afford the Discman on her own, and wondered how she had been able to buy it. She had already told him that things would have to be leaner now his father was gone. It was a difficult conversation for her, he could see that, and had done his best to accept it with as much maturity as he could. His brother Sandy - five years Harry’s junior - wasn’t part of the conversation, and as a result Harry had felt something within him that could be constituted as pride. His mother had thought him mature enough to handle what she was saying, and he loved her all the more for it. It had been early September, just over a month before Harry’s birthday, and he thought that she was trying to manage his expectations (which, if he had asked her outright, she would have admitted as the truth, and wondered again at how perceptive her oldest child was turning out to be). He owed it to her to take what she said with grace and maturity.
“I can help,” he had said. “I’m going to get a paper round. Jimmy down the road said that he’s going to give his up because he can’t be bothered getting up in the mornings. He said that if I wanted it all I had to do was go and speak to Mr Beasley and he would probably give me it. I know Jimmy is older than me but he said he started when he was eleven, and I’m nearly twelve. So I don’t see any reason that I couldn’t do it.”
That was only part of the truth. Big Jimmy had never been so convivial with Harry and never would be. The truth was that Harry had seen him the other morning cast all his newspapers into a hedge at the bottom of their road and when he had walked over as nonchalantly as possible (making sure the larger boy was far out of sight) and glanced in, finding not just that days papers b ut countless others as well. He knew that all he had to do to get the job was to go and tell Mr Beasley down at the newsagent what Big Jimmy had been doing. He didn’t even balk at the thought. Big Jimmy had lived down at the other end of the street as long as he could remember, and was horrible to everyone, especially Harry. He had it coming, Harry thought, and he stood to gain from the larger boys idleness. If he could contribute even a little to his mother’s bills, then that would at least go a small way of taking the pressure off her, or so he hoped. She had been working so much recently that he hardly ever saw her. She had taken a night job taking calls for one of the taxi companies on top of her day job as an insurance underwriter another office job. At least Harry knew what this one was, as he had asked her during that very same conversation, her eyebrows comically arcing up as she answered him, teasing him about him never paying attention when she had spoken of her work in the past.
She had told him his offer was very much appreciated, but it was unnecessary. His father had a provision in his will that would look after them for a time, and all she was doing was waiting for it to come through.
His twelfth birthday had arrived and he had celebrated it with his mother and his Auntie Sue. His mum had asked him if he wanted to invite any friends over and he had replied that he didn’t particularly want to. He would just rather spend it with her.
“What about Jimmy?” She had replied.
Harry reiterated that he would rather it was just them. He was too ashamed to tell her the truth, that the older boy hated him, that every boy in his class hated him. If only that. If only they had strong feelings towards him at all. It was only Jimmy that took the time to actually notice Harry’s existence at all. With his classmates it was worse. It was as though he wasn’t there. Seven years of Crown temple primary school and it was as though he was a ghost.
It hadn’t always been like that. He had had friends once. He could recall faces, names of other children with whom he had spent playtimes and lunch times with. Going to their houses after school. Sitting playing on their games consoles. There as Josh, who used to let Harry share his lego and they would swap wrestling cards. Josh moved away when Harry was seven. They lived halfway down the street and his father had been offered a position somewhere in the Far East. So Josh had moved and Harry had made friends with a red haired boy called Sean. He hadn’t liked Sean as much. Sean would say things hat made Harry feel bad about himself, putting him down over the slightest thing. Yet they had still had good fun together. Harry recalled a time when they had managed to drag part of a metal cattle gate up three boughs to form the foundation of a treehouse. Harry had taken his father there once it was up, hoping he would be impressed and marvel at the feat of engineering and strength required to take it that far up the tree. Instead, his father had reprimanded him and ordered him never to attempt anything like that again. Harry had walked home five paces behind, tears forming in the corners of his eyes, not understanding why he had been given in to such trouble. It was only when Sean hadn’t turned dup to school the next day, or the next, that Harry had discovered the reasons for his father’s rite. He hadn’t understood the risks. He had been so obsessed with getting it there that he hadn’t stopped to consider what would happen if it fell. Fall it did. Sean had gone back up after Harry had been taken home, attempting to attach some wooden planks he had found from an old pallet dumped in the neighbouring field.
The bough upon which the fencing had rested on had given way.
Sean was in hospital for two days. Harry had been allowed to visit but something changed then. It was almost as though Sean had blamed him for it happening to him, and not to Harry. He had also moved not long after. His parents had separated and the word around the school was that his father had been having an affair with one of the teachers, but now he was older Harry realised that it was probably nothing but rumour. Probably.
A few other friends, but none close. Then nothing. The ones he did have, or thought he had, just gradually began to ignore Harry. They would meet after school and not invite him. Then they would meet up in the playground or at lunch times and, again, not tell Harry where. He would go to where he normally met them and no one would be there. He began to fear that they were all laughing at him behind his back, having fun at his expense. Then gradually he realised that it was worse than that. They had simply deemed him too boring, too dull, to bother with.
The discman though.
The birthday present he never thought he would have.
It wasn’t alone either. When he had felt the other parcels that had been wrapped and hidden behind it, he soon realised that they were solid. Small square packages, each one a CD. They hadn’t known what music he was in to (and in truth, Harry wasn’t sure what music he was in to either) so had got him a selection. Duran Duran, Nirvana, Sting, Genesis, Radiohead, Oasis, Bon Jovi. He reckoned that the music must have cost just as much - if not more than - the CD player itself. Instantly he had taken it upstairs to his room, hugging his mum and - for the first time in a long time - his Auntie Sue. They had both looked at him and he was sure he had caught a glance passed between them as he left the room, presents in hand. Too caught up with excitement to focus too much on the meaning behind it, he had taken the stairs two at a time and ensconced himself in his bed, losing himself in the frantic opening chords of Smells Like Teen Spirit. This was new, and so exciting. He had never heard anything like it before, and he was instantly transported somewhere else. Somewhere where he was still on his own, but didn’t care. This was his place, his time, and the outside world didn’t have to exist beyond what was passing into his ears though the foam of his headphones.
A cold October morning and Harry was taking his usual route to school. There was a bus that he could get along with a few dozen other children from his estate that picked him up a couple of streets from his house but he very rarely took it, if at all. He always preferred to leave much earlier and walk the three miles to school himself. He didn’t mind that it took him nearly forty-five minutes. He loved the fresh air and - on mornings like this - walking as the sun rose around him, the world slowly coming to life. This was his time. This was his solace. He would walk and he would do nothing but think, retreating inside his own head and taking his thoughts off to fantastic worlds. The walk was even better now he could listen music as he walked.
He had saved up a few weeks pocket money and combined it to the left over birthday money he had received from relatives who he could no longer recall heir faces or the sounds of their voices. That had enabled him to buy a battery charger and rechargeable batteries at no small expense, but they had been worth every penny. He diligently left them to charge overnight (out of sight of his mother, who no doubt would reprimand him from making such a fire risk - he knew better than to leave it charging over night but he figured that so long as he had the unit plugged into the surge protecting socket he was okay) and that meant it would last the journey to school, lunchtime, and most of the walk home if he was lucky. He always brought the same CDs with him (partial to the Nirvana one yet also the Radiohead one, somehow finding a synergy between Smells Like Teen Spirit and Street Spirit that existed beyond the obvious similarities in name) and would listen one and the way, alternate to the other at lunch, then swap back over for the way home, reversing the order the next day.
Thursday, and he was walking a little slower than usual, in no great rush to get to school, knowing that Thursday mornings were when Mr Thyme liked to begin the day with around two solid hours of maths. The air had that quality that it only seemed to have in Autumn, as though it were primed for the scent of bonfires. Leaves the colour of old manuscripts scrunched underfoot and the pavements seemed to be perpetually wet, but it never seemed to rain. It was as though every night the clouds waited until Harry was sleeping before weeping soft cold tears across the world. He had reached edge of his estate, turning to see the high rises that stood as silent guards in the periphery reached and nearly punctured the low hanging cloud, like errant bottom teeth pressing into a top lip of a mouth otherwise devoid of them. It was here that he had to take the footbridge over the motorway - the very same motorway upon which his father had died - in order to continue his journey to school. Inside his head, Kurt Cobain was singing about shaving his head but that he wasn’t sad. Harry thought he understood, but then again probably not. He always liked his hair, the dirty blonde curls that forever seemed to lie just right, and he couldn’t imagine wanting to shave your hair off. Then again Kurt sung about a lot of things Harry didn’t quite understand, but he figured that was okay, that he would one day.
There were still relatively few people out at this time in the morning. The motorway was starting to build with traffic but as it was only quarter to eight it wouldn’t get properly busy for another half an hour or so. Harry slowly walked up the concrete staircase that took him on to the overpass, making sure that he didn’t take them too quickly otherwise he would cause the CD player to skip. If he had one thing he didn’t like about it it was how easy it could skip if he wasn’t careful. He was hoping to save up for a proper case for it to rescue the chances of that happening but as he’d spent most of his money on the batter charging kit he thought he would probably need to wait for a while for the case.
He arrived at the top of the staircase and took a few steps forward, unconsciously reading himself for what he knew was about to happen. Something quite strange. Something he couldn’t really understand.
Just ahead there was some graffiti that began at the waist high wall that then ran along the path and up to the other wall. Harry had never known what it was meant to be and looked to his eyes like some kind of impression of the Milky Way, or something similarly cosmic. What as strange about it was that the council had removed it on more than one occasion (seeing as how there were some mornings or afternoons in the past where he had walked and it hadn’t been there) and - he couldn’t quite recall if this was the case - but the strange thing hadn’t happened when it was gone.
The strange thing.
He wondered if it was going to happen now the cosmos graffiti was back. He took a tentative few steps towards it, nice and slow. It happened no matter what speed he walked, but he wanted to know that morning specifically at what point it happened. As he drew nearer, he was acutely aware of everything. Kurt singing in his ear, now about how he was afraid.
I’m afraid
I’m afraid
I’m afraid
Harry wasn’t afraid. Was he? The strange thing was such a minor thing. Such a small inconsequential thing. It was just a strange inconsequential thing.
Spots of drizzle against his face.
Gulls overhead, circling in a vortex. He felt them there. Looked up. The sky was devoid of birdlife and a leaden grey. He had imagined what Movement? The sound above his music?
Another step forward. Heart quickening.
His foot rested on the cosmos. Dark stars. It didn’t look like it was spray paint at that moment. He looked down and momentarily lost himself. He held the CD player in front of him. Keeping it level. He could see the disc spinning quickly through the clear panel in it’s lid.
Don’t knock it don’t rock it, he repeated to himself. The traffic underneath was building up in density, and he could feel the vibrations through his legs as the larger vehicles passed underneath.
The music cut out in his ears.
Just for a moment. A second at most. It was on his third step across the stange graffiti. His foot rested upon a star, just for a moment. The briefest of moments. It was a skip, surely a skip. Only it wasn’t a skip. He had heard the CD player skip loads. When he walked too fast or when he didn’t hold it steady enough or put it in his jacket pocket without doing the zip up and the motion of him walking caused it. Skipping was something he knew about. This wasn’t a skip. Kurt’s voice had become momentarily garbled and cut out in his left ear then his right ear. The song had slowed briefly, then resumed itself as normal. Harry stopped and looked at the CD player in his hands. Spots of moisture on the lid. If he wasn’t careful he was going to get it wet. Still though, he just started at it. More droplet of rain. He shook it, just a little.
There. That was a skip. Unmistakable.
He turned around, narrowly avoiding a suit clad man who brusquely stepped by him, shaking his head in annoyance at the child who had been daydreaming and hadn’t noticed that he was walking on one side of the bridge. Harry saw his lips move and knew he would have muttered something in annoyance, but didn’t care. He was too fixated on the CD player.
He decided to try something he hadn’t done yet. He began to slowly move back the way he had come, yet move as slow as he possibly could. This strange thing had occurred every since he had begun to walk this way with this CD player.
But only when the stars are here.
Possibly. Maybe.
He didn’t always notice, too preoccupied own his own thoughts, but that morning it was as though he had known he was going o investigate it. He had left his house ten minutes earlier than he normally did without giving it so much as a moments thought, yet it was obvious why he had done that. He know what he was about to do even before he did it.
Slow. Slower. He edged his way backwards. Movement caught his eye and he could see a group of children coming up the staircase he had just climbed. He didn’t recognise them even though they wore Crown temple uniforms. He moved even slower, not taking a step. They climbed the stairs quickly. A group of girls, lost in their own conversation. He heard their laughter over his music. Harry thought about giving up, about trying to look as inconspicuous as possible or resume his journey to school, quicken his pace so he could get ahead of them and any disparaging remarks, any odd looks. He had presumed that he was the only one that bothered to walk to school this way, never having seen any other pulls on this route before. Just his luck, he thought.
They arrived at the top of the steps and moved towards him. He stood there, unsure of what to do. They were younger by him but not by much. A group of girls any age was terrifying enough mind you. Particularly. If they were younger than him. He braced himself for an onslaught of jibes or jeers, or suggestive comments. Nothing came. They passed him by without a so much as a slight glance. Even so, he waited until they had moved further along the bridge before he shuffled another few centimetres. A few more.
There. There it was again. The distortion. Right over the star at his foot. Right there. He held the CD player still, and did not move. Whatever was causing it (and he made a note to ask Mr Thyme), it was localised to the a few centimetres. Perhaps even smaller. He stepped back but extended his hands, holding the CD played over the exact same spot. Spots of rain continuously fell on it and he began to get a little concerned. Even so, he was fascinated. He couldn’t hold it completely still and it wavered ever so slightly in his grasp. It was almost as though he was tuning a radio, like the one in his father’s car. He would get left in there with the radio on whilst his dad nipped into a shop or the post box, or if he had to pay for petrol. Nearly every time, harry couldn’t help but fiddle around with the tuning knob on the unit on the dashboard. His dad liked to listen to Radio 2, but Harry always tried to find something more upbeat to listen to. Besides, he just liked the act of gliding through all the full range of frequency until he happened upon something that piqued his interest. Some of the stations couldn’t quite be picked up properly and it was one of those that he would painstakingly try and tune in to, setting himself a mental challenge of doing it before his father came back to the car.
This was like that. There was one slight sweet spot that would cause the music to become distorted, but he could never hold it, no matter how hard he tried.
The rain began to get heavier and now bug spots were hitting the CD case. Harry became alarmed when one of them seemed to run into the crack that formed the edge of the lid. He wouldn’t be able to cope if anything happened to it, and so he drew it towards him and, after ensuring he zipped up his jacket, placed it into the large side pocket, fasting down the top and buttoning it in. He would make sure to check it properly later and make sure it was all dried off if necessary.
The traffic was heavier below him now, a near constant stream heading towards Manchester. Commuters - office worker mainly he presumed - all going to start their day. he checked his watch, a cheap Casio that he had one in a fair a couple of years before - and realised that it was time he too went to start his day. If he was late his mother would be called, despite the fact that he was sure the school was being extra lenient on him because of…what happened. Even so, he didn’t want to risk it, and so picked up his pace, not paying much heed to the CD player as it skipped every section step he took.
That was fine. That was skipping. He knew what caused that.
The other thing though, the strange thing?
He had no idea.
It wasn’t for another few weeks that Harry thought about the strange thing again. He had meant to speak to Mr Thyme that day after the last time he experienced it, that rainy morning when he had held his CD player out over the star and attempted to hold it in place. By the time he had gotten to school, it had completely slipped his mind on account of the fact that he had foolishly decided to dry off his CD player in class, furtively rubbing it on his grey school jumper, holding it under the desk so nobody saw what he was doing.
The trouble began when two other boys from his year spotted what he was doing.
Harry had been careful not to bring his CD player out in class. He had been careful to hide it in his bag before arriving at the school gates. He as too worried that it would get broken or stolen. He hadn’t been paying attention properly during the morning however, and when Mr Thyme had resumed talking about the Long Parliament, he had absently takin it from his pocket and examined it under the desk.
“What you got there,” hissed Archie from the next table along. He was a short boy with large jowls and and a head shaped like a bullet, on top of which his centre parting hung down and slightly hid his eyes. He had been in class with Harry since primary one, but Harry tried to keep as far away from him as possible. Archie Cameron had another three brothers, one older already at the high school and the other two younger. They were all known trouble makers, but Archie had never really seen fit to ever harass Harry. Had, like so many others in fact, decided to completely ignore him through most of their shared schooling. That all changed that morning.
Harry tried to avoid looking up and catching his eye, thinking it would give him more of an excuse to speak. Mr Thyme was at the front demonstrating something on the blackboard that Harry couldn’t quite make out, and he seemed to be completely oblivious to the hissed whispering.
“We’re asking what you’ve got,” a second voice added. David Glower, known as “Davey G” on account of the fact that there were another two Davids in the class. Davey had joined the school in primary three on rumours that he had been expelled from his previous school. He had quickly become friends with Archie, if friends were the right word for two boys who constantly fought with each other both physically and verbally. Nevertheless, if one of the them was getting in to trouble, the other one was always involved, even if only on the periphery.
Please, Harry said to himself, stop talking to me. He silently cursed himself for taking the CD player out in class, and now tried to furtively store it back into his pocket.
“What is that you’ve got there?” Archie said louder, a grin over his doughy face. His eyes were far back and sunken in the pallid flesh, and sparkled with a gleeful malevolence.
Mr Thyme stopped his monologue and glanced over to the rear of the room, towards Archie.
“Problem back there?” His voice was firm, and Harry could be reminded that his teacher, normally so benign, could be quite intimidating should he choose to be.
“Harry’s got something,” Davey said, grinning. His own visage gave him the appearance of a hawk, with his long hooked nose and long chin. A hawk, Harry thought, or a goblin like in the stories he liked to read. He thought it suited him. Quite apt in fact. People who were ugly on the inside should also be ugly on the outside, so people can see their wicked intention before they so much as act or go so far as opening their mouths.
“No I don’t,” Harry replied, the heat rising to his face.
“What’s that?” Mr Thyme was looking at Harry now, his thick black eyebrows raised in an almost comical fashion.
“Nothing sir,” Harry replied, looking down at his desk, at the blank page of his jotter on which he should have been taking notes. He could feel most of the eyes on the room on him. Somewhere a girl laughed quietly, but not quiet enough to remind unheard.
“Right, settle down please, and pay attention. I’m going to be giving you a test on this at the end of the week, so I hope you are all writing it down, yes?”
With that. The lesson continued, but Harry dared not take his eyes up from his book. He could feel Archie and Davey still watching him, and in a brief moment when he did decide to look up, he found them both starting at him, slack jawed with vacant grins on their faces. One would nudge the other and they would laugh before turning back to their own books. Harry would look down at his badly handwritten notes until he felt them staring at him again. Again he would look up, and again they would be there. He wished it was home time.
By the time it was time to go home, he had completely, forgotten to ask his teacher about possible causes for the interference. He also discovered that, once again, the graffiti had been washed off the wall and path of the bridge.
And all the roads we have to walk are winding
And all the lights that lead us there are blinding
November, and it was as the voice of Liam Gallagher drifted through Harry’s headphones that Harry noticed the graffiti was back on the bridge. There was a thin coating of morning frost over everything, making concrete around him iridescent in the soft winter glow of the sun. He had bought the Oasis CD only a week beforehand, won over by numerous plays on the radio and appearances on Top of the Pops. It had never left the discern since he had bought it.
He had taken the paper round after all.
Or rather, he had taken the paper round.
There was too much he wanted to buy, and he knew his mother was struggling. Two jobs and exhausted all the time. She kept offering him pocket money and he never wanted to take it. He helped as much as he could around the house; doing his own laundry; making dinner for him whilst plating hers up, ready to go in the microwave at whatever time she returned home. His father’s passing had left a financial void that whatever insurance he had hadn’t covered. Or rather (as his mother candidly explained to him recently) that she did not wish to dip in to it unless there was absolutely no choice.
“If I can work, I’ll keep working. There might be a day that I can’t work, or something big happens and we’ll need it,” she had said. She had also said that she was telling him because it was important he knew. That it mattered that he was aware of their financial situation. Not, because, she expected help, but because she never wanted him to take anything for granted. ”Like I had,” she added, a smile briefly crossing her sad face. She was sitting with him on the end of his bed, not long after coming in. He had heard the whirr and ping of the microwave and the silence that followed indicated that she was at least eating his dinner this time. The last few nights he had emerged in the kitchen in the morning to find the dinner in the bin and an extra four or five cigarette buts in the cut glass ashtray in the centre of the table. He would see the remnants of the food as he emptied the ashtray, before wiping the table down and setting out his own breakfast. She would have already left for work by then.
He had nodded, making sure that she saw that he understood.
He had got the paper round anyway. He had told Mr Beasley about Big Jimmy, and had even taken him to see the remnants of the papers that the older boy had been throwing into the bushes. The expression on the newsagents face had said it all and he had placed one hand on Harry’s shoulder, and told him to come in to the shop the following morning. Harry asked if he was going to tell Big Jimmy about the fact that it was Harry that had told him.
Of course not.
Yet he had. Or someone had. Because Big Jimmy knew it was him. Either that or he just held a grudge after seeing Harry out earning the monument that he felt as though he was entitled to, even though - as Harry rightly saw it - he hadn’t done anything to earn that money.
The extra grief that he got from the older boy was worth it as soon as he had the first five pounds in his pocket. He made a deal with himself. The first couple of weeks, he would buy the album that everyone was talking about. After that, he would save most of it away. He wouldn’t give it to his mother straight away, or even tell her about the round (she was still out before him, even though he had to get up an hour earlier every morning to allow time to pick up and deliver the papers), but he would buy her something nice for Christmas. She deserved that much. He didn’t know what yet. Some jewellery perhaps, or some perfume. He would ask his Auntie Sue what his mother would like and then he would see her face as she opened the gift. It wouldn’t make everything alright, and certainly would do nothing to bring back his father, but he thought that even the briefest of joy, the smallest of smiles, was enough.
That joy he recognised. He had felt the same joy when parting with his rightfully earned money when he had taken the bus in to Manchester that weekend, going in to HMV and picking up the CD, paying for it and taking it home. He had taken his CD player with him and had listened to it as soon as he got on the bus. Reading the lyrics in the sleeve notes along with the vocals. It had been worth it.
But the graffiti was back. The starts were back. It looked the same as it always did, and seemed to be in the same position as before. No, that wasn’t strictly true, it was exactly the same as it was before. He had walked over it too many times. This had happened - the disappearing and reappearing - too many times. It was here, then it was gone, then it was back again.
He waited on the bridge above the roar of morning traffic, just as he had done before, and waited until he was sure no one was coming in either direction. He looked down at his feet and saw exactly where the star was. That same star that marked the strange thing. It would do it again, he knew it.
This time, he actually knelt before the painted image, not able to discern it as clearly that morning under the crystallised moisture. He outstretched a gloved had and wiped it back and forth, not caring how dirty or wet the glove got.
There it was. It was intricately detailed amongst the light blues and purples of the swooshing nebula it lay within. It’s core was black, with bright greens and yellows spiralling out before blending in to the back ground. But it was what was within that dark core the fascinated Harry, and he knelt even closer to it. Some kind of pattern lay there, but he just couldn’t discern it.
He stood back up and restarted the track that he had been listening to, waiting until the familiar opening chords of Wonderwall began.
Then, he held the CD player out over the star. Slowly as he could.
There. Right there. The distortion. Exactly over the star.
He felt an energy radiate through his arms from the CD player, but he could have just been imagining it.
He shuffled forward slightly, bringing the CD player closer to his chest as he did so, so that it stayed in the same position as much as possible. The distortion was still there, the music slowing and subsequently going off-key, the vocals, once melancholic, now dejected. Now disturbed.
Now, disturbing. At least two registers lower, half the speed.
His father had a tape played in the car and although he preferred the radio, he would sometimes have a tape playing instead. Something from the seventies that Harry didn’t know. One of the trips they had taken, he tape had gone on and shortly into the second track, it had started to sound like this. He remembered his dar cursing and jabbing at the eject button, but only after he had pulled up to a stop at a set of traffic lights. His father was a safe driver, one of the reasons his cause of death had been so unfair. Well, there were meany reasons, but surely the safest driver around to be killed after being involved in a fatal road traffic accident is unfair. Harry thought so anyway.
The tape had ejected and his father had pulled the plastic cassette. Trails of brown ribbon had followed. It was the first time Harry had actually been aware of how a tape worked, or at least, what was contained within the black plastic. His father had cursed and thrown it in the back seat. Harry had asked him if it could be fixed and his dad had told him that if he could wind it back in, then it may be okay, but the actual tape itself was probably stretched a little. When it was stretched, he explained, the tension was gone and that’s when it distorted. It was pulled too thin.
Harry had nodded, and said he understood, but at eight years old, he didn’t think he did. He didn’t understand why his dad couldn’t just cut out the brown stuff and get rid of it if it was causing the tape to jam and make the music go all funny. Surely the black box would be better off without the brown stuff. He resolved one day to do it for him, to help him. He would find one of the tapes and take out the brown stuff so it wouldn’t be able to get jammed again.
He shuffled forward again. Juts a little. As sight as he could while ensuring that he did actually move forward. He didn’t quite know what, or why, he was doing this. Just that he felt as thought there as something there, something he couldn’t quite fathom. He could almost see the notion just beyond his conscious thought. Something buried in the back of his mind like a old memory. An itch at the back of his brain, between the soft fleshy mass and his skull, as though a spider had nested there, in he dark crevice. He continued to bring the CD player closer. Closer still.
Forward. Closer.
Someone was coming. From the far end of the bridge, as he drew closer to the star. He couldn’t quite see the person properly however. It was as though he was looking through a have of heat. The upper half of the figure was fine, but below the legs it was all wavy, and he couldn’t actually make out the part - the feet - that actually connected with the ground. The figure seemed to float towards him. Something else too. Something he couldn’t quite see yet.
I should stop, he thought, whoever this is is going to think I’m a right weirdo.
Probably. But then again, as always, who cares?
He shuffled closer still, the lyrics completely unidentifiable now. The CD that he could still see through the clear plastic panel was still spinning as normal, and the read out on the from was advancing the seconds of the track in what seemed like normal speed. He was now holding it to his chest, and his skin had gone all tingly under his jacket and clothes. He looked up and still the figure was moving towards him. It was closer now and he could see what else seemed to be wrong with it.
It had no head.
Probably just looking down, a strange trick of the light.
Except it really didn’t seem to be moving right either. It was skipping. That was the only way that he could explain it in his head. It was skipping backwards and forwards. It was closer, then further away, then closer again.
All around it was the strange shimmering mist, nit sure below it now. The ice crystals that had formed on everything with the morning. Frost were now full of sharp specular light that hurt his eyes. He found himself squinting, but still his gaze began to fill with black spots. He shuffled forward despite himself. Now the CD player was clutched tightly to his chest. The music all but stopped.
Was it getting dark around him? Harry began to feel his legs go, all the strength draining from them. The music was now just a static hiss in his headphones. The bridge vibrated but not with the throb of traffic beneath him. Something else. Something impossibly large was moving below him. He could feel it. He could sense it’s presecence, whatever it was. He did not like it. Still the figure flickered ahead of him, at one point it seems to be only a few feet in front of him, yet still he could not ascertain what it was. It was as though him or one of his classmates had been asked to draw a person for an art lesson but had gone for break before finishing, making it as far up as the shoulders and leaving the legs with little to now detail. It was an abstraction. It was merely some kind of entity.
He knew the word entity. It was one one of his ghost stories he read sometimes when he couldn’t sleep. Why he read stories that were written with the purse of keeping him further from sleep, he didn’t know. Nor did he know how they seemed to have a soporific effect regardless of how terrifying they were and how awake he was. It had been used to describe a shapeless mass that had burst into the room of an unfortunate ghost hunter, a strong-willed man who had deemed all things supernatural to be poppycock. His words afterwards were to the effect that he had been assailed by an unidentifiable thing. Evil in it’s purest form. Nothing more than an entity.
Here’s one now, that hidden part of his mind said. He nodded unconsciously to himself.
Everything was throbbing. Inside and out. His tongue felt too thick in I=his head. It began to squirm and break apart in his mouth. He could taste flesh, small chunks of meat as everything behind his teeth broke apart.
Flies, there are flies in my mouth.
He glanced down at the CD player and couldn’t see it. There as a pulsating dark mass where it and his hands once had been. There was nothing below that. The concrete of the bridge, the star, the morning frost. There as nothing except a whorl of black and not quite black.
I’m close, I can feel it.
He was almost there, almost on the spot. The static grew louder in his ears, yet it wasn’t a constant. There was something in it. Something that was punctuating it. A voice. Female? Male? He couldn’t discern. It could have been both, or neither. He didn’t know.
What was it saying? He could almost hear it. Almost make it out.
There, again.
A number?
Numbers. A series of numbers. Or was it? He thought he recognised a few, but the rest were incoherent. A different language. German? He wasn’t sure. He wasn’t good at languages and - in fairness 0- they hadn’t really learned much of anything. It was something that he understood that he would learn more of in high school.
Closer still. Another slight shuffle forward.
Unseen hands were massaging his scalp. Now below his scalp. Massaging his skull under the thin layer of skin and tissue. Moving down now, caressing underlies skin, pushing it out from within. The entity flickered to and fro before him. The bridge was gone. The sound from below a cacophony. The numbers kept repeating in his head.
Liquid surged up his throat, hot and acidic. It filled his mouth and washed all the parts of his broken tongue towards his teeth. He tried to stop himself from vomiting but it pushed through his teeth, taking them with it and surged out of him. He watched it as it cascaded into the black below. Bright yellow and green, with veins of red. Large pieces of dark matter that he knew to be his internal organs followed it. His bowels were voided, the acrid stench of faeces. He didn’t care, he felt himself coming apart, his arms coming away at the shoulders as he fell forward, a shroud of darkness thrown over his vision as the entity approached and -
“Woah, son, are you okay?”
Strong arms caught hold of him, pulling him backwards, away from the side. He opened his eyes and caught a glimpse of the traffic roaring past below. The upper half of his body had been over the wall.
He was released, and turned to face the man that had caught hold of him. At first Harry panicked, a scream forming in his mouth as he thought the man didn’t have a face, only to realise that he was wearing a hood and had a scarf over his mouth to keep the cold out.
“You okay?” The question again. Concern etched into the eyes, the only thing Harry could see. The thin lines underneath indicating the man was middle aged at least. He wore a large heavy wax coat and was carrying a holdall. “You were just about to go over the side, were you about to faint? If I hadn’t caught you…”
“Sorry,” Harry replied, realising that he was still gripping on to his CD player tightly. It had stopped completely, the disc motionless, the digital readout blank. He put it in his pocket and tried to smile disarmingly at the stranger. Something wasn’t quite right with his smile obviously as instead of assuaging the man that he was fine, his concern - and the lines around his eyes - deepened.
“Where are you going?”
“School,” Harry said, trying to sound as casual as he could. “I’m fine, honestly.”
“You be okay getting there yourself? Do you want me to go with you, or get someone? Your dad?”
“I said I’m fine,” Harry replied brusquely, stepping back away from the mana dn going to turn. He knew he was rude, he couldn’t help it. The mention of his father. “Leave me alone.”
If he could see the man’s full expression, he may have seen how cutting he had been, but he didn’t care. What right had this man got to mention his dad? What right?
He looked as though he was going to add something else, but instead just shook his head and walked away. Harry was sure he had muttered something under his breath, but couldn’t quite make it out.
The sun had risen enough so that already the frost had begun to liquefy, everything now coated in a slick wet coat. Harry stood on the bridge a few moments longer, waiting until he was fine enough to walk. Already the memory of what just happened was hazy, until another five or so minutes convinced him that it hadn’t happened the way he thought it had at all. By the time he got to school, all memory of the experience was gone. He had walked towards the star and had come over a little funny. He had lurched forward and a passing man had caught him, making sure he was okay before going on his way.
That was all that had happened.
He was sure of it.
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