Frankie stepped forward to have a peek. ‘It’s a squirrel you fool.’
We rushed over for a look. What lay there was so decomposed it could have been anything from a dog to a large rat. But on balance it looked as though Frankie was right, it was a squirrel that must have got into the barrel and become trapped.
We looked around. There was no longer just one path to take; we were surrounded by six dark dirt paths, each one as ominous and frightening as the next.
‘How do we know which one we arrived on?’ whimpered Colleen.
That was easy. Dolly had stopped to go to the loo and had deposited a neat pile of turds at the entrance to the
path. Twizzel, Horace and I had been peering down another of the paths. In the distance we could see what looked like a large house that had sunk into the trees. Twizzel pointed. ‘Let’s go down this one.’
The rest of the group walked over.
‘I ain’t going over there,’ Dolly said with a shudder.
‘Fair enough, come on, leave old scaredy-crotch here,’ said Frankie, linking arms with Jamie-Leigh. They began to skip down the track.
Dolly and Colleen planted themselves on one of the logs by the campfire. Dolly broke off a stick, poking it through the bars at the dead squirrel. ‘I ain’t going in there. We’ll stay here and give him a burial.’
The rest of us turned and followed Frankie and Jamie-Leigh. As we linked arms and headed down the dark path, a thrill of fear and anticipation shot through me.
Twizzel chuckled and began chanting, ‘Lions and tigers and bears, oh my!’
‘Shut up!’ Olive scowled, yanking Twizzel’s pigtail.
When we reached the building we had seen we discovered it wasn’t a house, it was an open-sided hay barn. But it had clearly not been used for some time. The few bails that were left were torn open and drooping toward the ground. Frankie and Jamie-Leigh were nowhere in sight.
‘Very funny, girls,’ Olive called out. ‘Come on, the others want to go home.’
There was silence. A flock of crows flew over us, cawing loudly.
‘This ain’t funny any more, you two,’ shouted Olive.
‘I think we should just leave them here and go home,’ said Twizzel.
‘What if something’s really happened to them?’ I said. I was beginning to feel scared, and Horace was clinging to my arm.
Twizzel gave me a poke in the ribs. ‘Like what, Mikey? Were they killed by a monster?’
‘Or the Predator,’ Horace added.
‘Oh shut up, carrot-top, there’s no such thing. Olive, come back here, now. I’m going home.’
Olive was kicking through the hay bales, swearing and cursing. The static from her coat attracted the hay like a magnet; she was beginning to look like a scarecrow. The more she brushed at herself, the more it stuck. ‘
I know you’re in here
,’ she shouted. Her voice rebounded from the shelter’s ceiling and threw out a thunderous echo.
As it died out there was a moment of silence. Then a sudden snap of breaking stick had us screaming like harpies. I looked over at Olive. She was still under the shelter, standing frozen, looking back at the three of us in horror. Jamie-Leigh and Frankie leaped out from behind the barn, throwing a pile of straw over Olive. But she remained petrified. The other two girls followed her gaze, and froze too.
‘Will you stop it,’ said Twizzel. ‘What the fuck are you doing?’
Suddenly, a voice from behind us said, ‘Eoghc DErrgh Thfhhuck Err Yuuu Gdoooin?’
It was the same question, only spoken in a strange slur.
We turned to see a slobbering man, with a lop-sided face and stooping shoulders.
My throat filled with ice. None of us dared move.
The man raised the working side of his face into a rotten-toothed smile and stood swaying to and fro like a gruesome
marionette. Then he hobbled forward, reached out with a limp hand and brushed it against Horace’s cheek.
Suddenly his expression changed to a grimace and he grabbed Horace with both his bony hands, tightening them around his neck. Horace croaked and squealed, trying to pull at the man’s large hands. But the man started to shake him violently, while howling from the back of his throat.
We sprang into action. Twizzel and I tore at his hands, as the other three ran over and kicked and punched at his legs. When we prised the man off, Horace dropped to the floor in a heap. Grabbing hold of him we started to run and sprinted back down the path to the campfire.
Dolly and Colleen were smoking cigarettes and poking at the squirrel, which by now was sprawled out on the ground.
‘
Run
!’ screamed Jamie-Leigh, heading back down the path towards the wall.
We arrived back in the camp, swearing never to set foot in the wood ever again.
As we approached our plot, Frankie and I could hear the sound of my father’s whistle. It was a Tuesday, my evening for training at the boxing club. I prayed that he hadn’t been waiting for us for too long.
When we arrived at the plot, our father was standing beside the car with a strip of bamboo in his hand. ‘I’ve been whistling you for an hour.’
‘Sorry, Dad.’
‘Where have you been?’
‘We climbed over the gate, over at the spare plot.’
He marched towards us, raising the bamboo above his
head. Frankie leaped clear and darted towards her Wendy house.
‘You went over to the divvy home, didn’t you?’
‘No!’
He lashed out, catching me across the back of my legs. The pain felt like boiling water across my calves. I rolled on the ground, screaming and holding my legs in pain as he took another swipe. Then another. And another and another.
His face looked red, the veins standing out like lumps across his forehead, as he swiped at me. My whole body felt filled with scorching pain as the bamboo slashed across my arms, legs, fingers, back and face.
I knew he was angrier about me being late for the club than us going to Oak Place.
He stopped, panting, and told me to get up. I was in so much pain I couldn’t move. He dropped the stick to the floor, and put me under his arm. I cried as he swore. He dragged me over to the stable and kicked me hard and square, launching me from the ground like a football. I crashed amongst the laundry as he slammed the door behind me.
‘You want a dog’s life, do you, my boy?’ He pulled the bar across the door. ‘Then I will give you one.’
Frankie came running for the door, shaking at the lock.
‘Open that door and I’ll kill him.’
She backed away from the door, leaving me in silence.
It was pitch dark. I sat on the floor. I could smell freshly washed and dried clothes. It was a nice smell. My father often locked me in here. He probably thought that being locked in this dark place would scare me, as it had scared
him when his father locked him up as a small boy. But unlike him, I wasn’t afraid of the dark. I felt calm, as I looked at the dust particles floating in the few tiny rays of light filtering through the walls and door.
I crawled over to the dryer, which was rumbling away in one corner, and leaned against it. It rumbled through the lashes on my back, soothing and comforting me.
As night drew in, the light switch outside was flicked on, the bar was pulled from the door and my mother came in, a basket of laundry in one hand and the other supporting Henry-Joe, who had his arms wrapped around her neck.
‘Just what are you doing in here, shit trousers?’ she joked. ‘I thought you’d gone with your dad to the club.’
I hoisted myself up. ‘Nah, he locked me in here instead.’
‘Oh well,’ she laughed, ‘you’re probably better off in here anyway.’
She crouched before the dryer, putting the loaded basket down beside her. Henry-Joe dived into the clothes pile, rolling blissfully around. She caught a glimpse of my face. ‘What’s happened to you?’ she exclaimed, rising to her feet. She grabbed me under the chin, moving my face from side to side, then lifted my jumper. The welts from the bamboo stood out across my skin like angry veins. She began to curse.
‘Fucking old cunt. How does he expect me to get you to school looking like that?’
‘Will I have to stay home?’
‘What?
No
,’ she said. ‘It’s the only place I can put you out of sight of the old fool.’
Fate of the Munchkin Queen
Granddad Noah was coming out of hospital and we were all going over to Tory Manor in the evening to celebrate his return. He’d been breathless and ill for some months, and in the end he’d needed a heart bypass.
That afternoon Frankie and I set off to show a disbelieving Dolly and Colleen the Haystack Man’s home and the spot on which Horace almost breathed his last. We had come well prepared, having filled several carrier bags with pinecones and rocks, but there was no sign of the monster.
Disappointed, we turned back and took another of the six paths from the clearing, which led us to Oak Place itself.
We were shocked to find that what we had thought of as a prison for mental patients was just like a quaint little village; from outside we could see thatched cottages, stables with friendly donkeys and even an all-day disco. Walking round the perimeter fence we followed the sound of cheesy pop to a huge hall, with an open front, where we could see several deranged people jumping around and throwing themselves into break dances to Michael Jackson’s ‘Beat It’.
It was a unanimous vote that we should all go and join in, and we managed to slip through the gate without being
noticed. It wasn’t until we’d had an hour or so of non-stop pop fun that we were finally escorted off the premises by four hefty, shaven-headed women guards, carrying truncheons.
We ran out through the main gates, out of breath and screaming with laughter. But as we reached the camp we heard my father whistling for us and realised that we’d been out too long.
We climbed back over the wall to find him standing there, heaving like an angry bull, and holding the dreaded bamboo stick. Frankie made the first run for it. She tried to dodge, but he managed to whip the bamboo stick across her rear end as she ran. She kept on going, holding onto her backside with both hands as she headed, screaming, towards our plot.
I tried to do the same, but as I swerved by him I tripped and landed right at his feet. Like a chicken in a fox’s jaws, I played dead, hanging limp in his arms as he dragged me back to the beating shed where he whipped me ferociously with the stick, before shoving me into the truck with our mother, Frankie, Henry-Joe and Jimmy.
As we drove up the lane towards Tory Manor we saw that every tree had been tied with balloons, yellow ribbons, and misspelled signs reading, ‘WELKOM BAK’.
Frankie and I had been made to feel guilty for the whole journey, and the sight of the decorations brought forth a fresh burst from our father, who gazed at them, tears in his eyes, and ranted at us about how shameful it was not to have been here early enough to help put them up.
‘It’s all because of you, fucking off to that mental home,’ he yelled.
Frankie was behind his seat, waggling her shoulders and moving her lips to his voice.
Our mother rolled her eyes. ‘For fuck’s sake, Frank, will you please shut up. You’ve beat the granny out of them and made us all feel miserable all the way here. What more do you want?’
We opened the car doors to the sounds of ‘Tie a Yellow Ribbon’, blaring from a speaker hanging out of Granny Ivy’s window. By the time Granddad Noah arrived, an hour or so later, we’d listened to it another thirty times, so it was with some relief that it was switched off once the old man had made his grand entrance on the arm of his eldest son.
The next hour was spent listening to his stories of the white light, and viewing his disgusting, yet very impressive scar.
Joseph offered to go and get some more alcohol and asked me to help him. I tried to say no, but my father insisted.
‘Come on, Mikey,’ Joseph said. ‘I’m taking your Granddad’s Rolls-Royce.’
I had never been allowed to go near Granddad’s car before. I got in expecting to find a jacuzzi, at the very least. In fact it was nothing special inside, apart from its blue-tinted windows that meant no one could see inside.
Perfect for Joseph.
He parked the car in a cemetery and, like a giant slug, pulled himself through the gap in the front seats and into the back with me. He ordered me to strip, but before I could even remove my jumper, I was spun around against
the rear window and he was tunnelling through the layers of my clothing.
In between gasping licks he asked if I liked what he was doing. I refused to say yes, but didn’t dare say no. So I hummed a little and gazed outside. I counted the gravestones that surrounded the car. I could see a woman sitting on a bench. Even if I pressed my body to the window she wouldn’t see me. From the outside those windows were walls.
As Joseph unbuckled, I thought of school, the mental home, and my grandfather’s heart surgery; anything but Joseph, jerking behind me. As his jerks lost rhythm, he fired onto my back and I felt the shower of sticky splats as they landed across my spine.
We drove into the car park of an off licence, and Joseph casually asked me about my bruises. ‘How many times does he beat you?’ he said. ‘Why does he? What else does he do? What can I do to help?’
I looked at his smug face. I knew he would never do anything for me. He was quite happy to get me a beating for refusing him.
As Joseph and I queued in the shop, I asked if I could wait by the car. I stood by the great blue monster and vomited, bringing up chunks of my uncle: his taste, his smell. I cried and retched and cried some more.
As Joseph appeared around the corner, I wiped my mouth clean.
‘You all right?’
‘Yep.’
He wouldn’t have noticed. He had got what he wanted.
I held onto the bag of bottles, staring ahead as he drove.
He gave me a crooked smirk, then turned up the volume on the tape. Some Jesus loves me ditty rumbled from the speakers beneath the seats. Joseph tapped at the wheel and sang along.
Joseph didn’t love me. He wouldn’t help me. Why would he? He was getting exactly what he wanted. The realisation that I was trapped made me feel sick and scared.
Granddad Noah made a great recovery. His mended heart was working perfectly. He even bragged he could two-foot jump a fence.
Then Ivy died and broke it again.
That night a huge crowd gathered outside the pink trailer. Word spread fast. People from all over the country wanted to pay their respects to a great queen of the Romanies.
It was a beautiful night and no one noticed when I slipped out and ran down to the Koi pond. The stars were so bright I could see the energy burning under their skin and the full moon reflecting shards of light across the hundreds of cars and trucks that filled the entire grounds.
One of the carp had been floating around the surface of the water for four days now. Every now and again, another fish would come to the surface to take a bite out of him. He was pure white; a great ghost of a fish.
I sat beside the pond, thinking about the birthdays and Christmases we had spent in the pink caravan, eagerly opening our presents – Granny Ivy would always re-wrap and give my mother the present my mother had given her the year before. I thought about Joseph, filling the couch with his bulk, sucking on raw bacon and fingering his belly button; Frankie and I being paid to sing songs; sitting
around the trailer steps, and listening to countless relatives celebrating. I remembered Aunt Prissy delicately polishing crockery as Granny Ivy, up on her stool behind her, combed her curtain of black hair.
Through the beauty of the silence around me came a great wave of a mournful song from the trailer.
Granny Ivy was dead.
A looming shape appeared in the dark. It was Joseph. I watched silently as he crashed down onto the lawn. He wailed like a wounded beast.
‘Mum, oh Mum.’
To hear my giant of an uncle, crying uncontrollably, was awful. I walked over to comfort him. He climbed to his knees, pinning my arms to my sides with his the tightness of his grip.
‘Please don’t cry,’ I said.
He leaned back onto his knees and looked into my face. I could see the brightness of his eyes, which were full of tears.
‘I love you, Mikey.’ His grip tightened around me. ‘Please don’t ever leave me.’
I stood, dumbfounded.
‘Your poor granny has died.’ His voice was distorted with grief.
I began to sob. As he wept I raised my arms and cradled his head. ‘I won’t, Uncle Joseph, on my life I won’t.’
I wept for Joseph, my granny Ivy and me.
Back at the trailer Granny Ivy’s giant bottle of oxygen had finally been switched off, but she was still sitting in her chair. She was even smaller than when I last saw her;
her tiny legs and pink moccasin slippers dangled a foot from the floor like those of a little girl, and a tea-towel had been tied around her head with a huge knot at the top to stop her mouth from falling open. She looked like a tiny drag queen.
How wonderful she was. How strong to have made it all this way. I remembered a picture of her taken at a theme park holding a giant ice cream. It was the length of her whole torso and she had to grasp it with both hands.
I thought of her soft childlike voice, telling stories about our history. ‘We came over here from Egypt years ago! Who do you think helped build them pointy cuvas, eh?’ She meant the pyramids.
Granny Ivy loved me. ‘Don’t you ever listen to them saying bad things about you,’ she would say. ‘I promise you my boy, when you get to the right age, you’ll show ’em all. You’re gonna break hearts, my little sweetheart.’
I knew I would miss her so much.
Two days later the mortuary returned her body through the front window of her trailer in a grand coffin that was triple her size. Every piece of furniture had been removed from the front room, and she lay in state there. The silk under the open lid of her coffin was a handcrafted mosaic of
The Last Supper
.
The cars never left, and over the next few days more arrived. We stayed in Uncle Tory’s house, us children all bunched up like fleas in cousin Noah’s room, while the adults never slept.
It was nearly three weeks before the lid on the coffin was closed and Granny Ivy was finally laid to rest. Her features had already begun to sink after just one. Her coffin
was carried for two miles by her beloved Noah and their sons, followed by more than a hundred cars; she made the local radio that day because traffic was stopped for miles around.