Authors: David Almond

Heaven Eyes (5 page)

W
AS IT THE SCARIEST MOMENT OF MY LIFE
? No. That was the moment when Mum closed her eyes for the final time and left me all alone. But my head reeled. My heart thudded. My legs trembled. As I stepped over the edge and climbed down the rotting timbers of the quay, I thought I was climbing down to my death. Mouse climbed beside me. He gave me strength. “Come on,” he whispered. “Come on, Erin.” January watched us from above. He hauled back on the tethering rope, keeping the raft close to the quay. But there was still a three-foot gap between us and the edge.

“Jump!” yelled January. “Go on. Jump!”

Mouse went first. He landed facedown in the center, with his feet dangling back into the water. He laughed. He turned.

“Come on, Erin!” he called.

“Mum,” I whispered. “Mum. Mum!”

I closed my eyes and leapt. I skidded on the varnish, on the water that was slopping across the doors. I squatted at the center with Mouse. Jan threw the paddles down. Then there was a scream and he came hurtling down on top of us. The raft lurched, slewed sideways, was caught by the current, and we were dragged away.

We goggled at each other. We gasped and yelled with terror and excitement. The raft spun out toward the center of the river. The sky was vivid red. The river was like running molten metal. The massive bridge arched over us. We were drenched in seconds. We clung to each other. The water quickened, dragging us down toward the thickening mist. Suddenly January leapt up. He stretched his arms toward the sky.

“Aaaaahhh!”
he yelled.
“Aaaahhh! Freedom!”

The raft rocked and toppled him back onto us again.

His eyes were wild with joy. His face burned like the sky.

“Freedom,” he whispered. “Freedom, Erin!”

T
HERE WERE EDDIES AND SWIRLING CURRENTS
. There were little waves whipped up by the breeze. The river didn’t take one single course. We were dragged out to the center, then back toward the bank. We tried to control the raft with the paddles but they were skinny things, almost useless. At one time we were dragged upstream and it seemed we’d be heading to the distant moors rather than toward the distant sea. But then the current turned again and took us down again. We were bitter cold. We were sodden. Soon it was like the river had soaked through to our bones. All the time the evening darkened, darkened. The city started to glare: brilliant lights outside the pubs and clubs on Norton Quay. Music echoed across the water. We saw the people gathering there in bright skimpy clothes, out for the
night. A group of girls pointed out to us. They danced a jig and yelled out “Bobby Shaftoe.” Others watched, serious, maybe worried about us. Jan yelled “Bobby Shaftoe” back at them. “Nice night for a paddle!” he called. The girls squealed. The river dragged us toward them, then spun us back into the center again. We waved, trying to reassure the worried ones, trying to reassure ourselves. “Hell’s teeth,” Jan kept saying. “Hell’s teeth,” I answered. “Hell’s teeth,” whispered Mouse. He held me tight, wouldn’t let go. His teeth were chattering, his voice was quivering. “It’s going to be all right!” he said. “It is! It’s going to be all right.” Tears poured from his eyes. “Erin!” he yelled in terror. “Erin!” We plunged onward. We seemed to catch the main current and it drew us relentlessly away from the lights, away from the voices, toward the mist, toward the night. The moon appeared, a white ball that brightened as the sky around it deepened into black. Stars glittered, first a handful, then a skyful. We passed the city’s dark outskirts, the dilapidated quays: more ruined warehouses, broken wharves, massive billboards showing how this place would be once the demolishing, building and developing started. Huge gaps of blackness where there was nothing. The river stank of oil and something rotten. There was the scent of salt and seaweed. We passed the stream called the Ouseburn and hit more eddies where the currents of the stream and river mixed. Then the mist, thin at first, still allowing
the moon and stars through to us. But it thickened, deepened. Soon there was nothing but us, the raft, the churning water and the mist. Our voices boomed and echoed back to us. We stared at each other, held each other, in terror that one of us might be lost to the others, in terror that we’d all be lost, in terror that this journey was nothing but a journey into death. We muttered bits of prayers, we called out for help, we forgot about the paddles and we drifted, rocked, lurched and spun. And then we slowed and the raft jerked, shuddered, and we stopped. Just water gently slopping, the gentle creaking of the doors beneath us. Just the gasping of our breath. And silence all around.

M
UD
. B
LACK, STICKY, OILY, STINKING MUD.
It was January who dared to lean out of the raft first. He dipped his hand into what should have been water. He touched mud, black mud. It oozed and dribbled from his fingers. The raft settled, and mud slithered across its surface, onto our clothes. It seeped through to our skin. It seeped through the tiny gaps between the doors. I took my flashlight out, switched it on, saw the doors disappearing as they sank, saw the gilt words and the red curse obscured, saw the mud rise, saw that we were being slowly sucked down into the sodden earth. “Hell’s teeth,” we hissed. “Hell’s teeth.” We crawled to each other, clutched each other. Our feet, our heels, our knees were caught in mud.

“The Black Middens,” said January.

“What?”

“The Black Middens. We’re grounded on the bloody Black Middens.”

I shined the flashlight into his eyes.

“Got to get out,” he said. “It’ll suck us in.”

We leaned out, tried to shove ourselves free. The raft just sank deeper.

“Hell’s teeth,” I hissed.

I shined the flashlight into the mist. Water behind us, black mud in front, impenetrable mist.

“There’ll be dry land further in,” said January.

We reached across the mud, searching for this dry land. Just mud. Wet black lethal mud. We goggled at each other. We gasped and sobbed in fright.

“Somebody’ll have to go, Erin. Somebody’ll have to take the rope and get to the dry land.”

We stared into each other’s eyes.

“Me,” said Mouse.

I didn’t turn.

“You can’t even swim,” I whispered.

“You’re lighter than me,” said January.

“I know I am.”

I put the flashlight between my teeth. I took the end of the rope. I slid across the edge of the raft. I stretched my arms and legs wide. I crawled. I kept moving. I slithered forward. I felt how at any moment I could stop and be taken down into the Black Middens. I whispered for my mum. There was no answer. Mouse and
January spoke my name from behind. I couldn’t speak. I grunted, whimpered, groaned. I slithered forward. There was no dry land, no dry land. My head filled with the mist and darkness. I cried. At one point I just stopped moving. I told myself that this was what I had come out on the raft for. I was following my mum downriver. She waited for me deep in the Black Middens. I began to let myself be taken down. I felt the mud gathering around me. I felt the great contentment that might come if I just let go, if I sank here, if I just let myself go down to her, if my mouth was filled with mud, if my eyes and ears were filled with mud, if there was nothing but mud surrounding me, encasing me.

And then I heard her: “Erin. Erin.” I felt her hands holding me, preventing me from sinking. “Erin,” she whispered. “Keep moving. Don’t let go.” She helped me drag my body free. She held me up as I continued. I stretched forward as I slithered and crawled. And at last I touched drier, firmer ground. I hauled myself onto it. I knelt there and sobbed and couldn’t speak. The others called for me. I heard the terror in their voices. I pulled on the rope. It tightened. “It’s all right,” I called. “I’m all right.” I told them to come after me, to follow the rope. And when they gripped the rope and hauled themselves, they too slithered through the mud and darkness. We shined our flashlights onto each other. We were black glistening trembling things, like creatures formed from water, earth and blackness a million million
years ago. We clutched each other, held each other tight. An age might have passed before we came out of our horror and released each other. Then January spat and cursed.

“The bloody raft,” he said. “Got to drag it in.”

He glared at us.

“Didn’t make it to lose it on the first bloody trip. And didn’t make it to get no further than the bloody Black Middens.”

So we pulled on the rope. We grunted and cursed. We slowly slowly dragged the raft back to us. We hauled it onto the dry land. We lay there, exhausted.

Then I felt her hand on my shoulder. I heard her voice. I turned and saw her face for the first time, her pale beseeching eyes gazing into mine.

“Is you my sister?” she asked. “Is these mine brothers?”

T
HERE WERE WEBS
stretched between her fingers. Her face was moon-pale. Her eyes were moon-round, watery blue. Her voice was high and light and yearning.

“Is you? Is you?” she said.

Mouse squealed. January gripped his knife in his fist. We backed away. We stepped back into the black wetness. She reached out to us.

“Do not go back into them Middens, my long-lost sister, my long-lost brothers.”

We felt the mud sucking us into itself.

She wept.

“Do not go back again!”

“Oh, hell,” sobbed Mouse. “Oh, hell. Oh, hell.”

I slithered back to the dry land. Mouse and January
slithered back. We crouched together. January and I shined our flashlight onto her.

“You must come with me,” she said.

She rested her webbed fingers on my arm again.

She sighed.

“What is your name?” she said.