The Island (6 page)

That's what the card in the museum says.

Of all the displays in the Horniman Museum, it's the one with the voodoo dolls and the bird hunters that scares Johnny the most.

The voodoo tribes of Haiti put plastic dolls' heads inside empty rum bottles. They squeeze them in tight and they stuff money into skulls and place them all on an altar. They believe it will connect them with their dead relatives and heal them somehow.

On the days Johnny's annoying me, this is the gallery I take him to first.

‘No, no, get off me,' he wails.

So I grip his arm tighter and frogmarch him to the African room, where the voodoo altar shuts him up at once because he's so terrified he can't even speak.

Rum bottles and smiley dolls' heads and mirrors.

If there's a voodoo altar in this jungle I'll die, I know I will. And it'll be what I deserve. I deserve it all for what I've done. I know I'm a monster but I don't like the dark. I don't like the dark and it's creeping towards me. I can see its shadow from the forest, so make it stop.

Make it stop now.

I curl up tight on my side; draw in my knees and all the time the memories bleed and burn.

 

Wild Thing

Smoke is billowing out behind me; I can smell it, can feel it scorch my bones.

And now I'm running, racing past the playground, past the sports block, laughing and sobbing madly.

I don't stop till I've got to Brixton High Street. As I stoop down, panting, by the Tube station, two fire engines come blaring past, sirens wailing blueblueblue.

OhmyGod.

Oh my God.

I haven't finished yet.

Careless of passers-by, I start to run again. I'm free; I'm wild.

‘Careful, love –'

‘Out the way,' I call, my heart skidding, as I slam into the market, grab handfuls of fruit, of nuts, of mangoes – of anything, just because I can.

‘
Losers
,' I bawl, swerving to avoid the stall-people shouting and grabbing at me.

I duck inside the arcade, head for the toilets.

I don't even want all this stuff; I leave it by the side of the sinks, where a woman is washing her hands. She stares at me open-mouthed.

I stare back.

‘What's the matter?' I say.

Ha ha.

I leave the toilets. I'm in Brixton Village and no one's waiting for me outside; the coast's clear. I zigzag in and out of cafes, taking tips from tables, swiping half-finished drinks, toppling chairs.

‘Oy, you –'

I whip a scarf from a vintage stand – just because it's bright, just because I can – and tie it round my head, laughing. I bomb it out of there because they're really angry now, they're coming running.

Duck under the railway arches and then out again, quick as you like, because Wayne's here; he's shuffling notes with some guy in the shadows, doing his deals.

Quickquick, before he sees me, I back away. I knock a kid off his skateboard and mouth sorrysorrysorry and swerve past the shoppers, the cafe owners, back to the Tube station. I race down the steps, three at a time, swiping some guy's Oyster card from his hand but not before I've vaulted over the barrier and I'm running and hooting; people are avoiding me, I'm a wild thing, I push past three layers of waiting passengers and into a crowded Tube train.

The doors hiss shut and I roll up and frickin

kill myself

laughing.

 

Thud

Sometime around dawn, I doze off, but it is then that the birds start.

Clacking and trilling and screeching. There are low howls that rise and rise into a wail, and all the time a clacking racket like ten thousand cars are getting into gear.

Where there are birds, there are bird hunters.

They stretch animal skin over a bird's skull and place it on their heads to do their hunting dance. Makes them look the big man. Then, when the hunt is on, they wear their bird headdresses to trick and distract the real birds.

The howling I can hear won't go away. I shrink my legs up well inside my plastic nest in case a bird hunter taps my skin with his bird beak. Just before he draws his knife.

When I wake again, the wind is shrieking louder than the birds and I have to bury myself into the foot of One Tree and wrap the rubber sheeting of the raft around me to stop it from blowing away.

Dark noises surround me:

thud

thud

thud
.

One sounds just by my head and I scream.

I dare not look, I dare not look

at what it is that is making that noise.

 

Stab

My legs are on fire.

It's like a million ants have buried under my skin and are having a party. I scratch my ankle and it feels so good, but I don't want to stop now I've started and my legs are
crawling
and there are hard little bumps all over my skin.

This time it really is morning.

The life raft has mostly blown away and I am buried into the base of the tree, clutching only the roof.

My mouth is dry.

I panic when I can't see the water sachets but it's OK – they're still in the Red Nylon Bag where I left them. I stab one open with my knife and suck the water greedily and it's lovely and plasticky and warm. I drink and drink and it takes only seconds to empty it.

One left.

Thud.

I spin around but it's only one of the green nuts falling from a palm tree into the sand. I always thought coconuts were brown and hairy but this one's green and sort of smooth. I pick it up and shake it.

Liquid.

Heart thudding, I prise at it with my nails but it won't split. The outer casing's thick and smooth like leather. It doesn't look like a coconut but I know I want what I can hear inside.

I scrabble around for the knife but my hand's so shaky it keeps slipping. Again and again I hack at the casing.

A few chunks of hard-as-leather skin fly off.

I'm drooling now, swearing. Nearly slice into my leg, I'm so mad.

Eventually, I turn the nut thing on its end and grip it between my bare knees. Stab over and over again with the stupid knife. Every time the nut moves, the liquid inside mocks me.

I lick my lips and try to calm down. The last water sachet I drank
– Only one more left. Only one more left
– has made no difference at all to the inside of my mouth, which feels full of sticks and stones and sand.

I hold the nut tighter between my knees and grip the knife in both fists. If I slip, it'll basically drive a spike straight into my thigh. I imagine the blood shooting up high and pretty like a flare.

Thunk.

The knife makes a tiny dent in the top of the could-be coconut.

In the end, it takes thirty stabs to split the nut open and all the liquid spurts out over my hands and on to the sand.

I. Am. Not. Going. To. Cry.

When I try to put my leggings on, the fabric scratches and snags on my burning legs. Each of my bites has turned into a watery boil so that my legs look like bubble wrap. They throb so much I can hardly stand.

I think of the spiky forest floor and rip off my T-shirt sleeves with the help of the knife. Then I bind them like socks over my feet.

There's a rock sticking out of the water that is curved just like a fang, so if I see it, I'll know I'm home.

One Tree Beach. Fang Rock.

I pick up my knife, limp along the beach, then take a deep breath and turn left into the forest.

I am going to find water.

 

Flying Fish and Torture Chairs

Children's shrieks explode like fireworks.

Two red howler monkeys bare their broken teeth.

Wellied mummies push their darlings to see the dead dogs' heads.

There's all sorts of stuff in here; you can never see it all because there's always something you've not noticed, in the back of some display, or maybe there's a different way of looking at something.

Down in the basement gallery, in among the crocodile death masks and the African puppets and the Japanese merman, is an actual torture chair from the Spanish Inquisition. It's made of iron and wood and stands by itself in its own display cabinet. Just in case you miss it.

The torture chair does spiking, racking and skull-crushing, so I suppose you could say it multitasks.

The people I've imagined being screwed into that chair include:

Angela, my social worker.

Miss Bright, my English teacher.

Sally, the school counsellor.

Big Wayne.

And, of course, Cassie.

Me and Johnny used to come here all the time. That's where the would-you-rather? game started.

‘Would you rather: sit in the torture chair or swim with piranhas?'

‘Would you rather: sit in the torture chair or have a shark eat all your toes?'

Me and Johnny sit by the entrance to the aquarium, waiting for the guide to look away so we can get in without a ticket. We reckon he just pretends he doesn't see. He's nice; hums a cheerful song as he does his walkabout and helps the schoolkids cheat on their worksheets.

‘See this here: it's a merman, see? Except it's not really. It's just a monkey's head stuck to a fish's body with little rat-claw front legs.'

The kids
ooh
and
aah
and we pretend we're with them for a bit till Johnny gets bored.

‘Hungry,' he whines.

I give him half my Snickers. ‘Shush. You can't be hungry already. Look at the ostrich, Johnny.'

He likes the baby ostrich best. This frozen baby gazes up at us with its Disney lashes. The stuffed bloodhound in the dog cabinet looks worried sick at all the attention he's getting.

I turn to show Johnny but he's gone.

He went a long time ago.

The Horniman Museum's only a train stop and a bus ride away. The main reason we came was because most of it's free to get into and they don't check your tickets at Sydenham Hill. But now I often come by myself and sit in the Natural History room and the African room and the Centenary room instead of going to school. Learning's learning, isn't it?

And, just for a moment, I smell smoke again.

I wonder if Miss has seen what I've done. I wonder if they've sent everyone home. All those teachers, getting an extra day off away from the kids. They should thank me, really.

Wish my heart wasn't still hammering.

Wish my stomach would stop flipping every time I think of it.

I take out the chocolate I've nicked from the gift shop and sit and watch the flying fish pretend to fly and the howler monkeys pretend to howl. And it's peaceful here because half-term was over ages ago and all the screaming babies have gone home.

‘Shouldn't you be at school?'

The guide's standing next to me, looking over my shoulder.

‘Left school, haven't I?'

‘How old are you then?'

‘Seventeen,' I lie.

‘Don't look it.'

‘What's it to you, grandad?' I scowl at him and move away, deliberately dropping my Fairtrade chocolate wrapper on the floor.

He finds me in the Centenary room, staring at the jars full of stuffed birds.

‘Old Freddie Horniman couldn't stop collecting things,' he says.

I ignore him and turn my attention to the brass hunting dogs' collars. They've got them on the pit bulls in Brixton, to make their owners look hard.

‘In the end his house was so full that he and his family were forced to move out and live somewhere else. Christmas Eve, it was.'

‘Oh yeah?' I say.

He chuckles. ‘Turned his house into a museum, but still he wouldn't stop collecting, so in 1898 they pulled it all down and started building this place.'

I make myself look bored. ‘What's this, a history lesson?'

The guide shakes his head. ‘Cross little thing, aren't you?' He leans forward and whispers. ‘I think, that if you're going to steal chocolate from our shop, the least you can do is listen to an old man give his guided tour. Haven't spoken to a soul all day.' He gestures towards my pockets. ‘Come on, what else you got in there?'

I roll my eyes, but something about his manner makes me turn out my pockets. I have:

A walrus key ring.

A sachet of basil and strawberry bath salts.

A postcard with a photo of the baby ostrich on it.

The old man sighs. ‘I think I'd better take these, don't you?'

I scowl, but my heart is beating African drumbeats
bangbangbang.
I don't want him to call Security. If I take the fire exit, I can be out of here in a blink.

‘Used to be a policeman, didn't I?' the man is saying. He puts my stolen goods carefully on his chair. ‘So, shall we start with the hunters' headdresses?'

And I stand there like a kid in a classroom as he tells me all about the African bird hunters and their beaded masks.

Still, at least it kills time because I really can't

I really can't

go home yet.

 

Are You Listening?

Sometimes I imagine talking to her.

I imagine that I've done what Angela asks and have visited her.

The way I picture it, there'll be a glass partition, because of the risk of infection. There's always a glass partition in the films.

‘
Miss
,' I'd say. ‘
Are you listening? Do you want to know why I did it?

‘
Well. It was you. You started it. You. Started. It.

‘
When they sent Angela round, that first time, I knew it was you. I knew what you'd gone and done.

‘
It was in your eyes, that last time I went to your stupid writing club. Your lying, purple-shadowed, traitor's eyes.
'

I imagine her looking back at me, and, because of the bandages, there'll just be her lips moving, forming those words.

‘
What's that you're saying, Miss?