Pitch

Amy knew what dead was. Dead was what had happened to her mum; dead was what had happened to her dad. This was not dead. This was death's tease, curling fingers, holding her, crushing her, trapping her screams in an old tin jar and letting them rattle as though they had any chance of escaping.

Only Amy was six and she didn't think like that. To her, this was merely evil, the sort of thing that the Devil himself would do, and she shut her eyes tightly so that Tom would stop looking at her like she was the finest roast on the spit. She thought it was a game gone wrong, something perhaps that she did not understand but when she went to say his name, her voice came out in cries that made her sob harder.

She needed the toilet.

That was how it had started and when she had made to leave this little trail Tom had drawn her and Dennis on, he had turned. Not like Mrs Cole when she was happy and then angry because someone had spilled their dinner on their clothes, but like he was someone else entirely. He had said she had to stay, that the game had not started yet and he needed her. She had crossed her legs and looked from Tom to Dennis to the path they had wandered in on and when she tried to run, she found herself flying headfirst into a wall that she could not see and could not remember but that was definitely there.

When she had cried, he had laughed.

When she had shown him the blood streaming down her nose, he had laughed.

When Dennis tried to run, he found his legs had gone from under him like jelly.

Tom had laughed again. Triumph. Victory. Power.

Dennis had heard things around the orphanage of Tom. Stories and whispers amongst the adults whilst he hid in corners as he was prone to doing, tales of things. That was all they ever said though, because either he got caught or something happened elsewhere, and the things were forgotten again, perhaps for late night conversation over a tipple of brandy when all the children were safely tucked up in bed.

But even then, that didn't seem to deter Tom. Dennis had seen him, some nights when he couldn't sleep and looked through the glass in the window, slinking around in the corridor, not even bothering to stick to the shadows. Sometimes, he looked straight at Dennis but in the darkness that night-time in the orphanage brought, the younger boy was quite sure he hadn't been seen.

Perhaps after all that, he had.

He couldn't run. He couldn't even move without his legs falling beneath him and Tom, somehow, was making him dance around like a puppet on a string. He was sobbing through his frustration and yet Tom carried on, moving his arms in huge exaggerated swoops that made him look like he was stood in front of a full symphony orchestra. It was like emotion meant nothing, told him nothing.

Dennis knew that Amy was somewhere but now all he could see was black. A huge vast expanse and pain, like a hundred knives pricking his skin and he thought that if he made one lurch forward, they would all pierce straight through him. At that moment, that was what he wanted. He could hear Tom's footsteps, light and jovial and dancing around him in a circle. He was enjoying this. He wanted him to feel this pain and when one of his long, pale fingers traced down the younger boy's back, Dennis screamed.

He fell to his knees and the knives drew away but still, nothing but black.

"Don't even think about it."

Tom had always spoken in a man's voice, a soft drawl that showed superiority, the need to be envied, and Amy froze. Now she was desperate and had crossed her legs to stop herself from embarrassing herself further. When Tom had been moving around Dennis in a hypnotic circle, she had seen her chance for escape but he must have had eyes in the back of his head and she stopped dead in her tracks at the chill of his voice.

The sun was shimmering through the entrance of the cave but she was freezing.

"Come with me."

Dennis felt his body be dragged up by his hair and he slumped forwards, letting Tom guide him as though he was a ragdoll: limp, not human. In the darkness, he could hear Amy whimpering and he wanted to show her that he was there, that he would help but it would be a promise he could not keep, and he had been scolded by Mrs Cole before for doing that. Instead he kept his lips firmly closed and tasted the salt of his tears on his tongue each time he swallowed. He kept his head down and his feet dragged and each time Tom shook him, he did not react. He would not give in again.

"There."

They stopped and when Tom let him go, Dennis crumpled to the ground. There was a scuffle that was Tom throwing Amy forward and Dennis could feel the smile on the elder boy's face. It glowed behind his blacked out eyes like a cat's eyes in the moonlight. It mocked him in his obscurity.

"Drink."

Dennis froze and then a hand on the back of his neck, a trill of laughter that bounced off the cave and black and white and red and gold and nothing. He could feel the water sliding past his open lips and forcing itself down his throat but in the darkness he was subject to, he knew screaming was futile. He thrust an arm out, hoping, praying to wrap it around Amy but he just met thin air. He could not even feel the hand on the back of his throat and when he pulled himself up and out of the water, Tom had gone.

"Oh, Amy, again?" Mrs Cole had said when they had emerged from the cave and found their way back to the group. There was no sign of Tom and when Mrs Cole swept Amy away to change her clothes, Dennis asked Jimmy Sykes if he had seen him. Not a hide nor hair and when Mrs Cole asked ten minutes later, Dennis found he could not tell her what they had been doing. Rendered mute by a memory he now could not recall, he had just stared at her dumbly and waited for the question to dissolve in the hubbub of the room.

It inevitably did and Tom inevitably returned and spun Mrs Cole stories of exploring and falling in puddles and laughter that sang through the air louder than the screech of a seagull. Dennis watched him but he could not bring to mind what it was, what made him so suddenly terrified of this boy.

In years to come, Amy and Dennis lost contact. Though they had bonded over a day lost in the depths of their minds, eradicated through terror, she had been evacuated in the war and he had stayed and watched London burn around him.

For him, the worst part was the night.

For her, the lap of the ocean made her faint.

For both, it was inexplicable but the face they both saw when darkness fell or when blood dripped from their bodies or when they felt themselves submerged into nothing at the smell of the sea was his. A child's laugh. A child's body. The dreams of a boy with a heart of stone and an imagination of one without a soul.

By the time he was vanquished, Amy Benson and Dennis Bishop were no more. Two victims who wanted freedom from the oppression of a missing memory, he had taken his life and she had lost hers to insanity.

Even in death, he was victorious.