Two Little Gods

Chapter 3: The Smiling and Beautiful Country-Side

[Messages: Greetings to my few reviewers and the many more who are silently watching. I appreciate your attention, may you enjoy the story. It has been a long time since I last posted - hopefully this makes up, it's rather a long one. Perhaps you can tell me what you do or do not like about it. Have a nice day and a cup of tea and even a biscuit if you like.]

The children gathered on the rail platform and awaited their attendant instructors. On either side of the walk was an identical stretch of vibrant rolling green run through here and there with a ribbon of white chalk. Fluffy gold-tinged clouds hung suspended in the big blue sky.

Sherlock grimaced and tugged his black fringe down over his eyes. A matron came and roughly combed his hair out of his face with her claw-like hand. The congregation then proceeded along the platform and onto the path leading to the village. Sherlock shoved his hands into his pockets and trailed miserably behind. His eyes watched the stones pass beneath him on the ground.

The students had been transported from the public school, perched in idyllic calm upon the fringe of a desecrated abbey, to a village in the heart of the South Downs, perched in idyllic calm upon the fringe of a Woolworths. Such outings made not an ounce of sense to Sherlock. The school was in the middle of no where. The town was in the middle of no where. He viewed such events as simply having the effect of removing him from the cotton-wool solitude of his room and his distractions of choice.

The matron shouted his name to gain his attention. He started. And realized that his wandering thoughts had caused him to physically wander into the middle of a churchyard while the rest of the group had turned a sharp left into the town. He had been stood there staring into the sunken graves of bi-centenarians - for who knows how long. The children laughed at him, the boys in their maroon and grey and the girls in their green and white, clashed terribly as they rocked with laughter. He set his face and followed far behind them, down the road.

Sherlock maintained as much distance as average eyesight would allow by focusing his attention on the askew unkempt hair of the tallest boy in class - the bully from the train. The "bully" was not by nature a violent boy, in Sherlock's experience. But that fact was of little consequence - he was worse than brutal, the boy was cowardly: He was not only painfully "normal" but he pursued the illusory ideal of "normality" with such earnestness that just watching him made Sherlock nauseous. He was the sort of boy, James he recalled his name now - James Hatfield; (Sherlock mentally labeled and filed these details for future reference) - was the sort of boy who chose his footwear according to the fashion tastes of MTV presenters. The sort of boy who needed glasses very badly but was too self-conscious to wear them. Pathetic. Disgusting.

The group, by now far ahead, reached the town square and disseminated along the high street. Sherlock waited until the mass cleared. Then he skulked along, observing his surroundings with the smallest molecule of interest. The narrow winding high street consisted of brightly painted buildings, of indeterminate age. Some were precariously leaning forward. And, to the right, was the body of a curving down, interrupted here and there by a crumbling wall which terminating in the Norman church with a sunken and corrupted churchyard shoved full to bursting with monuments melted by time, elements and the inventive introduction of acid rain.

Very pleasant.

Too pleasant.

Children hopped around and pushed against each other to investigate shops for sweets and cheap amusements. Sherlock resigned himself to a patch of cool shadow and regarded the surrounding square He sought a quiet hole in which to curl and read and hide during the four hours of this seemingly interminable waste. Instead, he was greeted by a broad open space punctuated with beatific statues of shimmering benevolent kings and sweet-faced queens. At their feet, statuary images of the dutifully enslaved kneeled in thanks. Behind them, a war monument stabbed into the sky.

Sherlock longed to lounge under the protective feet of that cow-eyed Queen, her monument to mediocrity, and devour the tastiest portions of The Times blotter.

"SHERLOCK!"

The angry matron was telling him that they had done with this part of the village and were moving to another place. He slowly unfolded his legs and shuffled, bleary eyed, into line. Moving down the street, he preoccupied himself with details he picked out from buildings they passed and cars. He took notice of incongruities in structure and character. A woman in a suit was standing on the pavement, talking to a man in a pair of overalls. That was not unusual. Yet she had light splatters of mud on her leather patent shoes. That was unusual. He eyed them carefully, passing her by. There was no mud in the street - the ground was dry. Then he saw beyond her there was a steep drop at the front of a house - it was a stair that led to a cellar apartment. A man in a similar pair of overalls was digging out and replacing the pavement. Yes, of course, of course. She was an agent overseeing a real-estate investment. Not a depraved woman at the head of a rural criminal ring. Sherlock sighed with disappointment. Yet his mind had already begun the inventive wander and now begged satisfaction -

The dug out pavement had reminded him of his grandfather's rambling French mansion - why? The mansion with its mysterious dark halls and vast underworld of cavernous cellars...

The cellars - ah yes. He recalled a story from when he was little. A macabre tale which his nurse had told him. Really she should not have been telling small children such things - but this was the prime reason he had been somewhat fond of her. And he imagined she thought him older and wiser than the others. The tale from his infancy called up vague memories of a cellar - which had at one point been a dungeon - with blackened walls that betrayed fire damage, marked by the clear break where the foundation had been rebuilt. Upon these walls echoed the cries of a servant girl's baby. The cries also echoed from the flagstones - under which the baby was now buried. Sherlock's eyes had glittered.

The story had interested him like no other. Interested him so that he could not even sleep, consumed - not frightened - but consumed as he was by wild imaginings. His pale little eyes became ringed with dark circles. His mother had consented to nurse giving him a spoonful of brandy in a mug of hot chocolate, every night, to ease him to sleep.

As fascinating as the mansion seemed, in theory, now that he was removed from it - he could not help but hate the house, as well as the school, and the village. For these structures made him feel like an animal in containment, able to sense things that other humans did not seem to notice, unable even to speak the same language. Under the smiles of the happy families and the thin mothers with their fat babies, he saw something sinister peeking out from underneath. And it was so dark he could not ignore it. Sherlock could not help he could see the things the others could not see - and yet he was relegated to silence. Silence in the company of others, as grandfather said, lest he embarrass himself and, worse - show up the family.

Silence was key in the Holmes household. Silence above all.

In his silence Sherlock trudged along. He could feel the glares of "the others". The laughter - sometimes stifled but more often outright. He sunk down into his thoughts. But before they could enwrap him in the usual cocoon of warming escapism - he was shouted at.

"Sherlock! If you're not going to play with the other children or visit the shops, at the very least - you must stay with the group."

Ah, the sea of students had drifted away from him again and he was now being summoned and filtered in with the lot. He sighed and enrolled himself, with grudging obedience, amongst his childish fellows as they crashed and bumped against him - as they were high on sugar and freedom. His grimace deepened. He wondered where they all were going to and if it contained a small alcove in which he could hide and brood. Sherlock had locked his focus onto the promise of this fictional place when he was shoved, violently, by an anonymous person against a window - a window containing hanging carcasses of meat.

"Sorry!" someone shouted brutally. His words were enveloped in group laughter.

Sherlock's face whipped around with a venomous look. But the students had already left the scene and were swelling around a turn in the road. Sherlock stood there for a moment, staring at the meat bound by string, fantasising episodes of violence. He felt it welling up in him, the great terrible thing that fell on him occasionally in a wave when he became bored or had too much "alone time" on his hands - he felt it washing over him, the chemical, overwhelming him, irrepressible, acidic - the emotion.

Sherlock swallowed against a rising lump and felt his little hands tremble in his pockets. Mercifully, he was jerked back into reality. An angry matron nearly twisted his arm out of its socket.

"Ow, ow, ow!" - he said, inwardly. He ground his teeth in silent protest.

"You can't take direction can you -? You'll never just play along. You're not at all like the other children, you're so much better - aren't you? Is it so hard to play along, your majesty? Your eminence, is it so very hard to play along?" She jerked and shoved him into order down the street.

Sherlock's unshed tears stung his eyes as his delicate pale skin twisted and reddened under the matron's vicious grip. He was only eight after all, and quite small for eight at that, and the very tall woman would have harmed him by pulling him down the street simply by not stooping down to ease the tension on his arm. But she was doing much more than walking carefully.

When the other herding matrons came into view, Sherlock was finally released. He did not condescend to rub his burning skin for the pleasure of this woman or the children who had turned to watch him scolded. He glared at them with open disdain.

"Lord Sherlock," he heard a snigger. "The dark lord!" He heard, along with: "Ooo!" and they all laughed at their cleverness and shoved along. He was trapped in their midst.

They reached a playing field, a miserable destination - as there was no where to sit and hide except for in the woods. The children were divided into little teams. Sherlock held back purposely and contemplated the woods.

The last time he had fled into the woods, he had hidden there for days in an attempt to live his life-long dream of becoming a feral child - such as he had read about in psychology books. Search parties were called. The dispatched helicopters had amused him. That was the end of his boarding school experience in France. And the only good thing about being in France was that he had seen his mother more often, then. And if he were bad again he feared they might lock up his mother in a tower and send him to a boarding school in Mogadishu -

- Or worse, Kent.

He puttered about, looking for a particularly pleasing piece of grass that was, above all, dry. Then he took a seat on the edge of the field. He presumed he had been cast into some team-like formation but he rather preferred tying strands of grass together and throwing them to see how far he could get different designs of them to fly. He had succeeded in crossing half a meter with an egg-shaped grass formation when a football fell directly in front of his crossed legs.

This event caused his brain to switch back onto the "reality" setting. He suddenly noticed the sound of bird song, wind, and - the groups of screaming children calling his name.

"Sherlock!"

"Sherlock! Kick it!"

"RUN, Sherlock! Bloody useless!"

He stared at the ball boredly for a moment. The children's words grew in volume and violence until Sherlock sighfully drew himself up, pulled his foot back - an inch - and gave the football a single meter skid before he turned around and walked away to the sound of booing and a whistle being called.

Further off, near the edge of the wood, he relaxed into a daydream and enjoyed the cool of the shade. He was inwardly chuckling at what he had done. What idiots they looked - chasing about and pushing and falling over one another - and looking to see if the girls had seen. Yet he was, also, inwardly sighing. On the edge of his senses, he was somewhat aware of the fact that it was, indeed, a very fine day: According to human sensibilities. The sky was blue, the clouds were few - not that he noticed them but out of the corner of his eye, they were there - the wind was drifting, not too much but just enough. The air was warm and the children - they were far away. He warmed slightly to that last notion and felt his clenched insides slowly relax themselves. Then his calm thoughts were interrupted by a violent blow to the head.

This event was followed with universal merriment.

The football had hit him and sat spinning at his side. Sherlock noticed that the matron did not come running - she did not even affect pretensions at concern for his cranial fortitude. In fact she seemed to be stifling laughter behind the back of her hand.

He felt a growl rise up within him. And then, in a red flash of anger, Sherlock ran at them. The ball raced in front of him, a sort of sportsmanlike cover for his brutal base animal rage - this, he imagined, was the heart of sports, at any rate. He chased it like a madman, knocking down everyone in his path, ignoring whistles on his way to the goal - which was guarded by a timorous youth in braces who dove for the grass -

(and later went to hospital with a broken nose).

Sherlock then picked up the ball and threw it at a child standing on the sidelines.

Then he ran into the woods.

The game continued without him. He watched the outline of it from where he sat balled up at the top of a tree. No one came looking for him, this time. Which was just the way he liked it. Sherlock was shaking with rage despite himself. The emotion had won, and was crashing over him like North Sea waves on a breakwater. The little leaves on the trees fairly danced for all the trembling.

"Good thing," he whispered to himself, "good thing roaming bands of ninjas aren't after me tonight - or they'd find - they'd find me hiding in this bloody shaking tree and I'd... I'd be a dead boy."

If only he could find a way to control the emotion, he thought. If he could he would. And he would. Someday he would.

He concentrated on the memory of the bleeding boy lying crying at the goal. He endeavoured not to care about the boy's pain - and he found this was not difficult at all. At least it was much easier to not care about the boy's pain then it was to care about his own. At that realization, he drew his arms around himself and shut his eyes against these thoughts.

Over the hour, his residual chemicals ebbed away. He felt safe enough to climb down from his tree and walk a circuit around the woods, feeling like a boy-wolf. Despite wanting to think of other things - matters of substance, intriguing problems - he could not help contemplating bitterly the injustice of life and the stupidity of others. He felt that if he did not have a distraction, soon, he might just turn into a boy-wolf and devour them all.

The sun began to sink. The children massed near the matrons. It was time to travel home.

The matron eyed his approach sharply then hurried to the front of the class - either tired of dealing with him or hoping against hope he would slip away back into the woods and disappear forever.

They padded along the pavement leading through the village to the train platform. Thankfully, the exertions of the day had tested both Sherlock's brains and his body. His clockwork mind was beginning to wind down and he watched his exhausted leather-clad feet clicking over the pavement. He trailed, as usual, far behind the other students. His pair of shoes was then joined by another pair. Then another. Sherlock felt a shove at his side. A harder shove struck his back.

He had blindly - stupidly! - walked past an alley, all on his own. Clearly, some students had dropped off from the class to wait for him and have a private meeting. There was another push and a laugh - a blur of faces, many faces. Sherlock was busy cataloging them all but did not finish before being hit by a sharp blow to the face. He felt the rough kiss of pavement on his cheek bone as he hit the ground. And was jerked awake.

"Look at me when I'm speaking to you."

Sherlock's head bobbed.

"Look at me - And stand up straight!" A voice ordered in rough brogue.

Sherlock's head shot up. He had been daydreaming, again. It had been weeks since he was expelled from the boarding school. His face was almost healed. Yet he had completely forgotten he was "home".