injured32 Chapter 2: fan, a 009-1 fanfic

We went another mile and then decided to camp for the night.

There was still some daylight left, but nobody really wanted to

use it. We were exhausted from what had happened at the

dump and on the bridge, but it was more than that. We were in

Harlow now, in the forest. Somewhere was a dead child, who

probably had a broken body and was covered with flies. Nobody

wanted to get too close to him with night approaching. By

stopping here, we thought there had to be at least ten miles between

us and him, and of course all four of us knew there were no such

things as ghosts, but ten miles seemed about far enough if we

were wrong.

Vern, Chris and Teddy gathered wood and started a campfire.

Chris laid it on stones and made a clear space around it because the

forest was very dry and he didn't want to take any risks. While they

were doing that, I sharpened some green sticks and pushed lumps

of hamburger meat on to them. When the flames were low and the

fire was good and hot, we cooked the meat, but we were too

hungry to wait. We pulled the lumps off their sticks early. They

were black on the outside, red on the inside and completely

Delicious.

Afterwards Chris opened his backpack. He took out a packet of

cigarettes and gave us one each. We lay back on the ground or

against trees and smoked our cigarettes, as if we were grown men.

We were feeling good.

'There's nothing like a smoke after a meal,' Teddy said.

'Absolutely,' Vern agreed

We laid our blankets out on the ground and lay down on them.

Then for about an hour we fed the fire and talked — the kind of

talk you can never quite remember when you get past fifteen and

discover girls. We talked about fishing and sport, and about the

summer that was now ending. Teddy told about the time he had

been at White's Beach in Brunswick and some guy had hit his head

while diving and had almost drowned. We had a long discussion

about our teachers at school.

We didn't talk about Ray Brower, but I was thinking about him.

There's something horrible about the way darkness comes to the

forest. There are no car lights to make it softer or less sudden; there

are no mothers' voices calling for their children to come in now. If

you're used to the town, the coming of the dark in the forest seems

unnatural.

And as I thought about the body of Ray Brower, I didn't

feel frightened and wonder whether he would suddenly appear

as a ghost. Unexpectedly I felt pity for him, lying so alone in the

dark. If something wanted to eat him, it would. His mother

wasn't here to stop it and neither was his father, nor any of his

friends, nor Jesus Christ. He was dead and he was all alone, and

I realized that if I didn't stop thinking about it I was going to

Cry.

So I told the others a Le Dio story; Le Dio is a soldier I

invented who had a lot of adventures in the Second World War.

It wasn't a very good one. And when it ended, as the Le Dio

stories usually did, with a single American soldier coughing

out a dying promise of his love for America and for a girl

back home, it was not his face I saw in my mind's eye but the

face of a much younger boy, already dead, his eyes closed,

blood running from the left corner of his mouth. And

behind him, instead of war-scarred France, I saw only dark

forest and the railway tracks dark at the top of a bank against the

starry sky.

Chapter 15 A Dream of Deep Water

I woke up in the middle of the night. I didn't know where I was,

and I wondered why it was so cold in my bedroom and who had

left the windows open.

Then I realized that this wasn't my room. This was somewhere

else. And someone had his arms wrapped around me, while someone

else was kneeling beside me, head turned as if listening to

something.

'What's happening?' I asked in puzzlement.

The thing holding me made a noise. It sounded like Vern.

That made me wake up properly and remember where I was. But

what was everybody doing awake in the middle of the night? I had

been asleep for some hours.

'Don't let it get me,' Vern said. 'I promise I'll be good.'

, I sat up, frightened. 'Chris?'

'Shut up, Vern,' Chris said. He was the one next to me, listening.

'It's nothing.'

'Oh, yes it is,' Teddy said heavily. 'It's something.'

'What is?' I asked. As if to answer my question, a long and hollow

team rose from the forest. It was the sort of scream you might

expect from a woman who was dying in extreme pain and extreme

Fear.

'Oh, Jesus,' Vern whispered, his voice high and filled with tears.

He tightened his hold on me, making it hard for me to breathe

and adding to my own terror. I threw him loose, but he came

straight back, like a young dog which can't think of anywhere else

to go.

'It's Brower,' Teddy whispered. 'His ghost is out walking in the

Forest.'

'Oh, God!' Vern shouted. 'I promise I won't take any more sexy

magazines from the shops. I promise to eat my vegetables. I won't

swear. I won't. . .'

'Shut up, Vern,' Chris said. But Vern's voice only dropped back

to a whisper. Chris sounded strong, but underneath I could hear

iff. I wondered if the hair was standing up on his neck as it was on

mine.

'It's a bird, isn't it?' I asked Chris.

'No. At least I don't think it is. I think it's a wild cat My dad says

they scream like hell at certain times of the year. It sounds like a

woman, doesn't it?'

'Yes,' I said.

'But no woman could scream that loud,' Chris said . . . and then

added helplessly, 'Could she, Gordie?'

'It's his ghost,' Teddy whispered again. 'I'm going to go and look

for it.'

I don't think he was serious, but we took no chances. When he

started to get up, Chris and I pulled him back down.

'Let me go, you asses!' Teddy shouted. 'If I say I want to go and

look for it, then I'm going to go and look for it! I want to see it! I

want to see the ghost! I —'

The wild cry rose into the night again, cutting the air like a

knife and freezing us with our hands on Teddy. The scream

climbed impossibly high, hung there for a moment and then slid

down to the lowest imaginable sound. This was followed by a burst

of what sounded like mad laughter . . . and then there was silence

again.

'Jesus H. Christ,' Teddy whispered, and he talked no more of

going into the forest to see what was making that screaming

noise. All four of us stayed close together and I thought of

running. I doubt I was the only one. If we had been camping in

Vern's field —where our parents thought we were — we probably

would have run. But Castle Rock was too far, and the thought of

trying to run across that bridge in the dark made my blood

freeze. Running deeper into Harlow and closer to the body of

Ray Brower was equally unthinkable. We had nowhere to go. If

there was a ghost out there, and if it wanted us, it would probably

get us.

Chris suggested that we keep guard and everyone was agreeable

to that. We spun coins to see who would go first. It was Vern, and I

was last. Vern sat by the camp-fire while the rest of us lay down

again, close to one another, like sheep.

I was sure that sleep would be impossible, but I did sleep — a

light, uneasy sleep that was as near to being awake as it was to

being asleep. My half-sleeping dreams were filled with wild cries

which were possibly real or possibly imagined. I saw — or

thought I saw — something white and shapeless float through the

Trees.

At last I slipped into something I knew was a dream. Chris

and I were swimming at White's Beach, a lake in Brunswick. It

was where Teddy had seen the boy hit his head and almost

drown. In my dream we were out in deep water, swimming

lazily along, with a hot July sun up in the sky. From behind us

came cries and shouts of laughter. On the sandy beach, people

lay face down on blankets, and little children played with plastic

buckets at the edge of the water or sat happily pouring sand

into their hair. Teenagers formed grinning groups and the boys

watched the girls walk endlessly up and down in twos and

threes, never alone, the secret places of their bodies wrapped in

Swimsuits.

Mrs Cote, our English teacher from school, floated past us on a

rubber boat. She was lying on her back, dressed in her usual

September-to-june uniform of a grey suit.

'Be careful boys,' she said. 'If you're not good I'll hit you so hard

that you'll go blind. Now, Mr Chambers, we'll hear the poem

"Mending Wall", please.'

'I tried to give the money back,' Chris said. 'Mrs Simons said

OK, but she took it! Do you hear me? She took it! Now what are

you going to do about it? Are you going to hit her until she's

Blind?'

' "Mending Wall", Mr Chambers, if you please.'

Chris threw me a desperate look, as if to say Didn't I tell you it

would be like this? and then began: 'Something there is that

doesn't love a wall, that sends the —' And then his head went

under, his mouth filling with water in the middle of repeating

the poem.

He broke through the surface, crying, 'Help me, Gordie! Help

Me!'

Then he was dragged under again. Looking into the clear water, I

could see two bare swollen bodies holding his ankles. One was Vern

and the other was Teddy, and their open eyes were empty and

white. Chris's head broke out of the water again. He reached one

hand towards me and out of his mouth came a screaming, womanish

cry that rose and rose in the hot, sunny, summer air. I looked

wildly towards the beach, but nobody had heard. Chris's scream

was cut off as the bodies pulled him under the water again. As they

dragged him down to black water, I could see his eyes turned up

to me and his hands reaching out helplessly. But instead of diving

down and trying to save him, I swam madly for the shore, or at

least to a place where the water would not be over my head.

Before I could get there — before I could even get close — I felt a

soft, rotten hand wrap itself firmly around my leg and begin to

pull. A scream started to rise in my chest . . . but before it came

out, the dream passed into reality. There was Teddy with his hand

on my leg. He was shaking me awake. It was my turn to keep

Guard.

Chapter 16 The Deer

The others slept heavily through the rest of the night. I was sometimes

awake and sometimes half asleep. The night was far from

silent, with the cries of birds and mice and insects; but there were no

more screams.

Finally I came awake and realized that something was different. It

took a moment or two to know what it was: although the moon

was down, I could see my hands resting on my jeans. My watch said

quarter to five. It was dawn.

I stood and walked a few yards into the forest. I stretched and

began to feel the fear of the night before slide away. It was a good

Feeling.

I climbed up the bank to the railway tracks and sat on one of the

tracks, spinning and catching stones. I was in no hurry to wake the

others. The new day felt too good to share.

I don't know how long I sat there, watching dawn turn to full

morning, watching the sky change from purple to blue. I was about

to get up when I looked to my right and saw a deer standing

between the tracks not ten yards from me.

My heart flew up into my throat. I didn't move. I couldn't move.

Her eyes weren't brown, but a dark, dusty black. She looked calmly

at me, her head held a little low in what looked like curiosity, seeing

a boy with his hair standing up from sleep in jeans and brown shirt,

sitting there on the tracks. What I was seeing was a gift, given with a

kind of terrible carelessness.

We looked at each other for a long time . . . I think it was a long

time. Then she turned and walked off to the other side of the tracks.

She found grass and began to eat. I couldn't believe it. She hadn't

gone away; she had begun to eat. She didn't look back at me and

didn't need to: I was frozen solid.

Then the tracks started to shake under my body and seconds later

the deer's head came up and turned back towards Castle Rock. She

stood there for a moment and then she was gone in three leaps,

disappearing into the forest with no sound except one dry branch

that cracked like a gun.

I sat and looked at the place where she had been until the actual

sound of the train came through the stillness. Then I slid back down

the bank to where the others were sleeping.

The train woke them up. They yawned and scratched. There

was some nervous talk about the 'screaming ghost', as Chris

called it, but not as much as you might imagine. In daylight

it seemed more foolish than interesting — almost embarrassing.

Best forgotten.

I nearly told them about the deer, but in the end I didn't. That

was one thing I kept to myself. I've never spoken or written about

I nearly told them about the deer, but in the end I didn't.

That was one thing I kept to myself.

it until just now, today. And I have to tell you that it seems less

important when it is written down. But for me it was the best part

of that trip, the cleanest part, and it was a moment I found myself

returning to, almost helplessly, when there was trouble in my life:

my first day in the forest in Vietnam, when this guy walked up

with his hand over his nose, and he took his hand away and there

was no nose there, because a bullet had taken if off; the time the

doctor told us that our son might have a brain infection; the long,

crazy weeks before my mother died. I would find my thoughts

turning back to that morning. But the most important things are

the hardest to say. It's hard to make strangers care about the good

things in life.