Out In The Cold: Chapter Four

The beginning of term came and Connor increasingly felt out of place; he couldn't escape the feeling he was wearing someone else's skin.  Inside he was something else, a vague vapour floating around a body not his own; he became aware, at the oddest times, of his veins throbbing against the underside of his skin; his arms began to ache where he felt they were stretching away from him; the real him trapped inside.  He saw no means of escape; he couldn't run away, not from himself.  Increasingly he removed himself to his hole beneath the boards and the blankets.

Miranda's days were dogged by the fear that her son was working up to something; without even being aware she counted the days free from incident.  His casual indifference to her continued, she cleaned up after him, trailing his wake like a faint shadow, but there was no outward active defiance.  In the second week of Connor's return to school Miranda's fears began to ease; she couldn't physically contain the building fear and anticipation that frayed her nerves and left her pale and blood-shot: she was drained and almost as indifferent as her son had always been.

In the park the ice had long fled, giving way to discoloured collections of water along the paths.  It was a Friday, Connor was in school and for the first time, in a long time, not on Report.

"Hello."  A voiced edged its way in at her.

A boy stood at the corner of her shoulder.  His hair, brown, soiled, as though he had risen from one of the pools of muddy water all around.  Miranda stared at him.  His eyes shone with a wizened sheen and the shock of him made her stand, stepping back from him.

"Don't".  He said.

"Don't?"  The word, the question, an echo out of her mouth before she could think.

"Don't go."

Miranda's mind stuttered.  The boy before her held her in his gaze, surveying her. He was Connor's age, she thought.  Connor's height.  But the look he gave her, so familiar: longing.  He stepped towards her.  Miranda stood. Frozen.  Every sense crackled, electrified, as if from static.  The idea of what the boy was rubbed at her and the alert edges of her mind.  She fought with it, but the darkened corners knew, the empty spaces knew and they assaulted her with it.  Her mind felt like a bubble, the membrane thick and viscous holding the contents of her life, her history and who she was, but outside of this the pressure grew and the membrane thickened in response, aware of the unknown beyond its sphere, pushing in.  The darkness rippled against the sides, shivering up against the layer of fear holding everything back.

He spoke once more, "I think I know you, don't I."  He didn't ask.  He knew and he told her so, but the look on her face left him fearing what she might say, what she might do.

A sudden wind picked up the wet leaves at her feet; the wind ran itself around her bare ankles, tugged at the loose sides of her clothes and drew the strands of her fringe away from her eyes.  The pulsing darkness poured in, filling her up and sudden recognition gave light to the boy before her.

*

Connor's day was a slow one.  The aches and weariness that overtook him continued, but he was becoming accustomed, attuned to the beating drum of his body.  Tireless voices chirruped all around him, nibbling at his patience and he longed for the silence of his hideaway.  It was science.  Science with Mr Bushell, the voices tittered around him because they could, it hadn't taken long to learn the simple lesson that day, now he was safe to play for time and they were safe to chatter.  Occasionally he spoke up and some listened, others averted their eyes; not many could take him seriously; at first, girls fawned over him, but most saw through him in the end.  Connor had seen through him quite some time ago.  Connor's eyes drifted loosely around the room now and finally settled on the poster of the human skeleton, its whitened bones proudly on display with tendons and muscles transposed across the frame, vaguely transparent so a view of both the tissue and the bone could be seen.  Connor set to wondering how his soul could fill the spaces there; did it ripple up and around the sinews, lapping around the body like a lost wave without any promise of breaking against the shore?  Taking down the plastic skull from the model display, Connor unpicked the catches and released the sections of the skull that exposed the pink, plastic brain.  How could his soul fill anything in this body of his when every space was accounted for?  He stared into the absent eyes of the plastic corpse and it stared back with a familiar vagueness: the corpse was a poor plastic cousin of his, but he felt a peculiar attachment to it and while Mr Bushell attempted to win favour with the crowd, Connor buried the skull in his bag.

The bell rang, summoning them to lunch.  Mr Bushell was the first out.  Always late, always first out.  Connor had never given him much thought, he was, after all, hardly worth it.  But he saw his science teacher then for what he was, an empty waste of a man.  A grown man, no better than the plastic shell in his school bag, chattering like some broken wind-up plastic monkey clattering its cymbals because this was all it knew to do.  He felt a revulsion at himself then, felt that he too were some puttering wind-up toy, skittering around aimlessly.  He didn't belong here, he didn't even belong in his skin, he felt it wasn't his, had never been his and as he scratched the paint from Mr Bushell's car door with the broken edge of his sharpener, he tore careful lines into his skin too, leaving bloody trails that petered along his arm's length.

He walked straight home that day, the first since he could remember.  The way was familiar enough the way the bus drove, but he cut through the neighbouring estate to save time.  Twice he came to a dead end in two separate cul-de-sacs; the children who lived there watched him walk by and then out again hurriedly.  Up until now, he realised, he was as much a joke as Mr Bushell: his tantrums and maliciousness were nothing but wasteful and as he slunk along the pavement in the direction of home he resolved to be wasteful no longer.

Out In The Cold: Chapter Three

In the morning the wind had eased.  The television spoke of fallen trees and floodings; Connor filled the sink to as far as the overflow hole and snapped the tap back, watching the water sloop up and down as if the tiny peaks were looking for an escape.  He filled the sink with tubes and bottles and gradually the water slipped up to the overflow, gurgling away into the hidden abyss behind the walls.  Leaving things this way, he moved off to his room and planted his shoes on his feet before joining his mother in the car.  They pulled out and left the house behind.  It was their annual trip to his grandmother's house.

At the train station people moved at infuriatingly slow paces, filling up spaces that others dodged around in sweeping panic of hurry and semi-madness.  His mother had put a full day's worth of coins into the machine and left the car parked ready for the dash back to the sanctuary of home later that evening.  It would be dark and cold, Connor thought, when they got back home and he had turned off the heating as he left.  He couldn't just leave without some sort of blemish to cherish, but now he regretted it and he could see it would only be colder tonight, with the sky so clear overhead.  He wanted to dash away, disappear between the tubs waddling back and forth, in and out, but it was too late: their train was here.

Miranda found good seats, window seats, hurriedly discarded their bags in the overhead tray and directed Connor to sit.  He did so.  Though he dutifully obeyed, she shivered with terror: at any moment he might spring up and scratch, snarl and bite at a passer-by like some deranged animal.  She didn't imagine it, she remembered it.  His fifth birthday, at a Brighton café, he had done just that.  It had filled her with bitter tears that she fought back in order to dish out the several apologies, each one a tearing agony of embarrassment.

Connor picked at the fabric of his seat, looking for loose threads or tears he could worry at, or use to hide stones, rubbish or a dirty tissue in.  The window held his reflection and he watched his face bob and sway against a moving flurry of green fields and occasional embracing woods.  The journey to his grandmothers's was a yearly ritual that was pointless to consider escaping.  If he didn't come his grandmother would only come to them and she would surely stay the night.  He didn't like the way she looked at him, through him.  It made him cold.  Made him look away from her.  He felt like some animal made lame by her stare; acid, it burnt him, and under it he felt like the cold ash forgotten at the edges of her fireplace.

Miranda's book was held loosely between her fingers, the words wandered up to her, called up to the uninterested stare and lodged themselves briefly at her doorstep before the page fled from her.  The book was a prop while she worried over Connor, kept watch on those around them, checked his glances and where they took him.  Prayed he didn't need the toilet, doubting he would want to wander away from the tiny hole he was working into the fabric of his seat, but worrying in any case.

*

Christmas came and went without incident; the trip to Miranda's mother's had been smooth.  She had left in something of a state of shock, feeling that there must be something around the corner, something ready to step out of the darkness.  But it didn't.  Even Chirstmas day had been free from event, Connor had opened presents, disappeared to his room and spent most of it out of sight while she was left to watch television, or read in the box seat.  Her only source of disappointment had been the return to the house after the visit to her mother's: the heating was off and a tap was dutifully filling a sink to the overspill.  That was it though.  At other times, windows had been broken, bed sheets thrown into the garden; on longer periods away she had twice returned with Connor to find the freezer off, a foul and fetid stench filling the house.

Now New Year's Eve hung over her and the clock ticked along.  The rain fell outside, it fell as dutifully as her tap had run, filling up the sink.

Although his mother sat downstairs in her precious box seat, Connor had decided to retreat into his hole.  He rarely came in when she was still in the house, but she felt he was safe tonight.  He could hear the spit and thunder of fireworks even from his hole, his mother, he was sure, watched in gasping amazement at the window.  There was nothing better to do than carve his name into different joists and push back the felt insulation further and further, widening and lengthening his hidden recess.  He felt a master here; here he could feel free.  He played with the lights too; he sat in the brightness holding the bulbs up against his eye then killing the power to his 9 volt.  Lights flashed dully against the darkness.  Orange glows and blue rings snapped in and out of focus, his own firework display to accompany the whizz and crack of those outside and, in the darkness, he held his breath.

Miranda's window held little between the purpled flashes and the blues that sparkled in the air above.  Her neighbours all year around tried to out do each other every year, and, each year, it provided Miranda with a new and better display than the previous year.  Outside the wind stirred, the fizz of falling lights was caught up for a moment longer before fading into the night.  The temperature outside had risen with the onset of the rain and the familiar frosts had fallen away from her window, away from the paving slabs; the white fingers that had pulled up toward her palms on the glass pane were gone.  The air was filled now with misty rain rather than left empty by Winter's touch.  There was a week left before Connor returned to school, when he realised this, when it felt real, like it was clawing at him, she knew the calm would break.

Connor felt safe enough in his space and slept, slept through the chime of twelve.  In his dreams he felt a touch on his hand, against his cheek, saw his mother's look of wonder but everything felt wrong to him, his skin was hot where she touched him, her wonder wasn't mirrored by him.  She wasn't his mother.

Out In The cold: Chapter Two

Connor lifted himself over his mother's back yard fence, landing lightly among broken garden tools and wood scraps.  The back light was on and it threw enough light across the lawn to see his way back.  He opened the French doors, helped himself to cake from the fridge and went to his room.  It was a mess.  The sight shook him each time he entered, but it was momentary and he adjusted; he had made it this way, this was how he liked it.

Moving to his cupboard, stepping over debris, unavoidably crunching some of it underfoot, he opened the door and stepped inside.  He hunkered down and wormed his way down into the mole hill of clothes, shoes, blankets until he disappeared into the mound.  Scratching at the floorboards below he found the one he had worked loose and pulled it clear, heaving himself in below the other boards, into the darkness.  Here he was free, safe from his mother's watch.  The boards opened into a dead space underneath the hallway and the stairs; he had room to move about freely and could fit at least another two people his size if he wanted, but he wouldn't, why would he.  He turned on his little light, powered by a lumpy 9v battery; the light's plastic casing was shattered long ago.  He had pulled out the metal parts fastening them back together and now a series of lights dripped out enough light for him to see the copper piping that ran overhead along the beams, the ruined webbing in the corners, his tools, the box of matches he had hidden.  Here he also had bedding and a pillow and it wasn't long before he decided to bed down in his hole.

Miranda left the school, her head held low, like so many times before.  The leather strap of her bag had given way to age and she fiddled with the fraying edge, sat in the car wondering why he caused her so much grief, so much trouble.  His teacher had told him to sit down, but instead he hung at the window, his hand against the pane, had slammed the window with the flat of his hand and, annoyed it hadn't given way, struck the nearest child.  She heard the story, so familiar, the words were like echoes skittering back across her mind to the last time and the time before that.  She simply nodded and apologised, finally abashed when the teacher finished on the part where Connor had lashed out at him too.

She drove to several playgrounds, the library, the supermarket; she walked along the canal and then up through the woods her breath momentarily clouding the way ahead before clearing above her slumped figure.  The police had checked all these places and would call the moment they heard something.  In her heart she wanted to disconnect the phone and disappear into the night's darkness.  She opened her coat, purged herself of the warm air trapped inside and welcomed the chilled touch of the black air, it was an embrace to the wishes and the prayers.

She sank to her knees and murmurred broken words between salty tears, each word drifting away into the darkness.

*

It was two days before Connor made himself known again, he knew it was the only way to gain enough sympathy from the school, from his mother and from the services that by now would be involved.  All those involved were well aware he could disappear, this wasn't the first time, but this was the longest time.  It hadn't become a media story, so certain was everyone that he would turn up.  Each day his mother disappeared to search for him he used the time to feed himself from the tins she wouldn't miss at the back of cupboards; showered and brushed his teeth, read his books and mooched about in the garden collecting good stones, stones he could throw long and hard, or picked at the garden waste and the tools there at the garden's end.  In the night he lay in his hole relishing the tears he heard his mother crying, he knew though that they weren't for him, not really.

Scores of adults and children at school wanted to know where he had been, but he wasn't about to give away the best thing about the house.  He could go there any time and he knew it.  As long as his disappearances were his secret, he could vanish whenever he had a mind to.

Christmas was gaining momentum.  Decorations were in the classroom as well as an advent calender. Only the children who had performed well that day were allowed to open the doors to chocolates or riddles hidden there by the teacher. He didn't care to participate.  Instead, when Chrissie had won for the third day in a row he sneaked in at break and hid drawing pins in the cloth of his teacher's chair, he tore at the edges of display boards and sketched obscenities on Chrissie's desk.

By afternoon registration Chrissie was nowhere to be seen and his handiwork had been cleaned away, but if you looked carefully you could still make out a faint etching in the table's laminate.  The teacher had seen the pins, but the frayed boards went unnoticed.  At the weekend he disappeared for several hours and waited outside Chrissie's house.  No one paid him any mind and when Chrissie left with her parents, Connor took a well fingered stone from his pocket and aimed it at a window, each and every crash that accompanied the successful targetting met with an uncontrollable sense of exultation that ran, rippling though his core.

On the walk home he saw his mother pass in the car, she slowed.  She couldn't pass him without picking him up, but he ran into the wood and disappeared from view.  At home he had made himself a sandwich, leaving the fridge door open.  His mother left the car keys at the counter and closed the door, she began, silently, to pick at the mess her son had left for her.  He wouldn't allow her the slightest peace.

In the evening Connor sat in the box window completing his homework: he wasn't stupid and it wasn't hard.  He let his book flap loose on his lap afterward, idly watching it slip slowly to the floor.  The wind outside thudded against the glass, as if shouldering the window in frustration.  The wind's direction was indiscrimate, the trees outside were battered from a west-sided barrage, then an east.  Connor's eyes rounded, his pupils growing black and large as he sucked in the energy on display, for him.