Boy in the Tower Read online

‘They didn’t think, Dory. They just punched and punched and kicked and . . . I didn’t think . . . I didn’t think I would get away.’

  ‘But you did, my dear. You did.’

  I accidentally drop one of the tins I was carrying, and they stop talking and Dory comes to the door to help me. Mum smiles when she sees me. Her eyes look bright but she’s not crying.

  I worry that she must feel tired because she’s not getting the same amount of sleep as she did before, but when I ask her that, she laughs out loud and says that she’s not tired at all, that she feels better than she has done in a long time.

  I can scarcely believe how much better she is; I keep thinking that there’ll be a day when she won’t get out of bed again and this time she has spent with Dory, Obi and Ben will just have been a dream I had once.

  I keep waiting for that day to come. I wait and I wait but it doesn’t happen.

  And just when I start thinking that Mum really is all right, that’s when the rain starts to fall.

  Chapter Fifty-two

  The first time I hear it, I am lying in bed at night. I am half sleeping, half dreaming when the sound of the rain wakes me.

  It takes me a few minutes to realize what it is. It’s such a soft sound if you really listen to it, the pitter-patter of the rain, but to me that night, it sounds deadly. Terrifying.

  I pull back the curtains. The sky is clouded over but it is beginning to get light outside. The rain is falling steadily down onto the green on the ground. Onto the swelling Bluchers below.

  I try to look down at the bottom of the tower to see if they have started to grow towards us but I can’t make anything out. It all looks blurry through the rain.

  Pigeon wakes up when I start moving and I pick up his sleepy body so he hangs over my shoulder. He feels heavy and warm against me. When I put him down, he settles right on top of my legs so I can’t move them.

  In the end, I just pull the covers over my head to try and block out the sound of the rain and go back to sleep.

  All I can do is wait for morning. And hope that it has stopped by then.

  But in the morning, the rain is still falling.

  The clouds look darker now. They are bigger, more menacing. Puffed up and heavy with the rain they are carrying.

  I have a feeling of dread in my stomach. I know the rain could stop and we might be all right. I know that people could be coming to rescue us at any time. But I also know that both of those things might not happen. That this could be the end for us now.

  And there is nothing that Mum or Obi or Dory or Ben or I can do about it. Our tower will fall down and we will be trapped inside it.

  I walk slowly to Dory’s that morning. Pigeon is balancing uncertainly on my shoulder and rubbing his ear against mine now and again. It feels like he is saying, Keep going, keep going.

  There’s no one in Dory’s flat when I get there. Not a trace of anyone. Not a half-empty cup of tea or a plate of crumbs on the table. Just silence.

  I know where I will find them all. I start the long walk down to the lower floors and find the one where I helped Obi pour the salt out of the windows. I can’t see anyone there, but there are bags and bags of salt piled up in the corridor.

  Then a door opens and Obi comes out of one of the flats, his head wrapped up in scarves. He doesn’t see me. He just picks up another bag and goes into another flat. He looks tired. His back is stooped and his shoulders slump as if there is a large, invisible weight pressing down on him and making him bend. The door slams behind him and echoes loudly down the corridor.

  Then I hear footsteps on the stairs and I see Ben coming up, carrying more bags of salt. His face is sweaty from climbing the stairs and carrying the bags. He doesn’t seem to have time to talk to me properly, but he tells me to go and help downstairs in the basement.

  Pigeon and I make our way down. Through the lower windows, I can see that more and more Bluchers have surged up. They have grown taller and thicker and they are growing so close to one another, it seems like they are trying to push each other out of the way. The rain falls on their glistening bodies so that they look even shinier than before. They look so glassy now that I think you might be able to see your own reflection if you stand before one.

  I look away from them, but then a slight movement at the corner of my eye makes me quickly glance back.

  Have I just imagined it or do they look bigger than they did just a moment ago? Are they growing in front of my eyes?

  They stand tall and proud, and though I can’t see them moving again, their stillness seems even more frightening. It is as if they are waiting until I have turned away before they move forward. I know that is quite impossible but it is how I feel that morning as I stand staring at the shiny, sharp tips and engorged, thick bodies.

  I find Dory and Mum in the basement. They are both kneeling on the ground doing something, but they stand up when they see me and hug me tightly to them.

  ‘Are you OK, Ade?’ Dory asks me. ‘We knew this day might come, didn’t we? We’ll be all right, though, don’t you worry. Your mum and I are spreading salt into all the corners of the walls and around every window. Can you give us a hand?’

  We work all day, pushing the white salt granules into every little crack and corner that we can find in the basement. It takes a long time to do it properly. My fingers feel sore and raw by the afternoon, my hands have turned red, and there is still so much to do. Pigeon stays close to us all day, watching us work and looking out of the window. Dory says that he is our lookout.

  We don’t stop properly to eat that day. All of us just keep going until we get really hungry and then we go off and quickly find something to eat, and carry on working as soon as we have finished. I only have time to eat a Snickers bar and some cheese crackers which have turned a little bit soft from being open too long.

  Dory makes us all stop for dinner that evening, though. She lights lots and lots of candles so that the room is full of their soft, golden light. We eat bowls of sticky rice which has mushrooms in it. It’s creamy and easy to swallow.

  ‘Shame we couldn’t have pigeon today, folks,’ Dory says. ‘I ran out of time. But I’d been saving this packet of mushrooms for a while now.’

  I notice that Obi doesn’t tell Dory off when she opens a large tin of tuna for Pigeon. In fact, he hasn’t really spoken much today.

  There are a few moments, while we are all eating our food, when, if you were looking at us sitting around the table enjoying our dinner, you would not have been able to tell that we are on the very edge of disaster. That while we are pushing forkfuls of soft rice into our mouths, the Bluchers are creeping around us in a deadly circle, ready to eat the stones and bricks of our home.

  But it doesn’t last very long, and as soon as our bowls are half empty, everyone starts talking about what we have done today. And what we should do next.

  Mum and Dory say that the basement has been salted so they will move on to the next floor up now. Obi says that the Bluchers haven’t moved much further in today, but as soon as we stop putting salt out they will come closer. The rain is washing it away as fast as they are laying it. Ben suggests that we should keep throwing salt out of the windows through the night, in shifts, which everyone thinks is a good idea.

  Then Obi voices something that everyone is worried about but no one has said anything about yet. That we haven’t got a lot of salt left now. That we are down to the last of the bags.

  ‘I can find some more,’ I say. It’s the first time I have spoken and everyone turns to look at me. ‘I know where to look, from going to find food all those times.’

  ‘Ade,’ Obi says. ‘That would be brilliant.’

  Suddenly it seems that there isn’t even enough time to finish our dinner, there is far too much to do. The night coming is no reason to rest.

  We leave our half-eaten bowls on the table, our forks still resting in them, and get back to work. Pigeon won’t leave his food, though. He protests so much when I pick him up that
we leave him in Dory’s flat.

  The rain has continued to fall heavily all day and shows no sign of stopping as darkness falls around us. It is just like the time when the Bluchers first showed up, when the first buildings tumbled. The rain which never stopped falling, which started it all.

  We all have to work by torchlight now. Mum, Obi, Dory and Ben go downstairs to continue the salting, but I go to the upstairs flats, to look for salt.

  I haven’t been out and about in the tower when it’s so dark before. Without Pigeon wrapping his furry body around my legs or perching on my shoulder, I feel something that is a little bit like being afraid mixed with the quiet of being alone. And things look different in the dark. They look like they could be something else entirely.

  My mind is bubbling away with ideas of what things could be, but I keep returning to the same image of the tangled bodies of the Bluchers, stretching out slowly towards me.

  I know I won’t be any help to the others if I keep thinking about these things, so I try to concentrate on them instead.

  I think about Dory’s wrinkled, serious face when she’s playing cards, and how Obi’s body always sags when he is sad about something so I can always tell. I think about Ben telling me how he’d never forgive himself for his wife dying, with trails of tears running down his face.

  I think about Pigeon’s thin grey body leaping from the exploding Bluchers and into my arms. I think about Mum’s face lit up by candlelight, as she sits quietly with us, eating dinner, and then reaching across the table to ruffle my hair, with a smile.

  And I think about Gaia too. I think, I want to see her again. And I think, I wish I’d had the chance to say goodbye.

  If it doesn’t stop raining and we don’t find enough salt, all these things will be lost. They will just vanish. Into the air. And no one will ever know them.

  No, that’s not quite right. They will be crushed. Devoured by Bluchers.

  If someone comes to look for us in a few days’ time, they won’t even be able to find where our tower once stood. It will just be covered in clumps of glowing, hungry Bluchers growing ever taller and more tangled.

  I give my head a shake because I realize now that it’s far too important to try and save them. I don’t waste any more time being scared of things that aren’t there and that my mind is just trying to make up to scare me with.

  I fling open front doors and cupboard doors and find every little bit of salt that I can.

  Sometimes I am lucky and find clear plastic bags full of salt or largish bottles of table salt. Other times, I only find little glass salt shakers which are half empty.

  It doesn’t matter, though. We need every little bit, every last grain. I make piles of what I find on each floor in the corridor by the stairs so the others can come and take it when we need it, and I work my way down the tower.

  Floor by floor, flat by flat. Shaker by salt cellar.

  When I reach my own flat, I stop to sit down.

  I think, Mum hasn’t come back, they must be still working, I should go down and find them. But the flat is so still and quiet, apart from the non-stop dripping of the rain falling outside, that it makes me want to be still and quiet for a minute. So I just sit there.

  I don’t mean to lie down or close my eyes, but I feel a great weariness take over me. It feels just like a wave going over my head, or as if someone has just pointed a wand at me and said, ‘Sleep.’ I want to sleep and I can feel my head pulling me down, but at the same time, I don’t want to just yet, as tired as I am.

  I take up my usual position on my windowsill and, in the darkness, look out of my window. I shouldn’t be able to see anything, because there aren’t any street lights any more.

  But I can.

  As my eyes grow used to the dark, I can see every Blucher, their spiky tops all pointing upwards. Drinking up the rain. Just like how Gaia used to lift her face to the sky. And the reason I can see them is because they are all giving off a little glow. It’s not a strong light; it’s a bit like those stars that you can stick to your ceiling that glow in the dark, maybe not even that bright. But it’s light enough that by sitting there at my window for a little while, I can see them.

  What I notice next is stranger still. I realize that the trees themselves are giving off a glow too. It’s not as bright as the light from the Bluchers but it’s there nonetheless. And if I look even closer I can see the glow coming from the grasses and the bushes on the ground. From all the plants that are not Bluchers.

  They are all connected now. They have become part of the Bluchers and the Bluchers have become part of them.

  It makes my head feel dizzy to see the whole world glowing like that. Because as afraid as I am of the Bluchers and as sad as I am about all the people who have died because of them, looking at them tonight, I still find them beautiful. And now the trees and the grasses and the bushes are part of that beauty too.

  A small voice in my head wishes that we could both exist together, that the spores didn’t catch in our throats and kill us and that we lived in wooden houses that they wouldn’t feed on.

  It’s a silly thought though and as soon as I think it, I dismiss it.

  As if I’m blowing out the candles on a birthday cake.

  Chapter Fifty-three

  There’s no time for sleeping. And from somewhere in my head, a line of a poem pops out. I don’t feel like I can understand poems most of the time, but this one has stayed with me for a long time. Well, one line of it anyway. It’s something like: And miles to go before I sleep . . . miles to go before I sleep.

  I’m not even sure exactly how long a mile is. Is it as long as a corridor in the tower? Or is it more like the length of ten double-decker buses? It’s probably longer. Miles and miles. It sounds like a long way. Walking down to the basement that night, it feels just like that. Miles and miles.

  And then I am there and I am about to shout out to the others, and I can hear their voices talking, talking through the doorway, and then I hear something that stops me. Someone laughing. It’s a weird sound that bounces off the dark walls and I can’t understand why someone would be laughing when we are all in danger.

  Then I hear Dory’s voice.

  ‘Stop crying, pet,’ she commands, not unkindly. ‘We need to think about what to do. We need a new plan. We can’t give up all hope. Not yet. Think of Ade. We are going to get him out of this, if it’s the last thing we do.’

  I turn the light of my torch off and I don’t move. I flatten myself against the wall and listen in the darkness.

  ‘They’re in the building, Dory,’ Ben is saying. ‘What else can we do? The spores are in the air. We can block off the lower floors but they’re going to take over soon.’

  ‘Ben’s right,’ Obi says. ‘We haven’t got enough salt left now. All we can do is try and use the salt we have left on the one coming up the drain and then move further up the tower and then – then . . .’

  ‘Wait to be rescued. They’ll come. They’ll come. Did you listen to the radio tonight? Did they mention it?’ Dory says.

  ‘There’s a meeting about it tonight, I think. But they don’t think there are any survivors. They don’t know we’re here,’ Obi says.

  There’s a long pause then, where the only sound is Mum’s cries. They are getting quieter now, though.

  ‘I’d better get the mask on and salt that Blucher,’ Obi says. ‘Coming up the water pipes.’ He gives a little almost-laugh. ‘I didn’t see that one coming.’

  And then Mum says, ‘But the spores are through there, Obi. They’ll be in the air now.’

  I can imagine Obi turning to her, as he once did to me. Back when I told him that I’d seen lights in the other tower and I thought Gaia was in there.

  ‘We must try to stop them,’ he says. ‘We must try for Ade.’

  I walk away then, as quietly as I can, spreading my weight across my soles like I used to when I played the Silence Game, and I move noiselessly down the corridor, back to my flat.


  I don’t want them to know that I heard everything they said.

  Despite everything, I can’t help feeling cross that they didn’t tell me they had a radio all along. It’s difficult to explain why, after what I have just heard – even that the Bluchers have come up through the water pipes into the tower – I mostly feel upset about that.

  And left out, I guess. Left out. It’s yet another thought I’ve had tonight that I need to unravel from my fingers and let fall to the floor. Because the other thing that I’ve overheard is how far they’ll go to protect me.

  And it’s weird because it seems like, from their voices, they want to save me more than they want to save themselves. Even though they can’t, really, and Dory still believes for no reason that we will be saved, and Obi’s going to go into a room with spores in the air just to give us a last chance to survive this.

  And I hang onto that thought and it makes me want to cry, but mostly to never forget that this is what people do for each other.

  Chapter Fifty-four

  Obi said we were almost out of salt, so I go back to the upper floors and start collecting up the piles I made into a bin bag. When I fill one up, I start the journey downstairs again. It takes both my hands to carry it.

  ‘Ade! Ade!’ I can hear Mum running up the stairs, calling out to me. ‘Ade! Ade!’

  ‘I’m here, Mum,’ I shout down, and she runs up to me and hugs me so tightly that I think she’s going to break me.

  ‘Something’s happened,’ Mum says. ‘There’s a Blucher in the water pipe – they’re in the building.’

  I can see where her tears have dried on her cheeks and the little white smudges where she has tried to wipe them away.

  ‘We need to get a mask on you,’ she says. ‘Just in case.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ I ask. ‘We’ve only got two masks. Why do I need to wear one?’

  ‘Come downstairs and we’ll explain what we’re going to do,’ Mum says.

  I don’t want to wear a mask.

  I know what Mum means: they want to make sure I’ll be OK by giving me a mask. But I won’t wear one when it means the others can’t.