How I Saved the World in a Week Page 9

  ‘Well, yes – I guess—’

  ‘We could work it out!’

  ‘But what if… I don’t know… he’s dangerous or something?’

  ‘It’ll be fine,’ Angharad says, swiping her hand to the side, dismissing any dangers that lay before us. ‘We won’t get too close. We’ll just see where he goes if you spot him again.’

  ‘All right,’ I agree. I get the feeling that whatever I say, Angharad is not going to let it go. ‘If I spot him again.’

  HOW TO MAKE A SNARE

  I’m teaching Anwar to make a snare trap. We can only do it on a mini scale in the playground but it’s sort of working.

  Fig. 8. – How to make a snare trap

  ‘So how did it go when you got home?’ he asks.

  ‘Well, they came round last night, Julie and Angharad.’

  ‘Again?’

  ‘Yeah, for dinner. Steve wanted me to apologize.’ I pause for a moment, remembering. ‘Actually she was all right about it, Angharad I mean.’

  Anwar looks up from our snare construction.

  ‘I thought that you didn’t like her.’

  ‘I don’t know, I don’t know her really. But she was okay. When I told her a little bit about why I shouted and she kind of understood. Said that she hides stuff from her mum too. She was more interested in the fallen man though.’

  ‘What’s a fallen man?’

  ‘I saw this guy fall over really badly on the street outside my bedroom window. Lots of people went to help him and an ambulance came and everything. And then the next day I read an article about him in a local newspaper. It said that he was dead but somehow sprang back up again and ran away.’

  ‘That’s mad! Did they find out what happened?’

  ‘No, he just disappeared. But I’m pretty sure I saw him again later that same night.’

  ‘What? Really?’

  ‘Yeah. And I told Angharad about it because she was at my house the day he fell. But now she’s fixated on trying to find him because she says that she loves a mystery. She’s going to get her mum to bring her round next weekend so we can try and look for him.’

  ‘I thought that we were going to build a snare in the park next weekend,’ Anwar says in a rush with a funny look on his face.

  ‘We are,’ I say quickly, worrying that I’ve hurt his feelings. ‘They’ll probably come round on Saturday, so we can hang out on Sunday. Is that okay?’

  ‘Okay,’ says Anwar, sounding relieved. ‘You know, I could see if I could find anything online about him, the fallen man guy?’ He pauses. ‘I suppose it’s good, isn’t it? That you’re getting on a bit better with Angharad.’

  I think about that for a moment, and then I say: ‘Yeah, I guess it is,’ and realize that I mean it.

  HOW TO FIND THE FALLEN MAN

  ‘Is that him?’ Angharad asks for about the billionth time.

  She’s lying across my bed, her eyes glued to everyone who passes on the hill and making notes in a little spiral-bound notebook she’s brought with her. When I asked her why she was doing it, she sniffed ever so slightly and said, ‘Observations. Just observations.’

  I glance over at the dog walker, a man with a sandy-coloured greyhound which walks with long, loping strides.

  ‘No, I told you – when he walks, he looks like he’s falling over.’

  ‘How can you even walk if you’re falling over?’ Angharad says with a huff.

  ‘I don’t know but he was. Anwar said—’

  ‘Anwar?’

  ‘Yes. He’s my friend from school.’

  ‘You told him?’

  ‘Course,’ I say.

  ‘And he believed you?’ Angharad asks, narrowing her dark eyes.

  ‘Yeah. He knows how to do lots of stuff online and said he’d help with research. He’s good at that kind of thing.’

  ‘Oh, right.’ Angharad turns away to look out of the window, the beads in her braids clattering together as she does. I get that same feeling of having said the wrong thing, but I don’t know what.

  ‘Anyway,’ I add, pointing to the man with the dog as he walks away. ‘Dogs don’t like the fallen man, so he wouldn’t be walking one.’

  ‘I don’t remember you saying that.’

  ‘When I saw him the last time, there was a dog that wouldn’t stop barking at him. But what does it matter?’

  ‘Because there’s a dog that won’t stop barking,’ Angharad says, getting up and slinging her notepad shut. ‘Can’t you hear it?’

  Now she points it out, I can hear a dog barking away in the distance.

  ‘That could be anything, Angharad,’ I argue. ‘It could be barking at a cat or maybe its owners have left it alone too long.’

  ‘Or, Billy,’ she says back to me in the same tone. ‘It could be something to do with the fallen man. Let’s go and find out!’

  Steve and Julie are in the garden digging out a flowerbed. They are both pink-cheeked and keep looking down at the muddy patch of ground they’ve dug in a pleased sort of way. When we tell them we’re going to the corner shop and will be back soon, they beam at us so much that I almost feel bad about lying to them.

  As we go back inside I hear Julie say to Steve, ‘They’re getting on really well now, aren’t they?’

  I have to run to keep up with Angharad as she sprints down the pavement, stopping now and again to look one way and then the other.

  ‘I think it’s coming from that direction. What do you think? It’s hard to tell because it could also be coming from over there.’

  ‘Let’s go this way,’ I say, picking one of the directions she’s pointed out at random.

  It seems I chose correctly, as the dog barks build in intensity and volume as we walk along. We’re not too far from Steve’s but have gone down an alleyway and rounded a corner to some old rundown garages.

  The dog is in the back garden of someone’s house. We can’t see it. But we can just about make out the voices of its owners arguing about what to do.

  ‘Ted, we’ve got to put Bailey inside. He must be driving the neighbours up the wall… He’s driving me up the wall,’ a woman’s voice calls out from the house.

  ‘I’ve tried,’ comes the reply. ‘But he keeps running off when I get close to him and he won’t come for his treats. Here, Bailey, here, boy! Come on!’

  ‘What is it he’s barking at anyway?’ the woman says.

  ‘I don’t know what it is. I can’t see anything. We’ll have to corner him. Bailey! Bailey!’

  Angharad’s eyes light up as we overhear them.

  ‘This has got to be the right place!’ she says, punching my arm.

  ‘Ow!’ I say.

  ‘Oh, come on,’ she says, ‘that couldn’t have really hurt. I could do one that does though.’

  She lunges towards me and I dart away quickly.

  ‘Oi! Stop it!’ I say.

  ‘Your face,’ Angharad says, doubled up with laughter. ‘Don’t worry, I promise I won’t hurt you.’ She laughs so hard that she can’t quite catch her breath.

  ‘Are you okay?’ I ask her, when I hear her wheezing.

  She stands up tall but when she sees my face, she collapses again, laughter shaking her spine. ‘Your face.’ She keeps wheezing with laughter and then after a moment or two, she scrabbles in her pocket and pulls out an inhaler that she puffs on. ‘Look what you made me do,’ she says. Her breath starts to calm. ‘My asthma’s bad at the moment. Wooo. Okay. Where were we?’

  We peer round to the garden where we heard the dog. The couple must have finally got it inside because now its bark is slightly muffled.

  ‘Let’s have a look around to see what the dog was barking at,’ suggests Angharad. ‘Maybe the fallen man is here?’

  We loop round the garages a couple of times but there’s no sign of anyone. The ground is cracked tarmac that’s coming away in places. The garages look unloved and unused; the paint of the doors is peeling away in curls and long grasses are growing out in angles around them, but they are a
ll securely locked.

  ‘Let’s go,’ I say. ‘There’s nobody here.’

  ‘Hold on,’ Angharad says. ‘There’s a bit around the back, I think. Look! There’s a path in between the gardens and the back of the garages.’

  I can see the overgrown path that she’s pointing to; it’s almost disappeared because of the weeds blocking the narrow passageway.

  ‘Down there?’ I say dubiously, when I hear a voice behind us.

  ‘Are you two all right? Are you looking for something?’

  It’s the same man who was trying to get his dog inside. I recognize his voice. What did the woman call him? Ted.

  He looks a bit like a teddy bear with a roundish belly and small circular glasses that make his eyes look a little beady. He has short gingery hair that looks like fur that’s started to wear away.

  Angharad steps in front of me before I can think of an excuse and says, ‘We’re looking for our cat. He’s black and white – have you seen one like that?’ She’s so convincing that for a moment I imagine it’s true; that we have a cat, that he’s mostly white with black splodges and hasn’t been home since last night.

  ‘No, sorry,’ Ted says, scratching his gingery beard. ‘But he could be back there. Our dog’s just been barking at something and he doesn’t like ca—’

  Ted suddenly spots something in the passageway behind us that makes his voice falter.

  He adjusts his glasses on his nose and looks again, peering round us.

  ‘Did you see something?’ Angharad asks. We both turn but there’s nothing there, just the entrance to the narrow path.

  Ted blinks a few times. ‘I thought I saw… Never mind… Maybe you should head home. Where should I go if I spot your cat?’ He takes his glasses off and begins to clean them on the yellow fabric of his T-shirt.

  I tell him the road that Steve’s house is on, but give a different house number.

  ‘Okay, I’ll keep my eye out.’

  ‘We might have a quick look down that path,’ Angharad says. ‘While we’re here.’

  She tugs at my arm and is about to turn when Ted calls out suddenly.

  ‘Wait! Stop!’

  ‘What?’ Angharad says.

  ‘There’s something there,’ Ted says, but then he corrects himself. ‘I think there’s someone there. But I’m not sure. If there is someone, they don’t look very well.’

  Angharad clutches my arm. ‘It must be him,’ she hisses.

  Ted steps forward to the entrance of the passageway. ‘Hello?’ he calls. ‘Anyone there?’

  There’s no answer.

  ‘Hello?’ Ted calls again.

  ‘Can you see anyone?’ Angharad asks, peering behind Ted.

  ‘No. Maybe it was a shadow.’ But he takes another step into the passageway and calls out in a softer voice, ‘Do you need any help? We can get you help if you need it.’

  Then I hear it.

  A rustle.

  A definite rustle in the passageway.

  I move past Angharad so I can look round to see.

  There’s the sound of someone moving, the sound of someone in the overgrowth.

  Everything that happens next rolls into one.

  There’s another rustle and then a crash and I hear someone gasp: Angharad, I think. Then I see him – the fallen man. Before I know what’s happening, my hand is in Angharad’s and I’m dragging her, yanking her away, and she has no choice but to follow. My legs almost stumble beneath me but I run with her away from the dark-green mouth of the passageway. I know we were looking for the fallen man, but now all I’m sure of is that we have to get away from here.

  ‘What is it? Why did you drag me away?’ Angharad asks, pulling my hand to make me stop running when we’re back on the main road. When she speaks, she’s breathless.

  ‘Didn’t you see?’ I say. ‘It was the fallen man, but he didn’t look like… like a person any more. He’s… something’s happened to him.’

  ‘I couldn’t see anything.’

  I can still hear snatches of Ted speaking from the alleyway behind us. He’s talking in a strangled sort of way, trying to sound like he’s in control.

  ‘Oh, mate. It’s all right. It’s going to be all right. I can get you help. I’ll call an ambulance.’

  I can hear it all swirled up in his voice: panic, fear and concern all bleeding into each other.

  ‘Stay here, Angharad,’ I say. ‘I’ll be right back.’

  ‘I’m okay,’ Angharad says, but her breath is coming in a wheeze again.

  ‘Sit down,’ I tell her. ‘Use your inhaler. I need to go back and see if that Ted man is okay. Just wait here.’

  I can see she doesn’t want to be left behind, but her breath is ragged and she reluctantly slumps to the ground and brings out her inhaler once more.

  I run back down towards the garages.

  The fallen man is standing just behind Ted.

  ‘I’ll get some help,’ Ted is saying and when he notices me he shouts: ‘Get back!’ in alarm. There’s panic written all over his face. I know it’s because of what the fallen man looks like.

  His clothes are hanging off him in tatters and now that I’m closer I can see that it isn’t really a greyish tinge to his face; instead his skin is the colour of dull metal. There’s no sign of normal skin colour at all and his face is mottled, like the grey is fluid somehow, almost moving like it’s alive.

  He doesn’t look human, and yet he is.

  He doesn’t look real, and yet he’s standing there.

  He opens his mouth to speak, but it’s not words that come out; it’s a strangled, desperate, piercing cry that I feel as something physical, stabbing me right through the chest.

  Ted holds his hands up as the fallen man makes a move towards him. His stagger is gone and instead his movements are agile and flowing, almost as though his legs aren’t legs at all but rolling wheels or waves curving over the sea.

  He starts to lift one of his gnarled grey hands towards Ted. It is distended, grown larger than any hand I have ever seen, and looks not unlike a claw, hooked and sharp. The movement is slow, as though there is some invisible force that is holding the man’s arm in place and stopping him from reaching out.

  But then, in a single, sudden movement, his clawed hand hooks around Ted and all at once, they are locked together. I can’t describe the embrace exactly, it’s like nothing that I’ve ever seen. It’s as though he’s all around Ted, on top of him and beneath him at the same time. And then Ted is released; they are no longer bound together.

  Ted starts to shudder.

  It begins in his head, in his shoulders – a convulsion that travels in a wave through his body. He jolts and trembles and twists.

  His pinkish skin changes colour so it resembles something closer to metal than flesh. His tufts of ginger hair begin to melt away to silver strands. His blue eyes dull and darken until they are a cold, iron grey that seems to dapple and breathe of its own accord. But it’s when he opens his mouth that I know it’s too late.

  It’s that same piercing shriek of the fallen man.

  It makes me feel hollow inside. Settling as a dead weight on my back, pulling me down.

  The fallen man screams back at what was once Ted.

  As though they have understood each other, they both slowly turn their heads towards me.

  I turn to sprint and I run as fast as I can. When I get to Angharad I skid to a stop.

  ‘We’ve got to get out of here,’ I tell her. ‘Something’s happened, come on.’

  ‘What is it?’

  I flounder, trying to put into words what I’ve just seen, but I can’t.

  ‘There’s no time,’ I tell her.

  I clamp my hand to hers and pull her away.

  HOW TO REMEMBER NOT TO MENTION YOUR MUM

  I’m faster than Angharad.

  Although her long legs extend out effortlessly, I can see she is still struggling to catch her breath but I pull her along with me anyway. We have to get away.


  Only when we finally reach Steve’s house, do I let us slow and stop.

  ‘What happened?’ Angharad asks.

  I try again to describe the fallen man, the way that he transformed Ted.

  I remember all that Sylvia taught me about soaking up your surroundings, being aware of all the details, and so when I picture it again, I feel like I’m reliving it all over again as though it is playing out in front of me. I can’t stop the questions flooding through my mind. What’s happened to them? Why have they been changed? And can they be changed back? I can’t get the sight of their grey, shadowy skin from my mind, it fills my head and makes everything else around me seem too garish and shocking in its colour.

  It seems unbelievable, made up, when I put it into words, but Angharad doesn’t question me on any of it. She listens. She believes me; I feel sure of it.

  ‘We’ve got to get help,’ Angharad whispers fiercely. She looks both terrified and determined at the same time. ‘We’ve got to call the police.’

  I nod and reach into my pocket for my key but my hands are shaking. They feel detached from my body, jellylike and cold.

  ‘Rule number four: Master your fears.’ I hear Sylvia’s voice ring out from somewhere inside me. I take a deep breath, reminding myself to keep calm.

  My hand closes around the cold metal of the key and I shove it into the door and we rush inside and to the back garden where Julie and Steve are still digging, laughing together.

  ‘Something’s happened,’ Angharad announces. ‘We’ve got to call the police.’

  They look up with astonished faces.

  * * *

  ‘Just tell us one more time,’ Julie is saying. She and Steve are sitting on the sofa calmly although Angharad and I can’t stop pacing the square of the living room.

  ‘We’ve told you already and there’s no other way of saying it,’ Angharad rants. ‘We need to call the police.’