Mr Ermey's Funeral Read online

  “Alex,” Buddy said, clapping a hand on his shoulder, “it’s good to have you back.”

  7

  Tuesday

  Feel almost as if my dreams could tell me what actually happened to David. Had the ‘Dumping Mary’ one for the millionth time. I think the reason that one comes back again and again is because no one ever actually did ask us whether we’d seen him or not. Was there an air of indignation that the police had not consulted us? Were we pissed off that no one cared that we had seen him only hours before his disappearance? Sure we were. But more that, we wanted to be pressed. All that knowledge was just being bottled up, good for nothing. No one wanted to go to the police, but if they’d come asking, I reckon even Buddy would have caved in. After all, we hadn’t killed anyone.

  Started to double the dose of painkillers. They make things a bit woozy, but it’s better than the headaches. Should go to the doctors, really.

  Should have gone to the police, really.

  8

  Mary knelt in the rough patch of ground at the end of the road leading to the new housing development. She leant forward against the broken road and picked up the small clump of tarmac that Buddy had kicked away. “Do you see what this is, Tom?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean this thing in my hand, do you see what it is?”

  “Sure.”

  “Then tell me.”

  “It’s a piece of road. So what?”

  “An experiment.” She carefully placed the small wedge of lumpy black matter on the smooth road surface and stood up. “Now, what do you think of that Firdale sign? Do you think it’s as cock-eyed as Alex seemed to think?”

  Tom looked at the sign, frowned, then looked at Mary. “What the hell are you going on about?”

  Mary caught her breath – and then relaxed. As expected, the fragment of road surfacing had disappeared, presumably back to its comfy nest of weeds. But for a moment it had been there, she thought, for a moment it was there. When I looked at it out of the corner of my eye, it was there for a little while – a flicker, a shadow. She shook her head in a gesture that, to Tom, looked more like a shudder. “It doesn’t matter.”

  “Do you think what they’re going to do will help?” He stuffed his hands in his pockets, crumpling his suit.

  In the distance, two figures walked back onto the main road; Mary watched them disappear around the corner and said nothing.

  9

  Wednesday

  First dream again. Sort of. Mary arrives late, bums a smoke, there’s the usual argument, and then we leave her. So far so ordinary, apart from one small fact: Mary’s different. She’s dressed as a teenager. No, she is a teenager, that’s the point. She seems bigger, too, as if she’s looking down at us. As if she knows what’s really going on.

  10

  Both boys were dressed in their darkest clothes. Alex carried a flashlight in a jacket pocket, and Buddy carried a selection of hand tools in a black rucksack more accustomed to sports gear. The trouble with Sycamore Drive, as Alex had pointed out, was that it was a cul-de-sac: it would be impossible to perform a casual walk-by to check out the house. They’d have to chance it. But it was late, and the house lights were off, so he admitted that everything was as good as they could hope.

  “Right?” Buddy said.

  “Right.”

  The boys started off, trying to keep a regular and leisurely pace. But not too leisurely, Buddy had suggested, we don’t want to look like sightseers. They watched for movement of any kind, and were thankful to see very little: someone dumping rubbish in a wheelie-bin; someone locking their car and hefting a large briefcase off its roof – neither one showing any interest in anything but themselves.

  The house at the end of the road cut a black, circus-tent silhouette against the luminous, purple sky. Telephone masts cast thin webs across the road, and streetlights glowed dimly in the twilight. The road was lined with cars, spreading oily shadows. Everything looked taller, closer, and less real because of it.

  The boys slipped down the driveway and hid in the shadows, creeping beneath the dark windows just in case. They waited; then, satisfied they hadn’t been spotted, strolled over to the garage. Its padlock hung open. Alex shook his head, not believing their luck. He nodded to Buddy, who set about working the bolt as quietly as he could, both of them wincing at each squeak.

  The two boys entered Mary’s studio.

  They stood still, allowing the surrounding gloom to slowly take shape. A handle jutted towards them, supported by a vague mass of something. Alex could feel resistance against his trainers: debris was everywhere, rendering silent movement practically impossible. He dug out the flashlight, switched it on, and let it slip from his clammy fingers to the floor. Before reaching the concrete, it bounced off something, producing a sharp, ringing sound that reverberated both in the garage and in their heads. The flashlight rolled and then came to rest, making a cone of light across the garage floor.

  Buddy peered through a crack in the door, and both boys waited for the inevitable commotion. When none came, they started to giggle, and for a while seemed lost on an endless loop of trying not to laugh. Both boys doubled over in a quiet mirth that neither had known for a long time. Eventually, Alex wiped his eyes and picked up his flashlight. “Right, now we’re here, what exactly are we looking for?”

  “Hand me that thing.” Buddy pointed the flashlight at the garage ceiling, poking its narrow spot into its black spaces. The yellow circle traced its way along a wooden beam. “See these rub marks?”

  Alex peered into the light and nodded.

  “The body will have swayed and turned. The movement made this triangle.”

  Buddy concentrated the flashlight on the floor. Dirty mugs and scraps of paper. He opened a ball of paper and the two of them examined it under the harsh spot. It was a sketch of a bird table. Buddy scrunched it back up again and let it fall to the floor, then he swept the flashlight around the room. The circle of light came to rest on Mary’s desk, revealing an assortment of brushes and paints and other things; it followed the contours of the wood, flickered in the deep recesses to the side and beyond, revealing dog-eared corners of paper, then it ascended to the garage walls, finding rusty nails supporting junior hacksaws and gardening gloves.

  “Go back to the desk.”

  Buddy refocused the light and Alex stepped forward, pointing at something.

  “Shine it underneath. There.”

  Alex knelt down and ran his hand down one of the desk’s rear legs; his hand came to rest on a large folder, which he hauled up into the darkness.

  “Put it on the desk.” In order to make room, Buddy was already repositioning a collection of worn erasers, a half empty tube of ultramarine gauche, an empty bottle of Indian ink, and a jar of brushes in murky orange water.

  Alex set the folder down and opened it without hesitation.

  “Oh,” he said. “Oh.”

  Buddy kept the flashlight trained on the portraits as Alex slowly went through them. The first was of her torso, depicted in the golden light of some forgotten afternoon; the next was a close-up of her genitalia, executed with graphite and intricate attention to detail; next was a full-length nude drawn from behind in coloured pencil; then her breasts, in gauche; her thighs, watercolour; toes; hands; eyes.

  “This is pointless.” Alex said. “It’s not even sexy, I mean, she’s dead.”

  “Shh, I’m trying to think.”

  Buddy rubbed his chin, working his fingers through the coarse stubble. He switched off the flashlight and turned his attention to the rest of the garage.

  Taking the hint, Alex closed the folder and replaced it behind the desk. To his surprise, his eyes had adjusted enough to see what he was doing.

  “Come and have a look at this.”

  Alex turned around to see Buddy silhouetted against the row of windows at the far end of the garage. He was standing before an easel. Alex tiptoed through the rubble, wondering briefly how Buddy had managed
to walk through it so quietly, and joined his old friend.

  Alex looked at the painting. In the indigo light emanating from the window, Mary’s browns and greens looked like navy blues and purples. Alex shook his head and murmured No.

  Their breathing suddenly seemed very loud.

  “It’s a message, isn’t it?” Alex said. “A very weird, very screwed up message.”

  “It’s a warning.”

  “Why hasn’t someone told us about this? I mean, it’s pretty obvious who these people are.”

  “Obvious to us, sure, we keep dreaming about it. But obvious on any normal day of the week? A bicycle wheel? A baseball cap?”

  “Baseball cap?”

  Buddy pointed it out, being careful not to touch the actual surface of the painting.

  “Baseball cap. Tom’s.”

  “Well, I would say this is pretty good proof for your group dreaming theory, Buddy.”

  Buddy leaned in a little closer to the painting. “Come on. Let’s get out of here.”

  With the aid of the flashlight, the boys picked their way back to the garage door. Alex took a precautionary peek through the crack, but there appeared to be no change: the Townsends’ house was still in a state of slumber. Whether the people inside were actually asleep was another matter entirely; he imagined acting normally was a full time job for Mary’s and Tom’s parents at the moment. The boys left quickly, once more keeping to the shadows, and emerging from the driveway as if it was the most natural thing in the world.

  Back on the main road, Buddy and Alex began to silently meander along, each lost in their thoughts. The streets were cast with an orange glow and the intermittent white glare of passing cars. The night was dry and still and quiet. Eventually they came to the place where they had agreed to split up: Alex’s house was just a few doors down, and they had agreed neither to meet up nor part at either of their own homes.

  “So what do we do now?”

  “Christ, Alex, I don’t know.” Buddy shrugged; then his care-worn expression eased into his usual grin. “Try not to kill ourselves, I guess. The same as any other day.”

  Alex watched his old friend set off into the road without checking for traffic, and stood watching him stroll further down the road until the curve removed him from sight. He wished he could call in on Helen. At that moment, being friends with her seemed like the best thing, indeed the only thing that was any good. But it was too late for that; besides, when had he ever called in on her? That was something a boyfriend would do. The most he ever did was choreograph chance meetings on the way in and out of school.

  Alex found himself at his front door, steadying the vaguely ornate doorknocker with one hand and grinding a key in the lock with the other. He quietly let himself into a brightly lit hallway, and a television programme screamed from behind the living room door.

  Chapter Ten

  1

  Buddy awoke in darkness. His room smelled of stale cigarettes and sweat. Even though he knew he’d forget, he vowed to change the sheets first thing after school – he’d been meaning to for weeks now.

  He pulled back the covers and sat on the edge of his bed rubbing his eyes, trying to remember his dreams; part of him, however, wanted them kept at bay. For a moment this uncertainty caught him, and then everything flooded back: Mary’s death on Saturday; Tom’s on Monday; and the previous evening’s small dose of breaking and entering with his oldest buddy in the world. Close behind these three events and their bizarre associations, his night’s dreaming yapped like an eager pup, waiting to be taken into account.

  Not yet, he thought and almost said, just give me a moment.

  He yawned and stumbled out of the bedroom into the dark and narrow hallway lit only by a thin shaft of light spilling from the bathroom door. With his eyes locked to the floor, he entered the small, white room at the end and fumbled with the toilet lid. He urinated for an age, one hand pressed against the wall. In the cotton wool that used to be his brain, his latest dream chased its tail, trying to find the place where it began. It was still spinning by the time Buddy finally slouched over to the basin, his eyes half-closed with sleep. A blurry face looked back from the toothpaste-spattered mirror; there was something different about it that he couldn’t quite place. Unconcerned, he plugged the hole and wrenched the taps, causing an unearthly rumble in the bowels of the house. Buddy watched the sink fill with white, foamy water, then fought with the taps and listened to the ticking of the pipes as they settled down. As he washed his face, the restless images that had been dogging him finally laid down for his inspection.

  The dream had resumed on one of the many overgrown paths that wound through Tithborough woods, this particular one running alongside the river. Alex was still with him. Judging by the steep incline of the far bank, they were fairly deep into the woods, deeper than they normally went. At a fork in the path they stopped. Straight ahead, the path stayed with the river as it narrowed and wound itself into an S; to the left, it forged a convoluted route back towards a small collection of adventure playground equipment. On the few occasions the old gang had ventured this far, the latter had always received the unanimous vote.

  “What’s up?” Alex asked, stepping on a nettle.

  “You were right, I am worried about Mary.”

  Alex laughed as if this was the funniest thing he’d ever heard.

  “No, seriously. I don’t know why, but I think she might be in trouble.”

  “Buddy, what are you talking about? She’s probably gone home ages ago, and even if she hasn’t, what are you going to say to her? Sorry, Mary, we were only kidding. We want you back in our gang. We don’t mind hanging out with psychos.”

  Alex wiped his forehead with the back of his hand and sat down on a fallen tree trunk. Behind him, the river gurgled.

  Buddy stood with his hands on his hips. “I’m going back there. Something’s not right. I mean, what the hell happened to Tom?”

  “I don’t know. He went home. Whatever.” Alex stared at him, his brow becoming a rack of thin lines. “Oh no, don’t tell me. You think whatever happened to little David has happened to those two.”

  Buddy turned away and continued along the path following the river; not only did the river thin out a little in these parts, but it got shallow too. There were several places where you could cross it on foot.

  Alex followed after him. “Don’t you realise how crazy that sounds?”

  Buddy stopped and turned. “Look at me Alex.”

  “What the-”

  “Just look at me. Do you notice anything different?”

  Buddy grabbed him by the shoulders and held him. Alex’s hands automatically found Buddy’s shoulders, and were about to wrestle when something about his friend’s face drained the fight from them. It was thinner, drawn somehow, the angles of his cheekbones more pronounced. His eyes, which had always been piercing, now bore right through him.

  “Oh.”

  Buddy let go. “Oh indeed.”

  “You’re old. Well, older, at least.”

  “I thought so. So are you.”

  Alex examined his own face, tracing his fingers along his nose, feeling the hollows of his eyes.

  “I don’t know if whatever happened to David is happening to Mary and Tom, but we’ve got to find them. Something very strange is going on.”

  Alex ran a hand through his crew-cut hair, checking the shape of his head. He shuddered, his hands falling to his sides. “Come on then.”

  Soon they came to a shallow spot and, stepping on flat stones dappled with sunlight, they crossed. Although there was no pathway on the other side, the footings beneath the long grass and bracken were solid and sure. Once fully up the bank, they quickly orientated themselves and found the nearest lane leading back toward St Vincent’s borders.

  Throughout their progress, from country lane to the line of trees that marked this edge of the school property, up and over the short perimeter fence, past the pond and across the field, neither boy spoke. Their s
hadows were midday short and the sun burned their necks. At the set of goalposts marking the edge of the field, they stopped, looking down upon the playground.

  Mary and Tom were nowhere to be seen.

  “Told you.”

  “Alex, you told me shit. Let’s go.”

  They descended the embankment. Alex hung back a little, while Buddy made a brisk inspection of the playground’s nooks and crannies: neither Mary nor Tom was hiding in any of the old hiding places.

  “Hello?” Buddy called out. “Hello?” Apart from the sound of Alex padding towards him, the playground was silent. In the midday sun, the playground and the school buildings seemed to almost glow, and his eyes stung with the light. Very close, there came a voice:

  “I wondered when I might catch up with you two.”

  Buddy spun around to find a stranger standing next to Alex. He looked to Alex for his reaction, but for some reason his oldest friend was staring at the ground. He seemed almost bashful, like a little kid who had just been told off. The stranger was a boy dressed in black; he held a top hat. It took Buddy a moment to realise he was looking at a dead boy.

  “David?”

  “Ten out of ten.”

  As Buddy approached, he cast another glance at Alex. To his horror, he realised Alex was shaking.

  “What have you done to him?”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t worry about Alex. He’s seen enough for now. Actually, I’m a little surprised that he’s with you. I guess the two of you have been communicating at last.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Lucid dreaming. You managed to convince him that something was up, and here he is. Ahead of schedule.”

  Buddy fumbled in his back pocket for his cigarettes. “Whose schedule is that?”

  “That, my friend, is a very good question. I guess you might say mine, although I’m not really sure it matters. I imagine these things take their own course.”