The Gathering Read online

  ‘All I did was answer his questions,’ I mumbled.

  Mr Karle chuckled. ‘Mr Ellis asked you to name positive characteristics of ant colonies which humans would do well to emulate. You told him ants would make good slaves, because they obey orders and work till they drop. But that they could never be artists or poets or great writers because really great people were nonconformists. Is that the gist of it?’

  I nodded, thinking Mr Ellis must have taken notes because it was not just the gist of what I had said; it was exactly what I had said.

  I looked up as a grin spread over Mr Karle’s face. There was something unpleasant about the smile. I thought a maniac who killed people for fun might smile like that. Then it disappeared and I wondered if I had imagined it because Mr Karle just looked concerned and sympathetic.

  ‘I think Mr Ellis was simply trying to impress on you the co-operative nature of ants. You find it difficult to co-operate with others. You think co-operation pointless?’

  ‘Ants have wars.’

  ‘Not against their own nest. They do not have internal wars,’ Mr Karle corrected gently. ‘And their ability to submerge them selves and become a single mind enables them to do things an individual ant could not achieve. As a team can do in sport. One player cannot work alone.’

  He stood up suddenly and crossed to look out the window at two people walking across the football oval. I recognised the loping walk and wondered if he realised one of them was Indian. On the other side, a window opened out onto the canteen cul-de-sac and a big blue rubbish truck was backing into the yard.

  ‘Nathanial, here at Three North, we set great store by harmony and co-operation.’ Mr Karle paced across the room and around behind me.

  ‘Cheshunt is a special place,’ he said almost dreamily. ‘Because of what it has become, people are drawn here. People like your mother who are seeking refuge.’ He paused to let that sink in and I stared at the desk sculpture wondering if the pieces would be heavy.

  ‘Cheshunt is not the place for people who want to stand out, because loners are trouble-makers. Those individualists you seem so fond of, are the ones who make life hard for everyone else.’ Mr Karle’s voice suddenly had an edge.

  ‘Don’t swim upstream, Nathanial. There is no room for salmon at Three North.’

  A buzzer sounded and he excused himself. ‘… Constable Paul asked if you …’ Miss Bliss’s voice drifted through the door opening.

  I sat forward in the chair and looked over my shoulder. Mr Karle had his back to the door. All of a sudden I felt like I was going to pass out. I swayed in the seat, grabbing at the edge of the desk to support myself and knocked my arm against the paperweight. Shapes spilled across the desk. I scooped them back onto the stand hurriedly.

  The last piece was a flat metal circle with the centre cut out. I was startled to find it was hot when I picked it up. Hearing Mr Karle hang up, I thrust the circle back in place.

  ‘Have you joined the school youth club yet, Nathanial?’ he asked in a friendly voice, coming to sit behind the desk. ‘We like all of our students to belong and I think it would help you to have a better understanding of the way we operate at Three North.’

  My level co-ordinator had mentioned the club, and a couple of the school patrol kids came round to the class asking everyone who wasn’t a member to join. I had even considered it but I didn’t like the way he was putting the pressure on. It woke a stubborn streak in me.

  ‘Do I have to join?’

  ‘You don’t have to,’ Mr Karle responded after a long moment, his voice distinctly cooler.

  I said nothing, determined not to be railroaded. I felt his eyes boring into me. He was trying to stare me into doing what he wanted, but I looked down at my knees.

  ‘Perhaps you need some time to think it over,’ he said at last. ‘Detention here at school all Saturday.’

  Mr Karle rose, crossed to the door and opened it. ‘You think about it, Nathanial.’

  6

  The Hanging Judge was waiting for me when I got home. My mother had never heard of being innocent until proven guilty, and Mr Karle had got in first.

  ‘He gave me the detention because of not joining the club,’ I tried to tell her.

  ‘Are you saying you didn’t shout at your science teacher?’ This was the first time I had ever got detention and having the school call her about it had freaked my mother right out.

  ‘It was a disagreement! But that’s not why he gave me the detention!’

  ‘I see,’ she said softly, her eyes reproachful. ‘Nathanial, I don’t know what has got into you since we came to Cheshunt but you needn’t think you can manipulate me into leaving by misbehaving at school.’

  My mouth fell open. ‘I wasn’t trying to do anything. I told you. I had an argument with the science teacher and whatever he told you, Mr Karle gave me the detention because I refused to join the school youth club.’

  ‘Mr Karle was very kind on the phone. He is worried about you being such a loner, but I doubt he would punish you for it.’

  ‘If you’d just let me tell you what happened.’

  ‘I won’t have you behaving like an irresponsible hooligan. You will respect your teachers and control yourself.’

  I gaped at her. ‘I can’t believe this!’

  ‘And now you are shouting at me,’ she warned softly.

  I made myself calm down but I was boiling mad inside. All she cared about was that I kept my voice down. I could have just murdered someone but that was fine so long as I didn’t talk too loudly!

  ‘Does that mean I’m supposed to respect my teachers even when they lie, like Mr Karle?’

  ‘Oh, for heavens’ sake, Nathanial. Don’t be ridiculous. A teacher doesn’t give a detention for not joining a voluntary club. You must have got it wrong.’

  For a minute I felt confused. Maybe I had got it wrong. Surely it couldn’t have been the way I remembered. Why would Mr Karle care whether or not I was in the youth club?

  My mother calmed down. ‘I’m sure that’s it, Nat. It’s all just a misunderstanding. Mr Karle will accept an apology. He was very kind on the phone.’

  That word again. I thought about telling her a lot of mass murderers are kind to their mothers and their dogs. Her idea of calling Mr Karle kind made me angry all over again. He had lied to my mother and I was supposed to apologise?

  ‘I didn’t make a mistake and I’m not apologising or joining his stupid youth club no matter how many detentions I get.’ It felt good to shout and I stood up abruptly. She drew back and for a minute she actually looked frightened, as if she thought I was going to hit her.

  That stunned me, and all the anger drained out of me. I felt suddenly empty and depressed.

  ‘I’m taking The Tod for a walk.’

  She just turned away without saying a word.

  Outside, the night was dark and cold. I tried to dismiss the whole stupid business about the youth club and the detention from my mind, whistling up The Tod. He rushed at me wagging his tail and barking in a frenzy of welcome. Instantly I felt better. Dogs are good at that.

  ‘Matey,’ I said, picking him up and cuddling him. He licked me in the eye and I felt like howling, more because of my mother and me, than over what had happened at school. He cocked his head anxiously, sensing my turmoil. I set him down, clipped on the leash and closed the gate behind us.

  I let him have his head and lead the way. I walked because I was too depressed to jog. If only I could talk to her properly, get through to her.

  I thought of the man my mother had gone out with for a while who had got me into running. I had liked him a lot. He had been quiet like her, but silence with him was not a weapon. It was not a shutting out. I used to jog with him some mornings. He always set the pace, throwing instructions over his shoulder: ‘Lean into the hill’ or ‘Fill your lungs’ or ‘Push into the pain barrier’.

  He told me the pain barrier was a threshold sports people reached. When he said that the first time, I thought h
e was trying to tell me about some kind of sports academy you could go to. But it turned out this barrier was a mental thing that tried to fool your body into thinking it had run out of energy. You had to resist the pain telling you to stop; you had to keep on going and suddenly the pain barrier would dissolve, and you could go on for a lot longer.

  Defeating the pain barrier meant your mind had control of your body, rather than the other way round. That, he explained, was the difference between an amateur and a true sportsperson.

  Back then, I had hit the pain barrier pretty fast with a cramp or broken wind. ‘Tough it out,’ he would say. I always ended up stopping, panting and clutching at my side, with him shaking his head and giving me sorrowful looks.

  He stopped coming around after a while and my mother never said why, but I kept on jogging trying to beat the pain barrier. Sometimes I felt there was a kind of pain barrier in my mother that I kept coming up against.

  I made myself jog and The Tod ran ahead, dragging at the lead like a bloodhound on the scent. We slowed to a walk along the edge of the park because it was muddy in patches, the ground soft and treacherous underfoot. The Tod waded through a puddle and I realised I would have to bathe him when we got back.

  He hates baths. He always stands in the water rigid and shuddering with loathing no matter how little water I use. I have never worked out the difference between the puddles he happily plunges through, and the dreaded bath.

  He knows the word too. Bath. As soon as I say it he cringes and puts his ears down. My science-project partner, Lewis, had wanted us to use baths as aversion therapy when we trained The Tod to find his way home.

  ‘He’ll be just like Lassie,’ he had said.

  I told him Lassie was about a dozen dogs with a couple of tricks each. Some dogs even got killed making those cute animal movies.

  ‘We wouldn’t kill him,’ he had pointed out reasonably. He thought worrying about the subject was unscientific.

  ‘You think too much, Nathanial,’ he had said, disgusted by my idea of a positive conditioning project. ‘Pain works better.’

  I broke into a jog as soon as we left the park street. I paid no attention to where we were going, giving myself to the physical sensation. I didn’t want to think any more.

  Then The Tod stopped and I did too.

  Somehow we had wound up at the school again. The hair on my neck prickled because it was the third night in a row we had come there without meaning to.

  The Tod whined and tugged at the lead and I let him draw me forward into Landy Close and across the road.

  At the fence-line, I looked around but tonight there was no sign of the security guard or the kid keeping watch for monsters. I unclipped The Tod, dropped him over the fence and vaulted after him giving myself no chance for second thoughts.

  It was very dark and a foul constant wind blew across the oval. Out in the middle with the street lights behind me, I had the feeling I was on a vast plain. I turned to look back at the line of houses on the other side of a sea of inky blackness, their windows squares of light. Reminders of warmth.

  I shook my head thinking how things could seem so distorted at night. Because it was so dark, the stars were super bright in contrast. I noticed one bigger than the rest and close to the horizon.

  ‘Look Tod. It’s the Dog Star.’

  He growled.

  I let my eyes drop to the school. It seemed surrealistic and alien in the patches of security light. I jammed cold hands in my pockets, wishing I had grabbed a coat. I thought about turning back but when I looked for The Tod, he had disappeared. My heart sank as I noticed a slight movement right at the edge of the asphalt; The Tod disappearing round the side of a portable.

  It wasn’t until I was on the edge of the light that I remembered what the old janitor had said about feral dogs. My heart beat speeded up.

  I walked through the middle of the science and maths portables, too uneasy to call out. I found myself alongside the toilet blocks.

  I don’t know where I expected to find myself, but everything felt strange. The wire grille was bolted, but the doors were open and a faint urine smell drifted out. I wrinkled my nose, thinking my memories of Cheshunt would always be of the smells.

  I froze at a rasping sound somewhere close. When I was younger, I used to sleep with a towel nappy-pinned around my neck to stop Dracula sinking his fangs in me. Even after I grew out of that, I always felt fear in my neck first. Hearing that noise I had an overwhelming urge to turn my collar up.

  What I did though, was to step back into the narrow gap between the boys’ and girls’ portables.

  For a long moment, I stood completely still listening to a piece of loose tin grind and rattle in the rising wind, and wondered if The Tod had gone home.

  ‘Shh,’ a voice hissed.

  ‘I can’t hold it any longer,’ said a second voice. Both voices seemed to be coming from the ground underneath my feet.

  ‘Shut up, stupid.’ The first voice was fierce and urgent.

  ‘Don’t call me stupid. The security guard left an hour ago. I’m letting go.’ The scraping sound went on for a minute and I realised the noise was coming from underneath the portable next to the toilets. There was a scuffling sound and one of the boards fell out, revealing two pale blobs of faces.

  ‘It’s not the security man I’m worried about. It’s the dogs,’ said the first voice. There was a bit more scuffling and grunting and one wriggled out, followed by the other. They replaced the board and the bigger of the pair turned to pick something up off the ground. The light fell momentarily on his features and I stifled a gasp of recognition.

  It was Indian. The second boy was quite a bit smaller and I nearly groaned aloud when I saw his face.

  Danny Odin.

  ‘You’re imagining things again.’

  ‘Smart arse,’ Danny snapped. ‘Wait until one of them chases you in the dark.’

  ‘There’s nothing here and we’d better go. It’s right on curfew.’

  ‘Shut up, stupid. I’m trying to listen.’

  ‘Don’t call me stupid. Come on. Give us a hand with this.’

  ‘Carry it yourself. Serves you right for getting something so big.’

  They went off wrangling.

  After they had gone, I leaned weakly against the edge of the toilet block. My legs felt like lumps of jelly and my heart was still galloping, but I was curious too.

  I looked out from between the toilet blocks. There was no sign of them. They had gone towards the canteen cul-de-sac. There was no way back out but past the toilets. I headed towards the canteen area, sticking to the shadows.

  Past the canteen was only the library and that was a dead end.

  I came to a corner and listened. I could hear nothing but the wind and creaking portables. I felt a stitch beginning in my side; the pain barrier out to rein me in. Ignoring it, I stepped round the corner into the shadowy canteen courtyard, only to be spotlighted in a fierce white torch beam.

  ‘Well. If it isn’t Sherlock Holmes,’ sneered Danny Odin.

  7

  ‘I wasn’t following you,’ I said. ‘I was walking my dog.’

  ‘Oh yeah? So where is it?’ Danny demanded, thrusting his face towards me like a closed fist. I prayed the security man would come back and see the torchlight.

  ‘I don’t know. He must have gone home.’

  Danny snorted in disbelief. ‘Without you?’

  ‘I trained him.’ I wondered if there was any hope of talking myself out of the mess I had walked into. If it were anyone but Danny, I might have stood a chance. I looked at Indian. Surely he hadn’t saved me from Buddha to let Danny Odin knife me?

  ‘You came here just by chance?’ Indian said slowly.

  Danny elbowed him in the stomach. ‘Idiot! He was snooping. Spying on us! No one comes here to walk a dog.’

  ‘But he’s new,’ Indian said, frowning.

  ‘He was spying,’ Danny snarled.

  ‘I wasn’t.’

 
; ‘You were!’ He glared at Indian. ‘You saw how he sneaked round the corner. Did that look to you like he was walking his dog?’

  Indian gave me a speculative look, verging on suspicion.

  ‘Who sent you?’ Danny demanded of me triumphantly.

  I sighed. ‘No one.’

  Danny lowered his head to his chest so that he was staring at me from under the blunt cliff of his forehead. It made him look like a mad troll. ‘We can’t let him go. We’ll have to get rid of him.’

  Up until then I had been worried about getting a beating, but something in Danny’s face reminded me of what the security man had said about the guy burning the old caretaker.

  ‘He didn’t see anything,’ Indian pointed out.

  ‘He saw us take stuff from the canteen,’ Danny retorted. ‘We can’t let him give us away. We have to make sure he can’t tell anyone about us.’

  ‘I think we better wait and ask the others.’

  ‘Can’t you decide anything on your own?’ Danny taunted Indian.

  The others? I wondered what I had stumbled on. Were there a whole gang of them robbing the school? Without meaning to, I took a step backwards, wild thoughts in my head of making a run for it.

  Danny reached up his sleeve with sick-making ease and slid out a flick knife. It was homemade and that made it seem more dangerous than a bought knife with a pearl handle. His knife looked lethal and businesslike; not a knife for show.

  I stood very still, my mouth slimy with fear.

  ‘Danny,’ Indian said urgently. ‘Danny, don’t stab him.’

  They both froze at the sound of a car passing the school.

  ‘My bike!’ Danny hissed, pale eyes flaring with panic.

  But the car did not stop.

  ‘That was lucky,’ Indian said. ‘You better hide it.’

  Danny nodded, handed him the knife and sprinted away leaving Indian and me staring at one another.

  ‘What is this?’ I asked at last. It didn’t make sense that they would be stealing food from the school canteen when there were computers and electronic gear worth thousands in the rest of the school.