The Deviants

Corey laughed. ‘Jo and Neil. How corny? I always envied Max though, having a garden that backed onto the beach. Well, the dunes, anyway. Ours backs onto a dog toilet.’

‘Don’t be fooled, Corey. Something’s rotten in the state of Denmark.’

‘Huh?’

‘Nothing. It’s just this stupid quote Dad’s got framed in his study.’

‘Max’ll inherit all that when they croak, won’t he?’

‘He’s not interested in the money,’ I said. ‘Not really. Max would be happier working for a living, I know he would. He just hasn’t got any incentive to at the moment. He’s certainly not arsed about all the businesses, the arcades and the garden centre and that.’

‘He owns the Pier now, doesn’t he?’

A salty breeze stung my eyes. ‘Yep. Yet another Rittman Inc property. It’s like a cancer in this town.’

‘Doesn’t Greenland sponsor your running? He can’t be that much of a knob head.’

‘Oh he is, believe me. And it’s only while I’m winning. He’s still a twat.’

‘Huge twat,’ Corey added.

‘Colossal.’

‘Mammoth.’

‘Gargantuan.’

‘Humungulous!’

We were laughing by the time Neil sped off down the seafront and Max returned to us.

‘What are you two giggling about?’

‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘Come on, we’ve got a cat to find.’

‘Yeah,’ he said, flinging an arm around me. ‘And a serial killer to ask about it.’

*

I don’t know why I didn’t try harder to talk Corey out of going to Whitehouse Farm. Maybe a part of me wanted to go back. A pretty sadistic part. Maybe I wanted to be reminded of a place I used to go as a child, before everything went wrong. I don’t know, I really don’t.

But anyway, we took the lunchtime bus to Cloud, the tiny village on the outskirts of Brynstan, where ‘Roadkill Rosie’ lived. It had been a while since any of us had been out there – Fallon had been the only reason. We’d befriended her in primary school, on the basis that she would do anything for a dare; ‘Don’t Dare Fallon’ became one of our catchphrases. Take your knickers off and throw them at that windscreen. Jump off Devil’s Rocks. Steal a Chocolate Orange. Flick a chip at that policeman. Go past the preaching Christians on the corner of the High Street singing that song about blow jobs. She’d do it all. She had no fear. She was also the kindest person I’d ever met.

The bus ride was endless, just like tomorrow seems like next year when you’re a kid. I drifted into a daydream of the past. We were in the lounge at JoNeille – me, Max, Fallon, Corey and Zane – and we’d made a den out of the dining chairs, with some king size bed sheets draped over the top. All around the inside were sofa cushions, and in the middle we’d got ourselves a midnight feast of peanut butter and banana sandwiches, crisps, Haribos and cans of cherry Tango. Suddenly, a head parted the flimsy wall, giving a terrible cry.

‘Wooooaoaaaaaaaaarrrrrggggghhh!’

‘Argh! Jessica, don’t scare us like that!’

‘Ha! What are you lot doing in here?’

‘Dad said we could make a den and sleep in here tonight.’

‘Have they gone out?’

‘Yeah. Some dinner dance thing. Where have you been?’

‘Just out, Beaky Boy.’

‘Can you tell us a story, Jess?’

‘Oh, not another story, Ella.’

‘Yeah, please, Jess. Tell us a really scary one.’

‘You can’t handle a scary one, Zane. We had to call your mum when I read you some Silence of the Lambs, remember?’

‘I won’t cry this time, I promise. Please.’

‘OK. Give me an idea, then, and I’ll tell you a scary story about it.’

‘Ummm…’

‘Cats!’

‘Cats? All right, then, Corey, cats it is. Hmm. Well, OK. There’s this Edgar Allan Poe story called ‘The Black Cat’. Have I told you that one before?’

‘No. Tell us now!’

‘OK, well, a long time ago, there once was this man who lived in this house with his wife and their cat—’

‘What was the cat called?’

‘I don’t know. Maybe Claude or something. Yeah, Claude. Anyway, Claude was black, black as night, and the couple who owned him loved him very much. Then, as time went on, the man started to drink way more than he should—’

‘Was he sad about something?’

‘Yeah, he’d probably lost his job or something or he hated being married, something like that. Anyway, he started taking out all his problems on the cat. When he was drunk he got moody, and the cat was always around, rubbing against his legs and meowing for food. And one day, this cat got on the man’s nerves so much that he took it out into his back garden…’

*

The bus dropped us off on the corner of Long Lane, and we walked the rest of the way until we came to the grubby sign for Whitehouse Farm, me with a gnawing throb of dread in my chest. Weirdly, it hadn’t changed at all in the years since we’d last been there. The mud-spattered jeep was still parked in a garage next door; the field opposite was still barricaded with three rusty shopping trolleys, linked end to end with rope. The sweet smells of hay and dung still hung in the air, and, despite my fear, I felt strangely happy to be back.

‘Go on then,’ said Max, nudging Corey forward. ‘Go and see if Mort’s there. Then we can go.’

Corey took one look back at the everlasting lane we had just walked down from the bus. I saw him take a deep breath. Then he led us inside, one by one.

‘Oh my GOD!’

FlapflapflapflapflutterflutterflutterScreeeeeech!

‘Get it off! Get it off me!’

‘AARGH!’

‘What the HELL is THAT?’

‘Jesus!’

Hell had been unleashed, and we were in the middle of it. Things squawked and screeched at me from branches, flapping about beneath the corrugated plastic roof. There were living things everywhere; creatures, birds, things crawling over my feet. Rabbits, ferrets, cats and an earless Jack Russell terrier brutally shagging a wig. Everywhere you looked were scruffy, eyeless or legless animals: a furry, flappy, feathery nightmare.

‘Shut the door, quick!’ a voice shouted, and Corey dived behind us to bang it shut.

All the way to Cloud, I’d held on to one hope – that Fallon Hayes might not be home. That we could just ask Rosie if she’d seen Mort, commiserate with Corey when she hadn’t, then walk back to the pub on the main road and call a cab back into town. But the curt instruction had come from a girl – a long-legged, green-eyed girl with slightly buck teeth, a platinum blonde confusion of hair, and thick make-up. She had once been my best friend.

I took a deep breath. ‘Hi, Fallon.’

‘Was it strange, being back there again?’

7

Back at Whitehouse Farm

That’s the weird thing. It was like the last four years hadn’t happened.

‘Oh, it’s you guys!’ she said, stroking a trembling white rabbit. ‘Hi, Ella!’

‘Yeah, hi.’ I nudged away a teacup Chihuahua in a sailor suit that was trying to piss on my trainers. ‘How are you, Fallon?’

She was smiling. A genuine smile, full of joy. She still had the same riot of freckles, like a leaf blower had blasted them to the four corners of her face. I hadn’t expected her to be quite so happy to see us.

‘I haven’t seen you for ages!’ The rabbit wriggled in her arms but she held it steady. ‘Wow – you got cute, Max!’ Max laughed and rubbed his mouth. ‘And Corey! This is brilliant! Zane’s not with you, is he?’

Max rose to the challenge of answering that one. ‘No. We don’t see him any more.’

‘Oh,’ she said. ‘It’s almost like the old times, isn’t it?

‘It was only four years ago,’ said Corey.

The joy disappeared from her face as quickly as it had arrived. I knew she was thinking about the funeral – the last time she’d seen us. ‘How are you, Max? How’s your mum?’

‘OK, thanks. Well, she has her days – you know. Dad’s cool, though.’

‘And, Corey, how’s your nan and granddad? Have you still got all your Harry Potter stuff? How’s baby Voldemort?’

I cut in at that point. ‘Actually, Mort’s the reason we’re here. He’s gone missing, and we were wondering if you’d seen him?’

I flapped away a rogue canary, nudging Corey. ‘Has he got a collar on, Corey?’

‘Yeah, a blue one. It’s brand new,’ he said, stepping behind me, cheeks so red I thought his head might explode. I’d forgotten he’d had a crush on Fallon four years ago. By the look of him, it had resurfaced.

‘No, I would have recognised Voldy.’

‘Mort,’ Corey corrected.

‘Actually, we haven’t seen any gingers lately,’ she pondered. ‘We had one come in with one eye. That was gingerish. You can have one of the tortoiseshells. Got loads of them.’

‘No,’ said Corey. ‘His collar says “Malinowski” and it’s got my number on it.’

‘Can’t you just take that one?’ said Max, pointing to a scrawny black cat licking its backside on an upturned bucket.

‘You can’t have Esmerelda,’ said Fallon. ‘She’s ours. Mum might have some more on the truck that she’s picked up this morning, but she’s not back yet. She shouldn’t be too long though, if you want to wait?’

Max and Corey failed to answer – they were both in a trance, looking at her bottom as she bent over to put the rabbit down. She looked quite fat, under her frilly white vest, tiny denim shorts and mud-speckled moon boots. She started back up the steps to the farmhouse. ‘You can wait for Mum inside, if you like. She should be back soon. We’ve got Sprite.’

Obediently, we all traipsed into the farmhouse behind Fallon, as if Sprite was the most golden carrot she could dangle. Cobwebs drooped in the corners of the kitchenette like forgotten Halloween decorations; the room opened up onto the same dingy lounge area, with the same tired leather three-piece and walls seemingly made from stacks of old newspapers. The shelving all around the top of the room was packed with ornaments, stuffed birds and woodland animals in small glass cases and clean white animal skulls acting as bookends and paperweights. The only light in the room came from two small windows and a box beside the fireplace with a nightlight inside, illuminating photos of Kate Middleton.

A little bird fluttered in from the lean-to and landed on a beam above our heads.

‘Don’t mind the mounts,’ said Fallon, having seen Max staring up at the shelves of stuffed animals. ‘They all died naturally.’

She retrieved three jam jars from a kitchen cupboard and put them on the breakfast bar. Not trendy jam jars like in some upmarket shabby chic restaurant either – actual old jam jars with the labels still glued on.

‘Where’s your mum gone?’ I asked, moving aside a broken hamster cage to sit on a stool. Max stood beside me, hands still in his pockets.

‘Gone to collect some pigs who died in the night. Sudden Pig Death Syndrome.’

‘What does she do, exactly?’ asked Max. ‘I mean, I know she’s a farmer or summing.’

Fallon turned to the fridge to get the Sprite and poured it out into the empty jam jars, handing them to us. ‘She used to be a farmer. She had to disintegrate, cos supermarkets are bastards with milk prices.’

Corey smiled. ‘Do you mean diversify?’

‘Yeah, that’s it. We sold off most of our livestock; kept a couple back for milk and wool. Nowadays she’s an ARS. Makes quite good money from that.’

‘A what?’

‘Animal Rescue Specialist. We look after sick animals, nurse them back to health. Kinda like vets, but a lot cheaper. We euthanise too, and cremate, all at cut-price. People report dead sheep or horses or large roadkill to Mum and she’ll go out to them and pick them up. We’ve got a furnace out the back where we burn ’em, if they’re no good for meat or black pudding.’

‘Gross,’ said Corey.

‘No, it’s not,’ said Fallon. ‘It’s a good business. I help out when I can, but it’s a bit difficult at the moment.’ She looked at me and smiled again, so genuine it was kind of unnerving. A three-legged white cat, wearing a small plastic tiara, limped across the worktops, stopping by the stove to nuzzle the kettle; the kettle, potentially, with the you-know-what in it. A guinea pig ventured in and Fallon picked up a broken tennis racket and lightly tapped its tangly little arse back down the steps. While she was gone, Max moved over to the stove, prized off the lid of the kettle and peeked inside. Corey looked at him expectantly but he shook his head

After we’d gulped down the jam-jar Sprite and some stale smoky bacon Mini Cheddars, Rosie still wasn’t back, so Fallon said she’d take us round the farm.

It was sad, really. The fantastic playground the farm used to be – giant tractors, rope swings, creeks, orchards, haunted corners and woods to ride our bikes through at breakneck speed – it was all still there, but we could see it now for what it was. Just a small, downtrodden smallholding in the middle of nowhere, housing dead or dumped animals, full of rust and mud. As kids, we saw the magic there. We saw magic in everything. Something about growing up kicks that out of you without you even realising it’s happening.

‘It’s a shame Zane’s not here,’ said Fallon. ‘Do you remember when those boys chased us at the swimming pool, Ella? We told them to get lost, but they kept on trying to kiss us.’

It was a memory I’d forgotten until Fallon unlocked it. ‘God, yeah, I do.’

‘Zane saw them off. He hated anything like that. His dad used to beat up his mum.’

‘I never knew that,’ said Max.

‘Yeah,’ said Fallon. ‘They split up. Zane still lives in that ground floor flat on the seafront with her.’

‘How do you know?’ I asked her.

‘I’ve seen him a few times since the – funeral,’ she said, guiltily. ‘I’m so sorry about what Mum said at Jessica’s inquest, Max. She really didn’t mean any harm, I promise you.’

There was a brief silence and awkward looks all round. Then:

‘Where are we going, exactly?’ asked Corey, bringing us back to the matter in hand.

‘We could go down as far as the old railway line if you want,’ said Fallon, as we crossed the road to the field gated by the three shopping trolleys. ‘Nine times out of ten, if someone’s lost a cat, that’s where they’ll be. Get loads of mice down there, cos loads of rubbish gets dumped. Mum’s had to go down a few times cos of a fallen cow.’

So we headed across the lane to the fields and orchard, in the direction of the old railway line – a long road cut into the hillside, leading from Brynstan Bay through the interconnecting villages, and on towards Bristol. We used to race our bikes down there as kids. The big attraction was the Witch’s Pool but you had to go miles down the track to get to it. There was an old railway tunnel halfway along the Cloud section of the line; we used to race through it at top speed, pretending a witch lived in the darkest part. If we went too slowly, there was a danger she’d reach out her bony fingers and grab us, dragging us screaming to our deaths. Zane was the most scared of all of us – I’d never seen anyone ride a bike as fast as him.

Past a chicken coop and a pen where four silky black goats were chomping on large heads of lettuce, we came to a rickety barn. Inside it, behind a mountain of hay bales, was a stash of small brown bottles. Each had a label on the front that read ‘Acid Rain’.

‘Mum’s home brew,’ said Fallon. ‘We’ve got a ton of the stuff. Help yourselves.’

Max grabbed four bottles, and Corey put two in his bag of sweets from the Pier. I didn’t take any, and Fallon said she preferred Capri-Suns. I couldn’t work out if she was joking.

Fallon had grown up in a different way to us three. She hadn’t grown up in the town like we had, so she was quite oblivious to a lot of the things we said, some of our slang. I almost envied her, a child wearing teenage skin that was never going to fit. I wanted to ask her if she had kept my secret, but I couldn’t with the boys around. It was too much to hope she’d forgotten all about it.

Max pulled his phone out of his pocket to check the time. Along with it came a small see-through bag, with a clump of what looked like dried grass. I’d seen it before. He’d dropped it at the garden centre the other night. I was first to reach it this time.

‘What’s this?’ I said, handing it back to him.

‘Nothing. Just a bit of weed.’

‘Weed? You mean, drugs?’

‘Keep your voice down, or they’ll want some.’

Still processing his answer, I followed Fallon through the orchard and across a field into the mottled darkness of the forest, making our way down a dirt track veined with tree roots. On either side of the track, the forest grew thinner and the pale yellow fields grew thicker. I scratched my now burning neck all over. I hadn’t realised how annoyed I’d become.

‘Can’t you take a pill or summing?’ said Max.

‘Like you, you mean?’ I snipped.

‘What?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Oh, I get it. You’re pissed I didn’t tell you about the weed.’

‘Yeah, all right, I am. I know everything about you, Max. I know that still sleep with the same Buddy Bear that your nan bought you when you were born.’

‘Ssh,’ he said, looking back for the others, but they were way behind us now.

‘I know you love tomatoes but hate ketchup. I know where you got every single bracelet on your wrist, cos I was with you when you got them all. I know you still use the peach shampoo Jessica used to like. I even know why that little tuft of hair won’t grow at the base of your neck. So why don’t I know you do drugs?’

‘It’s not like it’s heroin, Ells; just a bit of skunk. It’s no big deal.’

‘You said weed, now it’s skunk? Isn’t that the strongest one?’

‘Nah, it’s cool. It relaxes me. Seriously. Don’t sweat it.’

‘But people have gone mad on that, Max. Like, proper schiz. Are you high right now?’

‘Stop making such a big deal out of it! It’s nothing. I just didn’t tell you cos I knew you’d get a hair up your ass about it.’

‘How often?’ I asked.

He was getting antsy. ‘Just a few spliffs now and again.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘Oh for God’s sake, just now and again, all right? A couple of spliffs in the morning. A shottie or summing before I go to bed. It helps me sleep.’

I couldn’t believe what he was saying. I was waiting for him to smile and say he was joking. But he didn’t.

‘You should try it. Might loosen you up a bit.’ He swigged from his Acid Rain bottle – the final straw.

‘God, you are being the biggest arsehole today!’

‘No, I just meant to relax you. I didn’t mean…’

As I barged past him, he threw me a look like I’d taken his Buddy Bear and given him a bundle of barbed wire to cuddle.

The descent through the long grasses stopped at thick walls of leaves, and the long grey road of the Strawberry Line. The trains that used to run along there had taken strawberries and cheese to Bristol, and beyond. Now the tracks were gone and all the way along was an overgrown archway of trees and hedges, broken up in one direction by a huge black arc – the tunnel. A jogger huffed past and two cyclists were mere dots on the horizon. Apart from a dog walker with four elderly shih-tzus, we four were alone. We started walking, Fallon and Corey chattering away like old friends. Max was swigging Acid Rain, and I was ignoring him.

‘Pete jogs down here,’ I said. There was a definite eye roll from Max but I didn’t draw attention to it. ‘I’ve done some sprints along here too, at West Brynstan where the bend is.’

‘Who’s faster, you or Pete?’ asked Corey,

‘Oh Pete of course,’ Max butted in. ‘Pete’s good at everything. You should see him curing lepers.’ He sniggered and swigged at his bottle. I gave him the stink eye but he was ignoring me this time.

The air became colder as we reached the mouth of the tunnel; the smell of the limestone took me straight back in time. The slimy feel of the walls at the darkest point – the drip of rock water on my hair – all gave me a familiar thrill.

A little way along, Corey called out ‘Oh my God’ and it echoed around us. He’d seen a group of cats, all crowded around the carcass of a dead rabbit. As soon as they saw the torch, they began to scatter; some running back the way we’d come, others straight on into the tunnel.

‘I told you there were cats down here,’ said Fallon. ‘Was any of them Mort, Corey?’

‘No,’ he called back, his voice sounding strangled.

‘You really love Mort, don’t you?’

Corey sniffed. ‘He means a lot to me. I found him in a skip. He was only a few days old. I took him home and stayed up all night, giving him milk, keeping him warm. Granddad said I could only keep him if I laid out for all his food. So I did. He was my reason.’

None of us asked what Corey meant by that. I think we all just knew.

All of a sudden, there was chaos behind us. We looked back into the darkness to see four figures on bikes, all hollering. As they got nearer, I realised they were just kids. But they were shouting abuse – mostly at Fallon.

I couldn’t make out all of what they were shouting, but the odd phrase was clear. All right, retard? How’s your goats doing, Fallon? Hey, ugly girl! Butterface! Two boys and two girls, all younger than us. The eldest boy, no more than twelve, waggled his tongue at her as his bike sailed past. It was all over in seconds.

‘Who were they?’ said Max as the whoops died away in the distance.

‘Oh, just the Shaws. The boys go to that posh private school over in the next village. They’re idiots. They shaved a couple of our goats over Easter. And they write things on the farmhouse walls sometimes. They think Mum’s a witch who kills and skins people. You must have heard the rumours.’

None of us could deny it. We’d all heard the things people in Brynstan said about Rosie. The things we had all said. Things we’d laughed at.

‘Can we go and see the Witch’s Pool?’ asked Corey. ‘Just for old time’s sake?’

‘Uh yeah, if you like,’ said Fallon. ‘I doubt there will be any cats up there though. Never seen any animals round there at all.’

We were all looking at Max, as though it was up to him to decide whether or not we should go. He shrugged. So we carried on walking.

What had seemed like miles when I was a kid, actually took about ten minutes. Fallon suddenly veered off to the left where there was a weather-beaten sign saying Wit Po and she mounted the bank where some makeshift steps had been carved in the red earth. Max glanced at me then followed on behind her and Corey picked up the rear.

‘Do people still come here?’ I asked, as Fallon parted the overhanging branches to reveal a large overgrown meadow.

‘I don’t think so,’ she said. ‘The car park’s just through those trees on the other side and it’s all overgrown and people just tend to use it to dump old mattresses and oil drums. I don’t even think the sign’s on the main road any more. It’s hardly a tourist attraction now.’

I felt uneasy as we walked through those long grasses. I wasn’t actually scared – I guess it was a fear left over from childhood. A habit I hadn’t grown out of. I had no reason to be afraid of it now. And once we had reached it, I could see the place for what it was – an algae-covered, pear-shaped lake with a small broken bridge at one end. The rockery, over which used to flow the fastest little waterfall, was now just a pile of slimy green rocks. But for the midges clouding over the surface, all was still.

‘Is it really bottomless?’ asked Corey, peering over the edge to look into the murk.

‘Only one way to find out,’ said Max, nudging him forwards, making him stumble and grab for the ground. I pulled Corey back up, throwing Max eye-daggers.