Bird Blood Snow Read online

  At that point the landlord’s wife (----, 5’2”, 58yrs,19 stone) and daughter (----, 30yrs, 5’10”) came into the family room from the kitchen to lay up the tables.

  According to the account, the landlord and the two regulars followed the youth into the room and that is when the trouble started.

  The daughter states that she asked the youth to leave and admits to threatening that the locals would soon be in and that he would be forcibly ejected if he did not leave of his own accord. (Note: it is unlikely the youth was aware of the volatile reputation of the area.)

  This made him violent. It is unclear why, but the youth then assaulted Mr ----, one of the regulars. In attempting to intervene, the other regular Mr ---, was also grievously hurt.

  The daughter states that she continually advised her father to call the police, but he admits to holding off, admitting that at the time he ‘preferred to deal with the issue himself’. He admits this was a mistake.

  Before leaving, the youth was heard to be ‘shouting and raving’. It is unsure what he was raving about.

  They came across a bike saddle, torn off, the padding weathered and tattered, and when they had ridden around part of the mountain, they discovered in a stream, lying twisted and half-broken and rusted, the rest of the bike.

  As they were looking at the bike, they heard a whistle like that of a shepherd tending his flock, and suddenly, on their left, they saw a good number of sheep. Behind the sheep, at the top of the mountain, the shepherd appeared.

  They called to him and asked him to come down. He shouted in response, asking what brought them to this place. Even from where they were they could see he was elderly. They asked him to come down.

  ‘Found that bike, have you? On Hook it’s been there six months. Tell me: have you come across the owner?’

  ‘We haven’t seen anyone. Found the saddle though. Not far from here.’

  ‘I saw it. Left it where it was myself. Don’t want nobody accusing me of anything. Nothing to do with me.’

  ‘You know whose bike this is?’

  ‘I know I saw some kid, some time ago, over the edge fields. He was riding it then pushing it, riding it then pushing it. That very bike there. He looked touched if you ask me. Wasn’t right. He stood out bizarre in the posh tracksuit he had on. Had half a mind to talk with him, but he stayed off.’

  ‘Any ideas where he went?’

  The old man nodded out to the deepening hills: ‘Out there somewhere. He went off. Getting on and off the bike, trying to ride it. Getting off it, getting back on it.

  ‘Didn’t think of him again really until a few days later when he crossed paths with one of the other shepherds. Just went up to him and started to punch and kick him, then went up to the quad bike and took his flask and a pasty and bag of crisps and ran off.

  ‘We went and looked for him then for almost two days. Out there,’ he nodded to the hills. ‘We found him in the hollow of a huge oak. He came out as gentle as you please. His clothes were torn and his face so changed I hardly recognised him. But you couldn’t mistake those clothes. I was shocked how young he was, seeing him up close.

  ‘We told him to just come and ask when he needed food, not take it by force. We thought we’d got through to him. He was on the verge of tears. Said he was sorry about the stuff before, taking the food. He wouldn’t tell us who he was.

  ‘And then, halfway through saying something, he stopped and went quiet. We didn’t say anything, waiting to see what would happen, feeling sorry to see him like that, like some kind of craziness had come over him. Then in a great fury he jumped up and attacked the man closest to him, with so much violence and so much anger that if we hadn’t dragged him off he would have beaten and bitten him to death. He was screaming, mad things. Still screaming when he ran off. It was impossible to follow him.’

  – Well, that’s our man.

  – Our boy, said the other policeman.

  They sat for a while on the quad bikes they had used, looking out at the central scale of those hills.

  – He doesn’t justify a helicopter.

  – It’s been a while, said the younger one. The comment was tacit and gently loaded. The tough weather was coming in.

  – I vote we just see if he turns up, said the other

  Seeing the bike in the stream there... you see, all you hear is how violent I was, but there were things leading up to that. Things that weren’t told. That would not be part of the myth.

  One of the other kids came running and said they’d put my bike in the stream. It was the most precious thing I had and I’d been searching for it.

  There was a little stream at the edge of the estate and along it for a part a low brick wall about chest high to me back then.

  They’d taken my bike and put it over the wall. It wasn’t actually in the stream but it was scratched and one of the stabilisers was bent where they had dropped it over. The plastic saddle box was torn off and in the stream. It had been carried down but was caught in some weed that floated there, looking like it would get free anytime and be gone.

  I had to get into the stream to get the saddle box out. It was cracked. The striped stickers that were stuck to it were peeling off and ruined. The hinges of the lid were permanently broken.

  I tried to get the bike back over the wall. I struggled and got it over. The tyres were let down, and the saddle twisted round on itself. I didn’t understand.

  – And what did you do?

  It was two of the older kids. Three or four years older than I was. They were in their front gardens when I wheeled the bike past them and they laughed and mocked. I was crying. I was distraught.

  I took the bike home then went back to them. One of them had gone in but the other was still in his garden. I genuinely don’t remember what he was doing.

  The garden hose was lying there like a snake and I picked it up and swung it at him. He did not see it coming. The water gurgled and flew with each whip and I beat him until he cowered and bled.

  After a while he managed to get inside.

  – Do you think this is why your mother took you away?

  It was.

  – You remember the estates though?

  I remember the estates. I didn’t understand. I really didn’t understand. Because of the fear my father had caused, the children of those he frightened took it out on me. He was dead by then.

  A time before that they tied me to the climbing frame. There was a climbing frame there for us to play on, the grass all worn away in dry patches around it, and they tied me to the frame with my own shoelaces.

  I used to be something of a plaything for the girls there, when I was so tiny, and I think it made the boys jealous.

  They said they were going off to get nails, and that they would crucify me like Jesus.

  They made me drink puddle water out of my shoe. They said it was poisonous. They said it would mean I would stay alive when the nails went in. So I would feel them. I’m not supposed to remember these things. I was very little. I was too little to do anything.

  (At this he paused for quite some time.)

  I wouldn’t always be little, though.

  – Did you get the other one? The one who’d put your bike in the stream.

  Not then. I got someone who laughed about it though.

  I threw a large stone into his back and he crunched up like a spider dropped in water.

  His father got hold of me. He bit me. That was the strangest thing.

  *

  Life – the way it runs for us – is so determined by gatherings of little accidents. Stones that change the course of the stream.

  This was his attempt to return to innocence. To repeat the action of his mother, in removing himself from forces that would do harm to him. That would demand a violent response.

  So he went ‘into the wilderness’. But what did he find? A quad bike. The same machine that startled him so much when he was an infant: a thorough reminder of the poor deer. Again,
the trigger: and violence was the result.

  The same, an accident – a misheard word. Arthur’s Court. What are the chances? But what is life but reaction to chances?

  – But why violence? When he was trying to get away from it. When it sickened him. He was aware. He had a voice telling him...

  ...and some other voice coming like a sharp whisper out of way back in his breed: ‘sic ’im, boy, sic ’im.’

  You can’t shirk your genes.

  The wind swung and the rain came in from the North and that had changed things.

  He knelt in the wet ground over the sheep and tried to tear off the fleece. He tore so hard the quick of his nails hurt, but it would not come up.

  The head was unusually floppy from the broken neck and a bone in the foreleg shin was out through the skin. A precise line of blood had come from its mouth with the fall and it had gone into a red lacquer.

  He looked at the sheep. The eyeball seemed unnaturally big and still frightened.

  It was a scraggy mountain sheep and he had found it wandered away from the flock. Its fleece was away in places but the obvious red squiggle of marker dye was there, and a dry bramble was caught up in the wool like a ring.

  He had driven the sheep over the small quarry that the stone for the ruined walls about the place was from and when he got down to the sheep it was passive and dead.

  He had not been in the wilderness long but he had lost weight quickly and his strength had stubbornised into a leverage. He was surprised at the weight of the sheep and tried to butcher it there.

  He beat repeatedly with the sharp stick at a bald place of the sheep’s neck but the hide resisted and then he pushed and leaned on the stick but still it would not go through. Then he looked down at the splintered bone of the foreleg and tore this out and with that sharp edge finally got through the skin.

  He had no idea of butchery and he ripped and tore now at the meat of the sheep. He had seen a deer in that leap, and he wanted to dehumanise it.

  He scraped and pulled at the sheep until he had recovered a shapeless pile of meat and was exhausted by the physical geography of the animal. It confused him that it had not bled very much. His nails hurt.

  When he ate the first lump, he was sick.

  We didn’t recognise him at first. Looked like one of them junkies that come in now and then, all starey and away off the planet somewhere. Had this kind of crazy look. He was filthy. Bones of him all sticking out. Big bulgy eyes. A torn dirty sheepskin over his back that made his shoulders look bulgy. Skinny and bulgy.

  Kay was out, as usual, straight over there. Swear down we didn’t know it was him then, but it makes it a bit ironic.

  ‘Where you from, squire? Where you from?’ Kay. Always the same. And talk about history repeating itself, he didn’t say nothing. So this time Kay just charges the guy with a shopping trolley, not knowing who it was. Thump. Right into his leg. He’s a twat, sometimes, Kay.

  We picked the guy up, still not clicking who he was like. It was like he was properly stoned. Didn’t say anything. Like he’s in shock or something. All skinny and bulgy. That should have given it away. But there was a vulnerability there. I don’t think we ever saw that before or again. That’s maybe why we didn’t click.

  So Gwen gets all maternal instinct over him and we’re making jokes about her catching stuff off him if she touches him, but actually I’m giving Kay grief again for being such a dick.

  Anyway, there we were. It was later that day the other gang came.

  Gwen and the rest of the girls and most of the younger kids move back, because it’s sure this is going to be heavy. It’s been coming for a while. And Kay’s there, and me and Owain and everyone and the other gang lines up on their bikes. There were more of them than us.

  I was feeling pretty sick if I admit it. It had got heavy. We weren’t kids now. It was full on and out of hand but that was that. We weren’t grown ups either.

  And then Peredur stood up.

  *

  When everyone saw him get up and go and fight, they went behind the broken brick walls and on the roof of the old carriages and the burnt-out cars.

  He had picked up an old iron bracing strap, holding it there like a sword. He seemed to signal. Come on then. And one of the other gang charged at him.

  He struck the first in the visor so hard that his blade went into his teeth.

  He stood motionless, the bike coming, the hiss and rasp of its speed building, then he hit him, lifting him out of his saddle. And he caught up the bike, and began to beat it down on the fallen guy. It all kicked off then.

  And we knew, as soon as we saw him fight. Bulgy and skinny. The Ape Frog was back.

  He was David to Goliaths. He was sling and stone both. He beat the boy until he bled from his mouth and ears, and he was sound and fury.

  The people watched from about the high places and they looked down on him and called themselves his people then; and they saw him bear down with passion and wrath, violent and angry, eager and proud.

  The blood dripped from his hand to his elbow and he cut down one after another. He reaped them.

  He went back and forth against any who stood against him, so that they were filled with wonder at him; his sword was caked and dripping with blood and brains and the earth was heaped with the broken.

  His fury rose as he gave such a sword stroke that the blade went through helmet and skin and bent the bars of the bike that came at him. And the ground then was pink with the blood and snow. And he was a wind upon the earth.

  And then, above, a flock of geese. And he was a majesty amongst the ruin he had made, and the sky filled with their call; and he watched, and spread out his arms so the blood fell from him; and the sky was riot.

  ‘You want to hear it? You really want to know? This is it, in slow motion.

  ‘Gets to boiling. That’s how it feels. Blood. Like it gets heated up. I feel my veins then, all hardening.

  ‘Once it starts, that’s when it all slows down. For me. I feel light and gliding, a bird distantly above.

  ‘You can feel how far something has given in your fibres. Whether a bone’s gone. Cheeks are the best. Like paper. Jaws. The pop of a jam-jar lid. There’s a wildness gets in their eyes if you bust one of those.

  ‘Noses we all know. Nose bone can break like old bark if you hit it upwards, feel it disappear up inside the head somewhere. Makes them quiet. A kind of mongy nghhing noise if they make anything. Hit them right and the eyes can blacken up pretty much immediately, like busted TV screens.

  ‘Then there’s the other bones of course. You can get a person all slopey with a collar bone, easy with something heavy. Not highly technical. Good, satisfying crunch when they go. Ribs are tricky. Sometimes they go, sometimes they don’t. You kind of know when you’ve popped a lung though; easily confused mind with a cracked sternum: either way fuckers can’t breath.

  ‘Legs. Arms. Simple stuff. All angles really. Only so much weight they’ll take. Fingers. Now. Fingers are fun. Panics people so you have to have control for that. Over them, I mean.

  ‘That’s breaking. Then there’s bruising and tearing. Ears tear. You ever seen that?

  ‘Don’t look at me like that. You asked.

  ‘It hurts you, you know, when you punch somebody’s teeth. Teeth can go right into you.’

  He went on to tell me how it feels afterwards. Brings a peace across him. A descended calm. Like snow.

  *

  Police Force: ................

  Division: ......................

  Misc. Prop. No. ..............

  Description of item: Mobile phone.

  Identifying mark: ..............

  LAB. REF.

  CLIP ONE: You see the dogs. In the background there are the noises of the bikes. There’s no time stamp. The light suggests it’s dawn. The phone camera doesn’t deal with the light well and there’s often a bluishness to what we can see. A lot is unclear.

&nbs
p; The shot swings away from the lurchers. It’s unsteady now as the cameraman is walking. There’s a group of kids. I’d guess fifteen, sixteen. No older than that. Their hands and faces look quartzy white, stand out.

  You can hear the dogs, their sounds, the cameraman talking to them. CLIP STOPS.

  NEXT CLIP: Close-up of an air rifle. (Police detail – Looks like Webley Raider 10, pneumatic, .22, likely modified.)

  The dogs are whining and you can hear the kids talking. Frequent disruption of detail as screen glares and darkens. Phone dropped and everybody laughs. Picked up. Screen covered. A sleeve? (As phone is wiped.) In the time it’s picked up see the bike spokes, a trainer. CLIP CUTS OFF.

  NEXT CLIP: The kids move off on the bikes, the dogs on leads out in front them. You can clearly see Peredur. (Proof he was socialising with the gang at this time.) One of the kids is carrying another ‘weapon’. (Crossbow? Inconclusive.) Jerky shot as the cameraman must mount the bike and start off. Sound of this bike drowns out anything from the rest of the group. Gathers pace. The clip continues until it CUTS OFF.

  *

  They headed out to the scrub forest, each with some deep private examination, though they were a group.

  When they got to the edge of the forest some of the boys went on foot into the overgrowth with the tracking dogs and the others came behind in two groups along the dirt paths either side of the scrub so there were two flanks holding the chase dogs straining and lurching on leads in front of them. In that light, the brindle of the chase dogs looked mineral.