Cold Boy's Wood by Carol Birch (best books to read for students txt) 📕

a moment with a small wooden handle sticking out of the right side of his throat. When I pulled it out a jet of blood followed, spurting out in a horizontal arc. I looked in his eyes and he looked right back in mine: love, hate, horrible bewilderment. He opened his mouth as if to speak and his eyes never left mine.

He went over in the grass on his side, wound to the earth, kicking with his feet. I never saw such amazement as I saw on his face. Blood came shooting out, fast and dark, and his shoulders jerked, and his knees tried to bend and pull up towards the foetal position but they couldn’t make it.

The top of my brain flew off. Next thing I knew I was on the ground outside the open back door and I’d wet myself. It was warm.

Johnny lay still.

He was looking into the grass in front of his eyes. I think I might have lain there a long time. And everything was important again and there was meaning in life and things that must be done. OK, I’m done. That’s it, the lot.

There was a flash of lightning, an instant.

39

What a night that was indeed.

I sat up. He lay in that small low-walled garden with blood on the grass all around his head and shoulders, blood dripping from the stalks and blades, sucked into the earth.

I knew he was dead and I’d done it and it didn’t mean a thing. My mind was clear. The first stars were softly ghosting in the blue light. Soon be full dark but the moon will keep it bright. The gate was open.

I changed my clothes, got my torch, put it round my neck. I would not be without it on this kind of a night. My chest was heaving inside. I didn’t waste much time. I dragged him out to the car, a terrible job. You know what they say. These strengths you don’t know you have. Trust me, they’re true. But they wreck you. That’s how I fucked my back and it’s been fucked to this day.

It took me about an hour to get him through the gate to the car. No one came by. If anyone had, the whole game would have been up.

The worst thing was getting him in the car, that really was a nightmare. I cried. I ran round the car. Then saw the inevitable, he is to be got in. You can do it, you know. Call your dark angel. Everyone prays, you pray, of course you do, you just do. I laid him with his back and head against the side of the car, the door wide open, his neck uncomfortable over the ridge. I climbed in sideways, backwards, my skirt rucking up exposing my socks and hairy legs, no time to lose, arms under his armpits, now growing cold, my back cracked as I hauled him in, the weight of the whole world.

That took another good hour.

Then I had to get his legs in.

Then I had to stop after closing the door, stop and do nothing, just stare down the lane where dusk gathered, getting my breath, licking my lips, hot against the cooling night air, and weeping steady pointless tears, mechanical as time.

I drove him through Andwiston and up over the heights, part way down the other side. It’s wild round there, very beautiful with twilight and a big moon. The lightning had stopped and no storm had come.

We had a night of it. I talked to you in the van. ‘Sorry, love,’ I said.

I put him in the storm drain up beyond Beggar’s Ercol. No one goes up there. By the time I reached the track, the long ride between high hedges, the first light was beginning in the east. I stopped at the gate, got out and opened it, drove in and slowly across the field. The car was not made for this terrain and it bumped and rocked. I pulled up near the hedge and got out and looked around at the empty field, and it was cold and sad and terrible, and I knew it was ridiculous and impossible, it damn near killed me getting him up here and what now? But I’d seen it once a long time ago while walking, side of the field, the hole where the water goes down, a black mouth lurking under the hedge. I walked the perimeter, looking for it, walked twice around and was beginning to whisper to myself as the sun began, just yawning, not even stretching, maybe beginning to think of the possibility of getting up, and the night turned into birdsong. I found it on the third circuit, returned to the car and drove as close as I could get, then pulled him out. It was easier than getting him in but my arms and shoulders were so tired that I groaned and tears ran from my eyes. ‘I’m so sorry, sweetheart,’ I said. The back of his head hit the earth, which made me feel sick, made my stomach jump, but nothing could hurt him now, it didn’t matter. I set to again as before, arms under his armpits, like ice now, all of him hardening, dragged. Not far this time. To the storm drain, an opening some three feet high and six wide, curtained by wet trails of filth and deep green slime, and then I rested, not for long because the light grew and grew. No one came up here. I remember when I first saw this thing, I thought, creepy, you could imagine goblins sneaking out after you passed, following silently on behind. I scared my brother. Something’s crawling up, I said, and we ran.

First I tried to push him in but that just didn’t work, so there was nothing else for it but to get down on my hands and knees and crawl in head-first through the muck then turn around. My murdering arms