John Babbershanks
by Philip J. Davies
|
Table of Contents parts: 1, 2, 3 |
part 2
‘Alfie Pee-Pee Pants. Come on, Alfie. Let me in.’
John’s rasping voice scratches at Alfie’s ears. He doesn’t move. He’s lying in bed trying his best to look like he’s asleep, but he can’t resist opening his eyes just a crack. John is floating outside his bedroom window. He sees his unmistakable silhouette through his bedroom curtains. The shadow of his hair, his hand tapping on the glass, all picked out by the sulphurous glow of the streetlight outside.
The sight makes Alfie clamp his eyes shut again, and he starts to breathe deeply, trying to feign the rhythm of sleep. No, John. I’m not letting you in. We’re done, remember? We’re not friends anymore, if we ever were.
Silence now. Sweet, sweet silence. An idea grows in Alfie’s brain like one of John’s seeds. It’s an idea so exciting that he almost doesn’t want to risk thinking it. Is John Babbershanks gone? Has he actually listened to him and flown away, never to return? If he has, it would be the first time ever that John has done something Alfie has asked him to do. Probably the first time he’s ever done anything anyone has asked him to do, Alfie thinks. He risks another look, but his stomach ties itself in a knot. The shadow is still floating there. He sees one of John’s yellow eyes, too, squinting at him through the gap between his curtains.
‘Alfie, I’m getting angry now. Open the window and let me in. It’s cold out here, and I don’t like to be cold.’
Liar! You don’t feel the cold, do you John? You showed me that last winter when you took off your clothes and swam naked in the pond in the park.
‘At least open the curtains so we can talk properly. I know you’re not asleep. I can see the thoughts buzzing around inside your head like frightened wasps.’
‘Get lost,’ Alfie hisses back. ‘I told you we’re not friends anymore.’
‘And I told you that’s not your decision. Open the window now, or I’ll hurt you like I did last time you made me get cross.’
Alfie shudders. The bruises from last time Babbershanks got angry with him have only just faded. They took so long to disappear that his mother noticed them. That almost ended up in a trip to the headmaster’s office to discuss whatever bullying had clearly been going on at school. No boy should come home covered in bruises like that, she said. It had taken an unprecedented level of stubbornness on his part to get him out of that one.
‘Alright, alright,’ Alfie says sliding out from under the covers. ‘Just don’t make a noise. I don’t want to wake anyone up.’
He unclips the latch, and the window swings open, pushed by a breath of warm air. John Babbershanks floats in, spreading his arms wide. He pirouettes, then touches down in the middle of the bedroom, bringing with him that familiar smell of soil and rotting leaves. He settles down in front of the soldiers still laid out on the floor from the last time he visited.
‘Come on. I want to play,’ he says.
Alfie sighs and slumps down onto the floor, crossing his legs, as John moves his infantry forward, attacking one of Alfie’s squads from behind. He gleefully flicks the little plastic figures over whilst spitting out the rattle of a machine gun through clenched teeth.
‘You didn’t go and see your daddy, did you?’ he says when he’s finished killing them all. ‘I saw you creeping into your bedroom while your mum was busy washing your underpants.’
Alfie doesn’t answer. How does John know these things? It’s like he has eyes in the walls watching everything which goes on in the house.
‘You thought she wouldn’t notice, didn’t you?’ John says, grinning at him. ‘Well, she did, and she’s going to belt you tomorrow. I’m going to make sure I’m around to see that.’
‘That’s fine,’ says Alfie. ‘I deserve it.’
John rises up and floats across to the other side of the room, to Alfie’s bookshelf, the tips of his toes dragging along the carpet. A glance around the room, a snigger, and he sweeps all the books off one of the shelves onto the floor with his arm.
‘Hey, I told you to be quiet!” Alfie hisses at him.
‘I went to see him,’ John says. ‘I went to see him while he was asleep.’
‘What the hell did you do that for?’ Alfie asks.
A shrug from John. ‘I love the smell of death,’ he says. ‘There’s nothing quite like it. It’s all over your daddy right now. It’s seeping out of him. Even his sleep-farts smell of it.’
‘Liar!’ Alfie says, standing up. ‘My mum says he’s getting better.’
John’s lip curls into a snarl, and he launches through the air like a missile. Alfie crumples up and moans as Babbershanks drives his knuckles into the flesh of his belly, knocking the air out of him. Prickly hands grip his arm and lift him up as if he weighs no more than a leaf, and then both of them are floating out, out through the window into the night.
Holding him close, Babbershanks spins them both around as they rise higher and higher into the night sky. ‘Your Daddy dies on Wednesday,’ he chimes, half in song. ‘Your Daddy dies on Wednesday.’
* * *
Babbershanks hoots like an owl, and the sound of it mixes with the chiming of the stars to form a song. The melody tickles at Alfie and makes him laugh out loud. He feels weightless as if he could fly himself even without whatever magic it is flowing from John into him. As if he can read Alfie’s mind though, John releases him. At once, the stars fall silent, and he screams as he starts to plummet. John lets him fall only for a second or two before he swoops down to grab hold of him again.
This is more than just a moment of torment for John to savour, though. When he catches him again, he gives Alfie a look. A smirk of sorts. The message is clear. You need me, Alfie Brookes. If you ever want to fly again or hear the singing of the stars, then you need my touch.
And perhaps he should be glad to have John in his life. What other eleven-year old boy gets to fly through the night sky and listen to the stars singing?
‘Where are we going tonight?’ Alfie asks, half-shouting to make his voice heard above the sound of the star-symphony.
‘My house,’ John says.
* * *
John lives in a treehouse in the woods at the end of Monk’s Lane. As they touch down, Alfie sees that another piece has fallen off it. A plank of wood from the roof this time. It feels like every time they’ve been here recently, they’ve arrived to find another bit of the place lying on the ground.
‘I was a prince, once,’ John says prodding the fallen plank with his toes. ‘I lived in a palace of oak trees.’
‘Why don’t you bugger off back to wherever it is you came from then?’ Alfie says.
Babbershanks turns to him, narrow-eyed. ‘I’d go in a second, if I could,’ he says. ‘It’s not there now, though, Pee-Pee Pants.’
‘Why? What happened to it?’
‘My father died. Then my mother and my brothers and my sisters. Sweet little Ori, she was the last to go. I wept for a year when she died. When I was done, I wiped my eyes and saw that the trees had all withered up and shrunk back into the ground.’
‘Oh,’ says Alfie. ‘I’m sorry, John.’
It’s odd to hear John talking about his family. He’s never mentioned them before. Alfie has always assumed that John just crawled out of the ground or something. The idea of him having a family, of being sad because they are all dead, well, it makes him think of his own father lying in his bed, still breathing, just about. For how much longer, though? Mother says he’s getting better, but John says he’s going to die soon, and Alfie can’t remember John ever being wrong about anything. He feels a sudden sense of purpose, a need to go home again.
‘Can you take me home now, please, John?’ he says.
John isn’t listening. He’s slipped into that place he goes to sometimes. His eyes are heavy, and moist, and focused on something Alfie can’t see. His face has hardened, too.
‘I was at the fall of Troy. Did you know that?’ he says.
Alfie sighs. ‘Yeah, you’ve mentioned that once or twice before.’
‘That trick with the wooden horse. That was my idea. I whispered it to Odysseus while he slept and, the next morning, he woke up thinking he’d come up with this brilliant plan all by himself.’
‘John, please. I need to go and see my dad.’
‘It was me who told Theseus how to find his way out of the labyrinth after he’d chopped the minotaur’s head off, did you know that?
‘Yes, you’ve told me that, too.’
‘And Odin only has one eye because of me. You didn’t know that, did you, Pee-Pee Pants?’
‘What’s your point, John?’
‘My point is: gods and kings used to listen to me, and now the only one who can hear me is you. What good are you, Alfie? You’re scared of everything. You’re even too scared to go and see your nearly-dead daddy. I don’t know why I hang around with you.’
‘I didn’t ask you to come tonight,’ Alfie says. ‘I told you to leave me alone. And I do want to see my dad. That’s what I keep saying. I want you to take me home.’
‘You’ll have to wait,’ John says. ‘I’ve got to plant some seeds first.’
John leans in and licks Alfie’s face. The sensation of his tongue is like a hundred thousand army ants marching across his skin.
‘Lucky lick,’ he says, and then he walks over to the middle of the clearing. He squats down, farts, and plucks a seed from his hair. A blue one, this time. He sucks his finger, pokes it down into the ground to make a hole and drops the tiny thing in. Alfie has seen him do this a thousand times before.
‘You have to do that now, do you?’ he says. ‘It can’t wait until tomorrow?’
‘Full moon,’ John says. ‘I’ve told you before. My father said I had to. Before he died, he said every full moon I had to plant my seeds.’ He plucks another one from his hair. A orange one this time, so he puts it in the pocket of his jeans. ‘Yellow to change things, green to know, orange to go quickly, blue to grow.’
‘But what are you trying to grow?’ Alfie asks. ‘You’ve never told me.’
John doesn’t answer. He just carries on planting his seeds.
* * *
‘What does death smell like, exactly?’ Alfie asks John as they fly home.
‘It smells of vanilla and tobacco.’
‘Well, I’ve never smelt that on my dad. You must be wrong.’
John pulls a yellow seed out of his hair and shoves it up Alfie’s nose. It shoots straight up into his brain, fizzes for a moment, and then a tingle passes through his head back into his nostrils.
‘You will now,’ he says.
* * *
Alfie climbs the stairs, each footstep heavier than the last. His face is throbbing from where his mother just slapped him. It’s fair enough, though. Like he said to John, he deserved it. He didn’t like that his mother called him a wicked boy, though. She just doesn’t get it. It’s not that he doesn’t want to see his father. It’s never been that. He’s got these memories of his dad, though, of playing cricket with him, of him cheering when he whacked the ball, of him screaming for him as he led the egg and spoon race at sports day a few years back. These are the things Alfie wants to remember. Not the image of the frail thing he has become.
He’s a wraith now, lying there day after day, staining his sheets, his breath rattling inside him. Not wanting to see this does not make him wicked. None of this matters, though. The pain in his face, his sense of injustice, it all vanishes when a breeze from somewhere upstairs carries a whiff of vanilla and tobacco to him. Alfie wants to turn and run away again, but he won’t. Not this time.
* * *
Copyright © 2022 by Philip J. Davies
