John Babbershanks
by Philip J. Davies
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Table of Contents parts: 1, 2, 3 |
conclusion
‘Alfie, is that you?’
The voice comes from where his father lies, but it doesn’t sound like him. It is a faint voice, threadbare and fading. Wrapped up in the weariness of it, though, there is still a residue of the man he used to be. That sliver of recognition makes Alfie well up. He sucks the sobs which want to get out down though. There is no way he’s going to let his dad see him crying.
He skulks over to the bed and perches on the edge. ‘Yes, Dad, it’s me.’
His father looks up at him and smiles, but then his eyes drift to somewhere past him, to the corner of the room, and his smile turns into a scowl. ‘What’s he doing here?’
Alfie smells damp soil and rotting leaves. So strong it is, that it smothers out that smell of death coming from his father. He turns and looks where his dad is looking. Babbershanks is floating in the corner, his head touching the ceiling, his paper-white face glowing like the moon.
‘Why have you come back now?’ Alfie’s father says.
‘Wait a minute,’ Alfie says. ‘You can see him?’
John Babbershanks drifts down to the foot of the bed, smiling. It’s a warm smile, like one you might wear for an old friend you haven’t seen in a long time. So full of love and longing.
‘Not long now,’ John says looking down at the old man. ‘You’re almost done.’
Alfie stands up and steps back away from the bed. ‘What do you mean, John?’ What are you saying?’
‘You can smell it now, right? Vanilla and tobacco.’
Alfie’s father lets out a deep sigh and closes his eyes again. He doesn’t look sad, though. There is a look of relief on his face, like that of a traveller finding his way home to his own bed after a long journey.
‘I’ve missed you,’ Alfie’s father says. ‘Can we go flying one last time? Like we used to?’
John smiles and takes hold of the man’s hand, lifts him off the bed and puts his arms around his waist. They both hang there in the air for a moment; then Babbershanks hoots like an owl. The window opens all on its own, and he carries the frail figure out and into the night, cradling him with gentle arms.
‘I can hear them!’ Alfie’s father shouts. ‘I can hear the stars again.’
* * *
‘How did you get rid of him?’ Alfie asks his dad. He’s back now, and Babbershanks has left them alone. His dad asked him to go, and he did. Just like that.
The old man laughs, but the laugh turns into a rattling cough, and Alfie waits for him to catch his breath
‘Are you sure you want to be rid of him? You’ll miss flying with him. You’ll miss hearing the stars sing.’
‘Dad, he made me pee my pants in front of the class.’
A grunt from his father. ‘He did something like that to me,’ he says. ‘Alright, you want to get rid of him, here’s what to do.’
He beckons Alfie closer. The smell of vanilla and tobacco seeping from his skin is so strong now, but the words his dad whispers make Alfie forget this, just for a moment. A clamminess comes over him, and he realises these words from his father have made him sweat. Tremble even.
‘That’s the only thing which will make him go away?’ Alfie says.
‘It’s what he lives for,’ Alfie’s dad says. ‘I’m surprised he hasn’t offered it to you yet.’
‘I see.’
Alfie gets up to leave.
‘Come back again soon, won’t you?’ his dad says. ‘Let me know how it goes?’
‘Of course I will,’ Alfie says.
‘Make it tonight. Before midnight. Promise me.’
‘Okay, Dad.’
* * *
Babbershanks hangs in the air in the middle of the bedroom staring at Alfie who has been waiting for him. He stays there for a minute then moistens his lips with the tip of his tongue and floats down to the chessboard which is lying on the carpet by the bookcase. He blows a kiss at the box of pieces, and they all fly out and clatter into position on the black and white squares.
‘I’ve been waiting to talk to you,’ Alfie says.
John shrugs. ‘I’m not in the mood for talking,’ he says. ‘I want to play.’
Alfie bites his bottom lip, closes his eyes for a second, then takes up a position opposite John. Chess with Babbershanks is a waste of time; Alfie always loses. Not because John is better at the game than him, but because Alfie knows very well how John gets when he loses at anything, especially chess.
‘You never told me you already knew my dad,’ he says as he settles down ready to play.
‘And his daddy before him, and his daddy before that, too. So many daddies...’
Babbershanks picks up his knight and pushes it forward, moving it like the rook moves. With a flick, he clips the top of Alfie’s king, sending it scuttling off the board.
‘Checkmate,’ he says. ‘I win.’
‘You can’t do that! That’s against the rules!’
‘I can change the rules if I want to,’ Babbershanks says. ‘I invented this game.’
‘You did not invent chess!’
‘I did. I invented it so I could teach a maharaja how to win battles.’
Alfie sighs. He can’t help himself. John is serious, he can see from the thunderous scowl on his face. The very idea, though! John Babbershanks sitting with some Indian ruler coming up with the rules for chess. Somehow this seems even more ridiculous than the idea of him stalking the battlefields before the gates of Troy.
‘Out with it then,’ John says.
‘Out with what?’
‘Say whatever it is you want to say. I can see the words in your head trying to get out.’
Alfie laughs. ‘You always say stuff like that. It’s so weird.’
“Don’t you dare laugh at me!’ Johns screams, and he swipes at the chess board with his hand, sending the pieces scuttling across the floor.
‘Why? What are you going to do, John? Are you going to stick one of your seeds up my nose and get me to pee myself in assembly tomorrow?’
‘I can do worse than that, believe me.’
Normally this is the moment when Alfie crumbles, when the sight of John Babbershanks getting angry makes his insides shrivel up. Yesterday, he would have flinched away from the boy, begged his forgiveness, pleaded with him to keep those seeds in his hair and not do anything which would embarrass him or hurt him. Not today, though. Not after what his father told him. ‘Tell me how I’m going to die, John,’ he says.
‘What?’
‘That’s why you’re here, isn’t it? That’s your job. You tell me how I’m going to die, and then you leave me alone to think about it for the rest of my life. Those are the rules, right? My dad told me all about it. It was the job your dad gave you.’
John freezes. His face is still all knotted up with rage, but there is something else there now, too. Something in his eyes. A pin prick of fear perhaps, or of something else Alfie doesn’t quite understand.
‘There is no greater mischief than telling someone how and when they are going to die,’ John says, although Alfie’s not sure he’s speaking to him. His words seem dreamy, without shape or weight. He is still a boy, but there is something older in that face now. The lines of an old man’s weariness form around his eyes, and he becomes a strange mixture of boyish mischief and aged wickedness.
‘You really are you father’s son, aren’t you?’ John says.
For a moment, the boy with white skin and messy hair does nothing else. He sits there staring blankly at Alfie, that boyish old man’s face unmoving. Then he floats up into the air, grabs Alfie’s arm, lifts him up and flies out of the window with him.
* * *
No dancing to the music of the stars this time. No laughter. No playful pirouetting through the night sky. John just drags Alfie along, straight towards Monk’s Lane and his treehouse.
‘You want to be rid of me, then fine,’ John says. ‘But you have to do something for me first.’
They zoom down towards Monk’s Hill, and John lets Alfie go a few feet above the ground so that he lands hard, bum first.
‘Come and help me dig,’ John says. He moves to the middle of the clearing and starts scooping at the soil with his hands, carving out a groove in the earth.
‘John, I need to get back. I promised my dad I’d go and see him again tonight. Before midnight.’
‘If you don’t help me, I’ll visit you at school tomorrow and blow a seed up your nose which makes you take off all your clothes and run around the playground naked.’
John looks at him, and Alfie feels a peculiar sensation he’s not felt before from John, like he’s looking not at him, but deep inside him. The skin around his throat tightens, and his belly feels like its about to drop into his feet.
‘Don’t look at me like that,’ he says.
‘Help me then.’
‘And if I do?’
‘I’ll go away forever. You’ll never see me again.’
John carries on digging with his hands, his breathing sharp and forced, teeth gritted hard. It’s almost like he’s snarling at the ground. Alfie doesn’t know why he does it. It’s like he can’t help himself. He kneels next to John and starts to help dig.
* * *
‘What’s this?’ Alfie asks as his hand hits something hard. There is something white in the hole they’ve dug. He starts to brush soil from around it, and so does John.
A rib. A skull. The bones of a hand. On one of the fingers, a ring. A green stone set into a band of silver leaves. That snarling rage which has been driving John melts away in a second. His body seems to shrink a few inches as the tension oozes from him. He looks calm now, as if the sight of that ring has soothed him, placated some part of him. Is that a tear on his cheek? Alfie has never seen John cry before. Not ever.
‘Whose bones are these, John?’ Alfie asks.
‘This is where my sister Ori sleeps,’ he says. ‘If I can’t grow her again, I’m going to sleep in here with her.’
John lies down in the hole they have dug, on top of the bones, and starts pulling the soil over himself.
‘Bury me,’ he says.
‘What? Are you mad’?
‘You don’t want me here, do you?’
‘I’m not going to help you kill yourself.’
‘I won’t die. I’ll just sleep. For ten thousand years. When I wake up I’ll be surrounded by trees as tall as mountains. Ori will be there waiting for me, too. How sweet she’ll look under the starlight. Do it, Alfie. Cover me over and let me sleep.’
‘Just tell me how I’m going to die, John. Then you can go and find some other idiot to bury you.’
‘No, I’m not doing that anymore. You want to be rid of me, then this is how.’
He’s already doing it, Alfie realises. Again, he doesn’t know why, but he’s already started pushing the soil over John. It’s like he’s watching himself do it. He is a puppet; his strings being pulled by a force he can’t see. He pushes the earth into the hole until there is only a face visible, white, and shining against the dark muck.
‘Do it,’ Babbershanks says. ‘Do it now.’
Alfie obliges, pushing dirt over the smiling face looking back at him.
‘Good,’ John says. ‘Good.’
* * *
It takes a long time to walk back from the treehouse to Alfie’s house. When he gets there, he darts into a gap in the hedge of the house next door. There are two men carrying a coffin out through the front door. His mother is there, standing silently, watching, her face almost as white as John’s
‘Can you help me?’
The voice makes Alfie jump. There is a girl standing behind him. So dirty, she looks like she’s just been dragged from the ground. Her face, her hands, all caked in soil. Her hair is green and yellow. Not just a hint of colour, but vivid beneath the muck that covers it.
‘Where is my Babbershanks?’ she says, her eyes welling with tears. ‘Where is he? Where am I?’
‘You know John?’ Alfie says.
‘Of course I know him. He’s my brother.’
Alfie takes a step away from her, shaking his head.
‘Don’t leave me!’ she says, then she starts to scream. Alfie blocks his ears. Her cry is like rusting daggers stabbing through into his brain. He wants to run, but there is something about this girl, something fragile, something which he wants to wrap up and look after.
‘Okay, okay,’ he says. ‘Come on. I’ll take you to John’s treehouse. Just don’t make that noise again, please!’
‘I’ll make whatever noise I want,’ the girl says. ‘My mother said I shouldn’t listen to anyone who tries to stop me. Shriek to change things, sing to know, shout to go quickly, whisper to grow. That’s what she told me.’
‘Can you fly like John?’ Alfie asks her.
‘Of course! You mean you can’t? That’s sad. Be my friend, and I’ll take you up to the clouds. They tell stories. Did you know that? They tell such wonderful tales. You’ll be able to hear them if you come with me.’
Copyright © 2022 by Philip J. Davies
