Thicker Than Water

I closed it up again, put it back in the shoebox and the shoebox back where it belonged. I was piling up the porn barricade again when out of the corner of my eye I caught a movement from outside the window. Too late now to turn the light off, or to duck down out of sight: I’d just be advertising the fact that I didn’t have any right to be here. Instead I finished what I was doing, closed the wardrobe as slowly and casually as I could, and then turned to look out into the night.

I couldn’t see what had moved at first, because everything seemed still now. Then, as my gaze panned from left to right across the scene, I finally saw the small figure standing on the concrete balustrade of the walkway on the side furthest away from me. It looked like a boy, far from fully grown, with his shoulders hunched and his head down, staring at the ground sixty feet or so below. He was standing absolutely motionless, which was why he’d been so hard to spot: the movement that had alerted me at first must have been when he climbed up onto the balustrade.

Nothing in his posture suggested that he was about to jump: he might have been waiting for a friend, or for a bus, except for the insane place he’d chosen to do it. But somehow I could see in my mind’s eye how this was going to end: the shapeless, half-exploded blood-and-bone sack that had once been a human being, on the pavement below. I was seeing it as though I was remembering it, looking straight down from the spot where the kid was now standing.

Maybe that flash of false memory galvanised me. I don’t remember thinking it through or reaching any kind of rational decision. I was suddenly caroming out of the bedroom, across the lounge and up the stairs, taking them three at a time. I hauled Kenny’s front door open and let it slam against the wall, heedless of the noise: then I was out through the spavined swing doors and onto the walkway, in all maybe twenty seconds after I’d first sighted the kid standing there.

But once there I came to a sudden halt, uncertain what to do. The boy was still standing in exactly the same place, about fifteen feet away from me, and in exactly the same posture. There was something unnatural about his stillness: anyone in that position, standing over a drop like that, would sway slightly as they unconsciously adjusted their balance. This kid was as rigid and immobile as a statue.

I took one step, not towards him but towards the parapet, thinking that if he looked like he was going to jump I might have a moment in which to tackle him from the side and push him back onto the walkway before he could fall. I kept my stare fixed on him the whole time, and that Stimrom movement brought his face into profile so that I suddenly realised who it was: the blond boy who’d given me directions the first time I’d come here.

‘Bic,’ I called softly. He didn’t respond, didn’t seem to have heard. His eyes were wide and staring, and he didn’t blink.

I took another step, and then another, trying not to make a sound. If he was in some kind of a trance, waking him up was probably the last thing I wanted to do.

When I was almost close enough to touch him, he spoke. ‘Gonna get hurt,’ he murmured, his tone mild and contemplative.

I didn’t know if it was a warning or a complaint. I didn’t much care, either. If it was a warning then I was going to ignore it: if he was lamenting his own situation, then he’d probably thank me when he woke up. If he woke up.

As his knees flexed, I lunged. His feet were already off the ground when I caught him around the waist, but he weighed nothing and my momentum more than made up for his. We went sideways, not out and down, and I rolled as I fell so that I didn’t squash the breath out of the boy or slam him head-first into the concrete. As a result I landed awkwardly, my forearm and elbow making jarring contact with the ground so that for a moment I was focused only on my own pain. In that moment, Bic struggled free with a yell of surprise and alarm. He scrambled away from me on his arse and his elbows, his face making up for its earlier immobility by running through about a dozen expressions in as many seconds. Then he looked down at the cold concrete he was sitting on, at his hands and at the livid moon staring us down from over the shoulder of Weston Block. Something made a pat-pat-pat sound, very close, like soft applause, but there was nobody on the walkway except the two of us.

‘Shit,’ Bic said, in a tone of simple, stunned disbelief.

‘You’re okay,’ I said, unnecessarily. ‘You were sleep-walking. ’ It wasn’t enough, but maybe it would cover the basics.

‘I’m—’ he began. ‘I’m - not - where am I? Who are you? You keep the fuck away from me or I’ll lamp you. What did you do to me?’