Beast Read online

  I reckoned the structure was something to do with pumping water into the reservoir from an underground stream or something, maybe to do with water levels. I didn’t know. Whatever it was, it didn’t look like it was being used any more. Brambles had grown nearly right over the top. The whole thing looked like it might be very useful to me.

  I’m always careful about getting to the cage. I listen for ages to check no one can see me leaving. I’m a lot more careful than that stupid fox was. At least my boy isn’t roaring any more. I’m glad. It’s a horrible sound. You just want to turn and run. When I’m sure no one is watching me, I step from the path. I weave through the trees and push through the thorn hedge. There’s a bit of a gap now, I’ve come so often. I’m nearly there and I can hear snorting and water splashing. He growls, a low rasping sound that seems to come from the bottom of his guts.

  He’s smelled me.

  I hear him thrashing around in the cage and a splash of water hits me in the face. I kneel on the concrete and look through the bars. There is the gleam of an eye in the darkness. I have the key to the padlock in my pocket. I feel scared. I can’t help it. You would be too. The hatch is on the roof of the cage. He can’t get out. But I shiver all the same. Especially now when he has gone quiet and I can’t see him. I clamber up the bank, dragging the sack behind me. Dropping to my knees I crawl on to the roof of the cage. I unlock the padlock and lift the hatch. I drag the pig over and pull it to the hole. I shove it in, booting the last of it through. The relief is instant but I haven’t finished yet. I used to watch him feed. I used to lie on the bars and see him tear the flesh in a frenzy. Now I leave quickly and fetch the other half. I hug the naked, wet flesh in my arms and stagger back to the cage. This half feels heavier. It’s probably because I am tired and because my hand hurts. I rest on the bank next to the cage, holding the pig close to my body. It’s still just recognizably a pig. In just a few seconds it will be a mess of blood and bone.

  I’m tired. I want to be clean. I want to be in my own bed in my own flat, with my own bedding that doesn’t stink of the piss and sweat of hundreds of other kids. I want to be holding the warm back of a soft girl.

  I unlock the hatch again and open it, lowering it gently so it won’t clang on the bars. The pig’s too heavy. I can’t just drop it. My arms won’t do it. I push the thing towards the hole and its front dangles into the hatch. I grab the back leg and lower the pig inch by inch through the hatch. Then it feels like one of the bars is collapsing beneath me and I fall forward. The bloody cage is coming apart! Before I can get my balance there is this incredible yank and I am flipped on my side and my head bashes against the metal. I am dragged towards the hole.

  Let go, let go, LET GO.

  My arms splay out and catch the sides of the hatch. My head is sticking out over the hatch and as the pig hits the water a wall of wet piles into my face. I throw myself back and slam down the hatch as his jaws smash into the bars beneath me.

  F o u r

  I don’t keep my dad in a cage. What kind of a weirdo do you think I am? I’ll tell you what’s in there. It’s an animal, a bloody monster. You’ll see it soon enough, don’t worry. I’ve got my plans.

  So I’ve despatched the pig and I’m driving back to the house and I’m feeling pretty sketchy. I’ve got something new to worry about. One of the bars has rusted through and the water cage is no longer secure. It’s unlikely he could bust his way out. But the possibility is still there. This situation can’t carry on. I mean, I almost died back there. And I’m injured. When I was being dragged over the bars my face got hurt. One of my front teeth got knocked and now it has a horrible tingly feeling. I hope it doesn’t fall out. I’ve got good teeth. They’re straight with no fillings. Everyone’s jealous of my teeth. Even Carol told me they were quite good. When I first arrived at the house, three years ago, she was wearing a brace. She had one set of wires over the top and another over the bottom. Perhaps this is what made her turn against me; she was jealous of me. But you can’t decide to hate someone because you are jealous of their teeth. Can you?

  I stop the car and hide the bloodstained pig sack in the hedge because I can’t stand the smell of it.

  It’s about midnight when I arrive home. I hear the hum of the television and go into the sitting room. Jimmy’s waiting up for me. He looks pale and there are deep wrinkles round his eyes.

  “I was worried,” he says.

  I nod.

  I can’t believe that Jimmy and Verity fell for my story; that my dad was so hungry I was taking him a dead pig. Why didn’t they ask me why I didn’t take him a packet of Club biscuits and some tea bags like a normal person?

  I’ll tell you why they didn’t question me. It’s because they think we’re both animals. Oh yes, Jimmy lets me live in his house, and asks me to do the dishes with his daughter. He gives me lifts to town and buys me a CD player at Christmas. But deep down, in his heart, he is frightened of me. I am trouble. And the reason he has me in his house is because he gets paid for it. And so he can tell his friends, “Oh yes, we take the very worst kids. The ones no one else will have.” This makes him feel important. It gives his crummy life meaning. But he thinks I am dangerous. As you have seen, he believes that I am capable of murder. And I can’t believe I let him get away with it. Perhaps he felt guilty and that’s why he didn’t question me too deeply about the pig.

  His precious daughter, Carol, is far more capable of murder than me.

  Jimmy fiddles with the remote control. This is because he can’t look me in the face, and needs to have something to do. I might just be paranoid though. Carol says I’m paranoid. I didn’t know what it meant when she first called me that. I thought it meant someone disabled. Now I know she’s just about right. Anyone would be paranoid with Carol living in the house.

  Jimmy has worked out what he wants to say. He twizzles on the sofa to face me. It’s a big deal for him I reckon.

  “Stephen,” he says. “Should we tell Mindy about this?”

  “No,” I say automatically. Mindy is my social worker and I learned a long time ago it’s best not to tell her anything.

  Jimmy is unsurprised. “Hang on. This pig thing. It’s pretty extreme. She might be able to get your dad some kind of help. You’ve got enough to worry about at the moment.”

  He doesn’t need to tell me that. My dear old dad is the least of my problems. But maybe he can be of use. After all, it was him that got me in this mess in the first place. I wonder if I’d be able to find him. It’s been what? Two years?

  “Mindy’s not as bad as you think,” says Jimmy.

  I give Jimmy a look. “What, do you fancy her or something?” I know this is a stupid thing to say. It’s the sort of mouthing off I did a few years ago. But whenever I hear the name Mindy I get all worked up and if I think about her enough I feel slightly sick.

  Mindy.

  She’s been my social worker for four years and has only recently learned to spell my first name. And she calls me “Steve”.

  “How was your father?” asks Jimmy.

  “Hungry,” I say.

  “Is he not collecting his benefits?”

  “The dole office messed up. He’s been short for a few weeks.”

  I have to admit I am pretty impressed with that and I congratulate myself on my imagination and quick thinking. Maybe there’s hope for me after all.

  Jimmy feels under a cushion and hands me a brown envelope.

  “This came for you this morning,” he says.

  “It’s been opened,” I say, looking at it.

  “Sorry,” Jimmy says. “Carol thought it was for her.”

  “Why, has she forgotten how to read her own name?” I stomp out of the room and slam the door. I bet everyone in the whole bloody house has read it. I feel a new spike of hatred for Carol. Imagine if I’d done that; read her personal letters. I’d get done. I’d get a bloody lecture
about the need for respect and privacy. I bet Carol got off scot-free. I go into my room. I wish I had a lock. Carol and Robert have both got locks on their doors. And bolts on the inside. Mind you, these were there before I arrived so I know it wasn’t because of me. Like I said before, the Reynoldses like to have the worst kids. I bet Carol and Robert have seen a few things in their time. A few crazies. I knew one kid that came here, a few years before me; Alan Granger. He was a bloody psycho even though he was just this pasty little kid. He smashed up the staffroom in the children’s home and knifed one of the workers. He got into drugs. I heard he’s inside now. He’s only two years older than me.

  Alan Granger would have slept in my room, in my bed. The thought makes me want to spew. I wonder if it was him that drew the pictures. I doubt it. He wasn’t the type. But you can never tell, can you?

  When I first move to a place, I like to see where I am and explore my new territory. I have to check for danger. I can’t stand not knowing what is on the other side of the wall. I can’t sleep until I have looked in every room. My room is the smallest in the house. It is at the end of a landing. There is a bathroom between me and Robert, then there’s Carol’s room, then, furthest away from me, Jimmy and Verity. They’ve got a massive room with bay windows, a dressing room and an en suite bathroom, all done up in tiny blue shiny tiles. My bedroom isn’t so bad. But I can tell hundreds of kids have slept here. There’s a certain smell. The smell of urine and fear. A few too many leaky boys have pissed on the carpet. A few too many abandoned kiddies have had a sneaky fag here. The pillow is limp from night-time crying sessions. The wallpaper is cheap, nasty woodchip. Down behind the bedhead there is a load of graffiti. Someone’s scrawled the word CAVE; I suppose it’s a band name. I’ve never heard of them anyway. But the rest of the space behind the bed is covered with drawings, like cartoons. They’re all of members of the Reynolds family. As soon as I discovered them, the first night I was here, I found out all I needed to know.

  First is Jimmy. He’s drawn smiling, but with a big empty circle in his head above his eyes. Verity has two heads. One is a gentle lady with flowing hair and blue eyes; the second is a woman with staring eyes and hair made of snakes. Robert is this little dwarf with a huge knob hanging out of his trousers, tying up a teddy bear by its neck. Carol’s drawing is horrible. It’s spooky. I don’t like to look at it. The artist has got this little girl’s face on the body of a spider with long hairy legs, in the centre of a web. All around are dead bodies strung up and cocooned, and in the picture she is smiling innocently. You can imagine how freaked out I was when I found these pictures. I tried to tell myself to forget them. I knew that I should give the family a chance. But I couldn’t get them out of my mind. The wall is grubby above the headboard. The pictures could have been there ten years or more. Or maybe they were done just before I came. I don’t know, but they coloured my ideas of what the family was like before I had hardly had a conversation with them. I don’t like the idea that those pictures are right next to my head when I’m sleeping. But I can’t move the bed because then the pictures will be seen, and everyone might think I’ve done them.

  I sit on my bed, at the end, away from the headboard, and read the letter. I read it twice. I admit I am quite slow at reading. When you’ve been in and out of school as much as me, it’s hard to find the time to learn. The only person who tried hard with me was Mrs Denny, my first foster mother. I stayed with her two years and she helped me with the basics. She made me read these crazy little stories. Now I do all right but I am slow. If I had stayed with Mrs Denny, maybe I’d be reading Shakespeare and stuff like that now. But that was not to be and here I am struggling with a one page letter from my social worker.

  I drop it on the duvet and put my head in my hands.

  Four weeks. That’s all I have left here. After that, they’ve arranged a place for me at St Mark’s in town. It’s this really rough hostel where there are police raids and stabbings. It is only one step from St Mark’s on to the streets. In four weeks’ time I will be all alone in the world, without even a crazy family to talk to. OK, the Reynoldses aren’t my real family, but at least I have a room, stuff, a space for my car. I have most of my meals cooked for me. There is a cupboard full of food. There is Jimmy, who never says the right thing, but at least he talks to me. I have been here three years. Now I only have four weeks left. I’m seventeen and Social Services say they haven’t got any responsibility for me. In just a few weeks I am supposed to know what to do about cooking and tax and bills and electricity meters and rents and council tax and insurance and jobs and benefits and curtains and cleaning fluids and bank accounts.

  What do I know? I’m just a kid. Most people my age are leaving school and starting jobs or going to college. They get meals cooked for them and still get treated like children. I know. I’ve stayed with families like these. I know seventeen year olds with nine o’clock curfews who have never had a drink or a fag.

  But I have another new problem now. The Reynolds’s house is only four miles away from the reservoir. Feeding times are easy. I can go and check up on him and see that he’s all right. But St Mark’s is in town and that is twenty miles away. How am I going to be able to get to the reservoir if I don’t live nearby, or if I can’t afford to keep my car? I can’t leave him to starve to death, especially now there is the possibility he can get out, but what else can I do? Nobody else knows about him.

  Nobody except my father.

  F i v e

  There was this advert in the job centre:

  Meat Operative required for large local factory. Good stamina and physical strength required. £4.70 per hour. Training given. Successful applicants will be encouraged to apply for their Meat Hygiene Certificate.

  I had to take it. I can’t be homeless and jobless can I? I don’t want to end up on the streets with all the other losers from the children’s home.

  Today is my first day. Marshall’s factory is about six miles from the Reynolds’s house. You go through Gruton, past the reservoir and up towards the moors. It’s not far from the disused quarry where Robert is always pestering me to take him swimming. Don’t worry, I probably won’t. Robert’s a crap swimmer.

  I drive past the lay-by near Gruton Reservoir, and wonder what my Beast is doing. Hopefully keeping his head down and sleeping off his massive pork dinner.

  I get to the factory at seven a.m. It’s a long, grey warehouse-type building right in the middle of nowhere. I meet Naomi, the supervisor. I reckon she’s in her sixties. She’s got a squat body and acts like she’s half asleep. She talks to me like she’s bored. She gives me a hairnet, a white mesh trilby hat, a white coat, white wellies and thin rubber gloves which smell of condoms. She even makes me wear a beard net! I don’t even have a beard, just a bit of stubble. Naomi says if I don’t want to wear one, I have to shave every day. I feel like a right tit when I get it all on. You’d laugh your head off if you saw me. But I’m led down into the cutting room and see everyone is wearing the same getup and I feel a bit better.

  The radio’s playing Orchard FM and all these huge blokes are singing along and throwing down massive joints of meat on metal tables and cutting them up with long knives. Naomi points to a line of people working at a table and says they’re mostly students and that I’ll be working with them. It’s freezing down here. I wish I’d put another T-shirt on. Naomi says it has to be kept this cold for hygiene reasons.

  “You’ll get used to it,” she says yawning. “The quicker you work, the warmer you’ll be.”

  No sympathy here then.

  So the butchers are cutting up the meat and passing it along the line to have the fat trimmed off. When they make a bad cut or the meat looks dodgy they throw it in this massive mincing machine. Naomi says my job is to stand at the mouth of the mincer and transfer the goo that comes out into these shoebox-sized metal tins. The meat is pink like strawberry milkshake and squeezes out like toothpaste. I have to push
the lid down on the boxes to make skewered shish kebabs come out of the holes in the bottom. I give it a go and some of the meat squeezes up over the sides and gets in my gloves and on my sleeves. I even find some in my hair. When I have a tray full of kebabs I go to another table and stab a chunk of lemon on the end of each one. A few people stare at me but no one is really interested. I’m standing next to a huge woman with bare blotchy arms. She’s red-faced and sweaty and I can smell her armpits. I can’t believe she’s hot. It’s freezing in here.

  I wish I’d found a different job. The cold is making my tooth tingle.

  There’s this girl who’s in charge of cutting up the lemons. That’s what she does all day. She tops and tails the lemons, then cuts them in half and quarters them. Then she brings them over to the line of kebab makers. The girl has very short hair and these big dark eyes. At about eleven o’clock everyone goes off for a break. I follow along and we go up into the daylight. The cutting rooms are all underground. I hadn’t realized at first, but when we are sitting in the canteen, the sunlight comes through the windows and I feel the warmth creep up my arms and into my body. I watch the girl. She’s sitting with a few other girls but doesn’t talk to them much. She drinks coffee from her polystyrene cup and gets a chocolate bar from her trouser pocket. The heat from her body must have melted it because she’s making a right mess, licking the chocolate from the wrapper and getting it all round her mouth. She sees me watching her and I look away.

  At three thirty all the butchers leave and the place is quiet without all the singing and shouting and clattering. Someone switches stations to Radio One but it isn’t much better. We work for another hour and then all the meat in the mincer runs out. I’m supposed to work until five, but everyone else is leaving and I haven’t seen anything of Naomi since lunchtime, so I decide to go home too. I’m walking towards the loose, plastic strips that hang in the doorway, when I notice the massive freezers lining the sides of the walls. I look around and try the lid of the nearest. It’s unlocked. Very interesting.