Homing Read online

  “Are you okay?”

  The hurt boy bared his teeth. “I’m bleeding, man.” His voice was husky and weak.

  “I’ll call Mrs Galant—”

  “No. Nobody.”

  Was he a gangster? Surely not as bad as those other ones, the knife-men?

  “What’s your name?” Callum asked.

  The boy hesitated. “Neville,” he whispered.

  “Okay, okay. Just stay still,” Callum said. “Don’t move.”

  Quickly he headed back, past the rows of paperbacks and hardbacks with shining spines, through the interleading rooms to the checkout desk. Miss Galant was absorbed with something vexing on the computer.

  “Miss Galant,” he whispered. “Do you have a Band-Aid?”

  “What?” She looked up sharply from the screen. “Have you hurt yourself? Show me.”

  “No, I mean …” said Callum, “I mean headache pills.”

  She clicked her tongue, in a way that could mean irritation or sympathy. “Shame, sweetie,” she said, but her frown did not clear. She fiddled in a drawer, fetching out a tub of Panados. “How many?”

  “Two.” His mother always asked him to bring her two when she had a headache, which was quite often.

  “No, I’ll give you one,” she said, squinting at the tiny writing on the side of the container. “One is for kiddies. Drink some water with it.”

  Holding the tablet in his palm, he walked all the way down the long, tiled corridor towards the bathrooms. In the men’s room he took an empty Coke can out of the wire rubbish bin. While he was filling the can with water from the tap, the door swung open behind him and two men came in, bringing a cold air with them. The blood left Callum’s cheeks. Not turning his head, he peeked in the mirror. It was the knife-men.

  He kept his head down. He was careful not to look directly at their faces – just like his mother had told him to do if he was ever in a hijacked car. But the men paid him no attention. The taller one in the black tracksuit stood at the doorway, his hand thrust into his pocket, while the other one, whose short-sleeved brown shirt showed the hard muscles in his arms, pushed open the doors of the toilet stalls one by one. Callum’s hands were shaking a little, and the water overflowed the Coke can. Quickly he closed the tap. Then he turned around and carried the can to the doorway, eyes down. Black Tracksuit blocked his path.

  “Excuse me,” Callum said, staring at the hole in the top of the can.

  The man grunted and stepped aside. Callum pushed through the door and walked slowly along the corridor, holding the can in one hand and the Panado in the other, not looking back. As he got to the library turnstile, he heard the sound of the bathroom door swinging open and shut down at the other end of the corridor, and footsteps. He held the Coke can against his leg as he entered the library, so that Miss Galant wouldn’t see.

  Neville was sitting up. His face was paler than before and the egg-shaped blood stain had spread.

  “Here.” Callum held out the Panado and the water, but Neville seemed impatient. He pushed the can aside with the back of his hand, spilling a little. More blood bloomed on the T-shirt with the movement.

  “Are they coming?” Neville whispered. “I can hear them.”

  Callum couldn’t hear anything, but he nodded. “They’re here; they’re downstairs.”

  The blood was spreading. It needed more than a Band-Aid, Callum knew. Should he get a wad of toilet paper? But he couldn’t leave Neville alone again. Should he make a bandage from his own T-shirt? His mother would kill him.

  Instead he pulled a book from the shelf. The Siege of Ladysmith, it said. An old book – good, thick paper. He pulled a page out; it made a ripe ripping sound and for a moment he froze, waiting for an enraged Miss Galant to materialise. But no one came. Encouraged, he pulled out a few more pages, then a handful – not the shiny pages with pictures, but the absorbent typed ones.

  “Pull up your shirt,” he said. Neville looked at him dully. “Up!” Callum tugged at the sticky T-shirt. The cut below made his toes curl; there was a lot of blood, but he could see the pale layers of skin where the knife had sliced. He pressed the paper to Neville’s side, and redness immediately seeped through. He took the wad away and added more clean pages, pressing them tightly to the wound. The blood seep slowed. “Hold it there,” he said. “Push it in.”

  Weakly, the young man pushed his hand against the paper pad. Then Callum pulled off his belt with the snake buckle and wrapped it around Neville’s chest, cinching it tight to hold the paper in place. “Okay, hands down.”

  Neville obeyed. Callum pulled down the T-shirt and tucked it into Neville’s belt. The bloodstain was vivid, obvious. Callum took off his own jersey and wrestled it over Neville’s head, guiding his arms through the arm holes; he remembered his mother dressing him like this when he was a very little boy. The young man had a small frame, but still the jersey looked foolishly tight. At least it held the paper in place.

  “Come.” Callum stood and held out his hand. When it wasn’t taken, he grabbed Neville’s arm and pulled. Neville rose and Callum turned him around to show him the view out of the little window. “There,” he said, pointing. “Can you see it? The ladder?”

  Neville just stood there. Callum could feel that he was trembling. “Ja,” he whispered at last. And then: “Lift it for me, brother?”

  Callum struggled with the catch, then dug his fingers under the window frame. It squealed up and the air of outside rushed into the room, probably for the first time in decades.

  Callum turned and looked up at the young man beside him. He saw the scar running through his eyebrow and the sinews in his wrists, which stuck out from the sleeves of Callum’s baby-blue jersey. Was Neville older than he’d thought? For the first time, he felt a touch of doubt. But there was no going back.

  “Come,” he said. But Neville didn’t move. So Callum climbed up onto the window sill, and then over the edge onto the roof, dry bits of bird’s nest falling around him. The window sill was at chest height. He held up his arms. “Come.”

  Neville leant heavily on Callum’s shoulder with his left hand. Then he took his right hand away from his hurt side and grabbed the sill, put one foot up and, with Callum holding his arm, tumbled through. He landed on the ledge with a hollow clang that Callum was sure could be heard all the way through the building. After crouching for a moment on all fours, Neville grasped Callum’s arm with new vigour. Together they moved along the ledge towards the ladder. It was only a flimsy thing, Callum saw now, made out of thin strips of metal and half-rusted through.

  Neville gripped the rungs, and with surprising agility pulled himself up. As he scaled the ladder, one of the rusty bolts holding it to the wall disintegrated and it lurched askew, but Neville didn’t even pause, just kept on climbing up to the roof. At the top he stopped to look back for a moment, silhouetted against the grey sky. And then he was gone.

  Callum stood in the cool breeze blowing down. He reached out and tugged gently at the ladder. The second bolt tore away and the ladder fell towards him, and he jumped back with a cry. The ladder bounced off the ledge and fell down into the courtyard, clattering outrageously. Callum turned and ran back along the ledge, climbed through the window and slammed it down tight behind him, heart bashing at his chest. Outside, all that remained were two rust-streaked bolt holes in the wall – no sign that there had ever been a way to climb out. But inside, the blood drips led to an incriminating puddle right under the window.

  Quick, quick – more pages out of The Siege of Ladysmith, crumpled up into a ball … down on his hands and knees, Callum inched along the polished wooden floors, cleaning up the bloodstains, erasing the trail. He scrubbed his way all through biography, reptiles, astronomy, geology. Nobody was around; it must be close to closing time.

  Then he heard the voices. Shoes loud on the parquet flooring. He crawled into one of the aisles and sat with his back against the books. With horror he saw that his hands were red with blood. He took a volume from the nea
rest shelf, blotted his palms on the pages and then replaced the book. He took the scrunched-up ball of stained paper and shoved it to the back of the lowest shelf. Then he squeezed his hands between his thighs and closed his eyes.

  He could hear the two men coming closer. They paused, so close he could hear the squeak of their shoes. Callum opened his eyes and there they were, at the end of the aisle. Black Tracksuit still had his hand in his pocket, and now Callum saw the bulge where the knife must be. His eyes settled lazily on Callum. Brown Shirt kept on going, on into the other rooms. Black Tracksuit kept staring at Callum. His eyes were neutral, but his mouth was open, showing silver in his teeth, and he seemed to be panting slightly – not from exertion, but with a kind of eagerness. Callum could barely breathe; he was sure the man could smell the blood. He stared back at Black Jacket’s face, unable to look away, despite what his mother had told him. Brown Shirt appeared again, shaking his head.

  Black Tracksuit didn’t shift his gaze. He crouched down next to Callum, leaning his face in close. Callum pressed himself back against the books. He could feel their spines sliding back in the shelf. The man leant in further, his mouth opening, so that for a moment Callum thought he was going to bite him with those silver teeth.

  Then Callum heard a joyous sound. The pistol shots of Miss Galant’s shoes. The men heard it too: Black Tracksuit stood up quickly just as Miss Galant appeared, wearing her fiercest look. She looked from Black Tracksuit to Callum and back again. She did not flinch or hesitate. Not for one moment did Callum suppose that Cleopatra might fear these men.

  “It’s closing time,” she said in a voice of chilled steel. “Please leave.”

  And without a murmur, Black Tracksuit and Brown Shirt shuffled out of the aisle, with nothing more than a muttered “Sorry, lady”, leaving Callum pressed into the shelf between the books. His heart welled with love for Miss Galant, and he beamed up at her as he struggled to his feet.

  “Uh uh,” she said in the same deathly-cold voice. She held up the ruined copy of The Siege of Ladysmith, considerably slimmer than it had been before. “I’m not finished with you, sweetheart.”

  Callum was quiet in the car. His mother was very cross. Miss Galant had told her that Callum wasn’t allowed back to the library because of the damaged book; so there would be no more Saturdays like this. But staring out of the window, Callum felt secretly happy, as if he’d passed a test. Being shouted at by Miss Galant had been terrible, but he’d endured; he hadn’t told about Neville. Craning his neck up at the clock tower on top of the town hall as they pulled away, he wondered if the young man was still up there, or if he’d found a way to fly free.

  It was as they were passing the station that Callum saw the baby-blue of the jersey. Neville was moving quickly along the pavement, one hand still held against his side. As the car pulled alongside him at the red light, Neville’s head came up shiftily. Callum pressed his face against the glass, and for a moment they looked at each other. Neville slowed but did not stop walking. Just as the lights changed, he raised his hand away from his injured side and held it up.

  Callum returned the gesture, bringing his hand to his temple, fingers straight.

  Then the lights changed and the car pulled forward, and Callum watched the figure in the pale-blue jersey slipping behind, the young man’s hand falling slowly away from his face.

  The Leopard Trap

  Daniela had taken to leaving town when things got bad. If trouble was coming – and she could usually tell – she’d take the car and go somewhere random for a few days. A nice little bed and breakfast, some place where she didn’t have to explain.

  Before, in her old life, she would never have done this: go somewhere strange, all on her own. But the trips had become necessary. She’d almost started to look forward to them.

  It had been building for the last few weeks: Thom had been irritable, drinking too much, sleeping in the daytime. She knew the signs. His last bad spell had been months ago, and she’d started to relax a little. But now it was happening again.

  She’d packed her bag and soon was heading out, before the rush-hour traffic hit. It was easy enough to break away: Daniela had few commitments, apart from Thom himself. There was little need for her to work. She’d studied interior design, long ago, but she’d been out of it so long, she wouldn’t know how to begin again. Thom was older, with family money as well as a partnership in an architecture firm. She’d met him when she was young, straight out of college, and they’d married quickly. He’d always supported them financially. It’s what they both wanted.

  The car radio helped. Its tunes and chatter loosened the small stone of dread that lodged in her chest on days like this. She turned it on as she left Cape Town, the buildings giving way on either side to the broader contours of the countryside. The car was a new one, a convertible, and she wasn’t used to it yet: her hands seemed too small on the steering wheel, as if barely holding on, her feet just reaching the pedals. She was a petite, pretty woman, with black eyes and long, silky hair. Thom could pick her up and carry her easily, like a child.

  The place, near Sutherland, was a longer drive than she’d realised, and the sun had already set by the time she checked in and collected the key to her chalet. In the dark, she hardly saw the surroundings, was glad only to collapse onto the double bed, into sheets that looked like they were cast-offs from the farm family’s own beds, but very clean. The places she chose for these trips were good, but not luxurious. When she checked her cellphone there was no reception.

  She lay for a while staring up at the thatch ceiling, wondering what he was doing, whether he’d come home yet. When he was feeling this way, he sometimes stayed out drinking for hours. She worried that things might be getting worse, his depressions more frequent. Perhaps they should try the pills again.

  With difficulty, Daniela turned her thoughts away, directing them into a small box, one containing a few considered images. She thought about the flat. They were redoing the lounge. New paint: matte or gloss? There would be different upholstery for the lounge furniture; new cushion covers. The couch was still unworn, but it would need to be re-covered to match the look. She had to choose fabric. Sea green, she thought. With pale-gold trim.

  Eventually, sleep seeped in through a crack in the lid of her quiet thoughts, and she was gone.

  In the morning, Daniela emerged to find that she was very far from anything, in a flat, dry landscape. The actual farmhouse was almost invisible behind a clump of bluegum trees. One or two other chalets perched near the main building, but hers was out on the edge, and naked without a shield of trees. Disconcerting: in the night, she had imagined herself not so distant from other sleeping people.

  A faint, straight track came past from the direction of the farmhouse, with a tin arrow on a pole, pointing towards a ridge in the middle distance. The arrow said OLD LEOPARD TRAP in white-painted letters.

  The path was much the same texture as the bare ground on either side, and mostly distinguished by its different colour: silvery blonde against khaki. Caused, Daniela supposed, by feet scuffing the crust in a place where rain seldom disturbed it.

  There was no particular reason to walk on the path rather than beside it, but she obeyed the arrow and kept to the paler strip. She was wearing thin-soled shoes – Italian leather, a gift from Thom – but perhaps it wasn’t far to go.

  When the path split, another signpost led her left, onto the low ridge. Coming up the rise, she nearly walked right past the trap, it was so well camouflaged; but the path stopped short and so did she. At last she divined the heap of stones to one side of the path: coffin-shaped, open at one end. It reminded her of those cases of grit that caddis-fly larvae build, but giant-sized.

  It was a puzzle, set but unsolved. A leopard trap. For killing leopards, back when they still lived in these parts. Not for metamorphosis, but for ending. It looked crudely made, but it must be skilfully put together, and very strong. She could only imagine what force in a frantic leopard’s back a
nd haunches might once have been thrown against the walls.

  The thing drew her closer. Perhaps it was the pressure of the big sky above her – the trap was enticing, a private space. She had the curious urge to climb right in. Why not? She was half smiling at herself as she crouched down.

  But it wasn’t that easy. Leopards were smaller than she’d realised. She tucked her elbows close and wriggled on her belly into the narrow vault. It was a tight space, but long enough to fit her, head to toe.

  The stones were right-angled slabs that seemed compressed from dense grey mud. The size of shoeboxes, some of them, with chinks of sky showing in between. The floor was crisp sand in which pebbles were tightly clasped, not a thing growing. Bringing her hands up awkwardly before her chin, she looked down at the dim space where the leopard’s paws must have scrabbled – as if she were expecting to see prints still impressed there, a last message. But nothing, just sand as smooth as if ironed. No living thing larger than an ant had touched it for years.

  She saw now how the machine worked: you crawl in, exploring, perhaps lured by a bait of fatal meat, and there’s no turning back. A stone is rolled across the mouth; a trapdoor drops. And then pain.

  Shifting, she felt her shoulder rub against the rock, and her hips. She turned her head and shards of sky pressed into her eyes, blue against black. Her cheek touched stone. And all at once it grasped her: the horror of the trapped creature, of the trap, this box precisely measured out for her own length and breadth …

  She whimpered and reared, bashing her head. Bright and dark patches pursued her as she struggled backwards, out and onto her feet.

  And then the fear was gone. Daniela looked down at the trap and it was functional again: humans at work, doing their obligatory killing. Yes, a machine to take a living cat and turn it into bones and pelt. Such things had been necessary, once. She felt her interest switch to the design of the thing. How would it work, exactly? How might she make it better, if she had sheep or goats to defend?