Chapter Eight: Empty Spaces (Part V)

Two days later he was standing on a hill, next to an abandoned radar post, looking out at the lighthouse of Muckle Flugga, and past the small hump of the isle of Out Stack, to the empty sea. He had reached the northernmost point of the British islands. This was the edge of the board.

Instead of permitting himself guiltier pleasures, Richard had spent the night playing chess with the boy.

“Chess isn’t really my game,” the boy had told Richard. “I prefer poker.” And in an attempt to joke, or perhaps to punish Richard for his earlier display of weakness, the boy had flashed him that wicked grin that he had stolen from a friend a mere week earlier, and added: “Strip poker.”

Richard refused to be baited. He made certain the boy knew all the rules, and explained to him about openings, and control of the board, about lines of influence, forks and skewers. Then they played.

The first time Richard tried to let the boy win.

The boy scowled.

“You bought my time. And body if you want it. But not…”

He searched for the right word.

“Not your integrity?” Richard suggested. “You’re right. I apologise.”

“Sheesh, you do that a lot, don’t you?”

“I suppose so.”

“Never apologise, never explain. Some bloke said that.”

“I don’t think I agree.”

“Of course you don’t. Are you gonna set it up again or not? And this time, bloody beat me if that’s how it goes.”

So they played again. At first they played while they talked. Richard told the boy that his mother had just died in a nursing home in Scotland. He had driven down to get the last piece of furniture she had owned, the roll desk. He was a veterinarian on the Shetland mainland. He admitted he’d dreamed of young men all his life but never had the courage to go through with it.

Really? the boy thought. And you think it was morals keeping you from going through with it with me?

The boy told him more embellishments to his story, but eventually the unbroken sequence of defeats turned him taciturn. Finally, instead of accepting his 6th or 7th checkmate, he simply took the king and moved it past the border of the board.

“No, Arik, that is against the rules.”

“Never been one much for keeping rules.”

“I know.”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t know what the reason was for you to leave your home on the promise of some guy on the internet, and maybe you really have been check mated. But your plan, finding happiness with some Ersatz father here, at the edge of the world, that is trying to cheat, isn’t it? Your version of trying to move your king over the edge of the board.”

“What if?” Sullen again, and this time it’s no act. “I’m here, ain’t I? All those rules people make up, they’re just excuses not to accept responsibility for their own lives. Any time I hear someone say, they have no choice I want to curbstomp them.”

“Yes, you are here, Arik. And where are you going from here? Where is that place beyond the edge?”

The boy was looking at it now, from the abandoned radar post. He had reached the ultima thule, the furthest North of the British Isles. Beyond the few last rocks was the open North Atlantic. If you went in a straight line from here, there would be nothing but open water until you reached the floating ice shelf at the North Pole.

Lerwick had been bad for him. The only actual town on the entire archipelago, and with its 17,000 inhabitants way too small for a single underage homeless thief to get bye. There had been no crowds to vanish in, no anonymity. The few hostels he could have afforded didn’t buy his stories and after he beat his retreat he didn’t dare even linger in the vicinity out of fear they might have informed the constabulary.

He hiked and hitched his way further north, onto Unst. He spent a night in the colourful bus stop at Baltasound. And now he made his way down from the hill, past the cliffs dotted white with Gannets and Puffins. When he reached the rocky beach, he stared out at the lighthouse. He tried to skip stones across the water, but the waves were choppy and every stone tumbled and sank.

He remembered the lion Groagramman from The Neverending Story, the second book he ever read. Graogramman and Bastian, the main character, had talked about wishes and dreams, and about travelling.

It is not enough to wish to leave a place, the lion had told the boy in the story. You need to know where you wish to go to.

Is this me taking the king over the edge, the boy thought as he made his first step into the cold salty water. Or is this me pretending I have no other choice?

The water flooded his boots. It crawled up his trouser legs. His penis and scrotum shrank away from the cold. When the choppy waves lapped against his belly button he gasped.

And then he saw the boat, tourists on their way back from the lighthouse. He thought he heard them laugh and shout. He was certain they had seen him, were pointing fingers.

Would they rescue him? Drag him from the water? Force life back into him the way the paramedics had done some three years earlier, his first failed attempt? He had never felt more helpless than when they took his death away from him.

For a while he stood in the sea, almost chest deep. In the swell of the cold water his body’s buoyancy made him sway drunkenly. Air bubbles still crawled up his legs from his boots and little folds in his jeans. The sheepskin lining of his jacket got heavy and pulled on his shoulders.

Where do I go from here?

All he knew was that he couldn’t turn around and go south. He suspected that he knew the reason why as well, if only he could be honest with himself. But he also knew that he couldn’t be.

When he had exchanged messages with Master Daddy Matt, his Online BDSM Daddy, just after he had begun this reckless walkabout, the man had told him “not to do anything stupid.”

Was this what he had meant?

Master Daddy Matt had once attempted suicide as well. But according to the way he told it, he had been rescued by an angel.

“It had been a glowing figure of pure light. When he touched me, I knew I would be okay. I called my friend John and he sent the paramedics.”

The boy thought back to the day he had tried. There had been no angel for him. He had seen no light. When Master Daddy Matt had talked about the angel, the boy had hoped it was a lie.

The boat had changed course. The tourists had stopped laughing. They were shouting at him now, waving their hands. The guide at the rudder was focused on the rocks just underneath the surface of the sea.

I hate you, the boy thought to his God. I hate you so much.

He turned around, waded back on land. Water spilled from his clothes. He didn’t even stop to pour out his boots. Feeling a bitter sense of shame he just ran from the Samaritans on the boat.

That night he returned to Lerwick. He had no particular plan. Perhaps he would try stealing again. Get caught. He had the romantic idea of reaching under his jacket when a police officer came for him. Of that OK Corral feeling, when he got to stare into a gun. Would Bev’s Swiss Army Knife be enough of a threat?

But instead he found a legal move to take his king off the board.

For a while.

Chapter Eight: Empty Spaces (Part IV)

They got out of the car. The man eyed the boy suspiciously, as if checking for loot, or possibly weapons.

“Who gave you that shiner?”

Again the boy checked for useful lies. Would ‘a father’ work in his favour? A boy’s father, or better a girl’s? He wasn’t sure, decided to play for time.

“Someone,” he said, layering on a little sulk. His instinct told him to look down, as if ashamed or lying.

“Someone you stole from?”

 “No!” he spat, and glared at the man, suddeny certain how to play it. He forced himself to think of the man who had hit him, to pump for anger and disgust. “He stole from me. We had agreed…” He bit off the rest of the sentence, looked away again.

“He had agreed, to…” he muttered.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw the man adjust his belt, then wipe his brow, and he was certain he had him. But to make sure he let the silence become uncomfortable.

“Well,” the man said. “You can carry my bag.”

A short while later, they arrived at the man’s cabin: a small windowless room, the confined space thick with the hum and thrum of the ferry’s engines. The tiny, attached moulded plastic bathroom smelled of disinfectant. The boy put the bag down. The man sat down on the bed, looked up at the boy, then took off his glasses and began to polish them on his sweater. When he had put them back on, he said:

“My name is Richard. How should I call you?” and he put his hand out, as if he had forgotten how to introduce himself without doing so.

The boy waited just long enough to make Richard remember, then shook it – his palms were unpleasantly greasy – and said: “Ariel. Ariel Storm.”

He let go, stuffed his hands into his back pockets and looked down at the toes of his scuffed boots. “Um. Friends.” He looked over to the little neon light glowing over the headboard of the bed. “Friends call me Arik.”

For a while, neither said anything. Then Richard cleared his throat.

“Are you hungry, Arik?”

The boy nodded and they went to the restaurant. Richard asked him if he wanted a burger and fries, and then ordered the Viking Burger with cheese and bacon for the boy, while he had the haddock with chips and peas himself. He insisted on apple tart for both of them for desert.

“Can I smoke on deck, please,” the boy asked afterwards. Richard lectured him about health risks, but the boy could see how it made Richard both uncomfortable and happy to have him behave like a prisoner. He got his cigarette, and they talked about the stars. The boy pointed out Cassiopeia, and Richard showed him how to find Pegasus from there.

“It looks more like a kite with a tail, than a horse,” the boy said.

“True.” Richard looked at it for a while and cocked his head. “But it can still fly, can’t it?”

Richard watched the boy finish his smoke. Then he put a hand on the boy’s back: “Back inside, now.”

The boy knew he should shake it off angrily, it would fit the character better, but he felt too tired. They went back to the cabin. Richard guided the boy inside, and then locked the door from the inside, pocketing the key after a moment’s hesitation.

His voice shook slightly when he said: “Make yourself comfortable. I’ll be with you right away.” Then he went to the bathroom and closed the door behind him.

The boy stood uncertainly in the room. There was no sound from the bathroom. He sat down on the bed, opened his boots and kicked them off. Suddenly he felt embarrassment for the sour smell of sweat coming off him. Hastily he peeled off his socks, then his jeans, then his jacket and sweater. He bundled all of his clothes together and put them underneath his backpack in the corner by the door, farthest from the bed. Then he sat down on the bed, with his back against the wall, knees drawn up, blanket over the knees. And he closed his eyes and waited.

After a while he heard Richard flush and run the tap and then open the door.

Richard had undressed, too. He was wearing his unbuttoned shirt over a ribbed undershirt and grey retro boxers, and dark socks. He looked most naked without his glasses.

Richard came over to the bed in little steps, and sat down next to the boy. He put one hand onto the boy’s covered knee, looked at him. With his other hand he brushed the boy’s bruised cheek. Twice he wanted to say something, but failed. As if to release him, the boy let the blanket slide down, went to his knees and pulled his dirty white T-shirt over his head. Then he took Richard’s hand and placed it on his shoulder, as if to dance. He took the other one, but instead of placing it on his hip he tried to guide it between his legs.

Richard stood up.

“I am sorry…”

He disappeared again in the bathroom.

The boy waited for a while. Eventually he went over to his backpack, and got dressed. He took the dog eared copy of William Butler’s “The Butterfly Revolution” he had nicked from the Kirkwall hostel out of his pack, sat down with the back to the cabin door and started to read.

Eventually the bathroom door opened again.

Richard was dressed, too. The boy put his finger between the pages and dangled the book between his knees. Richard came over and sat down next to him.

“I am sorry.”

“It’s okay,” the boy said. “Do you want to try again?”

Richard shook his head, took off his glasses again and wiped them.

“I should never have even thought it. It was…”

“It’s really okay, Richard.”

“No,” Richard suddenly said fiercely. “It’s not.” And when the boy flinched, he added more quietly: “Not because…” He hesitated but then forced himself to say it. “Not because of the gay sex. But because you are a kid in trouble, and it was vile of me to even consider taking advantage of that.”

To his own astonishment the boy found himself smiling wanly, instead of bristling at the diminution. He patted Richard’s knee. I would deserve it, he thought. I would deserve so much worse. Why couldn’t you be a little bit less decent?

“So, what now? Want me to get out? I can make my way from here.”

Richard stared at the opposite wall for a while. Then he asked: “Do you play chess?”

Chapter Six: Tales from the Trails (Part V)

It was raining again when I entered Glen Dee. The sky was as rugged as the ground, clouds, torn, chasing each other, sunlight coming through the ragged opening in scattered bursts, the way a gunman might occasionally strafe a besieged house with bursts of automatic fire. The hills on both sides of the glen grew into mountains and the path itself plodded ever upwards.

In the evening I reached a mountain whose lopsided peak jutted out impressively over the glen, like a cock straining against tight trousers. As I found out later it’s called “Devil’s Point” in English, which was the polite translation of its Gaelic name as it was told to Queen Victory when she travelled through these parts. A more literal translation would be “demon dick”.

There was a small stone hut at the foot of the Devil’s Point. I thought about spending the night there, but when I got close, I saw that a group of happy hikers were just getting cozy inside, hanging freshly washed socks from the window sill and busying themselves with the fireplace. I greeted them half-heartedly, without breaking my stride. I hurried past the hut and up a small path that lead to the ridge joining the Devil’s Point and several other peaks to a plateau.

I had not intended to climb any of these peaks. I had wanted to stay on the trail along the valley. But the path to the stone hut had taken me away from the main trail, and once I was there and saw that it was occupied, I only had the choices of either staying, or turning around, or walking on, uphill.

I didn’t want to stay. Helen and John had been all the company I craved that day. And I didn’t want to turn around, because doing so would have made it only to apparent to those hikers that I was avoiding them. And somehow that moment I couldn’t have born the shame of my cowardice becoming visible to them. Even if it meant having to drag myself up that devilish mountain.

I cursed myself every exhausting and agonizing step. Each made my shoulder throb with a deep, dull fire. And when the night had quietly done away with the last of the dusk I found myself in a large corrie, illuminated only by the wan light of a distant, gibbous moon – an immense natural amphitheatre made up of moss-covered rocks and steep slopes. And I felt very lost, and small, and terribly exposed to the heavens.

The corrie was lines with little brooks. I found a dry, sandy spot between two of them, had the last of Helen Campbell’s sandwiches, emptied the bottle, tended to my feet, and finally smoked my last fag and gazed down into the Glen, and the tiny flickering light of the hearth fire in the stone hut far below me at the foot of the mountain.

As I sat there I was still mulling over the things Helen had said. And her question whether I believe in God and in Jesus Christ.

Just to be clear on this, I do believe in God. I do. I do. But… how do I say this?

My Dad had been raised a Roman Catholic, and my aunt had converted to the Church of England when she married. My cousins had been raised Anglicans. My mum is from a family of strict Prussian Lutheran protestants. My oldest friend and neighbour, Orcun, was from a family of moderately devout Muslims. And Hector’s parents were lapsed Communists and strict and vocal atheists. From the beginning I had known that whatever anyone wanted to claim about religion, there was always a way to look at things differently.

My mum had me and my siblings baptized in the local Lutheran parish, and all but me went to Confirmation class from 12 onward. I was the only one to flat out refuse to go. But that was the extend of my mum’s involvement with the Church. The only times I ever saw her even talk to the vicar was during ‘Nette’s funeral, and at Nicky’s baptism 2 ½ years later.

Primary school offered religious instruction for Protestants and Catholics, but none for Muslims, so it mainly served as a segregator for the main ethnicities – the German kids mostly went to the Lutheran class, Polish kids to the Catholic, and the Turkish and Arabic kids had a free period (but usually visited a Qur’an school some afternoons of the week.) Again it seemed to me that somehow religion was less about truth and more about belonging, about identity and taking sides.

I remember how astonished I was when I finally received religious instructions how boring and meaningless everything was that I was being told about God and Jesus. How God – supposedly almighty and all-knowing – was this soppy stern chap who in some never fully explained way was supposed to love everybody (like, what does that even mean?) and watch over the entire world and every littlest critter in it, and who for some reason was to be credited with every good turn but never to be blamed for everything that went wrong. And Jesus, the son (or incarnation, they never could tell me which) of this almighty God, had brought even more love and forgiveness into the world – I kept wondering what a perfect God needed a version 2.0 for – but then got killed rather badly for it.

And then I looked around in my world, and inside myself, and saw all the violence, and the callousness, the pettiness, and how messed up and dirty and run down everything was, and I thought, kurwa, He sure is doing a terrible job.

I also began to seriously resent my teacher, and God, because if there was any truth in what she told me about God’s intentions and power, then God must either hold one hell of a grudge against me, or – and that was even worse – I must be so unimportant that in all his omniscience He never noticed me.

And then ‘Nette started her confirmation classes, and in the nights we would talk about what she had learned, and what she was thinking about all of it. And we’d try to make sense of it ourselves. And once again I was astonished, this time because the stuff we read was nothing like that boring, pedantic, and utterly ineffective God the grown-ups had been telling me about.

The God of the bible is a truly wicked bloke. He is rash to anger and totally overreacts to everything. He blunders along and often acts before he thinks and then comes to regret it later, or changes his mind in mid-stride. He blusters and boasts, sulks, and refuses to admit when he’s made a mistake. He’s bloodthirsty, and untrustworthy, and incredibly vain. But He is full of love – and not that boring, serene love my dried-up teach was going on about, but a love that years, and hurts, is proud, and tender, and that knows how to forgive, not for morals butt for passion. Who could read the story of God and David and not be moved by the flawed, fiery passion for one another?

The bible is full of great folks, and I was pissed off that the teach had made them all sound so dull. There was David, and his suggestive, well, not even love-triangle but love-quadrangle, with King Saul and Saul’s son Jonathan and saul’s daughter Michal. I mean, talk about kinky. David’s career as an outlaw and rebel, his ascent to kingship, his trouble with his own sons, and his less than glorious old age.

Or take Jacob, the thief, liar, and runaway, who got into actual fisticuffs with God, and who God loved so much that he re-named him Israel. Or Job, who took God to court and forced Him to show His true colours. Or Moses, who I think it can be argued is the only person other than Mary who has a reasonable claim to the boast that God made love to him, but who was still turned back at the border of the promised land and had to die, alone, in the desert.

At the age of 10 the New Testament was a bit boring for me and often very hard to understand. But even there were hidden gems that the grown-ups had withheld from me: Why do they gloss over Herod’s mass child murder in the Christmas Story? And who came up with these three boring old kings, when the actual text tells of an numberless group of wise men – possibly wizards! – from the East? And then there are moments like the one when Jesus begs God to spare him, when he is filled with fear and doubt, but God refuses him and Jesus is nailed to the cross anyway. Later when ‘Nette’s tumour had metastasised into her bones and she had to be given morphine, an still it hurt her so badly, I had to think of the crucifiction and what it would feel like to have nails driven through my wrists and the spans of my feet.

This God of the bible was a God who made sense, a God who fit the world I was living in. It wasn’t a God I could approach about a new bicycle or a Playstation, sure, but it was one I could somehow respect.

Until he murdered my sister.

That long Saturday afternoon, as I walked up Glen Dee and climbed the Devil’s Point, He was a lot on my mind again, and for the first time in years I asked myself if I still had faith. If I was, as Helen had said, putting my fate in the hands of God.

The idea bothered me, it bothered me a lot. I mean, if I allowed for God as the charioteer of destiny, I could hardly avoid it, could I? But it rankled with me: Since her death I had never begged. I preferred to take what I wanted and be damned the consequences. I didn’t want handouts from Him.

When I was sitting up on the mountainside, shivering in my damp clothes in the night’s chilling breeze, I tried to see the world through the Atheist’s eyes. It was surprisingly easy, under those racing clouds, with the cold and distant stars blinking through them from afar. It was easy to imagine the vastness to be empty not only of matter or warmth, but of meaning. But it remained a thought experiment. It didn’t truly relieve me of my conviction.

It did make me remember those nights, though, when I’d lain in my sister’s bed, had felt the warmth of her body against mine, smelled her skin and the shampoo in her hair, and when we had gazed out through the narrow window, so high on the wall – the same window that I would try to flee through from that lady rozzer only a few years later, condemning myself to jail and all that followed – and through which we had looked at the very same stars that I was seeing now, from the slopes of the Devil’s Point. And the memory hurt. It hurt with a raw, sudden intensity I had not expected, and I wanted to cry out in pain.

Instead I bit down on that pain, and spit it onto the gravel, and snarled: “Yeah, well, fuck you, too!” And I curled up as tight as I could, under those cold stars, and surrendered myself to the nightmares once more.

***

It would be easy to leave it at that and to move on to the scary White Van Man from Beauly, and that beastly night in Cannich, and my near death experience in the Mullardochs, but that would be dishonest.

When I woke up I was very cold and did a double Aikido session before walking back down from the Devil’s Point. The day was misty and gloomy and I was hungry and very thirsty. By the time I reached the hut the hikers had moved n. I looked around inside, vaguely hoping to find some left over food, or to warm myself on the ambers of their fire, but only warm ash remained, not enough to do me any good.

My shoulder hurt if anything even worse than the day before. It made me think of Ponyboy, and I knelt down in the middle of the room and wanked. That made the pain flare up, but I gritted my teeth and brought myself to a sad, whimpering ejaculation onto the floor. Still kneeling I pissed on it as well. Then I buttoned up and left.

I drank of the cold waters of the Dee, filled up the bottle, and walked on. The sun came out for a while, and to my right be Ben Macdui reached for the sky. Clouds came and went, but the mountain remained, its peak dipping in and out of the wisps of mist.

I don’t know if you’ve ever seen the mountains in Scotland, but they are nothing like the Alps, or the mountains of the Balkans. The Cairngorms may have rocky cliffs here and there, and sometimes there are clumps of trees at their feet – pine, and birch, and aspen, and bushes of juniper and rowan – but other than that they are these rounded humps, steep, but startlingly smooth, overgrown with heather and lichen in the valley, but the tops  bald and covered in immense fields of lose, round, fist-sized stones. Walking amongst them is like paddling a small sealskin canoe through an immense herd of gigantic whales.

And so, their steep, smooth walls flowing out ahead of me along the valley’s sides, the valley floor itself rising like a wave to the distant pass, in spite of my anger and resentment, it made my spirits lift.

And when I passed a gushing creek coming down the mountain I veered off the path and began to hike up a pathless mountainside. It was hard going, and soon I was out of breath, but I didn’t slow down. My eyes were constantly on the lookout for the next good foothold, my brain kept calculating distance and balance, and once again it was his magic of movement, the trance of the trop, that pulled my heart along.

From time to time it rained, and the cold water ran down my body underneath my clothes. Then the sun came out again and dried me. And then, finally, in densest fog, I reached the heap of stones that marked the highest peak of the Ben Macdui, the highest peak of the Cairngorms.

Look, I don’t want to take back anything I just told you about my relationship to God, or life, or anything. It didn’t change anything, it didn’t convince me of anything. But still… while I stood there, catching my breath, the sky tore open, the mists around me blew apart, the world unrolled all its horizons, and the sun set everything ablaze. All the wetness caught and magnified her fierce fire, like a universe of jewels. No religion or philosophy dreamed up by humans can say as mayn good tings about the world, or say them as convincingly, as the sun, the air, the water, and the rocks did just then.

After that it was all downhill. By afternoon I surrounded by trees again, where I promptly got lost. By nightfall, tired beyond endurance, I ended up in Inverdruie, where I spent the night. Monday I first had a look at the Aviemore Centre, a piece of daring architecture from the 1960s so incredibly uncool that it is actually kind of cool again, and hitchhiked to Inverness, where I arrived in the evening.

Chapter Six: Tales from the Trails (Part II)

The lorry park offered free showers and a Transport Café. When the suczka  in the BP shop wouldn’t sell me fags, I went into he café for a coke and swiped two packs from tables I walked past. The driver had gone for a shower and a meal and I idled away the time at the Outdoor Activity Centre net to the petrol station, studying advertisements for white-water rafting and bungee jumping and other exciting adventures for rich pussies. Later the driver cam back carrying a pack of four large cans of Stella, which he shared freely. I got the narrow top bunk, and together we listened to a Best of Italian Opera mix and talked for a while about the Highlands, and the freedom of the road, and how it was disappearing a little bit every year. Then we settled down for the night.

I felt very comfortable in the cosy shelter of the lorry cab, in spite of the pain in my shoulder. I enjoyed the smell of patrol, beer, male sweat, and aftershave, the hypnotic lights from passing cars that came through the cracks in the drapes and moved white bars across the walls and ceiling, and the sound of the petrol station and the rain on the metal roof directly above my head. Eventually I drifted into sleep, and for a few hours I found rest in the deep sea silence and darkness of dreamless sleep, before the nightmares started again.

My dreams of that time came in two shades. Either it was that of the madding crowd. I would be in some place thick with peeps. Sometimes it was my old school, or the Prinzenbad public pool, where I used to go with my mates in the summers in Berlin, or it could be something from my recent life, like, say, a theatre or gallery I’d hit with Charley in Edinburgh, or the Headrow in Leeds, where I’d worked with Julie, or the camping site at the Big Chill. Wherever it was, it always began with me going about my business, alone. But then something would happen with the crowd. Sometimes they would start to mutter and talk amongst themselves, too low for me to understand. Sometimes I realized they were talking in some language I didn’t know. And then they’d begin to stare. Someone might ask me something in gibberish and get angry when I couldn’t respond. Or they’d start pushing me around, and shouting all together at me in an unintelligible cacophony of exclusion. In the end though the real horror wouldn’t come from those crowding me from head on but from someone being suddenly in directly in my back, touching me from behind, hot breath on my neck, too close to bear.

In the other kind of nightmare, I’d be stalked. Those would begin with me alone in some place that had been populated on moments ago, you know, Mary Celeste like. There would be food on the tables, and steaming mugs of tea. Tellies were on, flickering, but set to a quite murmur. There might be open books about, or fluttering newspapers, or unfinished letters, the pen still lying on the paper, the ink not yet dry. At first it wouldn’t be eerie, but seemed perfectly natural. As if I knew where they all were, and why. Sometimes I could hear peeps nearby, around a corner or behind some wall. Never loud, but, you know, present in their absence somehow. I knew they weren’t far.

But then something would enter. I’d notice motion behind a row of trees perhaps, or hear a floorboard creek beyond a door that’s been left ajar. Whatever It was, It would slowly come closer, prowling, lurking, circling me, moving behind furniture, or behind me. And I would realize that all those peeps that moments ago still had been just around some corner, that they were all gone now. I was all alone. Even if I’ start to shout for help, nobody would be there to hear me. Nobody would come. And I would become afraid. Terrified. I never had a clear idea what It would do to me when It caught, but I knew that anything would be better. Anything. Anything but that.

That was the dream I had that night. When I woke up with a start I painfully hit my head on the ceiling of the cab. For a moment I was convinced that It had followed me from the dream and was now going to grab me. Then a large lorry passed outside. It’s headlights illuminated the entire cab and I saw that nobody was there except for me and my still snoring host.

Too shaken to lie down again I got dressed in the darkness, grabbed my bag, and crept out. I lit a fag, crossed the A9 and the fields beyond, and climbed down the bank to the shore of the river Tummel. There I stripped and stepped directly into the cold, rain-swollen waters, and washed the stink of fear from my skin. The current was pretty strong. The water surged and swelled around me. In the distance I saw otters glide through the waves, look up, and disappear.

The overcast sky was beginning to grow grey when I walked back onto the shingle beach. I was shivering, partly with the cold, and partly still with the tension from the nightmare. I stepped into my boots, tied the lose laces once tightly around each ankle, and began training Aikido, hard enough to break out into a light sweat again. I kicked shadowy enemies, blocked their invisible blows, and rolled across the ground to evade their attacks, the pebbles scratching my back bloody. When I was done the shivers had passed.

There was hardly any traffic sounds from the A9, down there in the river valley, and when I finally got dressed, the birds around me began greeting the new day. My aunt is mad about songbirds, you see, she got her garden planted especially to attract them, and she is always pointing out one or the other of her little feathered friends, which is how I knew most of those that started singing all around me then: Thrushes and Robins, Tits, Siskins, and Blackbirds. And with their dawn chorus my soul, too, suddenly took wing, and soared, rose above the gloom of the night, rose, and rose, and revelled in the glory of the new day.

“All your life,” I sang quietly. “You were only waiting…”

“Blackbird” echoed with Aimee Mann’s gentle, hesitant voice in my mind, and I hummed along as I walked back up the riverbank and then northward, between the river and the road.

Chapter Six: Tales from the Trails

Step out the door and it feels like rain
That's the sound on your window pane
Take to the streets but you can't ignore
That's the sound you're waiting for

- OneRepublic: All Fall Down (2007)

Edinburgh’s northern boundary is the Firth of Forth, the estuary of the River Forth. I crossed it on the road bridge from South Queensferry to North Queensferry.

It felt good to be on the move again. It felt good to walk once more with the long, even paces meant to cover distance. The drizzle on my face felt good, and the street under the air cushioned soles of my new boots.

In the middle of the bridge I halted, leaned against the eastern railing, lit a fag, and looked out, across the firth and through the bars of the old Victorian railroad bridge beyond at the sea beyond. I had glimpsed it every now and then when I’d been on Carlton Hill, and Arthur’s Seat, but I’d never paused and looked at it.

I thought about it and figured that the last time I’d really looked at the North Sea would have been as I crossed it on my way from Berlin to Wotton-under-Edge – I counted the days in my head – 39 days ago.

Tolkien came to my mind and his famous lines about the dangerous business of going out your door, about those who wander, and about whither their road will lead. And Gaiman’s comparison of how change might be less this big, swooping thing that carries your off, and more like a thief who steals little things, night by night, until nothing familiar remains to keep you.

It all seemed so long ago, Berlin, my aunt’s, that day I had set next to Alice by the pond under Wimley Hill. Even the Big Chill, and bloody Leeds. As I stood on the Forth Road Bridge, smoking my way through half a pack, and watched the ships go by, and he trains on the other bridge, and the as the drizzle slowly soaked through the hood and began to trickle down my neck, as I stood there, I became aware that something had changed in the two weeks I’d spent in Edinburgh. Was it something fundamental, something inside of me, or just one of the little things, just one step along the winding road that was taking me ever onward? I didn’t know.

Behind me the setting sun was a piece of burnished silvery sky shimmering through a frosting of clouds, and the Firth of Roth was an arrow pointing towards that failing light. Slowly they were inching towards each other, the one about to extinguish the other. My shoulder ached and throbbed, past love bites of Leeds and Edinburgh not quite yet letting go of me.

The cuts Julie had given me had healed well, initially. But Ponyboy, endlessly fascinated by them, had again ad again toyed with them, probing, prodding, making me squirm and squeal. Again and again he had asked me how I had gotten them. Every time I made up another answer: My crazy father had cut them into my wanking arm so that Jesus would deliver me into faggotry. Drug dealers had tortured me to et me to betray a lover who’d turned narc. I had cut out the tracking device implanted by aliens and was now on the run from Men In Black.

Two days before I had left he had all of a sudden held me down and rubbed the mushy salt-and-vinegar soaked remains of a fish’n’chips cinner into my arm, and the black sludge from a beer can we’d used as an ashtray. It burned like battery acid. I twisted and screamed, but he just held me harder, and rubbed it in more forcefully, until I was bleeding again.

“What the fuck are you doing, you aşağılık herif?!” I screamed and punched him hard into the face. He sat back, and smiled quietly through the blood.

“Noo ye’ll ne’er forgit, ma wee sluagh. Noo ye’r kenmerkt.”

And indeed the salt and vinegar had made the lips of the wound puff up, and the beer-ash-mix had seeped under the skin like tattoo pigment. And now, two days later, everything had grown angry red again, and hot, and painful.

I flicked the last cigarette butt out into the gusty air between me and the waters below, watching its glowing tip fall and tumble and disappear. The I shortened the shoulder strap of my satchel and walked on.

A few hundred meters down the A90 on the North Queensferry side of the bridge, at the North Access bus stop, a lorry stopped at my thumb. The door opened and from high above me a small face smiled out from behind thick, black horn-rimmed glasses and a wiry, black moustache.

“Hey, lad. Gaeing north?”

“Sure,” I said and took the hand he offered me and hauled myself up and into the cab. Later he stopped at the lorry park in Ballinluig for the night, and offered me to stay in his cabin if I wanted.

Chapter Three: Chilled

Just because you don’t understand it
doesn’t mean it isn’t so.

- Lemony Snicket (The Blank Book, 2004)

Their names, of course, weren’t really Huey, Dewey, and Louie. Louie was Louise Thomas, and Dewey was her daughter Drew. Drew had been 3 years old and her biological father long gone from their lives when Louise met Hugh. I don’t know how they came up with those nicknames, but once they got them they stuck.

They were on their way to the Big Chill music festival that is being held every summer in Deer Park at Eastnor Castle in Herefordshire. This would be the fourth year that they attended. The festival started Friday, two days after we met.

Huey had pre-cooked the chilli Louie had been heating over the camping stove, and after he was done taking care of my feet, and checking – for the umpteenth time, because of the accident – Dewey’s pupillary light reflex, he relieved Louie of cooking duty for some last minute seasoning.

Louie disappeared in the camper. When she came out she tossed a heavy, clanking bag to Dewey. “Better set it up while there is still some light. It’s bugger to do by the light of a torch.” Dewey groaned and looked at me, but before she could ask, Louie interrupted. “Huey has just spent an hour patching up this young man’s feet. He is not going to do the work for you and ruin all of that again, you hear? Get going.”

Then she pressed a pack of clothes in my arm, topped by a towel, and some soap.

“Over there is a barrel with rain water. Please wash. Thoroughly. And then, I don’t know, burn your clothes or something. You stink. Oh, and…”

She put a fourth pair of flip-flops on top of the pile. They were black. I wondered if she sold them or something. “So you don’t get your feet messed up again.”

I put on the thongs and limped across the orchard to the barrel. The water was reasonably fresh and deliciously cool. I stripped and washed, head to toes. The clothes turned out to be hers: A pair of black unisex briefs, black shorts, and a black men’s shirt. When I came back she looked me over.

“Looks better on you than on me. Keep them. Now let’s eat.”

The chilli was good. They had crackers with it. Dewey drank coke, Huey and Louie had beer. At first Louie handed me a can of coke, too, but when Huey saw me look at the beer, he said: “Go ahead, take one.”

Louie looked cross but didn’t say anything.

Afterwards I shared my last fags with Louie and offered to do the washing up, but Huey wouldn’t hear of it.

“You keep off those feet until the morning, you hear! Just stay here with Dewey, Louie and I will take care of it.”

To that Louie added: “And no stealing.”

I was too relaxed to be pissed off by the remark. “Not on your watch, ma’am.” I said, grinning. (Come to think of it, she did look a bit like Demi Moore.) Dewey sat down on the chair next to me. Huey and Louie left for the rain water barrel.

Dewey and I made polite chit-chat. We talked mainly about music, and films. When there was a natural pause in the conversation like they sometimes happen when nobody really has anything more to say about the current subject, Dewey suddenly asked:

“What if I really did?”

“Did what?”

“Try to, what you said. With the car.”

“What?” I was puzzled. “What did I say? Hump it, you mean?”

She nodded shyly.

I stared at her. Above the cloudy sky was still a bright, if faded pigeon blue, but down here shadows were crowding in on us, and the trees, deadwood and underbrush had run into one another in the murk. Even the dark red camper was beginning to lose its definition. But Dewey’s face stood out clear and pale, like a frightened apparition on an age darkened painting.

“Dewey, that makes no sense. I was just making a stupid joke.”

“Never mind, hey, wanna come to the festival with us?”

Her conversational zigzagging made me vaguely queasy. “I don’t have tickets.”

“But it would be so cool. You could sleep in the tent with me. And it’s fun. But sometimes it’s boring, and it would be more fun with you. Please?”

“I don’t have any bloody tickets. I bet there aren’t any to be had one day before it starts. And if there are, they’ll be terribly expensive.”

“Can’t you just steal one? You’re a thief aren’t you?”

I hesitated. “Yeah, I am. And I suppose I could. But I don’t know…”

“But you will stay with us tonight, right? Sleep in my tent?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think your rents would be cool with that.”

“Why? Cuz you could steal something?”

“No, that’s not what I mean.”

It took a moment for the penny to drop. She blushed, giggled, and swatted me. “Nah, never mind that. I’ll manage that.” And she jumped up and bounced off, to join her rents at the barrel.

The three of them began lengthy deliberations, a dubious murmur punctuated by drawn out pleas, with the occasional sharp exchanges between Louie and Huey rising above the rest. For the second time that day I thought about scarpering, and if my feet hadn’t hurt so bad, I probably would have.

The night settled around me, and with the darkness clamminess crept into everything. Huey and Dewey returned the dishes to the camper and Louie sat down on the chair next to me.

“Well, thanks for the supper and everything,” I said.

“Yeah, well, you are welcome.” She hesitated. I was still thinking about how I could extricate myself from it all without sounding rude or crude, when she began: “Look, Dewey…”

“It’s okay, I’ll tell her I can’t stay.” I interrupted. “I’ll make it, like, totally my idea if you want.”

“No. Well, the thing is…” She floundered.

“If you’re not cool with it, that’s totally okay with me. If she was my daughter, I’d probably feel the same. And I’ll be okay on my own, really. What difference does it make if I go now or tomorrow.”

She swallowed. “No, we will not make you leave in the middle of the night. Yes, you will be on your own tomorrow, and that’ll be for the best, but you stay with us tonight. Don’t even act the tough guy, now, okay, it’s really just about you staying in her tent.”

I looked at Louie levelly. I don’t know, she was a bitch, no doubt about that, and I had no idea what kept Huey and her together, but somehow I respected her. So I decided to make that leap. I took a deep breath and said:

“Okay, listen. I don’t know if my word means anything to you, there isn’t any reason it should, but Dewey isn’t really my type. I mean, I like her, she’s a sweet kid and all, but it’s not just that she is a couple of years too young for my taste, she’s also not equipped the way I like ‘em. Chromosomally.” I adjusted my crotch. “And anyway, I’m way too knackered for any funny stuff tonight.”

“Oh.” She thought about it. “You mean, you’re…”

“As a bottle of chips. So, if there is anyone you need to worry about me hitting on, my first choice would be Huey. I like big and bearish. Just, don’t ask me to prove it, that’d be awkward. I don’t perform well in front of an audience.”

At that she had to laugh. She leaned back in her chair and looked at me. Then she nodded.

Dewey returned and told me I would read to her now. I asked if she wasn’t too old for that that but she gleefully said, nope, she wasn’t. So, after a second nod from Louie I crawled into the tent and Dewey switched on an electric torch and gave me the big brick of a book she had brought along. It was Inkheart, which gave me a bad sting. The last person I had read this to had been ‘Nette.

Dewey showed me where she had stopped reading. I began, and soon I was lost in the harsh, dangerous, and hauntingly beautiful world of Meggie Folchart. Eventually Louie poked her head in, handed me a second iso-foam mat and said:

“Don’t stay up too late, girls.”

Dewey did one of these happy little squeaks that only girls her age can pull off, hugged me, and then hugged her mum good night. After that Huey also came by. He was a bit more sombre and gave me a tube of zinc oxide cream for my feet before wishing us a good night.

After they were gone, Dewey snuggled up to me and had me read on. And while I did, she rested her head on my left arm and let her fingers trail the long, silvery scars on its inside.