Shades of Blood #1: Creepy Crawler

CREEPY CRAWLER

  PETER ACKERS

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

   

  CREEPY CRAWLER

  The stout of heart will have a friend,

  The weak will know a painful end.

  So toughen your soul, don’t be a bawler,

  Lest you’re visited by the terrible Crawler.

  The town of Bordon is nondescript, normal, quiet - name your adjective. Here bread is baked and mail delivered; people argue and make love; rains fall and the smokes of industry rise. But Bordon is a secret place. There exists an evil in that town that the rest of humanity never can know; some wily tactic of nature it is that clogs the spread of gossip and dissolves the will of foreigners to visit, cocooning the town in a protective bubble and thus leaving the residents of Bordon alone as if upon a distant planet.

  Bordon’s evil is kept away from the dinner table and out of supermarket aisles. The residents share an ignorance that has turned fact into rumour into folklore, and this has long kept safe the thing most at risk from the hidden bad thing in this insipid small town:

  Children.

  Two such children protected from the truth are Lem and Joey, who we will meet now. This is a tale about strength, partly, but it is weakness that draws together our young heroes. Thus it is weakness that we will begin with.

  1

  Joey was bullying material: short, fat, spotty, with oversized glasses on his nose and thick braces in his mouth. He didn’t like girls but blamed this on a keen desire to do well at school. His fellow pupils leaned towards a truth that Joey would not accept until later in life: he was homosexual. Because of this, other boys refused to be his friend, and Joey found himself increasingly drawn to the trees.

  The treetops were a sanctuary for the bullied. Spending a whole playtime perched so high allowed for two things: a nice view while studying, and a comforting knowledge that the bad children couldn’t reach you. They preferred to remain on the ground, closer to the girls.

  “Oi, Cheesegrater!” By now, experience had turned that simple name into a catalyst for action, namely running away. Through sheer habit Joey would turn and run whenever he heard that word shouted, for inevitably pain followed. Like Pavlov’s dogs salivating at the sound of a bell, Joey felt a rush of fear whenever he heard the word “Cheesegrater.”

  And so one day, a cry of “Cheesegrater” carried across the playground. Joey didn’t even look round: he just ran, straight for the nearest tree, and despite his weight he was very fast. He went up it like a squirrel, for it was his favourite tree. Many a playtime he had spent climbing this tree, getting used to all its twists and nooks, mastering it for such a day as this. He was at the top and in his favourite perch before the bully had even reached the tree.

  “Come down, you little shit!”

  Erm, no, he wasn’t about to climb down into somebody’s fist, thank you. He was going to stay right here, here where -

  He spotted a note pinned to a branch. Joey tore it off and opened it; inside was something that read rather like a job advertisement:

  “Fellow Bully wanted. Are you fed up with spending playtimes running away and climbing trees? Ever wanted to impress the girls? Pupil seeks likeminded boy for mutual Bully studies. Apply here Saturday night.”

  Joey tried to eat the evidence, but that didn’t work. Paper just got caught in his comically thick braces and was grated like cheese. Instead he screwed up the saliva-sodden note and put it in his pocket. He let a big grin split his face. He felt good things coming his way.

  2

  Joey was about to climb down and head home when he heard a voice.

  “Are you serious about this?”

  Joey froze. It was Saturday and he was back in the tree, but now it was dark and eerie and he no longer wanted this “job.” He had been about to leave when the voice had spoken from a tree next to his. It took some time for his eyes to adjust to what he saw making its way slowly, dangerously from that tree into his, but finally he recognised another bullied boy: Lem the lemon, as he was known.

  “Did you leave that note?” Joey said.

  “I did. You want the job?” Lem was a handsome boy, strong-looking. Only his girly love of poetry and dolls made him a target for the bullies.

  “Whadda we have to do?”

  Lem explained.

  And so it began, but slowly, quietly. Lem formulated a plan, and over the next week they ticked off tasks as each was accomplished:

  1 - A bag of sweets to secure, from another weedy kid, a woeful tale of abuse at the hands of Lem and Joey.

  2 - Karate books from the library left scattered on their desks, for all to see.

  3 - Knuckles rubbed raw with sandpaper and an accompanying yarn about mass attackers beaten off.

  4 - Voluntary admission into the school nurse’s office; there she diagnosed them free from flu, but out in the hallways and the playground, Lem spread a tale about Joey and something the nurse had called “psychotic behaviour,” while Joey did the same for Lem.

  The school grapevine went to work. Whispers and rumours abounded. Weak kids started avoiding the duo, while the girls took more of an interest in them. The other bullies watched them but made no moves. Except one. That event occurred three weeks after the hatching of their plan.

  His name was something that sounded like Haydock, but people just called him Haddock. He didn’t look like a fish, but people fooled themselves into thinking he did, because that made his nickname more appropriate and thus funnier. So, Haddock.

  “So you think yer hard, eh?” Haddock said one playtime as Joey and Lem impressed the girls with lies. Lem responded with a new piece of fiction.

  “Not ‘hard,’ mate. ‘Psychotic,’ the police said. ‘Cos I tore up their station yesterday.” He forced a mean, deep-throated laugh, and tried to stay calm. For three weeks now Joey and Lem had been bolstering each other’s confidence, but that confidence had yet to be put under test. Today, it seemed, was going to be that day. Standing firm by his new friend’s side, Joey forced a laugh too. Low and gutteral, just as he’d practiced in the mirror.

  “Well I’m hard, too,” Haddock said. “‘Disrespect for authority’ me mum said. Beat that.”

  “Yeah, you wanna make something of it?” said Joey. This was new ground for him, but he wasn’t scared; in fact, he felt good. And then he surprised everybody, primarily himself, by smacking Haddock right in the nose.

  The bully fell onto his ass and clutched his nose. Sheer shock dripped out of his wide eyes. He didn’t know what to do.

  A teacher was there in seconds. They knew this would mean detention.

  But wait. There was no mention of detention, and why was Mrs
. Smith dragging the boys across the playground, towards the school? Surely not…

  Fear welled like water in a blocked toilet as Joey and Lem realised their fate, and it was worse than Doomsday, or World War III.

  They were going before the Headmaster!

  3

  The Headmaster’s cottage was next to the school but fortified against pupil-invasion by a ring of trees, and within that ring was a chain-link fence. There was one way in: a gate in the fence reachable along a thin concrete path that snaked around the back of the school and to a nondescript door in a blank wall. It looked like a fire door, and it was; but it was also the Headmaster’s exit from his office. This was how he sometimes sneaked out of the school while pupils and sometimes even teachers continued to believe he was present, sitting as ever behind his desk, staring at