A sort of urban gothic(ish) story

[Draken]

She escorted Johnny and Harper to the holding cells. None of them said a word. There was an atmosphere of foreboding that Alicia could not dispel. The door of the cell clanged shut behind the prisoner: Alicia looked in through the small hatch. She had been about to say something mundane about seeing him the next day, but instead he caught her eye and - for the first and last time - said something of his own accord. “They’re afraid of what they see,” he said, those deep brown eyes sad yet somehow fierce. Harper slammed the hatch shut.

As they walked back along the corridor, Alicia turned to the taciturn policeman. “I saw what Ellis was like in that interview room,” she said quietly. “You make sure he remembers that. If anything happens I’ll end his career for him. I mean that.” She realised as she said it that it was not the sort of statement she had a habit of making, but something about this whole case was getting to her.

Harper looked back, his face blank. “I’ll try,” he muttered.

*

She never saw Johnny again. The office called her early the next morning: her latest client was dead. He had apparently gone into a frenzy in his cell, smashing his head repeatedly against the walls before anyone could reach him. He died from head injuries in the infirmary without regaining consciousness. There was a note in the station’s log that she herself had been concerned about the youth’s state of mind.

She went straight into the office and saw the senior partner as soon as he came in. She spent the rest of the day writing up a report on what had happened the previous night and preparing an official complaint. She knew what had happened in that cell after she had left. She knew Johnny’s wounds had not been self-inflicted. And all the while, something tugged away at the back of her mind. Something about Johnny. About what he was.

At six a Chief Inspector called her from Broom Grove: he would like to see her, immediately if at all possible. She said it was and got straight into her car. Here’s where you get yours, Ellis, she thought as she started the engine.

The radio came on as the car revved into life: it was playing a New Order song:

“When I was a very small boy, very small boys talked to me.”

She had never really been a New Order fan, but she liked this one.

“Now that we’ve grown up together, they’re afraid of what they see.”

She stopped in mid-reverse. “They’re afraid of what they see.” Johnny’s last words to her. Suddenly it came to her. That something at the back of her mind at last broke through. Johnny hadn’t been talking in riddles: he had been talking in lyrics. Fragments of songs.

She continued to reverse out of the parking space and then set off, trying to remember the things he had said.

“Between a man and a woman.” The first of his obtuse statements to her. There was a Kate Bush album track called that in her CD collection at home. She identified more of his riddles as she drove, all lines from an eclectic range of songs and singers: The Damned, Thin Lizzy, Cast, Crowded House.... There were plenty more she couldn’t identify, but then if he had been able to quote obscure album tracks the chances were a lot of his sources were unknown to her. If that was true then the breadth of his knowledge of popular music had been astonishing. How had he acquired such knowledge? He had just been a kid.

And why? What did it all mean?

*

It was dark by the time she reached Broom Grove. Glowering clouds reared up to block the last vestiges of twilight as she drove through the unfriendly streets. Tonight they seemed even more hostile than usual. There was something about them that did not belong in the Twentieth Century. Something dark and medieval. She noticed that there was nobody else about. Not a single car. Not a single person. Not a single kid.

They descended upon her so quickly that she had no time for thought. One second the streets were empty, the next, as she rounded the corner near the police station, her way was barred by a throng. Instinctively she hit the brakes. They closed around her car, laughing. Before she could find reverse gear the door was open and she was being hauled out.

It was the kids. Laughing and swearing and spitting at her. They flung her between them like a rag doll, propelling her away from the car until she slammed into a wall. She crumpled to the floor, winded and petrified.

A torch shone in her face, dazzling her.

“I know this cow! She were my brief.”

The speaker was a shaven-headed boy holding the torch. He craned over her. She didn’t recognise him.

“Said she’d help me!” he shouted. The crowd behind him laughed. They closed around her in a tight semi-circle of adolescent malevolence. She was too frightened to try to say anything. No words would come.

“Johnny could help us,” hissed the skinhead. “But you killed him, didn’t you? You with your laws and your rules, you had to bleeding kill him didn’t you?”

Then he laughed, and the rest of the mob laughed with him. Hysterical, whooping laughter.

“Well you killed nothing. You can’t kill what can’t be killed. Screw your laws and your rules. And screw your God. We got our own god now. A kids’ god we made for ourselves. A kids’ god just for us. A kids’ god you won’t ever understand, all you’ll know is it scares you. Just like we do.” There was a light in the skinhead’s wide eyes that could only be called evangelical.

“Look,” he said, pointing. “A sacrifice.” The crowd parted before his finger like the Red Sea. She looked, and for the first time noticed the flames billowing orange-bright from the police station down the street. The whole building was ablaze. Around it ran more teenagers, shouting excitedly, petrol bombs in their hands.

“And now...” whispered the skinhead.

“Don’t do it.” It was a command. Softly spoken yet somehow cutting through the tumult. It was a girl’s voice and sounded strangely familiar.
The skinhead stepped back immediately. The mob fell silent. Somebody walked through it toward where Alicia sat at the foot of the wall. She looked up slowly, the torchlight enough to reveal high-heeled boots, long legs hugged by skin-tight jeans, a scuffed black leather jacket. Then she saw peroxide blonde hair and a flash of bright red lipstick. And finally the eyes: deep and brown, knowing and mocking. She did not know the girl but she had seen those eyes before.

Suddenly Alicia understood all the skinhead had said. A god in their own image. And not just in their image, but in that of kids now grown. Not just an icon for now, but a reminder for people like her. A reminder of what she and her kind had been before jobs and mortgages and marriage and kids of their own had drowned them.

The girl gestured, and the kids around her disappeared. Not a word, not a sound: they just hurried away into the shadows, melted into the night. There was just Alicia, the girl and an overturned Renault, illuminated by the flickering bonfire that had been Broom Grove police station. A cold wind gusted grey smoke along the street. Alicia got to her feet.

The girl smiled. A sardonic, knowing smile. “Go now.”

Alicia nodded. She took a few steps down the road away from the blazing station. Her legs felt unsteady beneath her. In the distance she heard approaching sirens. She turned to look back at the girl: she too was listening to the sound of the sirens, still smiling. Her eyes caught Alicia’s.

“They’re afraid of what they see,” she said.

Again.

A sudden swirl of smoke obscured her for a second, and she was gone.

Alicia kept walking.



Apologies for the dated music! I got the idea after reading that 'Johnny' was the commonest all time name in UK chart singles.