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<h2>12</h2>
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<p><em>June:</em></p>
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<p>Kids were screaming and yelling. A rough voice cursed loudly and comprehensively and a high pitched one cried out in sudden pain.</p>
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<p>"Let me go you big swine," the boy squawked, clenching his teeth so that he wouldn't cry. Up on the hill behind the school, close to the angle-iron fence that bordered the old sandstone diggings, it was a bad idea to let people see you cry. It would let them know you were soft. In Quarryhill School, rough and ready as any, you had to keep your footing.</p>
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<p>Further down the hill a crowd of boys broke into a raucous cheer, the kind you hear in a school-yard when kids are up to mischief. A bell rang in the distance and the smaller boy squirmed away from the older one who was twisting his arm up his back.</p>
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<p>"I'm telling the teacher," he yelled. "You're in trouble."</p>
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<p>Quarryhill School. It stood just off the Arden Road leading out of town on its west edge, and the paved schoolyard backed onto the slope known to generations of pupils as The Hump. Here the tall green-painted spiked fence formed the boundary of the school land. Beyond it the chasm of the old quarry which had supplied stone for most of the old tenement buildings in the town was a barren landscape of sheer drops, massive tumbled blocks of stone, and tangled weeds and scrub. The fence was supposed to keep the pupils away from danger but naturally, this being a school, nobody ever came up the Hump to check how effective the barrier was. In one section, three of the spars had been torn away, leaving a space a man could walk through without turning sideways There were other places, closer to the low hill on the far side where the pigeon huts huddled, where the earth underneath the bottom spar had simply been scraped away by years of boys escaping the boredom of the classes on sunny afternoons. That part of the fence was not visible from any part of the school building, so any for any truant, the space under the fence was the ideal escape route. It was used so often that no grass grew there. It was Quarryhill's back door.</p>
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<p>At lunch time, especially on a dry day, the back yard of Quarryhill was just like tribal lands. Down close to the wall, the first year girls played skipping ropes and a hopscotch game called <em>peever</em>. Smaller boys played tag, though they called it <em>tig.</em> High tig, low tig, ball tig if they had a ball. Over at the sheds, the second and third year boys gathered to play five-a-side, or heading the football onto the roof, taking it in turn, scoring points if they could keep it up without letting it drop. When they tired of that, they might goggle at the senior girls of sixth year who hung around with the older boys who had lost interest in heading the ball and cared no longer about games of tig or kick-the-can.</p>
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<p>On the Hump, lower downslope where the ground was almost flat, teams of boys would mill around with a football, yelling and bawling the way that they do, sometimes twenty to a side, everybody chasing the ball at once to kick it between piles of schoolbags and jackets. Nobody outside the game ever knew how the score was kept, but again, that's the way it is in schools. Further up-slope there was a hollow close to the fence where any of the fights took place and that was generally a couple of times a week and an occasion for half the male population and a substantial fraction of the girls too, to come swarming up to spectate. Some of the fights were particularly violent, though most of them were simply pushing and shoving affairs involving a lot of swearing and name-calling as two reluctant boys squared up to each other, each determined not to be the first to land a blow. In real fights it was different. There were bruises, contusions, broken noses, mud, blood and snot flying. At any time outside class periods, the noise was horrendous. Kids were yelling and screaming, roaring and bawling. The senior boys, all of them smooth and cocky, or so it seemed to the thirteen-year-olds, had their radios turned up to a roar, listening to the Who or Manfred Mann, most of them with Beatles fringes and hair down over their collars and most of them with bad florescent acne. The back schoolyard and the Hump was like a cluster of galaxies, every group milling around with its own kind, and two groups hardly in contact, kept apart by the reverse gravity of age. Whenever two groups collided, as happened now and again, somebody could get hurt.</p>
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<p>The smaller boy with the now-sore arm ran away threatening to tell the teacher and the older boy, who was strolling up the hill tapping a ball lightly ahead of him with the toe of his scuffed Chelsea boot gave him the sign and turned away grinning. He kicked the ball to his friend who passed it to the third and then it came back. They were going up the hill towards the fence.</p>
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<p>"Got any smokes?" Crawford Rankine asked. His voice was just on the cusp of breaking, going from deep to high and then cracking to a thin gravelly rasp. His skin was just beginning to erupt in a line or risen weals on the edge of his jaw.</p>
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<p>"A couple," Don Whalen replied. "But we can club together and get more." He was a thin boy with fine, crinkled hair through which his scalp showed pink. He'd pulled his tie off and was trying to whip it against the third boy's backside.</p>
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<p>"Chuck it," Derek Milne told him. Don ignored the warning and whipped the tie, making it crack like a lash. Derek tried to catch it but failed.</p>
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<p>"If at first you don't succeed, fuck it, chuck it, never heed," Don chanted, mocking his pal.</p>
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<p>"Use the boot and then the <em>heid</em>," Derek snarled back in mock threat. There was no malice in it. They were pals. They moved up the hill, skirting the low wall where the huddled groups of gamblers sheltered from the breeze, deftly dealing cards for high-speed three-card brag (deuces floating wild) brag, or rapid fire blackjack pontoon with double odds for twenty one and better than that for a five card trick. Some expert hustlers would be thumbing coins against the brickwork in sudden death challenges of pitch and toss.</p>
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<p>"Deuce is wild," a high voice complained vehemently "That's three aces. A <em>prile</em>, and that beats you."</p>
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<p>"Piss off, you lunatic," a deeper voice countered "Jokers don't count,".</p>
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<p>"You're the flippin' joker Caldwell. That's my game. I win."</p>
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<p>Somebody shouted and somebody else yelled back and there was the unmistakable thud of a fist landing on a cheek.</p>
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<p>"Fight, fight."</p>
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<p>The words bounced from one group to another. The game of football on the flat grass stopped.</p>
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<p>"Fight, <em>fight!</em>"</p>
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<p>The girls stopped skipping. The senior boys with the acne pushed themselves away from the side wall, craning their heads to see what was going on. Small galaxies spun off groups of wheeling individuals and whirled them towards the gamblers. By now, two boys were rolling on the ground, locked together, each of them grunting and snorting with effort.</p>
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<p>"It's a fight," Derek, said.</p>
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<p>"No, it's a kissing and hugging match," Crawford said. "Look at them. Just a pair of jessies."</p>
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<p>He strolled on and the others followed as far as the fence. Up against the green metal railings, another group of younger boys had been playing dead man's fall, pretending to attack a machine gun nest and then being shot and dying in the most spectacular and dramatic fashion. When the fight cry had sparked from group to group they had forgotten their little private war and gone trotting down the slope like pups coming down to a kill, heads up, feet fast. The three pals reached the fence. Crawford Rankine threw his bag over the spikes at the top, eased himself down to the ground and limbo-crawled under the deep space there the earth had been worn away by the passage of generations of previous escapees.</p>
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<p>"Listen," Derek said. "I can't go. We got Matt Bryson for second period."</p>
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<p>"So what?"</p>
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<p>"He said if I don't bring in that essay today, he'll have my guts. He will an' all."</p>
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<p>"Oh, he's nothing but a big Nancy," Crawford sneered. "Come on man. My uncle Mickey said there's a run of sea-trout coming up. It's a great day for fishing."</p>
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<p>Derek hesitated. Don urged him to come along and for a moment it looked like their friend could be persuaded, but he shook his head regretfully.</p>
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<p>"Okay, don't say you weren't asked," Crawford told him. He picked up his bag and started walking on the path on the other side of the fence, heading away from the quarry and down toward the pigeon huts and shacks where the Quarryhill men kept their lurchers and greyhounds and occasionally, some fighting dogs. Don gave Derek an apologetic shrug and then scrambled under the fence. On the down-slope, the low rush of sound rolled up the hill, the tense and somehow hungry sound a crowd of teenagers make as they mill around two fighting bodies. Derek turned and walked towards the melee.</p>
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<p>Don and Crawford skirted the top shacks, and followed the natural alleyway between the old wooden huts. Pigeons coo-ed and mumbled from behind slatted openings. Overhead a flock of them clapped through the air, wheeling together with such perfect timing they might have been joined together by threads. Here the track, no more than a yard wide, fell away heading for the old back road that was once the service access for the stone-haulers at the quarry. On this party the yards and small paddocks were bounded by thick chain link or heavy duty chicken wire. Crawford stopped at the corner and Don opened the pack of cigarettes.</p>
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<p>"Got a match?"</p>
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<p>"Not since Samson died," Crawford threw back..</p>
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<p>"You mean his crippled baby sister, don't you?"</p>
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<p>They lit up and drew in deep then sauntered casually down the hill to where some steps had been constructed with old planks of wood in a rickety descent. Just as they reached the top stair a big black shape came lunging out from behind one of the corrugated-iron shacks and hit the chain-link with such force that the wire shrieked through the stay-holes. Don drew back with a cry of alarm and dropped his cigarette into the mud at the side of the track. The pit-bull terrier lunged again, a squat and powerful beast with a head twice as wide as any normal canine head should be. Its pin-prick eyes were flat black in a grey face wrinkled into a snarl and showing an impossible array of teeth. It growled deep and rumbling in the back of its throat.</p>
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<p>"Jee-<em>fuh</em>..." Crawford gasped. He was further from the fence than Don but the powerful dog's attack had pushed the wire right out to the middle of the path. The beast snarled and slavered.</p>
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<p>"Look at the teeth on that," Crawford said. "If that got you it would take your bloody arm off."</p>
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<p>The fighting dog launched itself at the fence, massive and muscular, leaping right up from the ground to hit with ugly snout and paws. Specks of saliva splashed on the two boys who had cringed back to the far side of the track.</p>
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<p>"It's like a Tasmanian devil," Don said, and they both laughed, now realising they were safe and that the powerful beast couldn't get through the fence. He picked up a slender twig from a privet that overhung the track and poked it through the wire. The dog leapt up at it, jaws snapping together with the sound of boulders clashing and Don pulled his hand away. Crawford reached for Don's smouldering cigarette. He drew hard on it, making the end glow brightly.</p>
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<p>"Here poochie-poo, here boy," he wheedled. The black dog twisted its head to the side curiously, though the low rumble continued. Crawford pushed a finger through the mesh. Without hesitation the dog lunged. Crawford whipped his finger away, twisting as he did to bring his other hand up. The dog hit the fence and Crawford jammed the lit end of the cigarette against its shiny nose.</p>
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<p>The pit-bull terrier seemed to explode. It leapt back in a perfect somersault, howling madly with pain and rage. It landed square on its feet, smooth hair now all spiked and hackled. Its thick neck seemed to have ballooned to twice its previous bull thickness. The howl turned into a slavering snarl and it leapt for the fence again, hitting it with such powerful force that one of the staples on the high upright popped out and pinged on the barrier on the other side of the track.</p>
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<p>"Flamin' hell Craw," Don yelped. The dog leapt at them, pushing its nose far enough through the mesh that the skin beside its snout pulled back so violently that it began to bleed. Its black eyes were rolling wildly, showing a ring of yellow-white all around. It snapped and slavered like a crazed beast, which in fact it was. Don and Crawford took to their heels hooting with laughter.</p>
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<p>Down to the left a trio of greyhounds started growling. Don and Crawford scampered down the swaying steps past the dog pen while the pit-bull terrier snarled and slavered behind them, attacking the fence with such ferocity it seemed certain to break through and come after them. The pair darted to the right past the greyhounds, tall emaciated dogs with arched backs and goitred eyes and long grinning mouths. They began to bark in chorus as the boys ran past, thrusting their thin noses through the holes in the wire.</p>
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<p>Crawford got to the flat just ahead of Don and they ran along the gravel path, past a series of old shacks and reached the dead end. Here a piece of sheet iron had been set up as a makeshift gate, but it had been peeled back by others in the past and the narrow gap allowed them to squeeze through. This was the final paddock and beyond it, there was a secondary worn track that led down to the back quarry road. They stopped and got their breath back.</p>
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<p>"Nearly shit myself," Don wheezed. "And look. My smoke's all wet now. It's like a duck's arse."</p>
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<p>Crawford flicked it out of his hand and ground it into the earth. He passed his own smoke over and Don took a big draw.</p>
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<p>"Cured my constipation as well," Crawford said. "If that thing got out it would eat you alive." The danger over, they began to laugh nervously.</p>
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<p>"It would eat <em>you</em>. I'd be a hundred yards clear ahead of you."</p>
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<p>They finished the cigarette, smoking it down until it almost burned Don's lip and then they moved through the mass of tall weeds that filled the paddock. The brambles and willowherb grew higher than their heads and they had to push the trailing runners aside to reach the far side. Here an old railway box-car was angled against the barbed wire fence that marked the east edge of the quarry. Don made to go past it when he stopped and bent down.</p>
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<p>"What is it?"</p>
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<p>"A padlock." Don straightened up and turned to his pal. "Somebody left it."</p>
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<p>They turned simultaneously towards the boxcar which was grey with age. A faded number 188 was just visible against the pocked grain of the wood. Any time they had passed this way the truck had been firmly closed. Somebody had jemmied the lock off. Don leaned forward and touched the pale gouges where the wood had been chipped off. Crawford moved past him and gave the door a tug to the left. It refused to budge but he got two hands to it and heaved. It gave a squeal of protest and slid back a few inches on its solid runner wheels. He peered through the gap.</p>
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<p>"Can't see anythinmg," he answered the unasked question. He pulled back and his pal got a grip on the door and between them they rolled it open enough to let them inside. A pale pillar of light crossed the dusty floor and climbed up the wall, illuminating the centrefolds tacked to the wall.</p>
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<p>Crawford pushed his way inside with Don clambering just behind him.</p>
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<p>"Look at the tits..." he started to say craning forward to ogle a blond boasting a stupendous and quite improbable chest. Behind him Don grunted.</p>
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<p>A loud thud shook the goods truck.</p>
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<p>He turned round, only curious at that moment. Don came swinging up in front of him., moving fast, his pale frizzled hair catching the light.</p>
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<p>"What the heck are you doing?" Crawford blurted in surprise.</p>
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<p>Crawford grunted again. A tall figure loomed out from the shadow. He had Don by the neck. Crawford got a glimpse, no more, of thick fingers clamped against the back of the boy's head. His friend hit the side of the wagon. Don's bag flew off to the side.</p>
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<p>"Donny...?"</p>
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<p>The tall figure came lunging forward, his other hand reaching out. It seemed to happen in slow motion. Don went slamming against the side, flicking out of the light and disappearing into the gloom. The pale hand, massive and wide came expanding toward Crawford's face. It reached the pillar of light. The fingers brightened. Crawford jerked back reflexively, instinctively. His feet slipped and he fell to the floor. The hooked hand clawed the empty air.</p>
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<p>"<em>Ungh</em>," Don said. His feet hit the side again. His head was almost at the curved roof of the wagon. Dreadful panic twisted in Crawford's belly. The hand lunged for him again, crossing the shaft of light once more. Crawford rolled. His bag slipped from his shoulder as his feet scrabbled on the wooden boards. He twisted again and, by a sheer miracle, he tumbled out of the wagon and into the daylight.</p>
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<p>The man growled, almost as loud, almost as ferocious the pit bull. Crawford's shin scraped down the edge of the door runner, burning a sliver of fire up on the bone, but at that moment he hardly felt a thing. The awful sound that had come out of Don's mouth was ringing in his ears, even louder than the growl of the big man who had lifted his friend up by the neck and slammed him, one handed, against the side of the rail truck so violently that the whole thing had shook.</p>
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<p>Crawford's foot shoved at the muddy ground, failed to grip. The panic burst inside him and he whimpered in fear. His foot got a purchase, pushed him forward. Something heavy - and he knew it was that reaching hand - hit him on the backside. He felt fingers hooking at the flannel of his pants, pulled away from it with a desperate heave. The material dragged away. He shot forward, got to his feet and crashed through the weeds. Behind him the man grunted again and snarled ferociously. Crawford reached the makeshift gate where he and Don had bent back the thin metal. They hadn't pushed it back into position and it was still open. He dived through, not trusting himself to squeeze between the uprights quickly enough. His hip hit the ground on the other side, abraded a red scrape into his skin, and then he was up and away.</p>
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<p>Behind him there was a thud of something heavy hitting the side of the wagon. Almost immediately the weeds and bramble runners snapped as an even heavier mass pushed through them. Crawford's whimper became a wail of pure terror. He ran along the track, past the snarling greyhounds, pushed himself off a slatted wall to get round the corner and then went skittering down the final track towards the Lochend Road which curved in a long bend past the base of the path. He stopped, head swinging right and left. If he used the road, he had five hundred yards to get to the junction that would lead him back up to the front of the school.</p>
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<p>Five hundred yards. Would he make it? Could he make it? His mind was jittering and jerking, not gauging consciously, but working it out none the less.</p>
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<p>To the left, the entrance to the quarry gaped, an overgrown and rutted space between two perpendicular faces of stone where the rock had been blasted and chiselled. Between them, a thick bow of steel chain acted as a barrier against people who dumped rubbish on any vacant spot, or who dumped cars there too.</p>
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<p>The quarry was forbidden to every pupil at the school, which meant that everyone, at least almost every boy had explored it at some stage and some of the older girls had made their own teenage explorations there too. There were paths up on the ledges, worn by the feet of countless boys taking a short cut or playing truant.</p>
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<p>Behind him he heard the growling of the man coming after him. Feet thudded on the track, heavy and deadly. Crawford froze for a second, paralysed with fear and indecision, then he spun on his heel and ran hell for leather for the opening of the quarry. He reached the chain and leapt over it like a hurdler, his shirt-tail pulled out of his waistband and flying free.</p>
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<p>The man came thundering down the track, moving so fast that when he reached the edge of the road his momentum carried him clear across to the far side of the road and almost into the line of trees. He looked left and right, much as Crawford had done, then the boy's flapping shirt caught his eye. It flashed in the shadow of the quarry like the tail of a startled fawn. He turned and went thundering after it.</p>
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<p>Even in the height of summer, the south faces of the quarry never saw the sun. They were covered in ivy and moss and constantly dripped the dampness down into the trenches where the masons had carved the blocks way back at the turn of the century. Jumbled and tumbled piles of stones were covered in willowherb and wild rhubarb, while close to the sheer face, square blocks of stone, some of them ten feet tall, lay like dice thrown by a giant hand. Crawford ran for the nearest block, jinked round the side and squeezed between it and its neighbour. The narrow defile led to a series of steps which had been cut in the sandstone and he clawed his way up them, breathing hard and fast. He risked a look behind him and saw the big man come rushing in through the man-made chasm. All he saw was a shock of black hair and a flapping coat. He could hear the thud of boots on the hard ground and the angry, almost inhuman growl.</p>
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<p>"Help," he bawled. The cry bounced off the sheer faces of the cut rock and faded to merge with the steady drip of the seeping water.</p>
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<p>From higher up, beyond the flat edge, the schoolyard shrieks and shouts came louder as he scrambled up the narrow defile.</p>
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<p>Behind him the man was growling words which were all mashed and jumbled together and made no sense at all. Crawford pushed himself up and through the cleft and onto the top of the first massive stone block. From there he could take a run and a short jump over the yard-wide cleft that would take him to the next block. The sound of the running man's boots came thudding up to him.</p>
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<p>"Help," his voice was getting higher and the word seemed to squeak out from a dry throat. His heart was thudding and kicking against his ribs and his knees threatened to buckle under him.</p>
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<p>Up on the top, where the grass was short and the paths leading away from the fence radiated in all directions, worn smooth by the feet of those years of truancy, there was a hollow depression that had once been the original quarry works when the stone was first cut out for an ancient farmhouse which stood on the land now occupied by the school. The hollow was bounded on three sides by a tangle birch trees and over-run by a thick matt of creeping ivy. From the school fence anyone inside the dip could not be seen.</p>
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<p>Brenda Fortucci, a plump and dark-haired sixteen-year old whose attractions included a large and pallid pair of soft breasts and the fact that her uncle ran the cafe and snooker hall along Kirk Street, pushed herself away from Brian Grittan. In a couple of months a group of boys would use a scrag street-pigeon as a decoy while they robbed the store where Brenda's mother worked.</p>
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<p>"Did you hear something?" she asked. Brian ignored the question and sneaked his hand back inside her school blouse to the smooth, yielding warmth.</p>
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<p>"Sounds like a fight," he said quickly, in a voice that said he couldn't care about anything outside the hollow, or outside her blouse for that matter. He gently pushed her back down onto the grass and hunched over her to press his mouth against hers. She had a soft tongue and clumps of black hair under her armpits and Brian tantalised himself with the notion that between her thighs it was the same luscious dark shade. He hadn't risked putting his hand down there, not yet...</p>
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<p>"Help, oh, please help me," Crawford Rankine bleated. The words came out all crimped and squashed together.</p>
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<p>Behind him he could hear the ragged breath of the man who had lifted Don up by the neck and hit him against the wall. It was much closer now. He leapt over the space onto the next block and angled right up the steep track, hands scrabbling for purchase on the ivy roots.</p>
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<p>Up in the hollow, Brenda pulled away again. "I did hear something," she said. Brian tried to fasten on to her again but she squirmed away. "Sounds like some kid."</p>
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<p>"There's always kids around here." Brain was seventeen and was about to spectacularly fail in maths, French and physics because his mind had recently become so distracted from schoolwork. "Come on, Brenda, the bell's going to ring in a minute."</p>
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<p>Over beyond the fence, a strangely hushed roar went up as the crowd around the fighting pair of boys reacted to the contest.</p>
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<p>"Kick his head in," a loud voice rasped.</p>
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<p>Closer, on the other side of the dell, a higher voice called out. Brenda sat up.</p>
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<p>"There. That's it again. Don't you hear it?" She began to fasten her blouse, flicking off the dried grass that stuck to the material.</p>
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<p>"It's only kids playing games."</p>
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<p>Down below them, Crawford Rankine was climbing for his life. Here the quarry ascended in a series of man-high steps, most of them covered in ivy runners and bindweed. The boy pushed himself up and through another narrow gap. The man was closer now, climbing fast. The boy felt his sphincter clench and unclench as if he was going to mess his pants. His throat clicked dryly. In his mind's eye he saw Don's crinkly fine hair up close to the roof of the railwagon, while the white hand floated into the beam of sunlight.</p>
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<p>"Ah...Ah....<EM>AAAAAH!"</EM> No words now, just a wavering, inarticulate cry. He reached the flat of the wide ledge where the birches leaned out of the face. There was a corner here with handholds, maybe twelve feet high. He had climbed it many a time without difficulty, taking a short-cut back into school. But he had never climbed it with a maniac chasing him up the side of the quarry. Behind him the man growled. Crawford launched himself at the corner and began to climb up, moving so fast and so desperately that his foot slipped on the smooth rock. He slid down two feet to the flat of the ledge again and started upwards once more.</p>
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<p>Up in the hollow, Brenda got to her feet. She pushed her way through the tall stands of willowherb close to the edge.</p>
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<p>"Watch that, or you'll go over," Brian warned. He was angry now, frustrated and disappointed all at once, but he didn't want to see her fall.</p>
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<p>A hand clamped on Crawford's ankle.</p>
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<p>It happened so suddenly that for a fraction of a second the boy thought his foot had snagged on a loop of ivy.</p>
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<p>The fingers squeezed so hard on his tendon that a dreadful pain seared up the back of his leg. He thought he cried out but in fact no sound came out of his throat. He struggled away from the grip, managed to raise his foot six inches to the next little ledge.</p>
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<p>Then he was down. The grip on his ankle simply jerked him off the corner of the rock. His head hit against a knuckle of stone and a white light flashed in front of his eyes. He came crashing to the flat and hit with such a thud that all of his breath came out in a whoosh of air. Another hand clamped on his neck and lifted him up just as abruptly as he had been slammed down.</p>
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<p>"Got you," the man's voice growled, deep as rocks grinding together.</p>
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<p>He was lifted up and turned, as if he weighed nothing at all.</p>
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<p>"And he took him up to a high place," the man said slowly, in a strange, distant tone, as if he was talking to someone else. His dark hair was falling over his brow and his eyes blinked so rapidly it looked like a quick-fire series of tics.</p>
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<p>A sudden and deadly knowledge sparked. <em>"Twi....twi...twi..."</em> The boy stammered.</p>
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<p>"Call thy angels." The face loomed close. "And they will bear thee up."</p>
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<p>Crawford dimly realised that the face had not moved. It was himself who had been drawn down wards towards it. The face moved away. Crawford felt himself rise up. The hands let go. He was still rising. The sun flashed over the rim of the quarry. He went up into the air.</p>
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<p>And then he was falling.</p>
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<p>Up at the edge where the brambles hung over the face, Brenda Fortucci screamed. The boy soared out from the cleft. All she saw were the arms windmilling for balance and the legs running in the air. The figure went flying out from the rock and plummeted straight down.</p>
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<p>"Oh look...oh Brian....he's.."</p>
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<p>"What is it?" Brian asked, bulling through the weeds. He reached her side and she turned into him, arms grabbing for his support breasts pressing into him.</p>
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<p>"He fell," he bawled. "Oh, that boy. He fell."</p>
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<p>A dull, somehow deadly thud rose up from below.</p>
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<p>Brian peered over the edge. Down on a flat rock, fifty feet below, the boy was spread-eagled on a flat block of stone. His legs were shivering violently as if an electric current was running through them. In the space of a few seconds, a stain spread out underneath the boy's jacket, turning the rock dark.</p>
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<p>"Oh Brian he's dead. I know he is."</p>
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<p>He grabbed her by the hand and went running for the fence. Down on the hillside, one of the teachers had pushed his way into the centre of the crowd and was now hauling two bloodied boys out by the scruffs of their necks.</p>
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<p>"Help," Brian Grittan shouted. "Mr Doyle!"</p>
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<p>Brenda made a soft sighing sound and fell in a dead faint at his feet. Suddenly, without warning, Brian's gorge clenched, opened and he retched so violently his recent lunch sprayed all over the fence and his prostrate girlfriend.</p>
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