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359 lines
26 KiB
HTML
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<title>Mythlands - Chapter 1</title>
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<h1>1</h1>
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<p>
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The high stone wall that circled Cromwath Blackwood had drawn him with a powerful and mysterious gravity, ever since he'd been a small boy.
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Now Jack Flint was going to break all the rules, ignore all the warnings and climb the wall to see just what was in there behind the wall.
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He and his best friend Kerry Malone had planned it for weeks, curiosity and apprehension jangling in them both. The wall around those dark trees was old and high and every kid here on the Ardmore peninsula had heard the tales. Nobody really knew for sure, because nobody went in there.
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"Maybe it's caves," Jack said as they sauntered down to the bus-stop after school. A cool sea breeze mixed salt in the scent of autumn heather on the air. High above, a jet contrail split the cold blue sky. "Or old mine workings that people could fall in. Anyway, we'll find out for ourselves tomorrow."
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"No," Kerry said, shaking his head. "I think it's a haunted house. That's why they built the wall."
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"You wouldn't build a wall for that," Jack insisted. "You'd just knock it flat. Caves are the best bet. Remember that boy who went in and got lost for years?"
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"If it ever happened," Kerry countered. "That was years ago. I don't believe it."
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They were all set for tomorrow. They had ropes and flashlights ready in Kerry's rucksack, and the fishing rods as a cover story. Nobody would be any the wiser, so long as Aunt Clarice didn't keep Jack around for weekend chores, and as long as the Major's gamekeeper didn't see them scaling the ivy that grew on the south wall. There was always the chance that the Major himself would be up in the turret of the big house with his brass telescope trained on them. With luck, Jack thought, they'd be up and over before anybody noticed. The thought of it made him tingle with excitement. At last he'd find out what was the secret behind the wall.
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<p>
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<em>Cromwath Blackwood</em> . Every place has its legends, and here on the peninsula, where the standing stones stood like ancient guards along the crest of the ridge where the edge of Scotland met the sea, the Blackwood was the focus of many a childhood story. Jack had pondered on the walled coppice since he was just a kid, living with Aunt Clarice in the lodge house on the Major's estate. In his imagination, when he was small, there were monsters there. Dragons. Caves of treasure.
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Now he was older, he knew it would be something more mundane than all of that, but still the Cromwath Blackwood tugged at him, fired up his curiosity. It was secret. <em>Forbidden</em>. It was something he and Kerry could share, their own secret, and in a small harbour town like Ardmore secrets were always hard to come by and even harder to keep.
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Nobody they knew had ever gone over that wall and gone inside. There were stories a plenty and the one Jack liked best was the one about Thomas Lynn, who was reckoned to be about fifteen, a few months older than Jack and Kerry Malone. Some said it happened sixty years ago, before the war and some said it was before the Great War and nobody knew for sure when it happened, if it ever really did happen.
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Thomas Lynn had ignored all the warnings, so parents would tell their children. He climbed the big wall one autumn night and went into the Blackwood…and then he vanished.
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And he'd been gone a long time, whenever it was.
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The next time anybody saw him was when he was found up beside the old stone cairn on the top of Dumbuie Hill, a good ten miles away. And when did turn up, so the story went, it looked as if he'd been sucked into to some kind of hell and it had spat him out again.
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<em>He was in a hell of a state,</em> one of the old hands down at the fishing quay had told them one Saturday morning when Kerry was earning some money unloading boxes of fish.
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"He was burned bad all down one side of him," the old fellow had said, "The skin on his bones melted like tar."
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He cocked an eye at them. "An' toes an' fingers gone, like they'd frozen off, or maybe <em>chewed</em> off. Who can tell? Worst was the stuff growin' on him. It was like a poison fungus rooted right in him, suckin' the life out. A woeful way to die, I can tell ye."
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He took a suck on his pipe, covering it against the smirr of rain coming in off the sea. Kerry sat on a box in his threadbare sweater, blue Irish eyes bright with interest.
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"Wherever it was he found himself, it musta been a place none of God's creatures should ever go," the old fellow went on. "Poor soul was slobberin' an droolin'. Mad as a hatter an' he was stone blind."
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The deckhand had knocked his pipe on the gunwale and squinted down at them against the sparkle of the rising tide. Both Jack and Kerry sat, fascinated, not quite believing the tale, but <em>wishing</em> the story was true.
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"The mystery was," the fisherman went on. "When they found him up on the hill, it was ten years after he disappeared. Ten whole years. Can you imagine that?"
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Both Jack and Kerry nodded. It was an old story, but it still gripped them.
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"His brain frazzled an' his eyes burned out like he'd seen a vision o' hell," the deckhand said, nodding himself, agreeing with his own story.
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"And he was not one day older than he was on the day he climbed over that wall."
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He left that hanging in the air. They hadn't heard that part of the story before. Ten years and not a day older. Story or not, that was a big one to get the mind around.
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"So where had he been?" Kerry wanted to know.
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"Somewhere nobody should ever go," the old fellow said. "Nowhere on this world, that's the truth of it."
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"How does anybody know he went in the Blackwood?" Jack finally asked. His dark hair was a contrast to Kerry's mop of brown curls.
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The deckhand shrugged. "It was afore my time, I grant ye, but folk seen him, an' the sight scared the bejasus out of them."
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He waved a finger at them. "Don't you boys be thinkin' of goin' up there in those trees, mind. Remember young Tommy Lynn, an' you pay heed."
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"You believe any of that?" Kerry Malone asked. He was almost the same height as Jack, with a smattering of sepia freckles across his nose and an Irish accent to match, even though he'd lived here on Scotland's west coast since he was six. "All those old fishers, they believe in kelpies and little people and the Loch Ness monster."
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"There has to be something in there," Jack insisted. "They put a wall round it to keep people out."
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They were almost down to Ardmore Road that snaked round the shore. They couldn't see the Blackwood from this distance, but it was there all right, dark and mysterious.
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"That wall's been there for hundreds of years," Jack said. "Nobody knows how long." He turned to face Kerry. "Maybe it wasn't built to keep folk out."
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"Why build it then?"
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"I can see it from my bedroom. Sometimes I've seen the tops of the trees whipping about when it gets dark, like something's shaking them, even when there's no wind. And when I was a kid I heard things in there.
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"Now you're winding me up."
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"No," Jack said flatly. "It was at night. I heard something. Like screaming. Real high and shuddery. And people wailing and crying. I had nightmares for weeks."
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Kerry still looked skeptical, but Jack went on.
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"I think maybe they put up the wall to keep something <em>in.</em>"
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He let that idea float.. Kerry walked with it until they reached the corner.
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"Aye maybe. But there isn't a wall high enough to stop a Malone."
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"Sure," Jack said. "Tell that to your Dad."
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Kerry collapsed a fit of laughter and that broke the moment. Jack was his best friend, so he could make a joke about the luckless Fergal Malone, odd-job-man, drinker and poacher who was having an unplanned three-month holiday in Drumbain Jail. They'd sent him up for using dynamite from the quarry to blow a few salmon from a pool in Brander Water, and almost blowing himself up in the attempt.
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They had been best of friends since they'd been six years old, when Kerry's dyslexia slowed him up in school and Jack used to try to help him with the letters in the reading books. After that, Jack had read the kids stories to him and then, when the Major let him use the library up in the big house, he'd share the adventure stories, tales of the old Celtic heroes and the battles they fought in Scotland and Ireland in the mythical days of long ago.
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For an orphan like Jack Flint and the son of a ne'er-do-well like Kerry, it might have been an odd friendship, but as the Major told him on their long walks up on Brander Ridge, you couldn't pick your friends, not your real friends anyway.
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They were still laughing when they turned the corner of the lane, schoolbags slung from their shoulders, and almost barged into the crowd of older boys hanging around the bus-shelter.
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Both of them stopped laughing when Billy Robbins turned round and saw them. He stepped out to block the way.
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He was big and beefy, red-faced, red-haired and freckled and the bane of many a boy's existence here in Ardmore.
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The village huddled around the harbour, between the ridge and the grey Atlantic ocean and there was nowhere to hide from a bully like Billy Robbins who had thrown his weight about ever since Jack had started school. His old man owned the boatyard where Kerry's mother worked as a cleaner, aside from the sewing jobs she took to keep the house going while Kerry's dad was away. She really needed the cleaning job in the boatyard and Kerry wouldn't risk it for her.
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"Hey, here's Malone!" Billy bawled, and Jack felt his stomach tighten. "The illegiterate bogtrotter."
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Jack hated it when Billy made fun of Kerry's dyslexia. It wasn't Kerry's fault his brain managed to scramble up the letters into a jumble, but that didn't make him stupid. Far from it. But Billy Robbins thought it just the best of laughs to point it up.
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</p>
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"What the hell are you doin' here?" He pulled his I-pod earpiece out and spun the thin cable around his finger. "They got a special bus for you window-lickers."
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A couple of girls in nearby sniggered that high-pitched way and Kerry's cheeks went bright red. Fiona Dunbar was one of the girls, and maybe she hadn't laughed, but she was there, watching, and Kerry was suddenly wilting on his feet with embarrassment and shame.
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"Are you hearing me? We don't want any raggy-arsed Irish tinkers stinking up the bus."
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Billy nudged one of his cronies and took a pull on his cigarette. Robbins and his pals were a year older, and while Jack was tall for his age, they were bigger yet, and heavier. And Robbins was meaner than any of them.
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</p>
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"Hey Stevie," Billy asked one of the others. He wasn't finished yet. "What's DNA stand for?"
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"Dunno?"
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"National Dyslexic Association.." He pointed up at the sign on the bus shelter. "He thinks it says <em>Sub</em>. Am I right, bog-trotter? Can't read, can't write, backside hanging out of his pants."
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Everybody laughed this time, or most of them. Jack looked across, past Kerry's bright red ears, and saw Fiona Dunbar was turning away and she wasn't laughing. Inwardly he thought <em>good for you, </em>and he wished Kerry would take his eyes off the ground and see it for himself. But Kerry never moved. He kept staring at the ground, fists clenched, face burning, shoulders twitching with the need to hit out and the tension of holding it back.
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"Turn around, rag-bag," Robbins said. He shot a hand out and grabbed Kerry by the shirt. "Show us the patch on your pants."
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Robbins was wearing a pair of trainers that probably cost as much as Kerry's whole wardrobe. He grinned widely, his acne-scarred skin stretched like pink gravel. The peach fuzz on his cheeks made him look piggish and mean.
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"Real cool, tinkerboy. Your old man's got more style and he's wearing jail stripes."
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Kerry said nothing. Robbins used his bulk to pull him slowly backwards and forwards.
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<em>Do it! Go on! </em> Jack's back teeth were clenched and grinding. He'd seen Kerry haul fishboxes all day down at the harbour. His hands were calloused and rough from hard work. If he wanted to, he could give Robbins a run for his money.
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"What did I tell you already?" Robbins demanded. "Bogtrotters don't get the bus with us. You stink of piss and fish. Now take a hike, you an' the bookworm. The walk'll do you good. You put a foot on that bus and I'll kick your raggy arse off, hear?"
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"<em>Go pick on somebody else, you fat bully!"</em>
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Jack heard himself say the words as if they were coming from somebody else. As soon as they were out of his mouth, he wished he could have bitten them back and swallowed them out of sight. He'd taken two unbidden steps forward, suddenly quivering with righteous anger at Kerry's humiliation, two steps that put him just within Robbins reach.
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A beefy hand shot out and grabbed him by the school tie. The other casually shoved Kerry away. It happened so fast Jack hardly saw it coming. His heart leapt into his throat as Robbins swung piggy eyes on him. Robbins took a slow draw on his cigarette then flicked it at him. It bounced off his jacket in a flurry of sparks.
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"<em>Oho!</em>" he said. "We got a big mouth here." Billy didn't sound angry at all. He sounded <em>pleased. </em>"What was it you just called me?"
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Jack tried to pull back out of the grip. His heart was thudding so hard he could feel the pulse in his ears. Robbins flexed his arm and pulled him close enough to smell stale cigarette smoke and whatever he'd had for lunch.
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"You sayin' I'm fat?"
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"I told you to leave him alone." The words just blurted out. Jack wished he could put a brake on his tongue. "He's done nothing to you."
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"Nothing? <em>Nothing</em>?" Robbins worked up indignation. "His old man stole from my old man, didn't he? You call that nothing? And this low-life Irish scum-bag son of his is just as bad.
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He held Jack close, eyes almost hidden by fat cheeks. He was still grinning, but there was no joy in that grin. Jack thought he could read some disturbing expression in those eyes and felt the back of his legs begin to tremble. For the first time in his life he thought he recognized madness in another human and it really scared him.
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"Want some action, Pink Lint?" Robbins had his own rhyming name for Jack.
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Jack felt the tight anger wrestle with the swelling fear. Just because Kerry couldn't read, just because he was <em>dyslexic</em>, that didn't make him stupid. Just because he wouldn't fight didn't make him a coward either. Robbins pulled him very close and Jack wished that he'd kept quiet but his mouth had worked before his brain could stop it and while he was suddenly scared, he knew it would be a real mistake to show it now.
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Without any warning, Robbins suddenly shoved him away. Jack turned to run, but the rest of the bigger boys had surrounded them and hands pushed him back again towards Robbins.
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He twisted to keep his balance and swung right into the swinging fist that caught him such a thud that everything went black for a second. The force knocked his head back against the shelter and made little bright lights spiral like tinsel in watery vision. He ended up on his backside with a jolt that gnashed his teeth.
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"That's not <em>fat,</em> Lint-boy," Robbins grated.
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He grinned, showing small teeth. "That's pure muscle."
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Jack groggily shook his head. Robbins pulled him up by the shirt, violent enough to pop two buttons which whizzed away. He drew his fist back for another punch. Instinctively Jack raised a hand to protect his face and his palm caught Robbins, purely by accident, square on the nose.
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Billy Robbins staggered back cursing, hand to his face, eyes wide in fury and surprise. Jack was just as surprised. He'd never hit anybody in his life, even if it hadn't been intended. Robbins roared and came at him, fists cocked.
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He jabbed a hand out and grabbed Jack's shirt again, dragged him forward with such force that the collar ripped, raised his clenched fist and brought it down again on Jack's cheek. The blow rocked him back, ears ringing. Jack tried to squirm away. Another punch almost dropped him flat.
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One of the girls called out for Robbins to stop, but Jack knew there was no stopping him at all. Robbins might have had the looks of a pig, but was mean as a stoat and all his cronies were egging him on. Whatever Jack had seen in his eyes, a kind of blankness behind the mean glitter, that had sent a chill through him.
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Robbins raised the fist again. Jack cringed away from it, tears smarting in his eyes from the first blow, but couldn't twist out of the grip on his shirt.
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Then Kerry moved in fast and grabbed the clenched fist in both hands. Robbins let out a mad howl and spun like a bull, swinging Jack right off his feet.
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Kerry hung on to the fist as Robbins wheeled, dragging both smaller boys with him. Kerry's complexion had changed from red to almost pure white. It was hard to tell whether it was fear or anger.
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"I'll bloody <em>kill</em> you," Robbins bawled. "I'll tear both of you apart."
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Jack didn't doubt that at all. In that moment, he knew there was something broken inside Billy Robbins. Some crack in there that festered with poison.
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He pulled, hard as he could, dragged himself free of the grip and spun away, tripped and went sprawling. He heard the sound of a pulpy blow landing hard. In a second he was back on his feet. He grabbed his bag, full of schoolbooks, bit down on his fear and the panicky urge to run and save himself.
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He darted in between two of the older boys.
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Robbins had Kerry by the throat, thumbs pressed against his windpipe, his face swollen with animal fury, mouth twisted into a mad snarl.
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"Come on Billy," somebody said, worried now.
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"Sure, man. He's got the message. Let him go."
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Robbins was beyond listening. Both hands were clenched on Kerry's throat, and his big shoulders bulged with the effort. His face was warped in a strange grimace. Kerry's was purple now and his eyes were so wide Jack thought they would pop out. His knees began to sag as he hauled for a breath that just wouldn't come.
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"He's <em>killing</em> him!" It came out in a screech. Jack was suddenly so scared he couldn't swallow.
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Kerry grunted, tried to pull the hands away. Nobody else made a move. Nobody dared.
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Jack ran in and swung his bag, hard as he could. It caught Robbins on the back of his knees with such force that they buckled forward and suddenly he was down on the roadside, with Kerry on top of him. One hand pulled free to try to break his fall and Kerry twisted out of the other. Robbins landed with a thud, and his breath went out of him. Kerry rolled over him gasping for breath, scrambled to his feet just as Robbins was turning. A big hand tried to grab his ankle, but he was too quick.
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Jack hauled him to his knees, to his feet, kept hauling until they were out of the melee.
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"Run!" Jack bawled. Behind them Robbins was roaring incoherently. He sounded like a mad beast.
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They ran. Jack dragged Kerry by the sleeve, forcing to run with him, as fast as they could. A half-brick whizzed past Jack's ear, close enough to hear, heavy enough to crack his skull. He ducked and they ran on, round the corner, along the road, as far as they could before they had to stop for breath.
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"He tried to strangle you," Jack managed. "There's something not right with him. He's really crazy."
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Kerry was still panting, hands on his knees. Finally he got enough air into his lungs.
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"No bother." Kerry gasped. He was grinning now. "Sure, I was just lulling him into a false sense of security before I made my move."
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</p>
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<p>
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Jack looked at him. Big red pressure marks were clear on his throat.
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</p>
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<p>
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"I had him just where I wanted him," Kerry said, his eyes bright with bravado, but his voice dripping irony.
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</p>
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<p>
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And suddenly, despite it all, they were laughing so hard they had to hold on to each other to keep from falling.
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</p>
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<p>
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"Come on," Kerry said when it subsided. "We'll hitch a lift home and save the fare. And look…." He dug a hand into his threadbare jacket pocket and pulled out a crushed packet of cigarettes. "I'm having one of these, just for my nerves."
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</p>
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<p>
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"Where did you get them?"
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</p>
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<p>
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"I swiped them when he was down," Kerry said, grinning. "You can't miss your chances in life."
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</p>
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<p>
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He winked at Jack. "We'll need them when we go over that wall."
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</p>
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