Black soul rose by John Jones... - HTML preview

Kieran

With curly hair that never looked properly maintained, Kieran was one of those teens that went through life kind of unnoticed. He mostly wore dark clothes with a slight stoop, as if he carried the weight of the world on his shoulders. A weight which had just increased as he stared at his car. At the tyres. They had been slashed, and he wondered who would do it and why. This village didn’t have too much by way of crime. If somebody set a bin on fire then that would be gossip for some here. So slashed tyres was a fairly considerable crime. The police would have to be informed he guessed, so he rang them on his mobile, and when he got through told them what had happened.

They didn’t take it as high priority. Gave him a crime number, and would

‘investigate’, which to Kieran meant they would investigate when they had nothing better to do, and when it came to their attention. The person on the other end of the phone would probably tap the keyboard for a few seconds, and when the screen closed, that would be it then, forgotten. Back of the queue. Yet, who would do it, and why?

Jordan. Little fucker, who wasn’t Jordan at all. He had also noticed a change in Brett’s behaviour, but not quite so profound as Jordans. He was more morose, exasperated because he wasn’t believed.

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He was still insistent that his friends had been taken in a van at knifepoint, and that he had been chased by an over-weight pensioner with a knife, who then had to stop for a breather, therefore escaping.

Of course that would be traumatic for an eight-year old, and Jordan was showing personality changes that didn’t seem conducive to being lost in the countryside for a few hours. Yes it could be stressful, but then after a while you would return to normal when found.

What he was saying seemed to be right, the children saying they had got lost.

Brett had never told a lie on this scale before. Yes he told white fibs to get his way occasionally, but what child didn’t?

Jordan spoke more ‘adult’, and Brett was showing signs of a traumatic event, more so than what it would have been had he got lost in the fields for three hours. Chased with a knife by an adult would more than likely do that.

Nobody believed Brett, so therefore nobody cared. No help in school by trauma counselling. No help from anybody at all. The nearest was Kieran, who didn’t understand why Brett was perpetuating it when the children were found.

Kieran’s belief in that Brett was lying was shaken slightly by his persistence, and by Jordan’s odd behaviour.

It caused him to find Brett out in the back yard staring at their small pond, at the blue orfe and golden tench fish swimming lazily.

“Oi squirt?” Brett just looked at him, then back at the pond.

“Are your other mates different? Do they show signs of not behaving as usual?”.

“What do you care? You don’t believe me”.

“No, I don’t. I just want to know that’s all”.

“Yes,” he muttered. “They all do”. Kieran found he had nothing else to ask, so went back into the house where his mobile rang. It was Josh. We’re all going down the arcade. They’ve got a new driving game. Are you coming?

He looked back at Brett.

“Yes, okay,” he said, and soon forgot about his little brother and his ‘lie’, although it wasn’t far from his mind.

His four friends were like excited children, clamouring around the new arcade driving machine in the nearby town near their village. Kieran, although he’d had 38

a go a few times was relegated to the sidelines, looking at his friend’s new friend ‘Beanhead’ as he drove around the circuit.

Kieran couldn’t quite enjoy himself as much as he would like. He kept thinking about Brett, who wasn’t himself.

Why would he get so upset, or depressed, based on a lie? There was clearly more going on, especially inside Brett’s mind, and curiosity made him want to dig deeper. Was Brett really putting on an act?

It seemed he was really convinced he was chased and his friends had been kidnapped.

Yet they could have been kidnapped, then quickly released, maybe told to say nothing. Say you got lost.

Why the change in personality though? Perhaps if they had been threatened by pensioners to keep quiet about what really happened, they would all be almost mute. They could be like Brett. Withdrawn.

Yet it didn’t seem right. He only had Jordan to go on, and his change in persona was rather radical.

Almost like he was older than his years the way he spoke.

Like a pensioner.

“Yayyy...” cried Beanhead, having beaten the highest score set by his friend.

He got out and gave Kieran a pretend punch in the face.

“I did it mate…Kieran, yes”. The smile on his face was infectious. One of those teenagers that sailed through life on his own terms. No adults or authority figures featured much, and if they tried to impose anything on him, he would just shrug and do his own thing.

He would usually wear summery clothes all year round, slightly over-weight, sport a skin-head, and a tattoo ‘B’ on his right temple, and ‘H’ on the left. He had nicknamed himself. The kind of youth you would cross the road to avoid, as first impressions would mostly stick, but once you got to know him, he was fairly nice. His outward appearance did not match his inward, but still, he seemed decent enough.

He was still fascinated by the new game though, but Kieran still did his best to show willing, and it worked. However, Brett was still forefront.

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The kid really believed something happened. He really thought he was attacked, or chased. As if you believed in something, then it actually happened, regardless of whether it did or not. The brain reacted, because the brain believed, and whatever happened in the brain, we were all victims of.

Brett was chased by a knife wielding maniac. Even if he wasn’t.

“Oh hey, did you hear about those bodies found a couple of miles away out in the fields?” said Beanhead.

“What?” said Kieran, suddenly alert. “What happened?”

“A load of pensioners were found dead in some old bowling club. Probably suicide”. Beanhead took from his pocket his mobile phone and quickly found the story and handed it to Kieran. His friend who was driving on the game yelled as his vehicle ploughed into a pile of tyres. Game over.

‘Mystery surrounds the discovery of seven bodies of pensioners’. He didn’t have time to read through it all as the others all looked at him.

“Your go,” said Beanhead, taking his phone back. Kieran was suddenly in a dilemma. Does he rush back to tell Brett? Even though there was probably a rational explanation for it all, and his brother had got it wrong. His friends such as Jordan, Ian and the others really were traumatised by being lost, and Brett really was lying.

Or have a go on the new racing game. He smiled, and sat in the driver’s seat.