Necroscope

'What's it to you?' Harry muttered, trying to sidestep the other, get round him and away.

Green moved closer, snatched the double shell out of Harry's hand. It was a shiny olive colour, old, brittle as a wafer. As he deliberately closed his fist on it, so it crumbled into fragments. 'There,' he said, his voice full of an unpleasant satisfaction. 'You goin' to tell on me, Speccy?'

'No,' Harry breathlessly answered, still trying to dodge past, seeing in his mind's eye 'Sergeant's' backside going up and down, up and down, in the reed hollow not fifteen yards away on the other side of the dune. 'I don't tell on people. And I don't bully, either.'

'Bully? You?' Green found it funny. 'You couldn't bully a fart out of a frog! All you're good for's falling asleep in class and acting like a big tart! That and getting people in trouble.'

'You got yourself in trouble!' Harry protested. 'Gig gling like that.'

'Giggling?' Big Stanley caught his arm, pulled him close. 'Giggling? Girls giggle, Speccy. You callin' me a girl, then?'

Harry shook himself loose, put his fists up. Trembling in every limb, he said, 'Piss off!'

Green's mouth fell open. 'Rude, is it?' he said. Then he shrugged, half-turned, as if to go, and when Harry dropped his guard turned back and caught him a punch at the side of his mouth.

'Ow!' said Harry, spitting blood from a split lip. Off balance, he stumbled and fell; and Green was just ready ing a kick when 'Sergeant' Lane, tucking in his T-shirt, came storming over the top of the dune scarlet with rage and frustration.

'What the bloody hell - ?' he roared. He caught the flabbergasted Green by the scruff of his neck, swung him round, aimed his instep accurately at the seat of the bully's pants and let .fly. Green yelped as he flew facedown in the sand.

'Up to your usual tricks, are you, Big Stanley?' 'Serge ant' shouted. 'And who's your victim this time? What? Skinny Harry Keogh? By God, you'll be strangling babies next!'

As Green scrambled to his feet, spitting sand, the PT master pushed him in the chest, sent him flying again. 'See, it's not so pleasant, Stanley, when you're up against someone who's bigger. And that's how Harry feels about it. Right, Keogh?'

Still holding his mouth, Harry said: 'I can look after myself.'

Big Stanley, for all that he was a year older than Harry and looked older still, was on the point of blubbering. 'I'll tell my dad,' he said, scrambling away.

'What?' 'Sergeant' laughed, hands on his hips as the bully backed off. Tell your dad? That fat beer-gut who arm-wrestles for pints with his mates in the Black Bull? Well when you do, ask him who beat him last night and nearly broke his arm!' But Stanley was off and running.

'You all right, Keogh?' Lane helped him to his feet.

'Yes, sir. Mouth's bleeding a bit, that's all.'

'Son, you stay away from that one,' said the master. 'He's a bad lot and he's much too big for you. When I called you skinny, I didn't mean it; it was just to point up the difference in your sizes. Big Stanley's not likely to forget this in a hurry, so look out for him.'

'Yes, sir,' Harry said again.

'Right, then. Off you go.' Lane made as if to return across the dune, but just then Miss Hartley appeared, looking all prim and proper. 'Shit!' Harry heard 'Sergeant' say under his breath. He wanted to grin but was afraid it would split his lip even more. So turning his face away he made for where the rest of the boys were gathering around Miss Gower, ready for the return trek.

It was the second week in August, a Tuesday evening, and it was hot. It was funny, George Hannant thought as he mopped his brow with a handkerchief, just how hot it could get on an evening like this. You'd think it would cool down, but instead the heat seemed to close in on you. During the day there had been a breeze, not much of a breeze but a breeze; now there was none, it was still as a painting out there. All the heat of the day, soaked into the earth, was coming out now, coming at you from all sides. Hannant mopped again at his brow, his neck, sipped an iced lemonade, knew that that, too, would soon start to run out of him. It was that kind of weather.

He lived alone not far from the school, but on that side of it away from the mine. The other side would have been too depressing, too oppressive. Tonight he had papers and books to mark up, lessons to plan. He didn't feel like doing either one of these things, or anything else for that matter. He could use a drink but... the pubs would be full of miners in their caps and shirt-sleeves, their voices coarse and guttural. There was a decent film on at the Ritz, but the sound system was deafening at the front and the courting couples in the back rows invariably annoyed him, their sweaty fumblings distracting his attention from the screen. And anyway, he had that marking to do.

Hannant's home, a semi-detached bungalow on a tiny private estate overlooking the dene and its valley where they narrowed towards the sea, was cut off from the school by the broad swath of a cemetery with its old church, well-kept plots, high perimeter walls. He usually walked through the place to school each morning, back again in the evening. There were benches circling huge, gorgeously-clad horse chestnut trees, their leaves already turning in places. He could always take his books and papers there.

Actually, it wasn't a bad idea. The occasional old-timer, a pensioned-off survivor of the colliery, would get in there to sit with his dog and stick, chewing baccy or drawing on an old pipe - and spitting, of course. Rotten lungs were a legacy of the pit; rotten lungs and spines like eggshells. But apart from the old lads it was usually quiet in there, away from the village's centre, the pubs and cinema, the main road. Oh, when the conkers began to fall there'd be kids to contend with, of course; what's a conker without its child on the end of a length of cord? That was a nice thought and Hannant smiled at it. Someone had once said that from a dog's point of view, a human was a thing to throw sticks. So why shouldn't a horse chestnut have a point of view? Which might well be that boys were for whirling them on strings - and for splitting them wide open. One thing seemed certain, boys weren't for learning maths!

Hannant showered, towelled himself slowly, methodi cally dry (hurrying would only produce more sweat), put on baggy grey flannels and an open-neck shirt, took up his briefcase and left his home. He walked out of the estate, into the graveyard and along the broad gravel path which bisected it. Squirrels played in the high branches of the brandy-glass-shaped trees, shaking loose the occasional leaf. The sun's rays came slanting down from across the low hills to the west, where that great brazen ball seemed permanently suspended, as if it never would relinquish the day to night. The day had been beautiful; the evening, despite the heat, was incredibly beautiful; and both of them (Hannant weighed the heavy briefcase in his hand) would have been quite wasted. Or if not wasted, spent fruitlessly - if there was a difference. He snorted mirthlessly, picturing young Johnnie Miller in a couple of years' time, 'down the pits', hewing coal, relieving his boredom and passing his shift by calculating surface areas of circles. What the hell was the point of it?