Boy on the Wire by Alastair Bruce

Author:Alastair Bruce [Bruce, Alastair]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Publisher: Profile Books
Published: 2015-08-12T23:00:00+00:00

9

Standing there, pinned to the wall, I go through how this could happen, if it has happened. I think back to what I saw when I arrived at the house for the first time. I knocked on the door and received no reply. I walked around the house and found the kitchen door open. I walked through each room, but somehow I knew where to look: his bedroom that he had as a child. Being the eldest, he got the one with the extra room in the eaves. We played in there sometimes. I remember a model railway, miniature trees, houses.

I walked into the bedroom, and then opened the door to the second room and there was Peter, floating in the air before me. And then – it may have been minutes or even days – the police arrived.

I find myself going through scenarios. Mirrors, cameras. Was I watching a screen and recorded events playing out in front of me? Were the police officers who arrived in on the plan? Why would he do this, construct this charade? It makes no sense. Perhaps it was the only way he could think of to convince me to stay, his guilt blinding him to the absurdity.

The vision of him at the window is now more real to me than the memory of my brother flying for the second and last time in his life.

I move away from the wall, but I do not remember moving, do not remember going inside. There is a time – how long I do not know – that is simply gone.

If I think of this time that is gone, I find myself imagining being in the bungalow, watching the screen, watching a man running through rooms, aimlessly, chasing ghosts.

It is night-time and I am in bed. The house is quiet. I can sense he is not here. I get out of bed and go through the other rooms on the floor. In each, I stop to look around and open the cupboards. There is nothing inside. In the room before the main bedroom, after I have closed the cupboard, I look out of the window, the one that faces the road. I am about to turn away from the window when I see, out there on the road, leaning against a tree, a man. At least, the shape of a man. That is what it seems to be. It is hard to tell. If I look straight at it, it seems not to be there. Out of the corner of my eye I can see the shifting of black against the grey tree trunk. I stand in the dark, wondering if I can be seen too, wondering if I should go out there, check it is what I think it is. I don’t think I can be seen. I am not standing in the light. I watch him. After a while the movement stops.

I go back to bed but do not sleep. Every hour or so, I check the window.

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