Clay by David Almond

Author:David Almond
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780375846465
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Published: 2008-03-11T04:00:00+00:00

THREE

one

Saturday night. Lie on my bed, wait in the dark. No moon. The TV rumbles in the room below. I hear Dad’s barks of laughter. Hell is on my mind, its searing flames, its savage devils, its prodding, poking, sniggering imps. I hear the howls and sobs of the sinners. I imagine an eternity in Hell, time going on forever and forever without an end, with no chance of release or relief. “Let me believe in nowt,” I whisper. “Let there be life and nowt but life. Let the body be nowt but clay. Let God be gone. Let the soul be nowt but an illusion. Let death be nowt but rotting flesh and crumbling bones.” I touch the locket. “Let this be nowt but stains and dust and Sellotape and shreds of cloth.” Dad’s laughter rises from below again. “Let nowt matter,” I say. “Let it all be nowt but a bliddy joke. God, world, soul, flesh. Jokes, nowt but bliddy stupid jokes. Nowt but nowt, bliddy nowt.”

Soon they come upstairs. Mam puts her head round the door.

“Night night, son,” she whispers. “Night night.”

I pretend to sleep. I don’t say good night back until she’s gone again and closed the door again and then I want to cry and call out,

“Mammy! Come back, Mammy!”

But I go on lying there. I try to empty my head of everything, try to enter a place where there’s nothing: no world, no house, no room, no Davie. But it’s Davie, of course, who rises from the bed an hour later, Davie who quietly puts on his clothes, who picks up the locket, who steps from his room, creeps downstairs, hesitates at the front door, Davie who opens the door and holds it open and lets the cold night air into the house, Davie who wants his mam to call, “What you doing, Davie?”, Davie who wants his dad to stamp downstairs and stop him and haul him back, Davie who closes the door behind him when none of this happens, Davie who steps out alone into the night.

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