Читать книгу The Boy in the Park: A gripping psychological thriller with a shocking twist - - Страница 17

With thoughts like these occupying my internal attention, work before lunch sits in my mind like a kind of haze. I’m fairly certain I sold a good stock of pills to several people, at least enough to keep my manager smiling. But I did it all while staring out the glass storefront at the bright sunshine of this new day, only physically present in the little shop. The higher part of me was somewhere else. I was anxious. Anxious to get back to the park and settle my internal bets about the boy’s welfare. I wanted to see if he would be there again. If he was, I wanted to survey his condition; and assuming that it still contained any troubling elements, I was resolved to speak. I had even prepped my remarks in advance so as to be fully prepared for the encounter.

Hi kid. My name is Dylan. I usually sit over there around lunchtime. I would point back towards my bench. I saw you hurt your arms. Are your parents around? Can we get them to take a look at it?

During the night I’d determined this was probably a good approach. Casual, not too confrontational. Caring, I hoped, without being creepy.

But they’re only plans. Burns once wrote a poem about plans – something to do with mice and men. One every poet has to learn. I forget it now, but the gist sticks with me. Plan and plan and plan, and eventually something will come along to best your intentions. So lunchtime has come, and I’m resolved to put my own into immediate action before Burns’s mice have the chance.

I walk towards the park with unusual haste, each foot planted before the next with a few extra inches in my stride. I don’t have the full hour today that I had yesterday – apparently Michael’s new hire has become proficient enough on the till that more extended training isn’t required, so it’s to be my usual forty-five minutes and I want to make the most of it. Today, unlike most days, I actually have things to do.

My ID is already in my hand as I approach the ticket window and hold it up for Anna. She’s the one who works Fridays, whose hair is dyed a hazard-cone orange with roots that are almost black, gelled into little spikes that give her head the overall appearance of a badly spray-painted cactus. There are three slashes boldly shaved at angles through her left eyebrow, which I’m vaguely certain is a signal of something, but I have no idea what (perhaps she’s in a gang? though this seems unlikely. I’m not sure how many gang members have day jobs taking tickets in botanical gardens). Her grey T-shirt says BACK OFF in enormous lettering, and she’s affixed her Welcome to the Botanical Gardens, My Name is Anna and I’m Happy To Help You badge just above the final F of OFF.

Anna glances at my ID with relative detachment. She’s not so much interested in the name, Dylan Aaronsen, or the photograph that is obviously me. Her real interest is in the zip code provided at the end of my address – proof I’m a resident, which she then notes down on a sheet of paper that for some reason charts the number of daily visitors from each zip code in the region. I’ve often tried to imagine why this could be of interest to anyone; but I’ve also taken an oddly irrational pleasure in seeing more tick-marks by my own suburban zip code (94131) than by many others. On other days, I’ve entertained the idea that this says something rare and telling about what kind of people we are in Diamond Heights. The kind of people who like plants more than the Union Square elitists of 94108 and the Mission hippies of 94110. I’ve never seen a single mark next to the zip codes that lie along the beaches. That’s telling, too. Let them have their sand. We 94131’ers like our nature, and enough to travel a good hike to get it.

But today my mind is on other things. I at last step into the gardens, my ID returned to my wallet, and start to walk with purpose. These grounds normally cause me such delight, but today they are simply an avenue towards a destination.

Five minutes later. I’m at my bench. I don’t sit down in a usual way: today isn’t about a gentle relaxing into place and breathing a little more deeply for the peace of it. I sit today with purpose, as if my butt plopping onto the wood will trigger the events I want to happen next.

The sun is bright and the water is dead still. There are no throngs of visitors this afternoon. Not every day draws the crowds, and it’s an unpredictable game, guessing what factors pull them in and what fend them off. It’s not always an exact correlation of sunshine-to-crowds or fog-to-emptiness. I’d have thought it would have been, that’s the sort of formula that makes sense; but today is a case in point against.

It takes a few seconds, given my swirl of thoughts, but I eventually calm myself down and shake off the various annoyances of the walk: the noise of the traffic along the road, the seemingly unnecessary ritual at the gate. I’m able to take in a few, deep, wonderful breaths of the fresh park air, scented with a touch of the must that comes off the still water. I’m refreshed. And in that relaxed state I realize that my stillness here is a little unusual.

I am, in fact, not only absent a crowd today. I’m entirely alone. Entirely. And the reality of that strikes out at me all at once.

The boy isn’t here. It’s past time for him to be here, and he isn’t here.

This isn’t right. This isn’t how these days go, I tell myself, agitated. My mind is immediately analytical. I come, I sit, and he appears. That’s the pattern. I’m used to the pattern.

My pulse is quickening. I can sense my heart thumping in my chest – and for an instant I feel absurd. Why this fuss? It’s just a kid with a scraped arm and a bit of a bruise. God’s sakes. You’re obsessing.

Yet I’m infinitely relieved when a second later I hear a rustle in the trees. I glance across the pond to the boy’s usual spot, expecting my consolation – but there is nothing there. A strange tingling starts to build up in my spine. Then, two college-aged students emerge from a different spot, giggling at each other with heavy book bags over their shoulders. They are the sources of my noise.

I have to calm myself down. I’ve become entirely too worked up over this whole thing. I don’t know this boy from Adam. His life is none of my business. I focus on the college students instead. They’re amused by whatever stories they’re telling themselves. They’re that age, so it’s probably something to do with alcohol, workloads, or sexual escapades – the only three categories of mental focus for the 18- to 22-year-old college crowd. For an instant, I desperately wish I was in college.

Then, to my relief, the longed-for moment comes. Branches rustle again, and from his spot the boy finally emerges onto the landscape of the pond.

I can feel the breath ease within me, like a great release from an over-inflated tyre. He’s here. And I can sense my curiosity pique as I squint in the sunlight to examine him from afar.

And then the colour starts to drain from my face – I can feel it disappearing – as I gaze upon what, despite everything, I was not prepared to see.

The blood still drips down his left arm. The bruise still covers his right. And today there is a great, blue patch of swollen skin beneath one of his eyes. Strange, that in the shadows from the trees I can’t make out the eyes themselves – I couldn’t tell you their colour, the length of the lashes around them – but the bruising on his face broadcasts just fine across the distance.

No, enough of this, I say to myself. A boy shouldn’t look like that.

More giggles come from the college students. They’ve now planted themselves on a patch of grass off to the left, facing each other, and are oblivious to the world. If they weren’t they would see him, and they would be as concerned as I am.

I rise from my bench. My words are scripted, and I know the little dirt pathway that leads around the pond to the spot where he’s standing. But I don’t want the child frightened by my bursting out of the woods without a little hint of warning.

‘Hey, kid,’ I call out from just in front of my bench. My voice echoes slightly over the water. The boy doesn’t seem to hear. His expression remains fixed, gazing out over the lilies.

‘My name’s Dylan.’ I start to move in his direction. My plan has begun. Burns may have ploughed over the nest of his mice and sent their intentions awry, but mine are being put into motion. I’ll be able to offer the boy some help, if he’ll let me. At least he isn’t running in fear at the sound of my voice.

But suddenly I freeze. I’ve barely made it a few steps, but I can’t move; my feet seem anchored to the soil. Something happens that has never happened before. An arm emerges from the greenery behind the boy. I can’t see the body it’s connected to, but it’s a large arm. An adult arm. And it reaches out with a practised violence – the kind of motion that can only be called that: violent – and grabs the boy by the back of the overalls. The arm pulls and the boy is yanked in reverse, his stick falling from his grasp.

‘Stop!’ I shout, but in an instant the boy is gone, his body gathered into the dense branches, out of sight, the heels of his shoes dragging in front of him.