The Ones We Don’t Play With

(originally spun out of a Haverbrook story, don't know where this sits anymore)

Must have been about two past midnight when the other kids came out to play, running through the fields, jumping over ditches and making a racket. I woke up, eyes all wide like Archie when he gets proper spooked during a muster. Proper frightening they are, noises they make is like howling and crying, shaking the windows like bad wind. I went to the sitting room window and you could see them in the fields, buncha blue lights and thumping like thunder-noise. Proper mayhem.

Sometimes I get bored being indoors, like I need to be outside, sky above. The word me Mum uses for that feeling is ‘cooped up’, and the other kids must have been that last night. Bunch of cows ended up all burst and rotten, like the fruits at the bottom of the pile and the roads all tore up with holes big enough to drown down. It was like that every night. They’d come out to play and then the kids ‘d go home again and it’d be over like none happened.

We didn’t want to play with the other kids, not after what they’d done to Pete’s first brother. In fact, after the funeral, we all gathered in the vestry to figure out what we’d have to do to the kids. It was me, Geoffrey Plum, Ed, Dan and Soap, on the pews.

‘It wasn’t right, what they did. The game isn’t played like that!’ said Dan, ‘It’s not right’

‘Not right’ said Ed, shaking his head quick.

I munched on an old apple and near threw up ‘...Rotten’

‘That’s right Tomm! It was right rotten, right rotten it was. We need to get them back’ said Geoffrey Plum, walking around like one of them detectives in the films.

‘Anyone tried telling the folks? I tried my Dad,’ said Ed, ‘and I’d have better luck with some tribe. I might have been speaking German to him.’

‘Mine same. Parents don’t seem to want to do nothing ‘bout it.’ Said Dan

‘Parents don’t see anything they don’t want to see’ said Geoffrey Plum. He was the oldest of us, so he was always saying wiseness like this. He was the only one who really understood what the minister was talking about when church came around; he was nodding along like Miss Beckins about Babel and the Eden gardens and that. He reckoned it might have been like an age thing, where only kids can see the other kids.

‘But that doesn’t work Geoff’ said Ed ‘The parents are always telling me to go play with the other kids. So they know the kids are real’

Soap coughed and we all went silent. He started trying to talk and we let him have a go, trying to find the letters and words to start-up. He was like the old milk truck in town, he needed a few starts to get going after a long rest.

‘I tried telling mah Pa about it, he wasn’t having any of it, just took the belt to me for being wit’ you guys near the railway line yesterday. Said after Pete went under the train I should know better than to go up there again.’ This was Soap talking now. Soap was Soap on the account of the fact he was rank with stink, pure face melting stink, no matter how much he washed. Like the stink of rotten eggs only in a person.

Geoffrey Plum laughed ‘So no one’s parents listened or believed them. We might be the only ones able to see the kids, or at least, talk with them’

Dan held up his hands ‘Hold on, Tomm hasn’t told us nothing yet’

It was my turn now ‘I tried telling me Mum about it. I got her up one night, took her outside while the others were playing. Showed her the Patterson’s sheep, all their fleshy stuff-’

‘Intestines’

‘Yeah, that stuff Geoffrey. Intestines and that, how they’d been tied to the trees by their intestines. Showed her the stuff the kids made, all those shapes that like we can’t make or nothing in arithmetic or find in the books in the library. And she was like nodding and stuff, getting real shocked like parents do so then we went home’ and I sat back against the pew.

I looked up, everyone was waiting for me to say something.

‘What?’

‘Bloody hell Tomm, what’d she say?’ – this was Dan now, getting annoyed

‘Oh well she said I had a good imagination and that’ I said and they all groaned and Geoffrey swore loud ‘But she saw it didn’t she? She saw what the kids had done?’

We fell quiet in the church, me breathing through mouth so I didn’t get knocked back from Soap’s stink. None of us knew what was to be done – Geoffrey Plum clapped his hands which meant an idea was visiting us.

‘What we need to do is simple boys’ said Geoffrey Plum. Other than being the oldest, he was also quick on the brains front ‘We gotta go to Rock Island and show them what for. Like we did with the Germans and the Japs and before that with the Germans as well…you with me?’

And we all clapped, hooted and hollered and filed out of church

We needed to get the kids while they were at home, not expecting it. That was the advice from Ed’s older brother who’d been a digger in the war just passed. He had gone on and on about it one day while we was at his, about knowing the enemy. You have to know the enemy before striking. You have to know the enemy before hitting them where they’d be weak. So I made sure we knew what was worth needing knowing.

Rock Island was the place the kids came from, this big rock thing in the middle of the dried up billabong on the Murray place. It was a big craggy thing, great for playing castle on or adventure. The rock had these holes that curved around, bent and stuff, like a giant worm had gone in it. Real strange, you could walk down one on the floor and come out the other side of the rock on the ceiling. The ones the other kids lived in just went into darkness deep.

And the other kids were black, all black with blue eyes, so black you’d hurt your eyes looking at them. You could barely see their noses or mouths. The kids mostly came out at night mostly; you’d see them sometimes during the day though, in the shadows of the shops or round the back of the Railway Hotel, their blues eyes staring out at you.

Now I’m right proper doubting it, sounds like a real howler of a lie now

And whenever we started playing, you’d see them off in the distance coming closer, black and blue like a piece of bruised up meat. They came whenever we played and gathered around in a large circle; sometimes it was two or three, sometimes it’d be twenty to thirty of them. We’d yell for them to go away, go back to where they came from. They’d get uppity, howling. Sometimes they’d go back to where they came from, other times they’d get violent like they did with Pete, throwing him under the Spirit of Progress and making all red on blue.

The boys were standing there with eight buckets of water, right outside Mahoney’s store.

‘We all ready Tomm?’ Geoffrey Plum asked me and I nodded. Me, him, Ed, Dan…

‘Where’s Soap?’ I asked

‘He’s distracting Old Man Murray at the station, giving us some time to get on his property’ said Ed. Dan was nodding at that.

‘Yeah, don’t feel like getting nicked by that rifle again.’ Said Dan now, rubbing his arm where the bullets had gone that day we’d trespassed, ‘And his Dad said he’d kill him dead if he was with us again’

‘Alright company, let’s move out!’

We went up the road out town way, all the dust from the cars and horses coating us and our sweat like another grainy skin. The buckets banged my knees proper, water coming over the sides as I walked. It splashed on my church lace-ups, Mum wouldn’t be happy bout that.

‘Tomm careful now, we need that for the rock’ Geoffrey Plum yelled this over his shoulder

‘What do we need this for?’ I yelled back.

‘They hate water, haven’t you noticed?’ he replied. As we climbed over the fence to the Murray land, he said ‘They melt like that witch in that movie we saw in town‘

‘Wizard of Oz?’

‘Like that’ Geoffrey hoisted my buckets over the fence and onto the grass ‘Trust me Tomm, once this is over, we’ll be free to play however we like’

We went over the ridge to the dry lake below and Rock Island was before us like one of those big things in the bible, all huge and no one can understand what they’re seeing. Ed and Dan were singing old war songs; both their brothers had gone to war together, and their dads to the one before that. They said they hoped a war came about soon so they could go off to war together and kill some Japs like their brothers did. I never said nothing, but I always thought about their brothers in the pub, drinking so hard so as to not speak or even be awake no more. Or so said Dad. And I thought about their dads when I’d visited them, they had this look in their eyes like lost dogs and I wondered what happened at war and why Ed and Dan wanted to find out so bad.

‘They’re a bunch of soldiers aren’t they?’ said Geoffrey Plum, as we neared the rock. We were dripping water everyplace we went.

‘Diggers I’d reckon.’ I said now.

‘I never asked you, but what do you think of this?’ and I must have looked confused or something cause he said more ‘The plan. Getting rid of the other kids’

I started thinking about the other kids. The ones in shadow and black. I realised I’d never tried to play with them once. They only came out when we played, maybe they wanted to join in? But I never tried to talk to them or nothing, just yelled and spat back. Never heard them or nothing. And they threw Peter’s brother under the train, killed animals and that, but I was thinking now that maybe we’d made them do it. Geoffrey once said that the kids before us had fought them, pushed them back into the rock and that the kids before that had pushed them outta town. I thought maybe we were making them live in that rock like animals. I wondered what they thought of us. Probably hated us.

Thing was, I couldn’t really think none of that, not here with anyone now. It was just other thoughts I had and sometimes when I tried saying them, it was all fuzzy like and I couldn’t find words.

So I said it was fine. Geoffrey thought it was fine too. But I sorta don’t think it was.

We poured the water down the holes, watching it trickle and flow quick-like and the screams started up. The howling, the shaking, the rock breaking apart as we poured water down into the darkness. The blue eyes went out into black, like fires going out. The rock went quiet.

‘Do you reckon we did it?’ said Dan

‘One fell swoop, like the bomb! Bwooosh!’ said Ed, gesturing with his hand ‘We can do whatever we want’

‘But do you reckon we did it?’ Dan said again cause no one had heard him

‘Only one way to find out’ Geoffrey Plum said ‘Tonight, if they come out to play, we’ll know’

I sat up in bed all-night, listening. The house was still and that, all the wood creaking and the clock ticking away. The wind howled, the rain came down, the trees shook and that, but the kids never came out to play. The night was just real quiet and dark and we were alone. I slid into bed and I don’t know what I felt but it was something like when the ministers tell you off for not knowing the verses. My face felt red and I wanted to go back and re-do it again, learn the verses this time. This time, I’d get it right. I wanted to go back and tip all the water out of the buckets. I wanted the kids to come out to play, I figured we get them to join in, try and figure something out. I was up all night listening in case they came out. The night after and after that too.

But the kids didn’t bother us no more.

#historical #fiction #australia #paranormal #supernatural #horror #aussie