5

He heard Calum then - a faint but continuing cry. Mr Armitage, aware of their route and accustomed to crouching, ran towards it. Making each hedge-hole far larger as he did so. Mrs Careen had heard it too and stepped outside. She gave him a look as he passed by her garden that seemed to implore him to settle her fears once he'd settled Calum's. He crossed into their garden and looked up at this strange and incongruous home. He'd led the group that had opposed the planning permission to build this hideous modern annex on the westward side of their beautiful cottage. A testament to the total incompatibility of their parents. Their mother, a perfect country woman. The house had been in her family for years. Some 'great' or 'great-great' had built the place. The boys had been Ella's shadow as she had been her mother’s. They all seemed to agree with Mr Armitage that - no matter what - there was never enough room inside.

Not so their father. He hated the cottage, hated bumping into door frames, knocking things off shelves. He wanted space. Space indoors. He'd wrestled for years to get planning permission for this annex and eventually managed it. Everyone in town despised it, but none more than they; Mrs Careen, Number 7 and himself; after all, they were the gardens overlooked by him and his 'bloody diamond' as they called it. The boys were seven when they built it. Their father had started it just after their mother's diagnosis. She’d been the one to agree with Mr Armitage on the guardianship of the children with him if anything dreadful would orphan them. He was more than happy to; their father seemed well, and in the event of the worst, he already had three of his own. Their father arranged his annex while their mother arranged the children’s future without her. That future arrived quickly, before the scaffolding went up.

The curtains of the bloody diamond were closed as he approached. Calum was evidently in the most horrific terror one could imagine. Mr Armitage ran through the outhouse and into the kitchen. He was bad enough in his own home that as he ran through the cottage, he clattered and smashed a mug from the sideboard, a painting from the corridor and a vase from the side-table near the stairs. He stomped through, his heavy boots thumping. Calum's screams were intensifying, not calming. He tried the handle of the room he was in and shook it. No luck. He spoke softly but firmly -

"It's me, lad, it's Phil."

He remembered then,

"It's Mr Armitage."

Calum heard it all: the mug, the paintings, the vase. He heard Mr Armitage's steps as he thumped up the stairs, slammed against walls, knocked on the door and eventually kicked it in. He heard it all and concluded the only reasonable possibility - a sea-snake as big as the centre of the world was here to eat his brain and eyes. When the hulking Mr Armitage appeared in the doorway, all his fears were validated. At that moment, his screaming stopped. No protest, there was nothing to be done to avoid what came next. This incredible calm overcame him as he accepted everything.

Mr Armitage stepped towards him, relieved that the screaming had stopped. He leant back and slumped to the floor, his legs bunched up between the wall and the bathtub. He leant over and picked up Calum by the armpits, sat him down between his legs and held him close.

Calum was thrilled when he realised that the sea-snake was a relative of the boa constrictor. Thankful that it would first choke the life from him before it swallowed him whole. He felt it slowly wrap itself around him and begin to squeeze as he fell asleep.

Mr Armitage sat there a moment with Calum until he felt his breathing change. He had slumped against him immediately when he held him. He stood up, slowly, cradling the boy. His legs lolled over his left arm, and his head pressed firmly into Mr Armitage’s chest. He walked down the hall and entered the bloody diamond. He saw then what the brothers had seen. He saw where the father still lay. All the blood. His orenda stolen. He stared at his lidless eyes, his absent scalp, and thought of The Great Law - Kayanerenk’wa - broken. He moved around the bed. Looking for Conor. He groaned as he crouched down and looked under the bed, finding no one. He approached the walk-in closet and peered in, but still no one. All the while, he gently spoke Conor's name, trying desperately to assure him a friend had come and that it was safe now. Ultimately, he concluded no one was there. He carried Calum downstairs, picking up a blanket from the bench at the foot of the bed with his right arm and throwing it over him. They moved outside. He carried him out to the hedge holes and into Mrs Careen's. She rushed outside as soon as she saw him and told him that the police had been called and would arrive imminently.

"Send them over when they arrive," he replied.

He carried on past Number Seven, looking disdainfully at what had once been the best-kept garden on the street before continuing through to his own. He moved much more gently and carefully, holding the lad than he usually did through the kitchen, down the corridor, upstairs, past his own room and into the room that had belonged to Bethany and Catherine. Two-thirds. The boys had never been upstairs in Mr Armitage's house. He suspected Calum would awake terrified again shortly, but that was a problem to be dealt with when it arrived.

He set the vacant array of limbs down in Bethany’s bed, wondering what of him would survive the night, before there was a knock at the door.