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Chapter 1.

March, 1981

"Go on, dare you. Call the Gimlet Boy."
Rupert felt the older, larger boy poking him in the back with the stick. He turned to the other children in the clearing, tears welling up in his opaque grey eyes.
"Yuck, isn't he ugly," whispered one of the girls in the circle.
"Even uglier than the Gimlet Boy," added her friend.
"Not that ugly, silly. No one's that ugly."
"Please. I don't want to," whimpered Rupert. "I'm frightened. Let go of me, please!"
"Go on, do it," ordered the older boy.
Rupert felt the stick poking his ear. He grabbed at it, but it was out of the narrow tunnel of his vision. The other boy side-stepped and tripped him up. He fell in the mud, the first tears forming in his eyes.
"Cry baby Rupert, scaredy cat of Gimlet," chanted one of the girls.
"Cat Weasel's a scaredy cat."
The others took up the taunt.
"Why won't one of you call him?" sobbed Rupert, blinded completely now by the hot salt flowing out of his eyes.
The others were silent.
"He'll like you," reasoned a fat boy with long hair. "You're one of his kind."
"Maybe they're related," giggled the blonde girl.
"Perhaps Gimlet'll take him under the ground. Forever!" The girls squealed with excitement at the prospect.
"To live under the hill like Rumpel Stiltskin!"
"Call the Gimlet Boy. I won't tell you again."
Rupert's legs were already stinging in the cold, damp evening air. They had made him take his trousers down, so he wouldn't be able to run away when the Gimlet Boy came. He felt a sharp pain as the bossy youth brought down the stick in a whipping action on his bare thighs. He was used to their bullying, but this game was different. He was terrified, partly of the savage new turn their taunting had take. And partly of something else, something be began to sense, approaching. And he very badly wanted to go to the toilet. He put his hands to his crutch, half to protect himself, half to restrain himself. He was ashamed...
It was getting dark. The fog that had hung around on the edge of Summerwell all day was beginning to find new strength as the sun sank in the sky. The girls fidgeted. They should be home for their tea already. They were missing Blue Peter.
Rupert held out his arms to protect himself. "All right, stop hurting me. I'll call him."
The others were silent now, expectant, although unsure still of exactly what to expect.
"Go on, Weasel, get closer to the stone. So he can hear you."
Rupert shuffled forwards, his trousers around his ankles.
"No, that way, glass eyes." The stick prodded him back on course.
Rupert edged towards the sarcen. There was a thick smell in the air, like ozone at the seaside - the charge you got before a thunder storm. He took a deep breath.
"Gimlet." He said the word quietly and stood, his head hung down, resigned to whatever might happen to him.
"Again," hissed the fat boy.
"Gimlet. Come and play with us. We want to be your friends."
The others retreated a few yards, to the apparent safety of the bushes, their hot breath rising in the mist like a dozen plumes of incense.
"Please, Gimlet." Rupert shuffled uneasily from foot to foot, conscious of a warm wetness trickling down his leg.
They stood waiting, listening to the wind.
But there was another voice, now. They all heard it, but it came from no direction. It was like reading a book, without saying the words - a skill some of the younger children had yet to master.
"You woke me." They heard the voice in their heads. "Who wakes me?"
Then they saw something, coming forward out of the mist. Afterwards, in the years that followed, on the rare occasions when someone broke the taboo and brought the subject up, none of them could agree exactly what they had seen that night. A face in the darkness by the stone. Just a face? Impossible. Most were still deeply confused by what had happened. Several cared not to recall at all, and had moved away from the area.
Perhaps he had been wearing dark clothes. They couldn't remember seeing much else. But that face. That was something to remember. Oh, God, yes. That brought it all back.
A boy's face? Well, sort of. Not any normal kind of boy. For a start, the shape of the head was twisted, the features warped. As it had approached them, they could make out the features. It was all wrong. Mixed up. The eyes were wrong. And the upper lip was split, like a rabbit maybe. And above the sunken nose, he was glaring at them. At least, something was glaring.
"I think I'm going to be sick," said one of the girls.
"Me too," said her friend.
They leant on each other for support, coughing up their lunch, trying to wipe their faces clean with tufts of long grass. Something compelled them. They turned reluctantly, unable to flee, daring to look back.
How hideous he was! He was utterly, unspeakably ugly. None of them had ever seen a child like that. The effect was hypnotic.
Rupert stared too. Yet to him it was a revelation. For eight years he had believed himself to be cursed. The unluckiest boy in the world. And now this. Far, far worse. He wiped away his tears, to see more clearly. Then he heard the voice again, softer now. The voice that was the antithesis of the face. But surely they were linked? A voice like liquid honey and soft ripe fruits. the accent and the words themselves were strange, old-fashioned, but the meaning was clear.
"You, the blinding boy. Your eyes. Come closer so I can see you."
Rupert advanced. Some of his fear was seeping away now. There was some kind of a bond between them.
He felt a hand come out to touch his face. He recoiled slightly but stood his ground. It was rough, bony, claw-like. It touched his eyes. Like the doctors did.
"They tease you about this?" The voice was more intimate now. Just for him. He knew the others could not hear it.
It seemed to Rupert that the Gimlet Boy's lips had not moved at all. "Yes," he replied.
"They are jealous." It was a statement, not a question.
"Jealous?" Rupert had not thought of it that way.
"Of how much you can really see."
"I. I don't understand."
"Then you must learn. Learn to use your sight."
"I don't know." He felt awkward. He couldn't think of anything else to say. "Will you show me?"
"Shall we play then?" asked the Gimlet Boy, his hare lip twisting up into - if not a smile, then a grimace at least.
Rupert smiled. He was beginning to get the picture. Oh yes. Such pictures! His head was full of colours, shapes, textures, desires, laughter. And then the screaming started behind him. He turned to his school mates, pulling up his trousers.
"I wish - " he said, pausing. There was no need to finish. He knew what the Gimlet was going to do. The Gimlet knew what he wanted.
"All right, that's enough," said the boy with the stick.
The girls rubbed their eyes. They itched so.
"Make him stop. Please stop."
Rupert walked towards them. The Gimlet was with him.
"It's not funny. Stay away."
The smell of ozone again. The children were shrieking, crying, whimpering. They cradled their faces in their hands. Rupert moved his head from side to side, eager to see through the dark tunnels of his sight, to know what Gimlet had done. He knelt down beside one of the girls and peeled her hands back. Her eyes were weeping. She looked up and screamed.
But not the hot, clean, salty tears Rupert had wept moments before. Instead, thick, yellow, mucus, oozing out of boils in the corners of her eyes. The children began to scatter, half blinded, running back through the woods to their homes. Rupert stayed. He had no urge to do anything.
And the Gimlet had gone. Rupert thought he could still hear a sort of laughter. Very faintly, so faintly it was hard to tell from which direction it came - indeed whether it came from any direction at all. He wasn't sure he liked using his new sight. He could see bad things. Or rather he could see the same world he had always known, and now knew it to be made up of bad things. Bad things to come. he looked beyond the ancient stone, and saw into the distance, the future. So many bad things to come. Sometimes seeing through a tunnel was a blessing.
He determined he would put his sight to sleep. For a long time.
But something else had been awakened that day. Something that would not return to sleep so readily. For between its long periods of twilight, like any growing creature, it needed to feed.

* * * * * * * * *
2.

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