With startling clarity, Karney remembered standing on Suicides’ Leap, looking down on to the Archway Road, Catso’s body sprawled below at the center of a network of lights and vehicles. He had felt so removed from the tragedy, viewing it with all the involvement of a passing bird. Now-suddenly-he was shot from the sky. He was on the ground, and wounded, waiting hopelessly for the terrors to come. He tasted blood from his split lip and wondered, wishing the thought would vanish even as it formed, if Catso had died immediately or if he too had tasted blood as he’d lain there on the tarmac looking up at the people on the bridge who had yet to learn how close death was.
He returned home via the most populated route he could plan. Though this exposed his disreputable state to the stares of matrons and policemen alike he preferred their disapproval to chancing the empty streets away from the major thorough fares. Once home, he bathed his scratches and put on a fresh set of clothes, then sat in front of the television for a while to allow his limbs to stop shaking. It was late afternoon and the programs were all children’s fare; a tone of queasy optimism infected every channel. He watched the banalities with his eyes but not with his mind, using the respite to try and find the words to describe all that had happened to him. The imperative was now to warn Red and Brendan. With Pope in control of the knots it could only be a matter of time before some beast – worse, perhaps, than the thing in the trees – came looking for them all. Then it would be too late for explanations. He knew the other two would be contemptuous, but he would sweat to convince them, however ridiculous he ended up looking in the process. Perhaps his tears and his panic would move them the way his impoverished vocabulary never could. About five after five, before his mother returned home from work he slipped out of the house and went to find Brendan.
ANELISA took the piece of string she’d found in the alleyway out of her pocket and examined it. Why she had bothered to pick it up at all she wasn’t certain, but somehow it had found its way into her hand. She played with one of the knots risking her long nails in doing so. She had half a dozen better things, to be doing with her early evening. Red had gone to buy drink and cigarettes and she had promised herself a leisurely, scented bath before he returned. But the knot wouldn’t take that long to untie, she was certain of that. Indeed, it seemed almost eager to be undone; she had the strangest sensation of movement in it. And more intriguing yet, there were colors in the knot-she could see glints of crimson and violet. Within a few minutes she had forgotten the bath entirely; it could wait. Instead, she concentrated on the conundrum at her fingertips. After only a few minutes she began to see the light.
KARNEY told Brendan the story as best he could. Once he had taken the plunge and begun it from the beginning he discovered it had its own momentum, which carried him through to the present tense with relatively little hesitation. He finished, saying: “I know it sounds wild, but it’s all true.”
Brendan didn’t believe a word; that much was apparent in his blank stare. But there was more than disbelief on the scarred face. Karney couldn’t work out what it was until Brendan took hold of his shirt. Only then did he see the depth of Brendan’s fury.
“You don’t think it’s bad enough that Catso’s dead,” he seethed, “you have to come here telling me this shit.”
“It’s the truth.”
“And where are these fucking knots now?”
“I told you, the old man’s got them. He took them this afternoon. He’s going to kill us, Bren. I know it.”
Brendan let Karney go. “Tell you what I’m going to do,” he said magnanimously. “I’m going to forget you told me any of this.”
“You don’t understand-“