Martyn Pig by Kevin Brooks Read Free Book Online Page A

says.’
    â€˜What?’
    â€˜Alex says you shot him.’
    â€˜She wasn’t there!’
    â€˜That’s what
you
say.’
    â€˜It’s the truth!’
    â€˜Where were you at eight-thirty this evening?’
    â€˜Watching television.’
    â€˜Watching what?’
    â€˜Watching you!’
    â€˜
Lew-is!
’
    Morse’s face shifts eerily as he shouts, changing into something else.
    â€˜
Lew-is! Lew-is!
’
    His silvery-grey hair darkens, glinting with oil.
    â€˜
Lew-is! Lew-is!
’
    A blackened wound appears on his forehead.
    He won’t stop shouting. ‘
Lew-is! Lew-is!
’
    Blood seeps from the corner of his mouth.
    â€˜
Lew-is! Lew-is! Lew-is! Lew-is!
’
    â€˜SHUT UP!’
    I sat up screaming vainly into the darkness. It was four o’clock in the morning.
    The thing about dreams, they don’t come from anywhere else but yourself. It’s not as if there’s some evil demon waiting around somewhere, waiting for you to sleep so he can sneak into your mind and show you all his crazy things. It’s you that does it. It’s your mind. Whatever demons there are, you invite them in. They’re
your
demons. No one else’s.
    I don’t know what that means.
    I couldn’t get back to sleep so I decided to take a bath. I felt dirty. My skin itched, sticky with sweat. And my legs ached, too. My legs always ache in the morning. Growing pains.
    I shut the bathroom door and turned on the bath taps. The water gurgled and spat for a while, stopped, then coughed into life. I sat down on the toilet and waited for the bath to fill. My reflection looked back at me from the mirror on the wall.
    â€˜What?’ I said.
    The head reflected in the steamed glass was unmoved.
    What I saw was a boy who didn’t seem to fit his body. Thin. Gawky. Awkward. A shock of mud-brown hair, cut in no recognisable style, tired blue eyes, a too-small nose and a crooked mouth with slightly wonky teeth. I was no beauty. But then again, I wasn’t exactly a hunchback, either. Odd-looking? Maybe. But what’s wrong with that?
    The bath was nearly full. I opened a bottle of shampoo and emptied a good dollop into the bath and watched the froth of rainbowed bubbles rise from the surface of the water like a perfumed mountain. Then I turned off the taps and stepped into the bath and lay there soaking and sweating in the silent heat of the water.
    I lay there until it turned flat and cold. And then I lay there some more.
    Thinking.
    What could I do? What do you do when you don’t know what to do? Cry? Scream? Run away? Feel sorry for yourself?
    What’s the point? There’s always an answer somewhere. You’ve just got to find it.
    I brushed my teeth. I dressed in clean clothes and ran a towel over my hair. I cleaned the sink, wiped the shelves, opened the window to let in some fresh air. It was still dark outside. A solitary bird whistled from somewhere hidden –
tsui-tsui-tsui
.
    â€˜What the hell,’ I said, and went downstairs.
    Dabbing at toast crumbs and sipping tea, I watched through the window as the sun rose slowly and nudged away the dead cold blackness of the night. It wasn’t much to see, the birth of another grey day, but I watched it anyway. When it was done I looked at the clock and saw that it was still early.
    I made some more tea.
    I felt as if I was waiting for something; but I didn’t know what it was.
    What happened next, I suppose you’d call it fate. Whatever that is. I remember once one of the teachers at school started talking about destiny – fate, determinism, free will – that sort of thing. Mr Smith, it was, the English teacher. ‘Call me Brian,’ he used to say, but no one ever did. It was pretty weird stuff, what he talked about, but it was kind of interesting, too. I spent a couple of days looking into it, getting books out of the library, reading this and reading that, but I didn’t