Stonemouth

The blade glittered in the sunlight and looked sharp as a newly broken bottle. Wee Malky was stock-still and staring down at George. George looked up at Wee Malky, making a threatening gesture with the big sword. George was still smiling, but that didn’t feel like it meant much beside the naked reality of that shining metal edge. George looked up towards us, held the heavy sword one-handed, and gave us a thumbs-up sign.

We had all come to a near-complete stop now, strung out in a line across the top of the dam, a few of us still stepping forward a little, to see properly. Hugo was shouting, ‘George! George! Just stay there; put the sword down, old son! Look, I’m coming down!’

George held up one hand to his ear. He was right at the foot of the overflow now, where the water zipped down and sprayed up against the stone stumps and — now — against George’s feet and bare calves, also darkening his khaki shorts. Maybe the water splashing all around him and fountaining up past his waist meant he couldn’t hear.

I looked at Wee Malky as Hugo started gingerly down the steep grass slope of the dam. Wee Malky looked petrified. He’d been running hard with all the desperation of having been pursued by a baying pack for nearly half an hour on a hot summer day, so he was drenched in sweat, his shirt sticking to him, his curly hair darkened to black and plastered against his skin. His eyes were wide as he looked at me. His head turned and he stared back down at George. He wobbled as he did this, arms waving wildly before he steadied again.

Nobody followed Hugo down the grassy dam. I suppose that sword — suddenly so adult compared to our play guns — had sent a chill through all of us. Everything felt very still, as though the air had coagulated around us.

I held one hand flat up to Wee Malky, patting the air, mouthing him to remain motionless, but he was still staring at George, who was continuing to waggle the sword. If it had just been a stick he was holding, it would have looked comical. Callum Murston came up and stood beside me, covered in drying mud, breathing hard and wiping snot from his nose.

Hugo was moving slowly down the dam wall. He had one hand on the grassy surface, helping him descend without going arse over tit, and the other held out to his brother, as though petting him, stroking him from a distance while he kept talking to him, telling him to put the sword down, that it was okay, that the game was over and it was time to go back to the house for drinks and cakes, and to put the sword back.

While we were all watching this, Callum raised his gun and fired, hitting Wee Malky in the head with a yellow splash of paint.

Wee Malky yelped and fell, splashing into the water on the overflow side, one arm reaching out to try to grasp the round stones at the summit, but failing. He started sliding down the slipway, arms flailing as he tried to stop or slow himself.

‘Aw, fuck,’ Callum said quietly.

‘What the—’ I started to say to Callum.

‘You fucking—’ Ferg began.

‘Ah, fuck youse,’ Callum breathed. He took a lungful of air and bent towards the distant figure of George, who was watching Wee Malky slide helplessly towards him and waving his sword enthusiastically. George was still smiling, though not so much. He shifted his feet, widened his stance. Wee Malky started screaming, high and faint and ragged, like he couldn’t get his breath.

‘It’s over!’ Callum roared down at George. ‘That’s the boy deid! Ah shot him! Put the fuckin blade down, ya big Mongo cunt, ye!’

Halfway down the steep grass slope and giving the tricky descent his full attention, Hugo hadn’t seen Wee Malky fall and start to slide down the slipway, but he must have realised what had happened. He gave up on his tentative, safety-first, no-sudden-movements approach and stood up to start running down the grass, taking only a couple of steps before one of his feet went out from under him and he started falling, limbs flailing even more wildly than Wee Malky’s.

‘Hi! Ahm talkin to you! You fuckin listening, ya moron?’ Callum was yelling at George, who just smiled back and waved the sword.

In some ways, the worst thing — the thing that plagued my nightmares for years — was watching Wee Malky trying everything to save himself. It hadn’t been his fault he’d fallen in the first place and now he did all he could to stop himself falling further; within a second or two you could see him trying to use his hands and fingernails as claws to scrape through the layer of weed into the stone beneath, then, when that did almost nothing to slow him, he tried to grab at the lengths of weeds, to use them like ropes he could hold on to. He even wrestled for a moment with his paintball gun, attempting to use it like an ice axe, but there was nothing on it the right shape and sharpness to bite through the weed, and hold.