The Berserker
Chapter 5

Aimee-Lou was waiting outside the main hall of Blaise Comprehensive school, leaning against her bike and singing to the song playing through her headphones. It was 3.50 in the afternoon and the skies were beginning to darken as twilight closed in, meaning it would be dusk in about an hour. She had her eyes closed as the soulful voice of Ellie Goulding filled her ears, and she almost had a heart attack when Lana Booth tapped her on the arm.

“Jesus and Mary,” she said as she pulled her headphones out of her ears, “You scared the pooh out of me then.”

Lana laughed as she gave her friend a hug.

“You were listening to Ellie again, weren’t you?” she said as she released her from her grip.

“Maybe,” Aimee-Lou replied, with a smirk. “Are we ready then?” she asked, as she climbed onto her bike.

“Ready,” Lana agreed, climbing onto her own bike.

They rode towards Blaise village with the rear lights blinking away and their hair blowing behind them.

The ride to Blaise Pool took them only a matter of minutes from their school, and they pulled up at the gates where Peter Robson had parked his RAV4 the afternoon before. They walked through the gate with a half crouch and a held breath as they surveyed the shoreline to the lake.

It didn’t take too long for them to see that there wasn’t anyone else at the lake today, and the both breathed a sigh of relief when they saw the coast clear.

“Where’s the boat?” Lana asked quietly, as she stared across to the island.

Aimee-Lou was also looking at the island, staring intently at the ruined church wall, and she pointed her hand in the direction of the boat, not once taking her gaze away from the collection of bushes at the foot of the wall.

“I think I saw something,” she said in a whisper. “Something moved.”

Lana joined her gaze at the foot of the wall as she stood next to her friend.

“There,” Aimee-Lou said, still quiet, but excited. “Did you see it?”

Lana continued to look, but didn’t share her friends excitement.

“Saw nothing,” she said as she shook her head. “Must’ve been the wind.”

“It was something moving,” Aimee-Lou protested, but Lana was already at the boat and placing her backpack into it.

“Well, let’s go see,” she called after her, and that made Aimee-Lou at last take her gaze away from the island and jog to the boat.

She threw her own back pack into it and pushed the heavy wooden dingy off of the bank. Lana had already loosened the lasso that held the boat to the mooring point, so Aimee-Lou quickly jump in before her feet got wet.

“Grab the other oar,” Lana instructed, and they began rowing in small strokes toward the island.

The 50 metre gap of water was crossed as the sky crept away in the distance, and Lana pulled the flashlight that Aimee-Lou had told her to bring, out of the backpack. She flicked it on and shone it at the foot of the boat, illuminating the area on the island where she and Aimee-Lou would climb out.

“Better get a move on,” she said, “The light is fading fast.”

Aimee-Lou jumped from boat and pulled on the mooring rope to get the front end out of the water to stop it from drifting away and stranding them there, and she took the light from Lana and shone it on the ground so she could climb out of the boat.

“What are all these imprints in the mud?” Aimee-Lou asked Lana, who stopped climbing when she saw what they were.

“Footprints,” she said apprehensively, and she stood down from the dingy, being careful not to stand in any of the deep impressions.

Aimee-Lou moved forwards so she could see the footprints better, but turned around suddenly when a rustling noise caught her attention by the ruined wall.

“What was that?” she said out loud, both to whatever it was and to Lana.

The bush rustled again as though something was trying to get away.

Lana reached her and grabbed something out of her backpack as Aimee-Lou shone the torch at the rustling bush.

They both caught their breath as the two tiny eyes shone back at them, and Lana even let out a little scream, putting her own hand across her mouth to stop it becoming a big one.

“Hello,” Aimee-Lou said, thinking it was a cat, “What are you doing out here on your own.

“Be careful,” Lana warned her, as her friend took a step closer to it.

“I’ll be fine,” she said bravely. “You hunt around for the trolls with the torch on your phone, and I’ll try to catch the cat so we can release it on the mainland.”

She crept off towards the beady eyes without looking to see if Lana accepted the instruction or not.

Lana had accepted what Aimee-Lou had said, and was now creeping past the remnants of the church, that actually just looked like two walls built as an L shape, and were falling down with the winds of time, and all the time she was moving her torch back and forth along the ground, trying to spot the green haired toys that they had heard Peter talking about.

“This is pointless,” she said to herself as she shone the torch on to the trees in front of her.

She could easily still see through them, even though the sky was a beautiful orangey red colour that was edging towards darkness, but there was an eeriness about them that made the minute hairs on her neck and down her spine stand up as a chill tickled her.

Her whole mop of auburn hair must have stood on end when the ear piercing cry from Aimee-Lou broke the dying daylight.

“Aims,” she called out as she ran towards the last place she saw her friend, tears already filling her eyes. “Aimee-Lou.”

As she rounded the wall she saw her friend face down in the bush that the cat was seen in, with the flashlight lying on the ground, pointing away from her.

Aimee-Lou looked up as Lana touched her shoulder and her face had a single scratch down her left cheek, with a tear rolling down the newly formed crevice.

“What happened,” Lana asked her, “Did the cat scratch you?”

Aimee-Lou didn't answer with words, she just lifted her whole body up to reveal the eyes that they had seen shining in the torch beam, making Lana take two steps backwards in shock.

What she saw was not a cute cat or a tiny kitten, but a creature that was the size of a large rabbit. It had a huge nose and long ears that were almost the length of its head, and a mound of brown hair that looked filled with mud. There was some kind of leathery animal skin on its ankles, probably cowhide, which was tied up with the twine that you would see creeping up a tree in the middle of summer. It was naked on its top half, except for woollen muff on each hand, that had 3 thick fingers on each, as well as a shawl around its neck that looked as though it was made of the same skin, and the skirt it was wearing had the same woollen look about it. The mouth of the creature was almost the width of it face as it smiled, making its cheeks rise up so that its cheekbones almost met the underside of its eyes. The eyes that were shining bright in the fake light were, in fact, green in colour, and its pupils were so small that you wouldn’t have noticed them at all if you didn’t get too close.

Aimee-Lou had the creature under its arms and she lifted it up as she stood, revealing its three huge toes on the end of the round foot.

“What are you doing?” Lana said in a panic. “Put it down before it attacks us both.”

She backed away again as Aimee-Lou stood fully upright, cradling the creature into her bosom as she would a new born baby.

She was talking quietly to the creature, and it seemed to be cooing back at her as its permanent smile broadened.

“For Christ sake, Aims,” Lana protested. “Put it back and let’s get back to the mainland while we still can.” She shone her phone towards the boat. “There must be more of them, and they must be huge, because there is no way that that little thing made those massive footprints on the shore.”

“It’s all alone Lana,” Aimee-Lou said, with more tears in her eyes. “Let’s take it back and we can keep it in the treehouse.”

Lana couldn’t even believe that she was contemplating the idea, but she stood and she thought. She looked to the vanishing light and knew that time was running out for them to get back to shore before it was fully night-time.

“What if it attacks us?” she asked. “Look at your cheek for starters.”

“It was scared,” Aimee-Lou said defensively.” Look at it now, its calm.”

She was tickling the creature under its chin, making it wriggle and titter with apparent happiness.

“We need to go,” Lana said calmly, reluctantly, as her breath was now pluming from her mouth as the air chill grew deeper.

She offered the loose bag that she had taken from her backpack, and Aimee-Lou used it as a foot blanket on the creature. Lana lifted the backpack up and Aimee-Lou placed the creature inside of it feet first, with just its head sticking out, its nose and ears making it look like some kind of trophy cup that you see the footballers lift after winning promotion.

They reached the shore as the dusk turned to darkness, and a splashing sound on the shores of the island urged them into a hasty retreat from Blaise Pool.

They arrived at Aimee-Lou’s house and pedalled around to the back garden, dumping their bikes against the trunk of the oak tree that the treehouse had been built in, and scampered up the ladder that was nailed to the trunk.

Aimee-Lou took the creature from the backpack and sat it in the corner of the treehouse where they had made their beds for sleeping out in the summertime. She placed a blanket over it, even though there was no sign of coldness coming from it, and she tucked the edges under the thin mattress.

“So,” Lana said, “What do we call it?”

“Depends,” Aimee-Lou responded.

“On?”

“Whether it’s a boy or a girl, obviously.”

Lana and Aimee-Lou looked at each other with a resigned look of dread on their faces. They knew that they would have to check under the woolly skirt if they wanted to know for definite.

“I’ll toss a coin for it?” Lana said.

“If it’s a girl, I vote for Bethany, and a boy is Ryan,” Aimee-Lou said as she grabbed a coin from her pocket.

“If it’s a boy, I say Clive, and a girl is Charlotte,” Lana replied.

“We will do the first toss to decide who checks, and a second toss for who names.”

To which they both agreed.

The creature was staring at them both as a little dribble of saliva crept from the corner of its mouth.

“Ready,” Aimee-Lou asked.

“Ready,” her friend answered, and the coin went spinning into the air.

“Call,” Aimee-Lou said excitedly.

The girls watched as the coin fell to the wooden floor of the treehouse, and a groan from Aimee-Lou was enough to say who had lost.

She stared at Lana with a look of disgust that she would have to peek under the skirt.

“Do the second one then,” Lana prompted her, trying to hide her victorious smile.

“Your turn,” Aimee-Lou said as she handed the coin to her friend.

Lana flicked the coin up as the offer to call went out, and all three of them watched the coin bounced on the wooden floor.

Aimee-Lou lifted the blanket off of the creature and blew on her hands as though she was about to touch someone she was in danger of instantly freezing.

She reached slowly forward and grabbed the end of the woolly skirt, lowering her head to a level that was only 3 inches from the floor.

The creature still had its ridiculous grin as it watched Aimee-Lou lower herself to its level, and not once did it flinch, even when its skirt was lifted and the cold air circulated around its nether region.

“Well?” Lana asked.

“May I introduce to you,” Aimee-Lou said, in a DJ style voice, “Our new friend, drum roll please,”

“Come on,” Lana said with a giggle.

“Whose name is...Clive.”

Lana punched the air as a shout of yes filled the treehouse.

The girls proceeded to spoil Clive, washing his hair and brushing the woolly clothes, as well as painting the three huge toe nails on each foot. Yet all the time the troll just sat there staring as the dribble of saliva would creep out of the corner of his mouth.

Aimee-Lou checked the time on her phone, seeing that it was 7.50 pm, and she placed it back into the pocket on her backpack and stood up.

“It’s ten to eight,” she told Lana, who stood up and grabbed her own backpack.

“What are we going to do with him?” she asked, pointing at Clive.

“Leave him here I guess,” Aimee-Lou said with a shrug of the shoulders. “I’ll make a sandwich and grab a packet of crisps from the kitchen to bring out to him later on when mum is watching her soaps, and I’ll text you on how he’s doing.”

Lana nodded in agreement and crouched down to Clive’s level, grabbing one of his thick fingers.

“So I will see you tomorrow, Clive,” she said with a smile, to which the troll responded by smiling wider and cooing at her. “Bye then,” she finished.

She stood up and smiled at Aimee-Lou, but stopped still when the voice squeaked form the corner.

“Bye then.”

“Oh wow,” the girls said as they dropped to their knees in front of Clive.

“You can talk,” Lana said, excited as ever.

“Talk,” Clive repeated.

The girls giggled uncontrollably as they began saying words to Clive to get him to repeat them.

“Say our names,” Aimee-Lou suggested to Lana, just as excited.

“Aimee-Lou,” Lana said to Clive, who shaped his mouth the same as hers.

“Ameelo,” he copied.

“Lana,” she said this time.

Clive overly moved his mouth to get the name out, and it prompted another cry of yes from Lana, who also clapped her hands.

Clive’s openly happy mood changed as soon as the mobile phone began to ring in Lana’s pocket. He scurried back into the corner, which he had gradually crept out from, and hid under the blanket that he was covered in before.

“It’s okay, Clive,” Aimee-Lou said as she crouched down to comfort him while Lana answered her phone.

“Hello?”

“Hey mum.”

“Why what time is it?”

“Is it really?”

“No mum, I’ll be home in five minutes.”

“Just playing in the treehouse.”

“I’ll be home now. I'm just getting on my bike right now. Okay, bye.”

Lana looked to Aimee-Lou with her mouth open in shock.

“It 8.40,”she said as she checked the time on her phone. “Mum is going spare.”

She kissed her fingertips and touched Clive on the head, and then bent down and hugged Aimee-Lou. “Text me later,” she said to her as she released her, and skipped to the exit ladder.

“Speak soon,” Aimee-Lou called after her as the top of her head lowered out of sight.

“Speaks oon,” Clive copied, and that made Aimee-Lou laugh a little.

“Close,” she said as she straightened the blanket over him.

Clive cowered down further behind the blanket when a call from the bottom of the treehouse filled the air.

“Aimee-Lou Bracewell, will you please come in for your tea,” her mother called up the ladder.

“Okay mum,” she shouted back down,

She turned her attention back to Clive as she straightened the blanket even more.

“Now I’ll be back in an hour or so. You keep yourself tucked up in here and I will bring you a nice ham sandwich. “

She reached out and placed her hand on his head, stroking it as she would a puppy dog, and he cooed at her like a contented pigeon as a dribble of saliva oozed from the corner of his mouth.

“Aimee-Lou,” her mother called again, and she kissed her fingers and planted them onto his head with urgency.

She turned and climbed out of the treehouse, glancing at Clive and smiling as she lowered herself down to ground level, not noticing that he grinned back as he sniffed the air, releasing the mouthful of saliva that he had been holding in for the past 4 hours.