Patrick Samphire

Crab Apple

By Patrick Samphire

Illustration © Melissa Ferreira.

Text © Patrick Samphire, 2005. This story may not be copied, sold or published without written permission of the author.

Illustration for Crab Apple. By Melissa Ferreira. I saw her first the day I found Dad on the kitchen floor. The new girl. The wild girl.

At first I thought Dad had been drinking again. There were beer cans scattered across the floor. But the cans were still full, and I couldn't smell alcohol.

There was something strange about the way Dad was lying. He was too still. His stick-thin arms and legs were sprawled loosely across the tiles. I thought for a moment he was dead.

He was still breathing, though, a wheezy, tight sound, as though a plastic whistle was stuck in his throat. He didn't wake when I shook him.

I'd begun taking first aid classes at school when Dad started losing weight and coughing. There was no one else at home to help. But they had never shown us how to deal with this. I put him in the recovery position and called an ambulance.

The girl was there when I went outside to wait for the ambulance. She was squatted on our garden wall like a wild-haired monkey. She had on a dirty white T-shirt and shorts that showed scratched legs. I guessed she was about fourteen, the same age as me. Her eyes were as brown as oak and her cheeks were freckled and sunburnt. There were leaves in her tangled hair.

"What's your name?" she said. "You, what's your name?"

"Josh," I said.

"Joshua," she laughed. "Stupid name."

She winked down at me. Her grin was as wide as her face.

Then she leapt from the wall and dashed away up the hill, her wild hair streaming behind her like a comet's tail. I watched her disappear.

In the distance I heard the ambulance siren approaching.

"You want to see something?"

The wild girl leaned against the school lockers. She was wearing school uniform, without the tie, but she'd got mud on her blouse already, and her hair was the same mess.

I'd spent most the night at the hospital, by Dad's bed, waiting for him to wake up. He hadn't.

"No," I said.

"You want to know my name?"

"No."

She shoved her sunburnt face close to mine. Her brown eyes glittered. "I don't care. Stupid boy."

She laughed and spun down the corridor, arms outstretched. "Stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid," she shouted as she span. My face turned red.

The door to the staff room burst open, and Mrs Wilson strode out, her thick skirt slapping like a whip against her legs.

"What is going on? Come back here."

The wild girl looked back.

"Screw you."

Then she ran again.

Mrs Wilson pushed back her glasses. Her lips were tight. "Little madam," she said. She glared at me as though I was to blame. "She's got the devil in her, that one. She'll be nothing but trouble, you mark my words, Josh. Nothing but trouble."

"He's awake," the nurse said. She let me into Dad's room.

He was sunk into the stiff white sheets like a balloon with half its air let out. There was a tube running up his nose and another leading to his arm from a bag of clear liquid hooked up on a stand.

He turned his head, blinking.

"Josh." His voice was hoarse, like he'd been shouting.

"How are you doing, Dad?" I tried to stop my voice shaking. I didn't want to seem like a kid.

"Been better, been worse." He worked his lips, as though his mouth was dry. "See, the old devil's put his hand into my chest, lad. Left a bit of a gift for me."

He coughed. His thin chest shuddered. He turned and spat into a metal bowl by his bed. The spit was thick and threaded with blood. He gave me a painful grin.

"Want to hear a name for the devil they never taught you in that Sunday school, lad? Forty-a-day. Good, hey?" He laughed. It was a painful, breathless sound. "Old forty-a-day'll get you every time."

I tried to smile, but couldn't. He looked shrivelled away, eaten from the inside. His cheeks were caved in, his skin almost yellow and sagging against his bones, his eyes bloodshot and too big in his face. This wasn't my dad. It was his reflection in a dead mirror, a body from the desert.

"Want to see my X-rays?" he said.

"Okay," I said.

"End of the bed. The blue folder."

I pulled them out and held them up to the window. I could see his ribs and spine as clear white. Two large grey shapes behind the ribs must have been his lungs.

"What's this?"

I pointed at a black lump almost as large as one of Dad's fists in the bottom of the right lung.

"Apple. Swallowed an apple. Hey? Hey?" He coughed again. "I'm tired, lad. Bloody tired. You wouldn't think so after all that sleep." His eyes fluttered shut. He sighed, and his body relaxed on the bed.

I stood over him, staring down at that exhausted face. I wondered how long he'd been so tired. I hadn't noticed. Too busy rushing around. I swallowed to stop a sob. He looked twenty years older than I remembered.

For a moment his eyelids popped open again. "Don't let your mum worry, hey?" he croaked.

"No, Dad," I said.

Mum had been dead since I was five.

Aunt Chris came to stay, to look after me she said. She was waiting on the porch when I got home. She bundled Dad's beer cans into a bin bag and left it outside for the dustmen. She emptied his ashtrays and put them in the cupboard, right on the top shelf. She threw away all the old magazines and newspapers. Then she started scrubbing, as though she wanted to scrub away every trace of Dad. I went up to my room.

Something woke me in the night. The moon was heavy through the trees at the end of the garden. Somewhere in the dark, an owl hooted, a forlorn, lost sound. I wondered if that had been what had woken me. Then I heard a scratching just below the window. My heart started to thump. A bird, maybe, or even a mouse. That would be it. My hands bunched into fists around the sheets. I closed my eyes. I wasn't a kid anymore, to be frightened by my imagination.

When I opened my eyes, there was a face at the window. I nearly screamed. It was pressed up close, pale but shadowed with the moon behind it. I took a deep breath. The face moved, and I saw the mass of tangled hair.

The wild girl pulled herself up onto my windowsill, and crouched there, staring in. "Open the window," she mouthed.

Wrapping my sheet around me, I stood and hurried over.

"What do you want?"

"Open the window."

I pulled it up, letting in the cool night air. The girl hopped inside.

"Jeez, you're hard to wake."

"It's the middle of the night."

She gave me a wide grin. "You want to see something?"

"What?"

"You have to come and see."

I glanced at the clock. It was two o'clock. I'd have to be up for school in five hours.

"Good," she said, before I could answer. "I'll meet you downstairs. Get dressed." She giggled. "You look stupid with that sheet." Then she clambered back out onto the windowsill. She lowered herself so she was dangling by her hands then looked up at me with that wild face.

"You want to know my name?"

"No," I said.

"It's Emma. Do you like it?"

"It's okay."

"Good."

She dropped, and I heard a soft thud from the ground below. I saw her dart around the side of the house.

I thought about going back to bed, but I just had this feeling that she'd climb back up to my window if I did. I didn't even think she would care if she woke Aunt Chris. She didn't seem to care about anything.

"You should cry, you know. Or scream. Or throw something." She picked up a rock and flung it toward the rooftops below. "Like that. Let yourself go."

We were climbing Braddock Hill, which rose sharply between the scattered houses on my side of the hill and the sprawling, dirty town on the other. It was cold out, and the sky was clear.

"Why?" I said.

"Because of your dad. You can't deal with anything while you're all sewn up like a pillow. You need to escape, let all your feathers fly around the room. Then you can handle anything."

"You can handle anything, can you?" I said.

She jumped in the air, twirling as she did so. "Anything." She laughed. It was a feral sound, like a fox barking in the darkness.

We topped the hill and began to descend. The ground flattened to the left. Emma led me that way, into the trees. I hung back for a moment. It was dark in there. I wasn't so sure this was a good idea anymore. Emma looked back.

"Scared, Josh? You a stupid, scared little boy?"

"No," I said, and followed her in.

There had been an orchard here once, but it had been long abandoned. Hawthorn and ash had sprung up between the apple trees, and tangles of brambles rose in hillocks between the trunks. Right in the centre, larger than any of the other trees, stood a spreading crab apple tree. Nothing grew beneath its branches save a layer of thick moss.

Emma stopped beneath it.

"It's a tree," I said. "Big deal."

She leaned back against the bark. "Come closer." She crooked a finger and stared up at me through her eyelashes. Her sweater was tight against her chest. She winked. My heart trembled. My pulse fluttered loudly in my ears. My lips were dry.

She pushed herself away again with a squawk of laughter.

"Just wait," she said, "and watch."

"What?"

"There." She pointed to halfway up the trunk of the massive tree. For a moment I couldn't see what she was pointing at. Then I saw it. The bark of the tree was pulsing, as though there was a slow heart beneath it, or a giant insect trapped in syrup.

The pulses grew. The branches shuddered.

Slowly, something pulled itself from the tree. The bark stretched like toffee, clinging to the creature that was emerging, and then finally snapping back. I thought of a butterfly emerging from its cocoon, but this was no butterfly.

It was shaped almost like a man, but it wasn't a man. It was wrong. Its fingers were as long as my forearm. From its head and its elbows and its knees grew twisted twigs. Its skin was as rutted as bark, but as silver as the moon. Its teeth, when it spread its wide mouth open, were as sharp as pins. Its eyes were bright yellow. I saw claws curling from its fingers and toes. It clung to the tree, and then slowly turned, so that its head was pointing downwards, and began to descend.

It moved with the reaching slowness of a stick insect. It would take forever to reach the ground, I thought, but even as I thought that, it moved in a rush I could hardly follow, and it was standing beneath the crab apple tree, not a dozen steps away from us. My breath turned to tar in my throat.

The creature was male, I could see that now. He wore no clothes. Moonlight gathered around him like cold mist. He was tall, towering above me. I wanted to reach out and touch him. He was beautiful. He was the way I thought an angel should look, glorious, alien, and terrible.

I was cold. My legs shook. The hairs on my arms and neck stood painfully on end. I thought he would drown me with his radiant, ugly beauty. I was dark and insignificant before him. He sucked at my thoughts, leaving my head empty. I was inadequate, pathetic, scared.

Through a dry mouth I said, "Who...who are you?"

He was right in front of me. He reached a long, twisted hand towards me, brushed sharp fingers that could slice skin across my face. Suddenly, all I wanted to do was run.

"Crab," he said. "They call me Crab."

He stepped back, and Emma was beside him, grinning her wild grin at me.

"Isn't he beautiful?"

His cruel hand smoothed over her hair, her face, her neck, her shoulders. I backed away. She leaned against him, a little scrap of wildness against his terrible form.

I turned and ran. Behind me, I heard her voice cry out: "Josh. Come back." But I didn't. I just kept on running.

Dad was asleep when I visited during the next two days.

"You mustn't disturb him," the nurse said. "He needs all the strength he can get."

So I sat beside him, holding his hand, gazing at his wasted body and his face that was so tired it looked bruised.

We used to play football in the park. If I scored a goal he would throw me over his shoulder like a fireman and go whooping down the pitch and dump me through the other goal. I reckoned I could pick him up with one hand now he looked so frail. His breathing was a thin wheeze, in and out, in and out, each breath creasing his face. Once I broke down and sobbed on his chest, but he just kept wheezing in, wheezing out. His skin was as dry as a winter leaf.

On the third day, he was awake, propped up on his pillows. He smiled at me when I came in.

"Been waiting up for you, lad," he said. "Well past my bedtime." He gasped a chuckle. The effort exhausted him. His eyelids fluttered almost shut, but he forced them open again. "Don't let me fall asleep."

"How are you feeling, dad?"

"Been better, been worse."

I sat beside him. "Brought you some cards." I set them out on the table.

"Nice," he said. "Lad, I got my biopsy results today."

"What's a biopsy?"

He screwed up his old face. "They stuck this tube up my nose, all the way down into my lungs and scooped out a bit of that apple I swallowed." He coughed. "Tested it." He reached out to me with a frail hand and laid it over mine. His fingers curled around mine. "No surprise," he said, looking at me. "It's cancer."

My hand tightened, and he winced.

"Sorry," I said, but I croaked so much it hardly came out.

"They're going to operate," Dad said. "Take out that whole side of the lung. Probably do some other stuff too. Chemotherapy or radiation therapy. We haven't decided yet."

I couldn't move. My whole body was shaking.

"I'm sorry," he said. And as he did, I started to cry, big, painful sobs that shook the chair and his bed.

He waited until I'd finished, and then pulled my hand closer. "Listen, lad, I've been wanting to say this. The drink, see, it took away the pain. Just thought I was getting old. Didn't want to think it was this. So I got drunk and tried to ignore it. I'm sorry."

His breath had become gasps. He was sweating from his forehead. His eyes were bloodshot and tinted yellow with exhaustion.

"Go to sleep, Dad," I said, and he did.

I hadn't seen Emma at school during those three days, but the day after, she was there, leaning against the lockers again, grinning at me.

"Where you going?" she said.

Her hair was more of a mess than ever. It was full of leaves. I shuddered when I thought about where they might have come from. That tree. That creature in it. I had tried to tell myself it was a nightmare, but I knew it wasn't. My shoes had been muddy when I'd got back, and there had been dried leaves on my bedroom floor, near the window.

"First aid class," I said. But I didn't move, just stood there and stared at her.

"Skip it," she said.

I shrugged. "Okay." There didn't seem much point in it anymore. Not unless they could teach me a cure for cancer. I had no time for bandages and mouth-to-mouth.

It was lunchtime. The corridors were heaving, but no one was taking any notice of us. I grabbed Emma's arm as we let ourselves be swept along towards the lunch hall.

"What is he?" I whispered. "Crab. What is he?"

"He's a Dane," she said.

"What, like from Denmark?"

She rolled her eyes, and her mouth turned down. She almost hissed in my face. "No, not like from Denmark. Stupid, ugly, stupid boy. No. The Danes, like in the Fates, the People of Peace, the Fane, the Pharisees." She lowered her voice. "The Fay."

"You mean fai--"

She yanked my arm. "Don't say it! It's bad luck to say that name." She hunched her thin shoulders. "Bad luck."

"That's ridiculous," I said, but my skin wanted to shiver.

"Oh yeah," she said. "So what is he then?"

I shook my head.

"He likes you," she said. "He wants you."

I squinted at her. "What does that mean?"

She bit her lip. For an instant I thought she looked scared. "I don't know," she said. Then she stared defiantly at me again. "I don't care."

We came out into the dining room. Mr Miller and Mrs Wilson were on duty. Mrs Wilson glared at us. I turned away, but Emma stuck out her tongue. Mrs Wilson went stiff, and her neck reddened.

"Why did you do that?" I whispered.

Emma shrugged. "Why not? Did you see the look she gave us? She can't stand me."

"Let's get something to eat," I said.

Emma touched my hand. I glanced at her. She looked nervous. There was a line of sweat above her lip, and her hand was trembling. She licked her lip.

"I brought you something to eat."

She held out her hand. "It's an apple," she said.

It was tiny and too green. I took it from her hand.

"It's okay," she said. "It tastes fine. Eat it."

She didn't meet my eyes.

Slowly, watching her all the time, I brought it up to my mouth.

Someone put a hand on my arm. "Don't eat that."

I looked up. Mr Miller was standing in front of me.

"That's not a real apple," he said. "It's a crab apple. It's a nasty, bitter, sour thing."

I looked at Emma. She just stared at her shoes.

"Why did you give him that, Emma?" Mr Miller said softly.

"Because she's an evil little cow," Mrs Wilson said from behind us.

Emma's head jerked up. "You're the evil cow," she shouted at Mrs Wilson. "You're the evil, fat, ugly, stupid cow. You."

Emma shoved past us, out into the middle of the hall. Her body was shaking like a branch in a storm. Her arms windmilled madly around her, sending plates and trays cascading onto the floor. All the while she kept up an inhuman shriek. In the middle of it all, her eyes fixed on mine, and I could have sworn that they were no longer wood-brown, but yellow. Burning yellow.

I found her later in the schoolyard, back pressed up against the concrete wall of the science block. She was staring up at the thick woods that cloaked Braddock Hill. She had been crying.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to do any of that. It's just...it's just..."

"Just what?" I said.

She turned on me, her eyes narrowed to slits.

"Nothing. It's nothing. Dull, stupid, ugly boy. Go away, go away." She leapt to her feet and ran.

"Mrs Tully from school says you've got a new friend," Dad said. "What's her name?"

"Emma."

"What's she like, hey?" He winked.

"Wild," I said, sighing.

"Wild, hey?" He laughed his breathless laugh.

Sunday afternoon, and dying summer had decided to throw up one final, wonderful hot day. The air was still and clean, the sky a ferocious blue.

Emma was waiting at the garden gate. She wore jeans and a light, long-sleeved T-shirt.

"Want to walk?" she said.

"Not to the orchard," I said.

"No." She shivered as though a spider was crawling up her back. "Not to the orchard."

We climbed the path that led around the other side of Braddock hill. The Somerset levels were laid out before us, lush green and gently rumpled. Hundreds of irregularly sized fields, divided by head-high hawthorn and blackthorn hedges studded with ash, oak, and hazel, stretched to the rise of the Mendip hills in the distance. Sunlight glittered from the streams and drainage ditches, like trails of mercury laid on green felt. Grey stone farmhouses were dotted here and there. Once every one of them would have had an orchard. Not any more.

We walked close, almost touching, arms brushing once or twice.

"Is your dad going to die?" Emma said.

My throat turned to miserable stone. "Maybe. I guess."

"Oh."

She stared into my eyes. Hers were wide and that deep, swallowing brown. "I don't think I'll die," she said. I could hardly hear her voice. "But...but I think it might be worse."

I touched her shoulder.

"I want to help you," I said. "If I can."

She shook her head. "You can't," she whispered. "He's inside me."

"I could try. If you told me how."

I thought she might cry.

"Let's get out the sun. It's too bright." She pointed to a stand of trees.

We sat in the shade, our backs against a tall oak, sharing the Pepsi and Mars Bar she'd brought with her. I could hear insects buzzing, but they left us alone. The air was so clear it might not even have been there.

I glanced over at Emma. She was staring far out over the levels, watching something I couldn't see. Her face was peaceful, relaxed. She had a twig sticking out her hair. I reached up and pulled it to get it out. It snapped off. Her head jerked forward and she screamed. Sap welled up in the broken twig, and a single drop of blood.

She turned on me, jumping to her feet. Her brown eyes had turned yellow. Her face was twisted. I scrambled to my feet too. I grabbed her arm and pulled up the sleeve. The skin below was wrinkled, hard, and silvery. I felt sweat under my collar, on my hands.

"You're becoming like him, like Crab," I shouted. "Aren't you? Aren't you?"

She swung for me. Fingernails like claws scraped along my arm. I jumped back.

"Keep away from me, Josh. Keep away."

She turned and was gone, into the trees.

I didn't see her again until the end of the month. Dad came home for a couple of weeks. His operation wasn't scheduled for three months, and the hospital said he was strong enough to be discharged. He didn't look it. His skin was pallid and unhealthy. I could see his veins through it. He couldn't walk more than about four steps without panting.

Aunt Chris cut her way through the jungle that was the back garden, uprooting weeds, cutting back plants, while Dad sat and glowered from the window.

Thursday evening at the end of Dad's second week home, and he had to go back in for tests. Aunt Chris went with him. I sat at home, by the phone, waiting for one of them to call. At ten, the phone went. It was Aunt Chris.

"Listen, Joshua," she said. "We're staying here overnight." I heard her voice tremble. "They...they say the cancer has begun to metastasise. It's begun to spread. They're going to operate tomorrow at two."

"I want to come in," I said.

"Tomorrow," she said. "He's got to sleep now."

I stood and went to the window and stared out across the moonlit garden.

It took me several minutes to notice the shape at the end of the garden, because it didn't move, but then I saw it for what it was. A person, standing rigid, half-hidden by shadows.

I went to the door, and opened it, stepped out.

Her head snapped around. It was Emma. I'd known it would be.

"Stay away from me, Josh," she hissed, then turned and ran.

This time I wasn't going to let her get away. I followed her. She ran fast, keeping to the shadows at the side of the road, but I knew where she was going. To the orchard. To Crab. I dashed after her.

I was out of breath by the time I reached the orchard. My lungs were raw and my throat painful. I saw her standing beneath the crab apple tree, staring up.

She turned, and in the moonlight I saw her clearly. Her fingers were too long. Twisted sticks poked from her head and elbows and knees. Her skin was silver and creased like the bark of a tree. Her eyes were burning yellow, bright in the darkness. Her teeth were pointed and sharp.

"Josh..."

Above her, the bark of the tree began to pulse and bulge.

I ran towards her. She hissed, and her razor-sharp claws darted at my throat. I threw myself back, and she followed. There was nothing of Emma in those eyes.

She swung again, and I ducked, feeling the claws slice through my hair. I punched. My fist caught her jaw. She stumbled back.

She blinked. For a moment her eyes were brown again. I saw panic and fear in them.

"Let me help you," I shouted.

Crab had freed one of his twisted limbs from the bark of the tree. His head was turning to peer down at us.

"Get it out of me, Josh," Emma whispered, her voice cracking. "Get him out of me."

She started to cough, great choking coughs that shook her whole body. Then her eyes turned yellow again.

Before she could move, I darted behind her and grabbed her, my arms circling her body. Above us, Crab freed his last limb and began to descend.

Emma's claws raked my arms. Blood trickled over my skin. I bunched one hand into a fist, crossed the other over it. Emma was struggling, lashing her twisted body to and fro, screaming. But still she was coughing, and still I held her tight.

A thud, and Crab landed in front of us. He rose, his radiance growing. For a moment I felt weak, scared, pathetic. His magnificence was like a tonne of sand, pushing down on me, burying me. My arms weakened, and I almost let go. But then I remembered Emma's frightened brown eyes, and I knew I wouldn't let him take her.

Ignoring the pain and fear and weakness, I pushed my fist below her ribs, the way they'd shown us in first aid class, and jerked it upwards in time with her cough.

Her body convulsed and she choked, gasped. Something flew from her mouth. We collapsed forward together.

Lying on the moss, still damp from her saliva, was a small green crab apple.

I looked up. Crab was standing there above us. But he no longer looked fearsome or terrible. He looked lonely. He looked like an old, old branch of a tree that had broken off and fallen. His yellow eyes gazed down at us. Then he turned, and climbed back into his crab apple tree.

"I'll be honest with you," the doctor said, looking down at me over his little glasses. "Your dad's got a twenty percent chance, at most. We've got to get the whole cancer out in one go."

Emma and I sat side by side. We had just seen Dad's trolley being pushed into the operating theatre. They had wheeled him away like they'd wheeled Mum away when I'd been five. She had never come back.

The doctor gave us a nod and then disappeared through the door.

My throat was hard. My teeth were clamped tight shut. I had to close my eyes to stop tears coming.

"Twenty percent," I whispered. "That's no chance at all. He's going to die."

I felt Emma reach for me and take my hand. She pushed something solid and round into it. I opened my eyes. It was the crab apple, whole, undamaged, out of her. She was smiling a wild, free smile. I smiled back, and clasped her hand.

We sat, the crab apple held pressed between our palms, and waited for the doctors to come back out.

-End-