Jimmy Coates: Killer. Joe Craig

back to sleep was pointless, so he thumped his hand down on the button that would stop the alarm going off and trudged to the bathroom as if going to his execution.

      It was when he reached the bathroom that he heard the noise from downstairs again and realised it must have been what woke him up. Felix looked across at his parents’ bedroom door. It was ajar, which meant they were both up. He was ready to brush it off as a lively breakfast, but then he heard his mother shriek.

      Felix knew that if there was something seriously wrong he probably couldn’t do anything to help, but nobody was ever more curious. A scream on a school morning was an unusual event. It would at least give him something to talk about at school. He trotted down the stairs and pushed open the kitchen door, then thought he must still be dreaming. “Oh, my God! Hi, Jimmy.”

      His mother was sitting at the table with her face in her hands, quivering slightly. Felix’s father was just staring back at him with his mouth half open and his eyebrows frowning. But it was Jimmy who had surprised Felix. First of all, he wasn’t meant to be there. He also wasn’t meant to have a huge kitchen knife sticking out of his arm.

      “Hi, Felix,” said Jimmy, happiness in his voice. He was genuinely delighted to see his friend. His left arm was stretched out on the kitchen table, his hand turned upwards. At his wrist, the knife stood up on its own, with about a centimetre of the blade sunk into Jimmy’s flesh. It rose like Excalibur and flashed in the grey morning light.

      Felix’s mother emerged from behind her hands. “Stop that at once! Put that thing down!” she squealed. But Jimmy just smiled as calmly as he could.

      “No, it’s OK, look,” he said. “It’s like I was saying…” and he curled the fingers of his right hand round the handle of the knife. Slowly he pulled the blade out of his wrist. “No blood. Told you.”

      Felix came right up close.

      “That is so cool. Can I have a go?” Felix reached out for the knife, but his mother pulled him away.

      “No! That is very dangerous and you shouldn’t do it. Nor should you, Jimmy. Put the knife away.” Jimmy didn’t answer. He just held out his hand to Felix’s father.

      “Jimmy,” said Mr Muzbeke, “is this a trick?”

      “No.”

      “And it did the same thing when you got glass in your wrist?”

      “It was a big bit of glass from the window, and at first I didn’t even notice it was there. It didn’t hurt or anything.”

      Just like before, there was no blood, no mess, and Jimmy didn’t feel any pain. Any normal person would be bleeding to death by now, but Jimmy just had a flap of skin. He could squeeze his little finger in and touch a deeper layer, which was slightly grey under the pink skin.

      “What are you doing here, Jimmy? Are you coming to school with me?” Felix was a little disappointed about there not being an intruder or a major disaster for him to report on.

      “Erm, I can’t come to school Felix, and you can’t tell anybody I’m here.”

      “Can I tell them about your arm? Does it hurt?”

      “No you can’t tell them, and no it doesn’t hurt.”

      “How come you look so terrible?”

      While Felix bolted his breakfast, Jimmy tried as best he could to explain everything that had happened to him. Felix’s parents kept interrupting, telling Felix to hurry up and telling Jimmy not to exaggerate. But even so, he began to feel that Mr and Mrs Muzbeke were starting to believe him. Felix was riveted.

      “OK, listen, I won’t tell anybody you’re here, but when I get home from school we’re going to check out your superpowers,” said Felix. In a flash he was dressed and out of the door, sprinting up the road – very late.

      “It doesn’t feel like having superpowers,” said Jimmy as the front door clicked shut. Felix’s mother put her hand on the back of Jimmy’s neck.

      “Go and get some sleep. And don’t worry about your family. I’m sure they’re fine, wherever they are.”

      Jimmy dropped his head and yawned. He was so tired he had stopped thinking straight a long time ago. He pictured the faces of his parents and his sister as he crawled up the stairs and into the unfamiliar bed. The spare room was too tidy, too clinical to be homely. It was obvious nobody stayed in there much.

      The fact that it was light outside didn’t matter. Jimmy closed his eyes and let his body curl into a ball. He didn’t feel as excited about any of this as Felix obviously did. He certainly didn’t feel like a superhero. He felt awful.

      

      “He makes bottle tops, for God’s sake. Who could possibly want to kidnap Ian Coates?” Felix’s mother was pacing the kitchen, trying hard to keep her voice down so as not to wake Jimmy.

      “Jimmy thinks they’re after him. Have you phoned the house again?”

      “Still no answer. But that doesn’t mean anything, does it?”

      “I don’t know.” Felix’s father rubbed his face with his hand, trying to banish the shock of a strange morning. He allowed himself a moment of self-pity. He worked so hard as it was, he didn’t need to be woken up extra early by a runaway child. He put the kettle on again and shook his head. His dark jowls jiggled as if they had just woken up. “What should we do?” he asked, finally.

      “I’m phoning the police.” Olivia Muzbeke walked over to the phone on the wall and picked up the receiver. Her husband was there in a flash.

      “You can’t do that,” he said, and put his hand across the phone.

      “Leave me alone, I’m calling the police. If Jimmy is telling the truth and something has happened to the Coates, then the police need to know.”

      “If Jimmy is telling the truth, then the police are also trying to catch him.” Felix’s mother knew her husband was right. She put down the phone.

      “What if he’s done something wrong?” she said as she poured yet more tea.

      “You know him better than I do. Has he ever been in trouble before?”

      “No.”

      “Has he ever done anything he shouldn’t have?”

      “He stuck my meat knife in his arm.”

      Mr Muzbeke sighed. He looked up at the clock and thought about going to work. “We can let him stay for a couple of days. Until we know what’s going on. But don’t tell anybody he’s here, and don’t call the police. Not yet.”

      “That’s so silly. It’s all so ridiculous, Neil…”

      “Just in case. The state this country’s in, I wouldn’t be surprised if the police decided to abduct an innocent family. Would you?”

      “OK. A couple of days.”

      

      Jimmy slept a long time, but still didn’t feel rested when he woke up. It had been happening quite a lot recently. He would wake up with the impression that he’d had a nightmare, but couldn’t remember what it was. And he hardly ever felt properly rested. He opened his eyes and wondered what the time was. There was no clock in the room. All he could think about when he looked at the light coming through the curtains was that he’d jumped out of a similar window the night before. Suddenly he was filled with anxiety. What if the Muzbekes had told someone he was there? What if Felix had blabbed at school? He was a good friend and he’d never put Jimmy in danger deliberately, but he was always giving secrets away by accident.

      An image jumped into Jimmy’s mind that was too real for comfort. It was the picture of the Muzbekes’ house surrounded by men in black suits, with their thin black ties oozing down their fronts. Then he pictured them in the kitchen, being served tea by Olivia Muzbeke, just waiting for Jimmy to come downstairs.