Bad Faith by Gillian Philip

Posted on Monday, October 6th, 2008

Read an extract from Bad Faith

The Thing was heavy, heavier than I expected. I never knew what the term dead weight meant till I had one of the Bishop’s legs under each arm, his booted feet flopping loose and banging my thighs as I struggled awkwardly down the hill, trying to ignore the twinges of pain in my hip. I felt no fear, and not a shred of pity, which was funny when I’d had nothing against the man till a few hours ago.

All I felt was revulsion.

Worse, my head was starting to echo, thoughts and images were beginning to clamour and if I didn’t keep a firm grip on my brain, they’d get out of hand. Determinedly I shoved down the lid on the voices, shutting them up. Now was not a good time.

It would have been fairer, this being my bright idea, for me to take the head end. But Ming insisted. It was the heaviest bit, he said, and he was stronger, and we’d get this done faster if I’d just shut up. His arms were locked around the Bishop’s chest, his fingers clasped together over his breastbone as if in prayer – ironic, since he’d never darkened a church door in his life – and the damaged head was jammed against Ming’s ribs. Luckily there was no blood dripping or anything. Ming said there wouldn’t be. Smart alek. Bookworm.

Tripping on lichened branches, stumbling on roots and hollows, we almost fell several times. To get flat safe access to the river, we actually had to clamber uphill a bit, over a shoulder of ground and down again. Where the river widened, where it wasn’t all churning rapids, there was a flat pebbly beach about two metres long, leading to a long stretch of calmer water by the bank. If we could get in there we could wade fifty metres downstream, floating the Bishop like a log. But we had to get there first.

I ought to be crying or panicking, but there was more of that in Ming’s white face. All I wanted to do was laugh. I thought how ridiculous we must look, slathered in mud and grass and twigs, hauling a fat and slightly malodorous clergyman down to the river, sliding and stumbling and cursing. Ming cursed, anyway, over and over again. I said nothing. I needed all my breath for the slope, and besides, I had this terrible fear of laughing.

We paused on the swirling edge of the flood, and Ming said, ‘Be careful,’ but I felt more immortal than ever as we waded gingerly into it. At knee-depth the tug of the current wasn’t too strong but we wouldn’t want to be going much deeper, that was for sure. Out in midstream the river still boiled and raced, heaping brown water against unseen rocks. Ming’s fair hair was falling into his eyes and his chin was resting now on the Bishop’s broken head, the body sagging in his arms. Through the strands of sweat-damp hair his eyes were very green and very scared, and he looked a lot more exhausted than I felt.

‘There,’ I gasped at last, and nodded. The bend of the river was ahead, together with the half-submerged secret cave where pirates and orcs and cowboys had once fought fierce cross-genre battles with plastic swords and cap guns. The memory made me hesitate for the first time, but then I thought: Well. It’s not a game any more, is it?

‘We’re fine,’ I said.

Ming just looked at me.

The cave mouth was well hidden and even at the best and driest of times you had to wade into the river to reach it. Now we floated our revolting burden in on the current, keeping hold of handfuls of cassock just to be on the safe side. We didn’t want it drifting off into the main torrent and pulling away from us. Then came the hardest part, because we had to duck into the concealed entrance, tugging the Bishop awkwardly after us. The river swirled into the cavern like it must have done aeons back, when glacial ice carved it. That was a strange thought but comforting. It gave everything perspective. The river must have seen stranger things over the millennia, though it was hard to imagine what. Cowboys battling orcs, maybe.

Where the edge of the water lapped the cave floor we hauled The Thing onto dry land. The cave was cool and gloomy but it felt familiar, and it was much easier to drag the body, a leg each this time, across the smooth grainy sand. We took it as far as we could, bending double ourselves, till we found a ledge of rock that would take a body jammed underneath it.

‘The sand’s wet,’ said Ming. His hoarse voice echoed too loudly and made me jump.

‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘It must have filled right up when the flood was higher.’

Blood throbbed painfully in my temples, and I had that horrible choked feeling in my throat again, and a rising clamour in my head. No. Get a grip, I told myself. I stared hard into the dimness, seeing nothing clearly, concentrating on smothering the voices. I breathed in, I breathed out. I did it again. I pictured a pillow, pictured myself shoving it down over them. Gradually, they fell silent, and I could let myself look at the real world again.

There was enough light for me to see Ming scrabbling at the sand with his fingers, digging out a hollow and frantically trying to shove the Bishop tighter under the shelf of rock.

‘It’s ok,’ I said. I sounded very calm. ‘The water’s going down.’

‘This is crazy,’ said Ming again, breathless. ‘They’ll find him.’

‘No they won’t.’ I don’t know why but I’d never been so sure of anything in my life. Wishful thinking, maybe.

‘Who knows the cave’s here? Just us. Let’s go, okay?’

Like I said, there was enough light to see by, and I very distinctly saw what Ming did as we turned away. Heard him, too. He spat on the Bishop.

I hesitated as he pushed past me and back towards the sunlight. ‘That was a bit unnecessary, wasn’t it?’

‘Yeah. Yeah, it was. Sorry.’ Outside the cave he stood up, waded to the bank and took great lungfuls of air. ‘Sorry. Pretend I didn’t do that, right?’

In the dappled sunlight, blinking, I touched his arm. ‘It’ll be okay.’

For the first time in ages he looked right at me and smiled a proper Ming-smile.

‘Yeah, Cass. Course it will. Listen, can you stay here a minute? You won’t be scared?’

‘No,’ I said. Surprisingly enough it was true. The Thing behind us in the darkness didn’t scare me at all. Not now it was dead. That seemed a surprising notion too.

Ming wasn’t gone long. When he returned he had a pine branch in one hand and the bloody rock in the other. The rock he pitched into the deepest part of the river; the pine branch he took into the cave. I heard the swish of it over sand as he brushed away our footprints and the long shallow groove the Thing had made as we dragged it. That was good thinking. Cowboys and Indians, I thought. Buried Treasure.

He flung the branch into the river, and with our breath stuck in our throats we watched it drift for a moment. It brushed against a tangle of downswept forest litter, then caught on it, resisting the tug of the current. It stuck there for what felt like a week. Then, abruptly, it was snatched by the current and swallowed, resurfacing ten metres downstream only to race out of sight. I heard Ming start to breathe again, so I did too.

…

‘Listen, Cass, when we walk away? Don’t look back.’

‘Why?’

‘Well, I dunno. Superstition, that’s all.’

‘Ming! You’re not superstitious!’

‘No, but…oh, just…Cass, it’s just a feeling I’ve got. Please?’

‘Come on, why?’

‘Don’t laugh. Don’t. Please. Okay, it’s superstitious, but don’t look back. When you look back something bad happens. Always. Like Orpheus and Eurydice?’

‘Oh, yeah. He’s told not to look back but he does. And he loses her forever.’

‘Yes. See? You look back, you get dragged down to the world of the dead.’

‘Ming, this is so not you.’

‘Just this. Just this. Please, Cass.’

‘You reeead tooo muuuch.’

‘But don’t look back.’

‘Okay.’

…

I don’t know how poor Orpheus felt, but I’ve a rough idea. How can you not look back? He could see the light. He was out of the cave. He must have thought she was right behind him. The impulse must have been killing him. I always felt sorry for Orpheus, from the day my father first read me the story. It was so unfair. He was almost there. How could he stop himself looking?

And I thought, as I glanced just once over my shoulder: How could I?

Posted in: Books.

Tags: Bad Faith, Gillian Philip, Young Adult

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