Shelter from Thunder
By
Michael Cargill
Edition 1.1
Slaughter in Barnaby Close
Shades of Grey
Underneath
Bits of Cargill
Jake
Saying Goodbye to Warsaw
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Shelter from Thunder
Copyright 2011 Michael Cargill
Chapter 1
The rising sound of the air raid siren. The hurried rush to safety. The startled look on his parents’ faces as they are interrupted mid-sentence. A morsel of food falling from a fork and plopping back down onto the dinner plate. Sam thought that he would have been used to these upsets and interruptions by now, yet there was always something that made him feel uneasy. Sometimes it was something new or something that he hadn’t ever noticed before; sometimes it was an otherwise innocuous incident. On one occasion it had been because he had struggled to pull on his shoes, a delay of no more than a few seconds, yet it was enough to unsettle him. In fact it did more than that, it downright terrified him as he felt his father’s lingering gaze of disappointment burning a hole in the side of his head, a sensation that left him wondering if his clumsy fumbling had paralysed the entire country.
Tonight it was his mother’s indignant cry of “Another fine dinner ruined!” that roused the butterflies in Sam’s stomach, her words coming out as if her mouth was a misfiring machine gun. The three of them descended the steps down into the home-made shelter in the back of the garden, the hurried footfalls adding to Sam’s anxiety.
“Do they wait until the whole street is sitting down to eat before deciding to show themselves?” continued his mother, “Is blowing half the country to bits not enough for them now?”
They filed quickly into the shelter and closed the heavy door behind them. It scraped along the uneven concrete floor, making an ugly noise that reminded Sam of the kids at school who insisted on dragging their fingernails down the blackboard whenever the teacher’s back was turned; the butterflies in his belly were well and truly awake now. Inside the shelter it was as dark as any blackboard you could imagine and the three of them faced each other in the gloom. Sam felt around for his seat, the only thing in the shelter that he could truly say belonged to him, though it was more of a box than anything else. He did his best not to trip over his own feet or bang his leg against anything and his mother coughed as she always did when the stench of the stale, musty air became noticeable.
There was a scrabbling sound to his right and Sam found himself blinded by the bright glare of an igniting match, the shadows looming and jumping as the flame nearly died out before slowly coming back to life.
His father took two small steps to the side, causing the shadows to bounce around as if the room was being shaken by an enormous hand. He reached out and lit a candle, sending the shadows into retreat until an uneasy and unspoken truce between darkness and light fell upon the inhabitants of the room. Sam looked up at his father and barely recognised him as his dark hair, bushy eyebrows, and moustache seemed to consume his entire face in this light. He had recollections of how, almost a lifetime ago, his father used to pick him up and cradle him in his arms; if that happened now, Sam would probably scream in terror.
Sam realised that he was still hungry and he sat there mourning the loss of a perfectly good meal until his mother produced a can and set about opening it.
“Still hungry then, lad?” his father asked, to which Sam replied with nothing other than a nervous nod.
Sam stuck his fingers into the crude opening, being careful not to cut himself on the sharp sides of the tin. He grabbed what he could and held back a grimace as he slurped down a few slices of peach. Although he didn’t mind the taste of tinned fruit, sitting here in the almost-dark he couldn’t shake off the notion that he was swallowing a selection of slugs.
“Where’s that gas mask of yours, boy?” asked his father, “You’re supposed to keep it with you at all times.”
Sam just looked at the floor.
Chapter 2
Sam knew exactly where his gas mask was: upstairs in his room, on the back of his chair and it would stay hanging there forever if the decision was his. It was a complete pain having to carry it around wherever he went and if the end of the war brought nothing but relief from having it hung round his neck all day then he would be happy. The older boys at his school seemed to deal with the burden by swinging it above their heads and ‘accidentally’ letting go of it, a game that Sam would watch them play from a distance - if he got too close the masks had a tendency to end up flying towards his head, rather than a wall.
They had been issued with the masks months ago and he remembered the first time that his teacher handed them out to the class. At first they were a great novelty, an intriguing device that seemed incredibly high-tech and important. Sam found the strong smell of rubber to be a curious, alien thing and his hands came away stinking of it every time he touched the mask. Getting it to fit on his face properly was always a struggle, no matter how much fiddling he did with the straps, but he soon learned how to have some fun once it was in place: if he blew hard enough with his mouth the air would escape out the sides of the mask and make a loud farting noise, something that never failed to fill the classroom with the sound of giggling children. After a while the mask would steam up, leaving Sam almost entirely blind until he was told he could take it off and put it back into the case. During the first week just about everyone in his class forgot to take their mask home with them and it took several hard grillings from the headmaster before it was lodged permanently in their minds that they really did need to keep hold of them wherever they went.
Fire alarm drills were quickly replaced with air-raid siren drills. For some reason the construction of the school shelter wasn’t started until several weeks after they received their masks, so there was lots of aimless wandering around the playground while they waited for it to be finished. For a while they had to make do with crouching under their desks every time the siren went off, which didn’t really make Sam feel very safe at all - if the desks didn’t protect him from the bits of paper that his classmates threw at him, how would they stop a bomb?
Once the shelter was finally built there was plenty of excitement about going into it for the first time. At long last they didn’t have to rely on two inches of wooden furniture to protect them from the full might of the Luftwaffe and there was an anxious wait as they all stood in line, gas masks clamped awkwardly to their faces, waiting to be told to walk in as part of a practice drill. There was plenty of bumping and shuffling around in the gloom and Sam was sure that at least some of the kicks that he received to his legs were purposefully meant, rather than accidental.
When it came to using the shelters during an actual air raid, the teachers did their best to keep the children entertained with songs and games to stave off boredom within the cramped conditions. Sam tried to avoid sitting too near the back when he realised that some of the other kids had developed a habit of fingering out the insides of their noses and depositing the contents onto his head.
Sam couldn’t quite remember when his lessons first started to be crammed full of information about Germany and the Nazis, but it seemed as if hundreds of strange new words had been conjured up out of thin air and thrust into everyday conversation. The deluge of information had been almost overwhelming at first and he could easily recall the day he saw the faces of the Nazi high command for the first time.
He could remember Hitler because of his strange, cheap-l
ooking moustache that looked more like a gap at the top of his lip than something that had actually grown there. Hitler also looked incredibly angry in every picture that he appeared in, something that reminded Sam of the school headmaster.
Sam reckoned that Goering could be spotted from a mile away, simply because he was quite possibly the ugliest human being that he had ever set eyes upon. He had the sort of face that belonged to a villain in a fairy tale, a villain that crept into houses at night to steal the children as they slept. Goering actually reminded Sam of a strange old man that lived a couple of streets away that he always tried to steer clear of. His mother told him that the man’s wife had died a few years back, yet all Sam knew was that the man smelled funny and had that weird old person’s look about him.
A while back Sam had been in the local bakery with his mother and this same old man had been in the queue in front of them. Sam spent most of the time burying his face into his sleeve or his hand to hide the old man’s smell, completely ignoring his mother’s requests for him to behave himself. The old man had turned around, smiled down at him and said “The young boy is just bored and restless. Here, have this as a treat,” before handing a doughnut to Sam.
Ordinarily Sam would have devoured it eagerly, but he just stood there staring at it as if it was something from outer space. The old man’s hand was shaking and it was a wrinkly, hairy, gnarled monstrosity that made even the most desirable things look old, haggard, and ugly.
“Go on Sam, say thank you to the nice man,” his mother said, giving him a small nudge.
Sam took hold of the doughnut and garbled out a weak thank you, almost screaming when the man patted him on the head and said goodbye. Despite the long walk, Sam was still holding the doughnut when they got back home. He had kept his hand down by his side the entire time, hoping that the old man’s gift would somehow disappear of its own accord if he didn’t look at it, not daring to drop it in case he incurred his mother’s wrath. He sat down at the kitchen table and did his best to ignore his mother’s smile as she fetched him a plate. Sam had no intention of putting it anywhere near his mouth and when her back was turned he dropped the doughnut silently into the bin, washed his hands and put the plate back into the cupboard. His covert little operation over, he realised that he had been holding his breath and he let it all out in a gasp.
Chapter 3
The booming sound of anti-aircraft guns started to ring out somewhere above them, a sound that gave Sam a morsel of reassurance and comfort not because he thought that the guns would protect them, but because listening to the constant noise broke the monotony of sitting in the shelter all night.
“That’s the sound of British might, right there,” claimed his father, “you’ll see, we’ll beat the Germans back. Just like the last time.”
Sam was broken out of his day dreaming and when he looked over at his father again, his face didn’t look so threatening any more. There had been little conviction in his voice and Sam’s mother just rolled her eyes dismissively, though neither Sam nor his mother said anything as there simply wasn’t any point. Sam didn’t talk very much at all with his dad these days, not even about school; when nearly every comment or conversation resulted in some kind of a telling off, it was easier to just sit there and say nothing at all.
It hadn’t always been like that but over the course of the past few years his father had changed, and it was rare to ever see him smile or to hear him laugh. At one time his father was always taking him to the park, to the zoo or even the circus if it was in town. In years gone by every time Christmas or Sam’s birthday rolled around, his father would be busy making him a new toy or some other wonderful surprise, but Sam struggled to remember the last time that actually happened. Back then, his father took great pride in building furniture, decorating the house, and working in the garden yet that desire and work ethic seemed to have left him.
When the shelter was being built, Sam didn’t really think his father put a great deal of effort into its construction - compared to the other types of shelter he had seen it just didn’t seem to offer much protection. He had actually watched it being built from scratch, sometimes from his bedroom window and sometimes as he played outside in the garden, and there had been something about his father’s body language that just didn’t seem right. He looked tired and worn out all the time, leading Sam to wonder if the shelter had been dug deep enough and whether the roof would survive a direct hit.
Sam suspected that his mother shared these same doubts, never failing to notice her nervous glances up at the ceiling each time they were down here. His father either sat in silence or talked about how many German planes were going to be shot down by the guns, yet never bothered to reassure them that they would be safe down in the shelter. Sam took that as a bad sign and he presumed his mother did too.
There was practically nothing to do during these air-raids except sit and wait it out. Occasionally they played cards but most of the time they just sat there anxiously waiting for the haunting wail of the all-clear siren. So far their street had been lucky and hadn’t been hit, but you didn’t have to go far to see how badly the less fortunate had suffered. At least two local families had been buried alive down in their cellars, either because they were unwilling to build a shelter or because they just didn’t think they would need one. Some of the seats in his class at school had become conspicuously empty.
“Sam? I hear that there’s a new person starting at your school soon. He might be in your class actually, a chance for you to make a new friend again,” it was his mother who spoke this time and she sat up straight. Although her voice was hopeful her face looked sad in the semi-darkness and Sam’s father let out a perfectly cynical grunt.
Make a friend? Really? Sam could barely imagine how such a thing could happen again.
Friend.
Sam just looked at the floor again.
Chapter 4
Sam had only ever had one proper friend before. A year or so ago, a family had moved into the area and they had a young son and two older daughters. Sam didn’t know much about the two girls but the boy had been put into the year below him at school. The boy had a disfigured face to the extent that he didn’t really have an upper lip. His mother had said it was a condition known as a cleft palate or something but Sam could never really remember or pronounce it properly.
He first met the boy one Tuesday afternoon at the back of the school. Sam had heard some commotion from round the corner and when he went to investigate, he was stunned and outraged with what he saw. The new boy was lying face-down on the ground with two other kids sitting on top of him whilst a third kid was trying to force a lump of dog excrement into his mouth.
“Come on you freak, eat the nice sausage!” the bully shouted at the new boy, “Why don’t you want it?”
The three kids hadn’t noticed Sam, so when he clenched his fists and screamed at them they were taken completely by surprise. Although these boys outnumbered him Sam was in the year above them and his howling rage sent them into a panic that startled their bullying minds into falling over each other in their haste to get away.
Pretty much from that day onwards the two of them became firm friends. Sam didn’t really say much to the new boy on that first day, if only because he was still in shock himself and didn’t really know what to say, but it wasn’t long before they were spending every free moment together. Sam didn’t really care about the boy’s disfigurement and it was something he barely noticed after a couple of weeks - he was just glad to finally find someone he could have some fun with and he was thrilled when he discovered how close they lived to each other.
Both sets of parents were equally relieved at their sons finally finding a friend and they encouraged it as best as they could. They would pack them picnic lunches to eat over the park or the local woods and the two boys would even write letters and mail stories to each other. During the summer they would often camp out in a secret den they made in the woo
ds and invent ghost stories to scare each other with round a campfire. Nothing, it seemed, could separate them.
One cold day in November, his friend went home early from school with a headache and Sam popped round after school to see if he was okay. Although he was a bit groggy and tired, there seemed to be no cause for alarm and two days later the boy was back at school as normal.
A week later, Sam’s friend collapsed during assembly. The two of them were giving a short talk on the local wildlife, a project that they had been working together on for weeks. They were standing up in front of half the school, going through everything that they had rehearsed, when the boy just stopped mid-sentence and Sam looked round in despair to see his friend lying motionless on the floor. The school nurse was alerted but she was unable to revive him with either cold water, smelling salts, or soothing words of encouragement. An ambulance was called and Sam watched on helplessly as his friend was stretchered into the back, flinching as the rear doors were slammed shut. The ambulance drove off and Sam remained there for a while, just staring off into the distance wishing that he could rescue his friend once more.
Sam barely ate a thing at dinner that night and he struggled to get to any sleep. Two days later he was allowed to go to the hospital during visiting hours, but his friend wasn’t awake. The boy’s parents and two sisters were there, but he didn’t really have much to say to any of them and within an hour Sam asked his mother to take him back home again.
A week or so went by with no further news but one Friday Sam came home from school to find his mother crying at the kitchen table. It wasn’t long before Sam was also in tears as his mother told him the devastating news: his friend had slipped into a coma and died.
The funeral was held a week later and Sam and his family were invited to attend. He barely heard anything that the minister said, instead just staring at the coffin as it was lowered slowly into the ground. The words ‘ashes to ashes, dust to dust’ set him off on another round of tears and there were hugs from both of the sisters once the service had finished. They told Sam that he was the only friend that their brother had ever had and that they had heard how Sam had rescued him from those three bullies. Sam briefly swelled with pride at the memory but the feeling soon abated and his eyes were full of tears again.