The Adventures of Locksley & Harper

Chapter 3: Scales

The alarm that woke Neal sounded like someone had let a Jack Russell loose inside a grand piano and broadcast the results through a megaphone. He lunged for his phone's off switch, and experienced a sensation as though his head were being simultaneously run through a mangle and shaken vigorously. For a brief moment, the contents of his stomach made a bid for escape, but he took a few huge deep breaths, and the feeling passed. His heart was pounding so hard that he thought he could feel the blood being pumped around his body. It was 8am, and Neal could smell himself.

'Ohh no... Oh no. Ok. Ugh.' There was half a glass of lukewarm water on the bedside table, and he gulped it down too quickly. A fresh wave of nausea swept through him.

He staggered out of bed and reached for his phone. There were three messages, all from Bez:

(06:30) Mate, let me know you got home last night? I didn't think you were that bad but I wake up and you've sent me like 7 pictures of a wall.

(06:33) Not to say I don't like them. They suggest the dawn of an interesting new period in your photographic career. Maybe you could do a series. There's a nice brick one on my road.

(06:37) If you're really struggling, make yourself a quick bloody Mary and crack an egg in it. Knock it back then have a cold shower. It's brutal, but it works.

The thought of drinking a raw egg, no matter how well camouflaged it might be by vodka and Worcester sauce, made Neal's head reel. It was one of the great injustices of life that Bez appeared to dodge the worst of alcohol's after effects. He had an irritating ability to pop out of bed at first light, and would wake other people up with offers of coffee and bacon sandwiches, trying to cajole them out of the house for walks. Neal, for whom hangovers were protracted affairs almost poetic in their awfulness, preferred to bury himself in his bed and dream of death.

Today, however, death was not an available option. Neal flicked back through the photos that he had taken the previous night. Seven photos of a grey, urine-stained concrete wall, with some bins propped up against it. There was nothing to suggest that someone had just taken a flying leap straight through it and into - what? And that flash of blue light was nowhere to be seen...

With a start, Neal remembered what was in his coat pocket. He grabbed his jeans off the floor and stumbled into them, pulling on a clean t-shirt as he hurried out of his room. From downstairs, he could hear Radio 4 playing softly, and the sound of the kettle coming to the boil. He ran downstairs, momentarily forgetting how sick he felt in his eagerness to wrap his hands around that strange, inexplicable object. His coat was on the hook, but to his horror both pockets were empty; where had it gone?

Stomach growling ominously, he headed into the kitchen, where his mother sat at the table, working her way methodically through the cryptic crossword. She sipped her coffee (black, heaped with sugar), and looked him up and down.

'And how are you feeling this morning?' The corner of her mouth was twitching, trying not to reveal the smile hiding there.

'Um. Terrible, actually. Quite possible I will cry in the shower, terrible.'

'You never learn. There's more coffee if you like.'

Neal poured himself out a cup and stuck two slices of thick white bread in the toaster, sitting down at the kitchen table and eying the newspaper supplements without reading them. He picked up the 'what's on' section, which was propped against the fruit bowl, and let out a little yelp: behind it was the knotted white ball. His mother frowned at him.

'Oh, yes, I meant to ask you - what on earth is that? You left it on the stairs last night, your sister nearly tripped over it when she came down this morning.'

His mother's question took a moment to permeate the fog of hangover that surrounded him. Neal blinked.

'This? It's, er, well, it's Bez's. He left it in the shop yesterday and I meant to give it to him in the pub. Must have forgotten.'

'Such an odd boy,' Neal's mother said, and the smile at the corner of her mouth spread. 'So, come on, what is it then?'

Neal turned it over in his hands. In daylight he noticed a detail that had eluded him last night. The rope-like cords that wrapped in on themselves were intricately lined - carved? - with what looked like hundreds of tiny scales. He shrugged.

'I have absolutely no idea.'

*