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Page 12
Chapter 1: Bobby
"Every house a den. every man bound; the shadows are filld
With Spectres, and the windows wove over with curses of iron;
Over the doors Thou shalt not; & over the chimneys Fear is written..."
William Blake, Europe: A Prophecy
Page 13
Panel 1
Dawn clucked its tongue.
The boy's mother watched the mist mould itself around the shadows, sly as morning
in whiskers and tails, and a premonition of rain
hung grimly from the corners of her mouth.
Panel 2
When the boy appeared he was late;
she saw with approval that he was
already in his uniform.
He clutched
his satchel nervously.
Panel 3
Her son; he was spectre-pale and silent.
Recently she had
heard him,
she thought,
moving around the house after dark.
Every morning after he had
gone for school she found his bedclothes knotted in a pattern
of violence,
the tracks of a sleep
tangled by violence.
Panel 5
She detected on him the faint, conspiratorial scent of illness.
Panel 6
The boy's mother tied a plastic shopping bag over each of his shoes, and instructed him not to untie them until the bell had told him so.
Panel 7
She eyed her son as a general eyes terrain.
Panel 8
She thought of
coughs
colds;
poison in the blood,
the hollow heart
beating fibres of blood;
of the fragile hull
propelled through the flood,
driven by this fragile
engine:
her son.
She thrust two more bags, folded neatly, into his hands, and made him promise to wear them
on the walk home.
Panel 8
The boy's name was Bobby.
He was
seven years old.
Page 14
Panel 1
Afew weeks ago, at school,
a girl whose name dapple-dazzled in his head
Sophie?
Daisy?
gave him his first kiss.
Panels 2-7
She swept in, grazed his cheek lightly with lips—was gone:
a sudden giggling visitation
a touch
a peck
before she swept away
and, giggling still,
was gone.
Panel 8
He passed through the moment like sleeper through sleep
lit with strange colours.
Panels 9-10
A dream: a report of his mind,
made to itself,
of a thing
it had not witnessed.
Panels 12-14
Nevertheless,
the thought of her touch on his
cheek lifted him
like a hawk hunting
whenever it came
to him.
Page 15
Panel 1
That evening, leaving dinner half-eaten, Bobby crept out onto the doorstep, gripping a thick sheaf of paper and a pencil.
Trembling,
in small, furtive darts,
he touched the blank whiteness
of the first page.
Panel 2
His brow furrowed.
He turned the paper this way and that.
It wasn't right.
Panel 3
He began again.
Panel 4
Several times this happened;
soon, he stabbed at pale skin
with a will worn blunt.
A litter of pages coiled around him.
His heart beat clumsy.
His blood ran thin.
Panels 5-7
Mountain-weary,
at the limits of his endurance,
every attempt upon the summit
beaten back
by sheer
lubricous
whiteness.
Panel 8
The girl.
Sophie?
Daisy?
He was trying to capture her, set her down in clear
leaden lines.
The pencil
whirred and trembled.
Panel 9
He found all of a sudden
that he had run out of paper.
He attacked the old pages,
trying to restore them to their pristine,
untouched state.
But they wouldn't rub clean.
Panel 10
They left grey ghosts
behind them, haunting
the rough,
ineradicable trenches
he had ploughed
into the paper.
Panel 11
Bobby drew and rubbed and drew and rubbed,
until every page was murky with clouds of graphite,
until the rubber had ground down to a paper-slicing stub,
and the sky above had darkened to a deep violet,
unseen behind its permanent screen of grey.
Page 16
Panel 1
He was in love with her.
Panel 2
Daisy.
Sophie.
Panel 3
Longingly, achingly in love.
Panels 4-9
He wanted to crystallise her,
to render her
in clear leaden lines;
her portrait a glyph
by which to work magic;
to draw her out,
to bring her to him;
for every stroke of the pencil pulsed:
a body is to its shadow drawn
as beauty is
to beauty.
Panels 10-17
But the vision dribbled like wax
as it ran down hand
to paper:
the memory,
upon which his imagination's lens
focussed brightburning desire,
dissolved into messes.
Page 17
Panel 1
A wind sprang up;
it uplled at the sheet
that remained in Bobby's hand.
Page 18
Panel 1
Later that night,
standing beside the bathtub,
Bobby saw something.
Panels 2-3
He was watching
the drops of water
falling
through the plughole
into the pipes when
suddenly
he saw,
looking
back up at him,
the shining
of flat fishy eyes.
Panel 4-5
In an instant
he pictured
the troughs
and cisterns
and tanks,
all the enormous spaces
below him,
crowded
with the
mute complaint
of gills.
Page 19
[Silent]
Page 20
Panel 1
It was upon that very instant
that something moved inside Bobby.
Panels 2-3
A seed tremored beneath the earth,
preparing to unfurl,
upwards
outwards
to break the surface
of the soil
and spread out
into the sun
Panel 4
It had detected
somewhere far above it
the coming of its season
Panel 5
Bobby, however, did not feel it.
He dressed himself and went
to bed as he always did.
But beneath
the skin of his routine
swam a profound loneliness.
Panel 6
That night, a few weeks ago, Bobby had three dreams,
one after the other.
Page 21
[Silent]