Chapter One - Wenher
Oliver felt drowsy as he looked out of the classroom window, eying the gently whispering leaves falling from the tall sycamore tree which was standing in the centre of his view. Behind it was the school oval, a shrunken, passive, dreary looking thing, which had the shape which resembled something which a four-year-old could have scribbled, the grass spattered across it in blotches revealing the ugly grey soil underneath. The tree stood on a small hill, where a few rotting benches had been placed, old and unused and altogether uninviting. The rest of the hill was covered in paving, decorated by some of the art students in the school, although Oliver felt he couldn’t exactly call the unidentifiable shapes “art” at all. In fact the so-called “art” helped with the worn down appearance of the yard, as if at first the decorations were meant to excuse all the other shabbiness except had failed miserably.
Although it wasn’t a particularly pleasant sight, he found it far more interesting than the teachings of world politics, the drone of Mr. Warshuk now merely a buzz in Oliver’s ears. However, without his teacher’s insanely tedious voice drilling through his skull, he was able to relax, finally and escape the bothersome reality of education. But before he could dwell on his freedom, a sharp pain woke him from his pleasant state of dreaminess, and he wore a look of alarmed surprise on his face when he realised where he was and what was happening. Mr. Warshuk glowered at him through the terrible caterpillars which he had for eyebrows, and when Oliver looked down on his desk, he saw it was a piece of chalk which had hit him so suddenly on the head. He gaped dumbly as he searched for something to say, but Mr. Warshuk managed to open his quivering lip before him, not lowering his piercingly hot gaze.
‘Seven times! Seven times Mr. Bennitt!” His eyes bulged as he uttered his student’s name, spitting it so angrily that the pupils in the front row had to shield their faces from the rain of saliva. “Seven times I have had to stop this class for your – your—your impudence!” His face was flushed red and he clenched his podgy fingers into balls as a he spoke. “You’re not going to learn anything from staring at the clouds all day! And if you think you can pass by drawing these—these—” He had now stormed up to Oliver’s desk, and was ripping up the pages which had been filled with Oliver’s drawings, mostly scribbles of random shapes and odd deformed lines “—these abominations!” Oliver’s expression had changed into one of pained shock. “Stupid! Stupid! Stupid I say! I’ve had enough I tell you! Enough of this nonsense. You have no respect! No respect for the teachers! No respect for my subject! And no respect for your fellow students!”
“But I’m not distracting any—”
“What rubbish! I can’t stand putting up with your claptrap any longer! I’ll make sure you’re gone from my classroom! From my subject!” If Oliver hadn’t been so alarmed by Mr. Warshuk’s sudden fury, he would have otherwise compared him to a toad at this moment, with his face scrunched in such an odd manner. “Gather your things.”
Oliver sat glued to the spot. He was hardly listening, only trying to comprehend why he had received such a hot shouting. However Mr. Warshuk did not take this well, another fit of rage boiling inside of his. “I SAID PACK YOUR THINGS!!” Oliver jumped a little in fright before slipping his torn notepad into his bag along with his neglected world politics book and hurried out of the classroom, just glad to escape Mr. Warshuk’s wrath.
He wandered down the stairs, his fly-away blonde hair hanging over his thin pale face in a fringe, covering his eyes deliberately. He looked lonely in the empty school halls, and although the scene of the mouldy cracked building walls was not a favourite sight of his, he preferred it than to the bustling confusion of people at the lunch and recess breaks. His footsteps echoed slightly as he slowly made his way to the deputy’s office, a small weedy looking room with a broken sign saying “Mrs. Yues”, where everybody was sent, or at least expected to go when in trouble, a place which had become Oliver’s second home. He tossed his bag in front of the door and entered, not particularly worried whether the deputy was in or not. This time she was – a middle-aged, tired looking woman an appropriate look compared with the appearance of the school.
She glanced up unpassionately at Oliver, as if she had been expecting him, and then looked down again, continuing to scribble on some papers.
“Which teacher was it this time?” she asked monotonously.
“Mr. Warshuk,” replied Oliver, taking the seat in front of the woman’s desk. “Oh, he’s a world politics teacher,” he added before she had to ask.
“Right,” she said, without looking up. There were a few moments of silence until she finally finished her writing and sat up, leaning an elbow on the desk.
“Do you want to know what happened or what?” wondered Oliver indifferently.
“No. I can guess,” she replied fixing Oliver with an irritated gaze.
“Detention then?” Oliver asked. He hoped it was so. Since he had first been put in detention he had realised that all it consisted of was ten minutes of free time in the computer labs after-school and had quickly come to enjoy the sessions which he regularly received.
“Don’t say it so lightly,” Mrs. Yues answered him. She didn’t pretend to sound upset about it. The effort of appearing cross at him had worn away after his daily visits. “And no, detention gives you too much joy for a punishment.”
Oliver sank in his seat.
“Suspension, for a week,” she said.
Oliver’s heart jumped as she said this. Pleasure dripped over him like treacle as he thought of all the school-less days.
“However,” Mrs. Yues continued, “you will finish school today as usual – in the classes which you haven’t been kicked out of.”
Again Oliver slumped against the chair at these words.
“Honestly, Oliver,” she sighed looking at him with sudden concern. “Why are you throwing your career down the drain? You have the lowest marks out of everybody in your classes, and every time I try to do something for you, you give me this!”
“I can’t help it—”
“I don’t know what you think you’re doing. Perhaps you find the classes to hard? I’ll put you in lower classes if you’d like…”
“I’m already in the lowest classes,” he said matter-of-factly.
The woman put her hands to her face. “I don’t know what is going on with you, Oliver, but you have either got to pull yourself together somehow or I’ll have no choice but to expel you.”
Oliver nodded, shifting uncomfortably in the chair.
Again Mrs. Yues sighed and picked up her pen, reluctantly starting to scribble once more. Oliver saw that he was dismissed.
“This period isn’t over yet,” he said, “and I can’t go back to world politics.”
“Take a bucket and tongs and clean the yard,” she replied, obviously too absorbed in her paperwork to supervise him. Shrugging he exited the messy office, taking a bucket off the top of a pile which stood near the outside of the office, and some tongs which lay next to them. He left his bag in the same place, but before starting, he took his old tattered grey beanie out of his bag and wrestled it onto his head.
The beanie was one of the few things he treasured, a present which had been given to him at just two years old. It had been given for insulation purposes because of the constant illnesses which had possessed him as a child, his immune system a miserable disappointment, often worrying his family whether he would even survive infanthood. However, on his third birthday, a terrible fever had shook him, so his grandparents had said, where nobody, not even his ever-supporting had expected him to live through. The fever had brought Oliver and his family three days of terror, on the third evening leaving him at death’s door and his parents at absolute despair but that night it was said that the fever had been suddenly overcome and that Oliver, by himself, escaped death’s determined clutches and slept soundly through to the next day. And no illnesses had ever touched him again.
The story which his grandparents had relayed to him though, was as much a tale of fact as snow-white to Oliver, and the only reason he held the beanie in such high thought was because it had been from his parents. As Oliver slipped the beanie on, he thought of them, replaying the few memories he had of them, over in his head. His parents had died a year after Oliver’s miraculous recovery from disease. It had been on a vacation to a small island in the Pacific, to visit Oliver’s uncle, a bloated imp of a man, with a cheerful disposition and a generous heart. They had stayed in his shack-like wooden house, where they had slept on the floor through the hot sweating nights, enjoying the closeness of the white sandy beaches and the shimmering transparent ocean. But choosing to be so near the water had proved to be their doom, as a freak storm had struck the island causing a tsunami which had wiped out half the village. Both Oliver’s parents and his uncle had been washed away, their bodies never recovered. Oliver had survived only because of a heroic resident who had fished him out of the water with a pole to higher ground. Nevertheless, the memory of the vacation had mostly escaped Oliver, apart from the abstract few of the rush of dirty water, and the horrifying thought of drowning which had spurred nightmares ever since.
He started to pick up the litter which scattered the cracked mossy pavement, feeling for some reason at peace as the thoughts of his parents fluttered through his mind. The events of their death did not surface in his thoughts – they scarcely did, and on those occasions, they only lasted for a few seconds until he forgot them again, in his absentness. What seemed like seconds passed and the bell rang for lunch break. He enjoyed picking up rubbish, exceedingly more than he enjoyed participating in school. He thought glumly of the next class he had to attend and how long an hour suddenly seemed. School had never given him joy. Even since pre-primary, the start of it all, he never liked joining the activities of sing-song or games. The only thing which perhaps gave him a little satisfaction was art. But that soon dissipated as soon as his teachers insisted that he drew what they taught him. Because he had no interest in what most other children had in primary school, he grew up detached from them, developing an icy and what seemed an impenetrable shell around him, protecting him from the wrath of any bullies, but also from the warmth of any friends. To heal him of his loneliness, he drew things, things which only he would be able to recognise and decipher, which, to other people would seem like indistinguishable lines and squiggles. Once, when he had been very little, in kindergarten, he had attempted to draw something comprehensible for his teacher, a young woman in her early-twenties who had cared for Oliver like a son, who had a particular fancy for Egyptian artefacts, something she had reminded her class over and over with her constantly renewed stash of photographs of the view of Egypt. He had scribbled the picture quickly in the art session in pen, and after half an hour, he showed it to her – a replica of one of her photographs drawn perfectly down to the smallest detail. As far as she could tell Oliver had made no mistakes while drawing it, as it had been drawn in ink and any mistakes would have been obvious. At first Oliver had grinned at her evident shock when she was the paper, but as her eyes had moved onto Oliver, he had felt the raw expression cold and frightening and had soon withdrawn, crying. After that, he had only draw to his own style, refusing to acknowledge any other form of art.
Oliver sighed as he slipped on his bag, the load of disused books feeling uncomfortably heavy against his back as he watched students dispatch like uniformed ants from their various classrooms. He weaved his way down the hall and turned left to the library, where he removed his bag and took out his sketchpad and pen woefully, the difficulties which had been recently presented still fresh in his head.
He entered the library, passing the decaying shelves holding shoddy second-hand books and seated himself at a table. The librarian, who was an odd bespectacled man with a hunch and an awkward posture, did not greet him, barely seeming to notice Oliver coming into the library, eyes glued to the screen of his laptop. This suited Oliver fine, as he felt greetings were awkward and unnecessary, and so he was able to draw in peace. He drew a picture of freedom, of himself under a tree on a hill overlooking his school, birds seated on his shoulder, animals scurrying around his feet. He drew himself with a content expression, an expression of comfort and bliss, an expression which he had never seemed to be able to wear. To others the picture would have revealed a blur of meaninglessness, but to him, it was as clear as glass. He worries seemed to dissolve into the picture and when he finished he looked back on it, dazed, as though no misfortune had ever disturbed him in his life. He flipped the pad and closed his eyes imagining what he was to draw next. For some strange reason no ideas reached him and for a long minute he sat as clueless as he was in the classrooms. Suddenly a feeling unknown to him overthrew his body and his left hand snatched the pen from his writing hand and began to scribble furiously, without thought. The overwhelming power gripped his body as he drew and his grey eyes glazed over, he became unaware of what he was doing, and his head seemed to droop, but his mind whirred with activity, more alive than ever. Five minutes passed and his left hand threw down the pencil and his eyes were de-glazed, woken from the trance-like state to see a new drawing, perfectly inked with intricacy foreign to his own.
Staring speechless at this new wonder, he looked around wondering whether any prankster drawn this masterpiece mistaking it for someone else’s. Nobody else was in the library, for good reason, as it stunk of rotting paper and carried an uncomfortable silence. He studied the masterpiece with artistic eyes, awed at the detail and realism. The drawing was of a stone carved of a goblin-like creature which bore a row of wickedly sharp teeth and stared through huge malevolent bejewelled eyes. The drawing had managed to withhold the creature’s stare of malice, though had also retained the sparkle of the gemmed eyes. Again a feeling stole him, which was unfamiliar; a ravenous desire to search out the mysterious object as if it’s the drawing communicated a power which drew him.
“Wenher,” he found himself muttering. That was its name, he thought wondrously; Wenher. But he could understand how he had known. All he recognized when looking at the drawing was the pressing sense of importance. At once he stood up, face twisted with determination. The librarian glanced up in bored surprise. Oliver needed to quench this dreadful desperation which gnawed at him. Somehow, no matter the hindrance, he was going to find it.
Chapter Two ---->