The Demon Boy

Day One - Morning

     A carriage clatters onwards to 'a new beginning'. That's what the toff calls it; he keeps saying it throughout the ride. He said it when he and his "ass-so-see-ates" came to the workhouse to sort the children out. He said it when the boys got carted off to the boy's home, Saint Markus. When the home got too full, he said it at Saint Barthelemy, and again at Saint Andrews.

     People call them "homes", but they weren't. Not really. They were another place to stay until you got shipped off again. And some boys did get shipped off. Literally. Girls too. Off to unheard-of distant relatives. Off to the countryside. Off to the colonies. Off to places where nobody cared. Places where you were out of people's hair. Places where you were forgotten.

     Every time the boys were dumped off at Saint this and Saint that, they numbered fewer and fewer. Some were taken away, hopefully to that promised new beginning. Others died, be it sickness, accident, or crime. A few became men during their stay. They found work and left or were kicked into the streets to bum on street corners. These are the lucky ones.

     As for this boy in the carriage with the toff intoning promises he can't possibly keep... Well, he's alive and lived this long to be sure. Now he too is being carted off to that 'new beginning' that keeps getting talked about.

     This is the fate of the former workhouse children.

     'A new beginning.'

     The boy's heard that one so many times, he's not sure what it means anymore. It's just words at this point. Most things toffs say are. Toffs like to say stuff. They like to say lots of stuff. It keeps them happy, talking. It keeps them from feeling too guilty about the beggars dying of hunger right across the street from their big, old dinner tables in their big, old houses.

     As far as the boy is concerned, this toff can talk all he wants. It's not like there's much else to do but listen, and talk, and look out the tiny carriage windows. Watching the world go by.

     But the toff doesn't talk. Not anymore. He ran out of words a little past halfway through the early morning train ride. He might have more if the boy spoke, but the boy didn't. So, the toff doesn't.

     It's not the boy's place to speak. Not with adults, and certainly not with toffs. It's his place to listen, but never speak. The streets taught him that. Then the workhouse. Then the homes that weren't homes. And before all that, before the long hours, empty bellies, and cold, crowded rooms, maybe there was family. Maybe.

     The memory is vague and shapeless. Trying to grasp it is like clutching smoke. It slips between desperate fingers and disappears.

     The boy sighs.

     The toff takes it as an opportunity (an excuse) to reassure the boy (himself) with the sound of his voice. His mouth opens easily. The problem is nothing comes out. Nothing new anyway. It's the same old stuff: weather, lovely morning, country air...

     New beginnings.

     Guess how many times he's said that. It's more than ten, the boy can tell you. He doesn't speak though. Not a peep. Not now. Not yet. It's not his place and he knows it, so he lets the toff speak. And he watches the world outside clatter past a tiny window.

     The toff doesn't do quiet. A city gent like him? Give him silence, real silence, not the muffled din that passes for peace and quiet in the city, and he will fall apart. He's been fidgeting the entire time he's been in the carriage. At least on the train he could talk to the other gents. Here there's only the boy.

     To be sure, there's also the carriage driver; horses don't drive themselves you know. But that would be talking below his station. More relevantly, the driver is an old, deaf man who hasn't heard a thing in five years. Not much for conversation. Never hears the toff when he bangs on the wall behind him to ask how much longer the ride is going to take. (That's the third time he's asked, counts the boy.)

     With nothing else to do, the toff coughs and fidgets. He fidgets with his little suitcase, with his little hat. He fidgets in his seat. He tries not to look at the boy. A guilty conscience perhaps? Like with the beggars out on the streets? The boy certainly looks beggared. Such a scrawny thing. He's dressed in the best clothes the home had to give him, but still looks beggared. The clothes don't fit. The shoes are too big. The shirt is too small. Mice nearly ate through the trouser straps. Beggared.

     Then again, everyone looks beggared next to a toff in his shiny, pressed suit.

     Beggared or not, these are the only clothes the boy has. They're good clothes, despite the wear and the size. He's done with less. He's done with rags and less than rags back at the workhouse. What he's wearing have no holes in them and are well mended, which makes them good clothes. The boy will stop wearing them only when he can't wear them any longer, whether it be the size that doesn't fit anymore or because there's nothing left to wear. Worn away to rags and less than rags until there's nothing left.

     The carriage stumbles over another lump or dip or something in the road. Whatever it is, it jolts the carriage badly. The toff braces himself in his seat, feet on the floor, one hand on the ceiling, the other still clamped onto his suitcase. The boy is too small to reach any anchorage and is practically thrown adrift from where he sits. He almost winds up on the floor.

     "BANG, BANG, BANG," goes the toff's fist on the carriage wall. "Is it too much to ask for you to keep your eyes on the bloody road, you old fart? Or are you blind as well as deaf?" Following that comes a fair bit of muttered swearing until the toff remembers the company he's in. He clears his throat and looks away again. At least he has the decency to look embarrassed.

     The boy doesn't care. He knows worse curses, many of which he's used. He still doesn't say anything though. The toff has heard more words coming from the driver than he has from the boy at this point. The quiet is getting to him. His fidgeting is getting to the boy. This is getting ridiculous. Out of turn or not, keeping silence isn't worth this awkwardness.

     And so, he finally speaks.

     "Do you know what he's like?"

     The words don't register right away. Or at all. The toff is too busy burning holes in the wall between him and the driver to notice that the boy is looking at him now.

     It's funny. After six hours of struggling with the boy's presence, the toff finally forgets he's there. Until he looks back, that is. Now it's the toff's turn to nearly fall out of his seat; he starts so badly at the gaze suddenly trained on him. He clears his throat and pretends it never happened, trying to look especially dignified for the occasion. He ruins the effect with the few words that follow.

     "What are you looking at?"

     The boy bites down a laugh and a smile. His face stays carefully blank. He doesn't want trouble. "My uncle. What's he like?"

     "Oh. That." The question is unexpected. "Well, I don't know. I never met him."

     He's a typical toff. He's good at looking good and absolutely nothing else.

     The toff simpers. "Come now, I'm sure your uncle is a perfectly nice man. He agreed to take you on, did he not?"

     "He did?" Hadn't heard that before. Given how the toff reacts, neither did he.

     He sputters and sniffs and eventually comes up with something along the lines of "Of course he'll take you on, he's your uncle for crying out loud." But he's not finished yet. Oh no. He's a toff, remember? Toffs love to talk. "And I'm quite sure that so long as you behave yourself and are a good boy, you will have absolutely nothing to worry about. Furthermore-"

     The boy stops listening. The smudges of distant windmills on the horizon are so much more interesting. And more relevant. Where there's windmills there'll be other buildings close by. Sure enough, grain stores and barns begin to sprout along the roadsides, scattered homesteads hiding just behind. Then those houses aren't so scattered as the carriage passes the farmlands. The buildings stretch up and crowd together the further they go on. The windmills that became farms became a small town.

     Nothing could possibly compare with the crowds and cries of the city, but the gypsy hawkers in the market square certainly try. Looking at the shop fronts and people passing by, the boy becomes nostalgic for home. Not the boy's home at Saint Whichever-it-is, but the city he'd known in one form or another all his life. But this is where the carriage stops. This is home now.