OK, here’s a question for you.
You’re delivering newspapers door to door, and you come across a box of strange masks on someone’s doorstep. Do you:
I’m guessing, and hoping, your answer will be a) or b). I’d like to think I’m a b), but if I’m honest – because I’m honest – it’s probably a).
Definitely not c).
But then, I’m not Macca.
Grandpa Byron is first to run towards the scream, and Pye and I follow him. In the middle of the sitting room, little Hypatia is standing rigid, staring out the window, a tiny puddle of wee darkening the carpet at her feet. She turns to her dad and buries her face in his legs.
“What is it? What is it, Hypie? Are you OK?” he asks, but she just points behind her out of the window. With a jerk of his head, Grandpa Byron indicates to Pye and me to go and check outside.
Opening the front door, we can’t see anything, there’s just noth—
“RAAAAAAAAGH!” A hideous figure leaps up in front of us from behind a bush, causing us both to yell and jump back.
The mask is truly gross: an ugly head in blue and gold and red and white, with big jagged teeth, a long red tongue, and tiny skulls around the edge. And then the mask is lowered and Macca reveals himself, cackling cruelly.
“Ha! It’s the boyfriends! I didn’t knaa ye lived here, man, Chow! Eeh, you should’ve seen your faces. You looked like you were gonna wet yerselves!”
“Well, I think you should be very proud of yourself,” says Grandpa Byron who has appeared, bare-chested, in the doorway, still wearing his gold pyjama bottoms. “You’ve managed to achieve that with a five-year-old girl.” His voice is completely calm, but there’s an icy look in his eyes. “So well done, son. Do you feel big, now?”
If this were you or me, or anyone normal in fact, then we’d be really embarrassed and stammer out some sort of apology. But this is Macca, who straightens his back and tilts his head to one side, looking defiantly at Grandpa Byron with his little bulging eyes, who is waiting for him to say something. Behind Grandpa Byron, in the window, little Hypatia’s face is pressed against the glass, her big, scared eyes still wet.
“Well?”
Macca says nothing. Grandpa Byron turns to us. “Do you know this joker, Pye? Is he a friend of yours?”
Before Pye can answer, Macca chips in with a friendly note in his voice, “Oh, aye. We’re good mates, aren’t we, Chow? Pye? We’re—”
“I wasn’t asking you. Pye?”
Pye’s eyes dart from me, to his dad, to Macca. Macca’s eyes narrow as they meet Pye’s and his nostrils flare.
“Is he a friend of yours, Pye?”
Almost inaudibly, Pye mutters, “Yeah.”
You know what? I think I’d have done the same. Self-preservation and all that. I think no less of Pye.
“All right then. Give me back the mask, say sorry and bugger off.”
I don’t think I have ever heard anyone say sorry and mean it less. Holding Grandpa Byron’s gaze with his own hooded eyes, Macca delivers a clipped, “Sorry,” as he hands over the mask, then turns sharply, gathering up his bag of newspapers from the driveway and stalking past us.
As he does so, he throws a glance at us and it’s what he does next that sends a chill down my neck.
He winks, and there’s a half-smirk on his lips.