Free The Gospel of Us by Owen Sheers

to stay put while I went to have a look, then went to the bathroom at the end of the corridor. Opening the window I looked down, and there he was. The Teacher, crouched on the grass, shouting and screaming.
    A bunch of boys on bikes were cycling round and round him. Just kids they were, we all know them, annoying little shits causing trouble then wheelin’ off. But nothing serious, nothing to shout about like he was doing down there. But shout he did. Again and again, cowering away from them as if they weren’t kids at all, but demons.
    I reckon he must have freaked them out in the end, because pretty soon they scarpered, leaving him alone whimpering on the grass. I looked to the head of the close. The club was just there, on the other side of the street. I could make out a bunch ofpeople on the bench of the bus stop outside its car park. It was his followers. I could make out Alfie’s bright jumper, and the Legion Twins, leaning against each other like one man leaning against a mirror. They were asleep, all of them. Nothing unusual in that. All of us have dozed off after a big night, haven’t we? At the bus stop, in the train station. But the fact they hadn’t been woken by the Teacher’s shouting, well, that was weird.
    I decided I’d go and wake them up. Tell them their man was having a bad trip or something. So I went and told my girl just that; that I’d be back in soon enough, but I had to go and sort out this bloke first, crouched on his own in the middle of the close. When I got out there though, he wasn’t on his own. Old Growler was with him.
    At least, I think it was Old Growler. It was hard to say. The close was dark and whoever the Teacher was talking to was wearing one of those Security gas masks. Only even that was different. The nose of it was longer, more like a snout. Like the snout of an animal. But the way the man stood, the way he didthat little parade back and forth, the way he stabbed his finger in the air like his boss; all that made me think this was Growler, or at least some kind of a bad dream of him.
    I couldn’t hear what they were saying. The Teacher had stopped shouting now, and if he was speaking at all then it must have been softly. Bending double, I edged nearer, parking myself up behind one of the neighbour’s garden hedges. I got there just in time to hear the end of their conversation.
    ‘Tell me your story,’ the Teacher said. Just as he’d said to everyone he’d met these past two days. ‘Tell me your story.’
    Silence. Just the sounds of the close sleeping, the tick of hallway clocks, the creak of a bedspring turning. I wanted to look, but didn’t dare. I pressed my ear right into the hedge, straining to hear. And then, finally, he spoke.
    ‘I have no story,’ Growler said. ‘I am.’
    When I plucked up the courage to look over that hedge the Teacher was on his own again. Or was he? Again, it was hard to tell. There was no one else inthe close now, but he was still talking. Looking up at one of the windows, talking, saying, ‘I don’t want to come in. I want to stay out here. I want to stay here.’
    Then, all of a sudden he was down on his haunches again, his arms outstretched as if open to a child running towards him.
    ‘Here you are!’ he said as he stood up, throwing his arms in the air, catching a weight of nothing a moment later. ‘Let’s get you dry is it?’
    I edged closer. He was on his knees, smiling, rubbing at the air with both hands. I followed the shape of them, the shape his hands made in the night and I saw it was a little girl. He was drying a little girl.
    And then he wasn’t.
    Standing up again he turned to the head of the close. He’d seen someone else. Someone walking towards him, slow and steady. I could see his face clearly now, the one streetlamp catching his eyes. They were wet, filling with tears. Whoever was coming towards him must have been beautiful. I mean really beautiful. Because that’s what his eyessaid, that’s what his