13 Words

Prologue

This story starts when my son, Eric, was 17. He had never spoken a word until then. Not a single word.

Oh, he cried when he was born, and all the usual baby things, but never progressed to speaking. We tried specialists, therapists, psychiatrists and psychologists; in fact, all the 'ists' you can think of. Nothing. Various intelligence and other child behavioural tests were taken; and the Wechsler test was completed annually, because he tested so high - over genius level, and it kept increasing with age. But not a peep out of his mouth.

We tried several schools, which couldn't handle his situation, and then special needs establishments, but still nothing. Don't get me wrong, it wasn't because he couldn't cope, it was because the teachers couldn't keep up or come to terms with the silence. He studied all his waking hours, of which there were many. Finally, we kept him at home. We couldn't teach him of course, he did that himself, but he was more at ease. The only thing we could really do was give him a break, as silly as that sounds. Every day for two or three hours, one or both of us would take him out of the house to meet the world. Shops, people, markets, events; the countryside, occasional day trips to the seaside, the odd theme park - you get the idea: outside knowledge, ground-truthing.

A Day and a Half...

It was on one of these outings that it happened - four youths attacked us. Inexperienced I suspect, because although one of them had a gun, me and my adrenaline managed to kick it out of his hand and push Eric out of the way before getting swamped with punches and kicks. I didn't see what happened: I was down on the ground curled up and protecting my head; but I heard it.

"STOP", a loud wobbly but authoritative voice rang out. A couple of the attackers briefly paused their onslaught by glancing up but were not really phased by it. Then three shots rang out: One, Two, Three, and three youths died on the spot. The fourth froze and was as white as a sheet as he looked straight into the barrel of the gun my son had picked up.

"Go and tell all the bad people in the world to Stop", my son continued; and then he removed the clip and chambered bullet from the pistol like a pro and tossed it into the belly of the immobile mugger where it bounced off and clattered to the floor.

Absolute silence, absolute stillness.

The remaining youth backed up a few steps slowly, turned, and fled. My son came over, knelt, examined me with an experienced eye, took off his T-shirt and ripped it several times. I hadn't realised he was so muscular before now. The worst few cuts were padded and bandaged without a word before the police arrived. This was the beginning of the longest, most unpleasant afternoon, night and morning of my life.

I won't go into many details, just to say there was little I could do to help Eric after they took us away, and the hours of anguish of not being able to do anything counteracted all the doctors' painkillers. Statements and questions and accusations all blurred together in my anxiety over him. The police would say nothing until the next morning, except that he was helping with their enquiries.

Apparently, helping without words, but he drew an absolute bang-to-rights likeness image of the fourth attacker. So good in fact that he was recognised instantly and picked up within an hour.

Mid-morning I was released, so asleep and sore I could hardly walk. My wife gave me a glance and a hug and immediately re-started her own verbal sparring with the police superintendent. And she was being backed up by a lawyer I had seen only as a photograph in the papers: a good one I assumed. The way it was going, I didn't think it would be long before Eric joined us, and it wasn't. Self-defence, released to appear in court blah-blah-blah was all I made out.

Somehow at home, I was in bed and passed out for many hours before being shaken awake by my wife, not gently I felt. Groggily I noticed that it was barely light, but Susan was jabbering incessantly in a stream of words that weren't yet registering.

"He's gone, he's gone, he's gone", eventually filtered through.

"What"? I said sitting up slowly. "Gone"?

"Gone, yes, in the night. He's packed a bag and left this".

Flustered and distraught she thrust a crumpled envelope in my face. Smoothing it open, a very neat few lines written in cursive worthy of an expert calligrapher simply said: 'I have to stop the bad people. I will return. I love you both'.

"Did he say anything"?

"No, nothing, not a word".

Epilogue

Of course, the police said he skipped bail, and issued an arrest warrant.

That was a year ago. We've heard from him only once so far, a letter arrived mysteriously, a few weeks after he left. Same note paper, same beautiful writing (ball-point now though, not ink), and equally simple and to the point. 'Read "The Daily Newspaper", every Tuesday, page 7, top right paragraph of 7 lines'.

We immediately burnt the letter, and now we can follow him secretly (but in the open), through the newspaper. I have no idea how he does it, (maybe the editor did something naughty and was found out), but each Tuesday the paragraph follows the same pattern (without the details): 'From our correspondent in such-and-such a place, it is reported that so-and-so said', and then a line which seems to be a private message to us. The 7th line always ends: 'The story continues on page X, column Y, paragraph Z'.

The correspondent seems to be progressing slowly through England, criss-crossing from coast to coast. Paragraph Z is usually a story about puzzled police finding hardened criminals tied up waiting for them, falling over themselves to confess, or similar; none of them injured in any way.
Most of these towns and cities also report a drop in crime.