Dark Screams, Volume 1 (8 page)

“Can I ask you something, Mrs. Briscoe?”

“Anything you need to. If you don't ask questions, you won't learn.”

“A community policeman, is he a real one?”

“You should do what anyone in authority tells you if it's not against the law.” This sounded like a standard answer to a question Jimmy hadn't meant to ask, but Mrs. Briscoe added, “Did you have somebody in mind?”

“The one who came to talk to us about drugs.”

“Ah, that gentleman. I hope you've taken what he said to heart.” Once again she seemed to follow an official caution with a personal response, murmuring, “But you're right all the same. I'm afraid Mr. Blundell isn't real any longer.”

“Why?” Jimmy tried to sound less rude by saying, “What happened to him?”

“I understand he became too involved in a case.” As Jimmy grasped which one she had to mean, Mrs. Briscoe said, “He's no longer with the police, so if by any chance you should meet him, don't let him make you think he is.”

Jimmy thought that like any adult she knew more than she was prepared to tell him. Had Blundell tried to convince someone else he was still a policeman? Knowing that he'd lost his power was such a reassurance that Jimmy even felt emboldened to ask questions in class rather than hoping none would be addressed to him.

The hide was empty when he passed it on his way home. Either the dusk wasn't quite dark enough for Blundell to take up his post or he'd abandoned his vigil. Jimmy went to his room to make a start on his homework before dinner. As he shut the curtains a head loomed into the gap in the hide. The man had ceased to be a threat, and Jimmy didn't even bother trying to overhear anything next door.

In the morning the hide was still deserted. It glistened with mist like a lingering wintry breath. He'd forgotten about it by the time he reached the school, but Mrs. Briscoe called him over in the yard. “Will you forget what I told you about Mr. Blundell?”

She sounded as conspiratorial as Blundell had. “Why?” Jimmy said.

“I shouldn't have mentioned it. There wasn't any need. I'm afraid the gentleman isn't with us any more.”

Jimmy was ashamed to feel relieved. “You mean he's…”

“That's precisely what I mean.” Less brusquely, Mrs. Briscoe said, “When you're old enough to drive, just you make sure you never drink, and don't let anybody drive who has. Mr. Blundell drove into the canal.”

Jimmy's feeling of relief seemed to be in danger of deserting him. “When?”

“Before I spoke to you about him. The previous night, I believe.”

Jimmy was remembering not just how he'd hoped to provoke a car chase but Dez Dibbin's protest that a car hadn't been touched. “Thanks, Mrs. Briscoe,” he mumbled, turning away to keep his thoughts to himself. He just had to realise that he couldn't have seen Blundell last night. Either someone else had been in the hide or Jimmy had imagined the silhouetted head.

He managed to put it out of his mind until he was on the canal path. The late afternoon was dark enough for the lights outside the houses across the water to have come on, except for the pair of lamps closest to the Dibbin house and his. The hide was deserted, but as he reached the house he thought he glimpsed movement in the reflection on the kitchen window. Before he could look his grandmother came to the door almost too hastily to keep her balance. “I'm glad you're in,” she said, with not much breath. “They've been smashing the lights.”

“Who has, Nan?”

“I didn't look, Jimmy. They might have seen me seeing.”

Jimmy thought he could answer his own question, although why should the Dibbin family feel watched now? He went up to his room, hoping to spend not too much time on his homework. As he drew the curtains he glanced across the canal. Somebody was in the hide.

The occupant wasn't anxious to be seen. Jimmy had barely made out the shape of a head when it withdrew into its lair. Was there a trickle of moisture on the logs beneath the corner of the gap where the silhouette had appeared? In the dimness between the dead lamps Jimmy couldn't be sure. He gripped the flimsy plastic curtains and leaned his forehead against the chilly window, and then he dragged the curtains together.

The history project seemed more remote from him than ever. He hadn't written much by the time his grandmother announced dinner. “What are they making such a row about?” she wondered as the Dibbins carried on an argument in which only all the words she forbade Jimmy to say were audible, and he thought it must be the aftermath of running Blundell off the road into the canal. He was tempted to let his grandmother know, but he shouldn't make her nervous. He needn't risk telling anyone at all, because surely the police would track the culprit down.

The murky morning seemed to have cleared the hide, and it was still deserted when he came home, but he saw his grandmother in the kitchen doorway. She was looking for someone, though not him. She gestured at the Dibbin house, and Jimmy was afraid what she might say until she called, “Have you seen the window-cleaner?”

“It isn't his day, Nan. He came last week.”

“Well, he must have been again, and he didn't do a very good job. I could do better myself.”

Jimmy tramped across the footbridge and along the towpath to see that a smeary trail led across the kitchen window and the door, ending halfway along the blinded window of the Dibbin house. “He wants to buy himself a new sponge,” his grandmother said.

Jimmy didn't think the trail looked as if a sponge had made it, and in any case the window-cleaner would have washed it off. It must have been left by an object the size of a man's face and at about that height. Was the resemblance more apparent where it had come to rest on the neighbouring window? Before Jimmy could risk a closer look, a wind brought a fierce onslaught of rain across the canal, reducing the marks to an indistinguishable blur. “Come in, for heaven's sake,” his grandmother cried. “We don't want you catching your death.”

He was in his room when he had to glance out of the window. How could anyone be in the hide? It had been deserted less than a minute ago, and so had that side of the canal for hundreds of yards in every direction. Nevertheless, a head was dimly visible against the glow of a lamp on the road beyond the hide. As it lolled into the gap, the rain on Jimmy's window made it seem uncertain of its shape. He had the sudden uninvited notion that the watcher had been waiting for him to come home. He shut out the sight and retreated downstairs. “Can I do my homework down here, Nan? It's cold up there.”

“You do it wherever you like. And if you want the heat up, just you say.”

Working in the front room wasn't as reassuring as he'd hoped, because he could hear visitors next door. Before long he realised they were all using a signal—two knocks with a long pause after each, and then a pair separated by almost none. He didn't enjoy feeling like a spy when there was nobody he wanted to inform. After dinner he felt still more uncomfortable, sensing how wary his grandmother was of distracting him from his work. Whenever she turned a page of her library book the timid whisper felt like an apology for making such a noise. He called his homework finished as soon as he could, but he didn't have much fun watching television. Now that he'd heard the secret knocks he was afraid his grandmother might notice them, and the thought of her ignoring them made him just as nervous.

He had to go to bed when she kept telling him. The only movement at the hide appeared to belong to trickles of lingering rain, and he was letting the curtains sag together when he saw another aftereffect of the storm. A swathe of moisture as broad as a man led from the canal towards his house and disappeared close to if not at the kitchen wall. Jimmy had only to lean out of his window to see how it ended, but instead he made sure that the window was locked before he retreated to bed.

In the night it rained again. On his way to school Jimmy couldn't distinguish the marks on the window or the trail from the canal. The hide was empty when he passed it, although the left-hand corner looked darker than the rest of the interior. He tried to think the stain was just some of the mist that hung around the canal. He'd started to feel anxious about leaving his grandmother alone in the house, and he hurried home from school, though not fast enough to outdistance the dark. As he came to the hide he saw someone within.

He was grateful that the figure in the corner had its back to him. Was it already there because night had fallen earlier, or was it waiting for him? The way it slumped in the corner reminded him of the bag of potatoes he'd dumped on the shelf in the hide, not least because it looked equally capable of losing its shape; more than its clothes appeared to be sagging with moisture. As Jimmy made to sneak past in the hope of going unnoticed, the figure twitched as if it was hitching itself together. Before it could turn and show its face Jimmy fled to the bridge.

His grandmother hadn't even let him in when she demanded, “Is something wrong at school?”

“I've just got a lot of work to do, Nan.”

“Well, don't you let them drive you too hard or I'll be in there for a word.”

He had to go up to his room, where he stayed well away from the window. Next door he heard raised voices, mainly saying words that always made his grandmother wince and grimace. When he watched television with her he kept hearing the secret knock. Lying in bed felt like not daring to go to the window, and suppose the occupant of the hide came over to the house? What if his grandmother saw it from the downstairs window? Jimmy couldn't even start to fall asleep until he heard her come up to bed.

The nights grew longer, closing like claws around the days, leaving many of them smudged with a twilight of fog along the canal. Jimmy stayed well clear of the path by the hide and used the road instead. Whenever he came home after dark he saw a shape, such as it had, in the corner of the hide. It looked wetter than ever. From the house he sometimes couldn't avoid seeing a roundish object lurch into the gap in the hide as if to remind him that he was being watched, or that he hadn't yet fulfilled his mission, or even that he'd been responsible for a death. He could hardly even work at home, never mind at school, for living in a panic as constant as it was dull. He was afraid what his teachers might say to his grandmother when the school had its evening for parents and people who'd taken their place. He was still more nervous of having to explain, in case talking about the reason for his fears brought it closer.

How close would that be? Jimmy kept seeing a moist trail that led from the canal and finding marks on the window. While he was glad that the marks were increasingly blurred, he preferred not to think why they might be. One murky sunless morning he saw an extra elongated smear at the height where he would have expected the eyes of a face to be, as if they had been squashed blindly against the glass and drawn along it. He would have rubbed it off the window if he could have borne to touch it, so that his grandmother wouldn't see. He was anxious for her all day, and the feeling turned into dread as he came in sight of the hide, because he could hear her calling, “Mrs. Dibbin. Mr. Dibbin.”

Jimmy dashed to the bridge so fast that he didn't have a moment to glance towards the hide. As he clattered up the steps he saw that his grandmother wasn't alone. She was knocking on the back door of the Dibbin house. He faltered on the bridge—he was afraid for her, but even more fearful of the situation—and then he ran down the steps three at a time. He was on the towpath when Mrs. Dibbin flung open her door. “What's all the noise for?”

“You make quite a lot yourselves, Mrs. Dibbin.” At once Jimmy's grandmother sounded apologetic. “Have you seen somebody out here?”

“I'm seeing you and him.”

The other person was the window-cleaner, Jimmy saw. “Someone at the windows,” his grandmother said.

“There better hadn't be.” The woman's sullen face grew even duller as she said, “Looks like you are.”

“I'm only seeing what someone's done. They've been doing it to my house as well. Surely you'll have noticed, Mrs. Dibbin.”

“We've not noticed much about you.”

This was so plainly a threat that Jimmy was afraid his grandmother would respond to it, but she only pointed at the marks on the glass. “Did you do that?” Mrs. Dibbin accused the window-cleaner.

“It wasn't me and I wouldn't leave it like that, either.”

“You can stay away in future all the same. Our Dez can do the windows just as good.”

The man stared even harder at Jimmy's grandmother than at Mrs. Dibbin before tramping away at a pace that seemed meant to express injured pride. “And you can keep clear of our windows as well,” Mrs. Dibbin said.

“I'm sure I only wanted to look out for my neighbours,” Jimmy's grandmother protested. “It would be a better world if we all did, don't you think?”

“We can take care of ourselves, so better give up looking,” Mrs. Dibbin said, and slammed the door.

As Jimmy's grandmother followed him into their house she murmured, “I don't know why everyone's acting as if I'm not right in the head.”

“Watch out what you're saying to Mrs. Dibbin and them,” Jimmy blurted, before he could stop himself. “They're the ones that policeman was after.”

“Isn't he still?” As Jimmy heard a more ominous meaning, his grandmother said, “Never mind, I don't want to know about it. Don't look for reasons to take against people. You've seen what happens with that.”

“What does, Nan?”

He could see that she regretted having to say “What did with your mother and father.”

Once he was in his room Jimmy risked looking across the canal. The outline of the head that peered out of the hide seemed dismayingly unstable. How much notice might his grandmother's behaviour have attracted? He didn't know if he was more nervous of the Dibbin family or of the watcher in the hide. He'd done very little homework by the time he was called for dinner.