Dark Companions (22 page)

A student was using the microfilm reader. Tony went back to the
Observer
building. A pear-shaped red-faced man leaned against the wall, chatting to the receptionist; he wore a tweedy pork-pie hat, a blue shirt and waistcoat, tweed trousers. “Watch out, here’s trouble,” he said as Tony entered.

“Has he come in yet?” Tony asked the girl. “The man who knows about Ploughman’s Path?”

“What’s your interest?” the red-faced man demanded.

“I’m staying in the cottage near there. I’ve been hearing odd things. Cries.”

“Have you now.” The man pondered, frowning. “Well, you’re looking at the man who knows,” he decided to say, thumping his chest. “Roy Burley. Burly Roy, that’s me. Don’t you know me? Don’t you read our paper? Time you did, then.” He snatched an
Observer
from a rack and stuffed it into Tony’s hand.

“You want to know about the path, eh? It’s all up here.” He tapped his hat. “I’ll tell you what, though, it’s a hot day for talking. Do you fancy a drink? Tell old Puddle I’ll be back soon,” he told the girl.

He thumped on the door of The Wheatsheaf. “They’ll open up. They know me here.” At last a man reluctantly opened the door, glancing discouragingly at Tony. “It’s all right, Bill, don’t look so bloody glum,” Roy Burley said. “He’s a friend of mine.”

A girl set out beer mats; her radio sang that everything was beautiful, in its own way. Roy Burley bought two pints and vainly tried to persuade Bill to join them. “Get that down you,” he told Tony. “The only way to start work. You’d think they could do without me over the road, the way some of the buggers act. But they soon start screaming if they think my copy’s going to be late. They’d like to see me out, some of them. Unfortunately for them, I’ve got friends. There I am,” he said, poking a thick finger into the newspaper: “The Countryside This Week,” by Countryman. “And there, and there.” “Social Notes,” by A. Guest. “Entertainments,” by D. Plainman. “What’s your line of business?” he demanded.

“I’m an artist, a painter.”

“Ah, the painters always come down here. And the advertising people. I’ll tell you, the other week we had a photographer—”

By the time it was his round Tony began to suspect he was just an excuse for beers. “You were going to tell me about the screams,” he said when he returned to the table.

The man’s eyes narrowed warily. “You’ve heard them. What do you think they are?”

“I was reading about the place earlier,” Tony said, anxious to win his confidence. “I’m sure all those tragedies must have left an imprint somehow. A kind of recording. If there are ghosts, I think that’s what they are.”

“That’s right.” Roy Burley’s eyes relaxed. “I’ve always thought that. There’s a bit of science in that, it makes sense. Not like some of the things these spiritualists try to sell.”

Tony opened his mouth to head him off from the next anecdote: too late. “We had one of them down here, trying to tell us about Ploughman’s Path. A spiritualist or a medium, same thing. Came expecting us all to be yokels, I shouldn’t wonder. The police weren’t having any, so he tried it on us. Murder brings these mediums swarming like flies, so I’ve heard tell.”

“What murder?” Tony said, confused.

“I thought you read about it.” His eyes had narrowed again. “Oh, you read the book. No, it wouldn’t be in there, too recent.” He gulped beer; everything is beautiful, the radio sang. “Why, it was about the worst thing that ever happened at Ploughman’s Path. I’ve seen pictures of what Jack the Ripper did, but this was worse. They talk about people being flayed alive, but—Christ. Put another in here, Bill.”

He half emptied the refilled glass. “They never caught him. I’d have stopped him, I can tell you,” he said in vague impotent fury. “The police didn’t think he was a local man, because there wasn’t any repetition. He left no clues, nobody saw him. At least, not what he looked like. There was a family picnicking in the field the day before the murder, they said they kept feeling there was someone watching. He must have been waiting to catch someone alone.

“I’ll tell you the one clever suggestion this medium had. These picnickers heard the scream, what you called the recording. He thought maybe the screams were what attracted the maniac there.”

Attracted him there. That reminded Tony of something, but the beer was heavy on his mind. “What else did the medium have to say?”

“Oh, all sorts of rubbish. You know, this mystical stuff. Seeing patterns everywhere, saying everything is a pattern.”

“Yes?”

“Oh, yes,” Roy Burley said irritably. “He didn’t get that one past me, though. If everything’s a pattern it has to include all the horror in the world, doesn’t it? Things like this murder? That shut him up for a bit. Then he tried to say things like that may be necessary too, to make up the pattern. These people,” he said with a gesture of disgust, “you can’t talk to them.”

Tony bought him another pint, restraining himself to a half. “Did he have any ideas about the screams?”

“God, I can’t remember. Do you really want to hear that rubbish? You wouldn’t have liked what he said, let me tell you. He didn’t believe in your recording idea.” He wiped his frothy lips sloppily. “He came here a couple of years after the murder,” he reluctantly answered Tony’s encouraging gaze. “He’d read about the tragedies. He held a three-day vigil at Ploughman’s Path, or something. Wouldn’t it be nice to have that much time to waste? He heard the screams, but—this is what I said you wouldn’t like—he said he couldn’t feel any trace of the tragedies at all.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Well, you know these people are shupposed to be senshitive to sush things.” When he’d finished laughing at himself he said “Oh, he had an explanation, he was full of them. He tried to tell the police and me that the real tragedy hadn’t happened yet. He wanted us to believe he could see it in the future. Of course he couldn’t say what or when. Do you know what he tried to make out? That there was something so awful in the future it was echoing back somehow, a sort of ghost in reverse. All the tragedies were just echoes, you see. He even made out the place was trying to make this final thing happen, so it could get rid of it at last. It had to make the worst thing possible happen, to purge itself. That was where the traces of the tragedies had gone—the psychic energy, he called it. The place had converted all that energy to help it make the thing happen. Oh, he was a real comedian.”

“But what about the screams?”

“Same kind of echo. Haven’t you ever heard an echo on a record before you hear the sound? He tried to say the screams were like that, coming back from the future. He was entertaining, I’ll give him that. He had all sorts of charts, he’d worked out some kind of numerical pattern, the frequency of the tragedies or something. Didn’t impress me. They’re like statistics, those things, you can make them mean anything.” His eyes had narrowed, gazing inwards. “I ended up laughing at him. He went off very upset. Well, I had to get rid of him, I’d better things to do than listen to him. It wasn’t my fault he was killed,” he said angrily, “whatever some people may say.”

“Why, how was he killed?”

“Oh, he went back to Ploughman’s Path. If he was so upset he shouldn’t have been driving. There were some children playing near the path. He must have meant to chase them away, but he lost control of the car, crashed at the end of the path. His legs were trapped and he caught fire. Of course he could have fitted that into his pattern,” he mused. “I suppose he’d have said that was what the third scream meant.”

Tony started. He fought back the shadows of beer, of the pub. “How do you mean, the third scream?”

“That was to do with his charts. He’d heard three screams in his vigil. He’d worked out that three screams meant it was time for a tragedy. He tried to show me, but I wasn’t looking. What’s the matter? Don’t be going yet, it’s my round. What’s up, how many screams have you heard?”

“I don’t know,” Tony blurted. “Maybe I dreamt one.” As he hurried out he saw Roy Burley picking up his abandoned beer, saying “Aren’t you going to finish this?”

It was all right. There was nothing to worry about, he’d just better be getting back to the cottage. The key groped clumsily for the ignition. The rusty yellow of Camside rolled back, rushed by green. Tony felt as if he were floating in a stationary car as the road wheeled by beneath him—as if he were sitting in the front stalls before a cinema screen, as the road poured through the screen, as the bank of a curve hurtled at him: look out! Nearly. He slowed. No need to take risks. But his mind was full of the memory of someone watching from the trees, perhaps drawn there by the screams.

Puffy clouds lazed above the hills. As the Farmer’s Rest whipped by, Tony glimpsed the cottage and the field, laid out minutely below; the trees at Ploughman’s Path were a tight band of green. He skidded into the side road, fighting the wheel; the road seemed absurdly narrow. Scents of blossoms billowed thickly at him. A few birds sang elaborately, otherwise the passing countryside was silent, deserted, weighed down by heat. The trunks of the trees at the end of Ploughman’s Path were twitching nervously, incessantly. He squeezed his eyes shut. Only heat-haze. Slow down. Nearly home now.

He slammed the car door, which sprang open. Never mind. He ran up the path and thrust the gate back, breaking its latch. The door of the cottage was ajar. He halted in the front room. The cottage seemed full of his harsh panting.

Di’s typescript was scattered over the carpet. The dark chairs sat fatly; one lay on its side, its fake leather ripped. Beside it a small object glistened red. He picked it up, staining his fingers. Though it was thick with blood he recognised Di’s wedding ring.

When he rushed out after searching the cottage he saw the trail at once. As he forced his way through the fence, sobbing dryly, barbed wire clawed at him. He ran across the field, stumbling and falling, towards Ploughman’s Path. The discoloured grass of the trail painted his trouser cuffs and hands red. The trees of Ploughman’s Path shook violently, with terror or with eagerness. The trail touched their trunks, leading him beneath the foliage to what lay on the path.

It was huge. More than anything else it looked like a tattered cut-out silhouette of a woman’s body. It gleamed red beneath the trees; its torso was perhaps three feet wide. On the width of the silhouette’s head two eyes were arranged neatly.

The scream ripped the silence of the path, an outraged cry of horror beyond words. It startled him into stumbling forward. He felt numb and dull. His mind refused to grasp what he was seeing; it was like nothing he’d ever seen. There was most of the head, in the crotch of a tree. Other things dangled from branches.

His lips seemed glued together. Since reaching the path he had made no sound. He hadn’t screamed, but he’d heard himself scream. At last he recognised that all the screams had been his voice.

He began to turn about rapidly, staring dull-eyed, seeking a direction in which he could look without being confronted with horror. There was none. He stood aimlessly, staring down near his feet, at a reddened gag.

As all the trees quivered like columns of water he heard movement behind him.

Though he had no will to live, it took him a long time to turn. He knew the pattern had reached its completion, and he was afraid. He had to close his eyes before he could turn, for he could still hear the scream he was about to utter.

The Show Goes On

The nails were worse than rusty; they had snapped. Under cover of several coats of paint, both the door and its frame had rotted. As Lee tugged at the door it collapsed towards him with a sound like that of an old cork leaving a bottle.

He hadn’t used the storeroom since his father had nailed the door shut to keep the rats out of the shop. Both the shelves and the few items that had been left in the room—an open tin of paint, a broken-necked brush—looked merged into a single mass composed of grime and dust.

He was turning away, having vaguely noticed a dark patch that covered much of the dim wall at the back of the room, when he saw that it wasn’t dampness. Beyond it he could just make out rows of regular outlines like teeth in a gaping mouth: seats in the old cinema.

He hadn’t thought of the cinema for years. Old resurrected films on television, shrunken and packaged and robbed of flavour, never reminded him. It wasn’t only that Cagney and Bogart and the rest had been larger than life, huge hovering faces like ancient idols; the cinema itself had had a personality—the screen framed by twin theatre boxes from the days of the music-hall, the faint smell and muttering of gaslights on the walls, the manager’s wife and daughter serving in the auditorium and singing along with the musicals. In the years after the war you could get in for an armful of lemonade bottles, or a bag of vegetables if you owned one of the nearby allotments; there had been a greengrocer’s old weighing machine inside the pay-box. These days you had to watch films in concrete warrens, if you could afford to go at all.

Still, there was no point in reminiscing, for the old cinema was now a back entry for thieves. He was sure that was how they had robbed other shops on the block. At times he’d thought he heard them in the cinema; they sounded too large for rats. And now, by the look of the wall, they’d made themselves a secret entrance to his shop.

Mrs Entwistle was waiting at the counter. These days she shopped here less from need than from loyalty, remembering when his mother used to bake bread at home to sell in the shop. “Just a sliced loaf,” she said apologetically.

“Will you be going past Frank’s yard?” Within its slippery wrapping the loaf felt ready to deflate, not like his mother’s bread at all. “Could you tell him that my wall needs repairing urgently? I can’t leave the shop.”

Buses were carrying stragglers to work or to school. Ninety minutes later—he could tell the time by the passengers, which meant he needn’t have his watch repaired—the buses were ferrying shoppers down to Liverpool city centre, and Frank still hadn’t come. Grumbling to himself, Lee closed the shop for ten minutes.

The February wind came slashing up the hill from the Mersey, trailing smoke like ghosts of the factory chimneys. Down the slope a yellow machine clawed at the remains of houses. The Liver Buildings looked like a monument in a graveyard of concrete and stone.