Elidor (Essential Modern Classics) (6 page)

S
TAT

R
oland decided to fetch the Treasures at the end of the first week in the cottage. Every Friday he brought his games clothes home from school in a rucksack, and there would be plenty of room for the cup and the stone, while he could manage the other Treasures easily.

It was left to Roland because he was the only one to go to school by train. He would get off at the station for the old house, collect the Treasures, and catch the next train home.

It felt strange to walk down from the platform with the usual travellers – other schoolchildren, and businessmen old and rich enough to leave their offices at half past three – to walk down the steps, and then to see not the hall light shining through the stained glass of the front door, but a ‘For Sale’ board behind the hedge, and the windows blank.

When Roland unlatched the gate he realised how much of his life had not moved with him to the cottage. The unique sounds of a house: the noise of that gate, of
his feet on that path. Wherever he went he would never take those with him. And yet already there was something different about the house, even after a week. Roland felt it as a kind of awkwardness, almost uneasiness, in his being there, and as he reached the door this suddenly became so strong that the hair on the back of his neck tingled, and his palms were cramped with pins and needles.

It was a sensation so close to fear, and yet Roland was not afraid – then the door opened in front of him as he put the key in the lock.

There was a man standing in the shadowy hall.

“What are you on, son?” said the man in a hard, flat, Manchester voice.

“Noth – nothing,” said Roland.

The man was wearing overalls and carried some electrical equipment. Once Roland saw this he was reassured.

“I used to live here. We moved last week, and I’ve come back to pick up a few things.”

“Such as?”

“Oh, just some bits and pieces.”

“You’re not one of these here radio enthusiasts, by any chance?” said the man. “A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, you know. You could do yourself a mischief.”

“Oh, no,” said Roland. “My brother’s keen, and I’ve another brother with a transistor set, but I’m no good at that sort of thing.”

“Ay,” said the man. “There’s summat peculiar going on here: there is that.”

“What do you mean?” said Roland.

“Well,” said the man, “all this week we’ve had nowt but complaints at the post office from the streets round here about radio and TV interference, and a lot more besides – a proper deluge. So me and me mate comes out in our detector van this afternoon, and there’s no two chances about the signal we’re getting from this house. There’s summat here jamming every frequency we’ve got and a few more on top, I’d reckon.”

“But the electricity’s switched off at the meter,” said Roland.

“I know it is,” said the engineer. “I had to go to the house agent’s for a key, and I’ve checked mains and wiring. No, it’s summat like a generator going full belt – and then some.”

“Can’t you tell which room it’s in?” said Roland.

“Not a chance. It’s too strong. Every needle’s peaking high enough to kench itself as soon as we switch it on. We’ll have to come in the morning and try again. It may just be a freak, though I doubt it.”

He looked back up the stairs.

“And I’ll tell you another thing. This house is full of stat.”

“What?”

“Stat – static electricity. And I’ll tell you summat else. I can’t earth it! What do you say to that?”

“Er – oh, yes?” said Roland.

“Eh? I can’t earth it!” said the engineer. “What?”

“Gosh,” said Roland, since the man persisted in demanding an answer.

“I’ve not seen owt like it: I have not. It’s a right bobby-dazzler.”

The GPO van drove off into the dusk, leaving Roland in the hall. The engineer had warned him not to switch the electricity on, just in case there was a fault that he had not been able to find. But Roland had never intended to make the visit obvious, and he had brought a torch with him.

The air inside the house was so dry that it rustled as he moved. A blue spark cracked between his hand and the banisters when he climbed the stairs, and it felt as though all his hair was on end. Every time he touched anything, sparks flashed.

It must be the electricity he was talking about, thought Roland.

He went up to the attic. Roland’s lips and mouth pricked with the metallic sweetness of the air. But he reasoned that perhaps this was because he was at the top of the house. He knelt down to open the hatch.

There was a strong smell of ozone in the space under the roof. The Treasures were as he had left them. Roland squirmed through the hatch and went sideways over the joists to avoid the ceiling plaster in between.

The fine dust that lay over everything did not rise when he disturbed it. It was so charged with the static electricity that it clung like fur. Roland felt that he was crawling on an animal.

He worked the Treasures from joist to joist, put them through into the room, and dragged himself after them. He wrapped the stone in his football shirt, and the cup in a towel: then he turned to close the hatch. But there were the shadows of two men in the torchlight on the attic wall.

After the first pulse of horror Roland did not move.

He saw every detail of plaster on the wall: he heard every sound in the house and in the road outside. He did not breathe: his mind raced so that every second was ten.

The shadows were not anybody in the room. It was too small and bare for anybody to be in it unseen. And they would have to be between the torch and the wall to make shadows.

This was my bedroom. There’s nothing to be frightened of here. They’re marks on the wall. Damp patches because the house is empty.

He went closer. They remained the same size. Flat shadows on the wall: motionless, sharp, and black.

It’s an optical illusion. I’ll shut my eyes and count ten. Or it’s all that static electricity. It’s a freak, like the man said.

Roland shut his eyes, but he could still see the two figures, reversed like a negative image, yellow against the black screen of his eyelids. He opened his eyes: black on yellow. Closed them: yellow on black: but just as clear. He shook his head, and the men vanished, and then appeared. He turned his head slowly to one side: and back.

He could see the shadows with his eyes closed only when he was facing the wall.

Roland opened his eyes and switched off the torch. In the darkness of the attic the yellow shadows were full size. The air was alive with tiny sparks, and they were thickest
round the outline of the shadows, like iron filings clustering about a magnet.

Now the force in the room seemed to hold Roland’s head locked in one position so that he could not look away. A numbness was spreading into his limbs, and in his mind and all around him he felt or heard a noise, high, whining, powerful, and the sparks merged into blue flame along the edges of the two shapes.

He willed his hands to switch on the torch, but the flame still showed even in the light, and the blackness of the shadows was more solid than the wall itself. The shadows were becoming independent of the wall, cut loose by the blue flame. They stood both in front of the wall and behind it. They were becoming not shadows, but black holes in the air: holes in space.

Roland felt that if he watched a moment longer something irrevocable would happen, and that by watching he would be the cause.

He threw himself backwards from the attic and leapt down the stairs. Cold fire blazed around him from the air. He cleared the last six steps to the hall, sensing the whole weight of the house poised over his head. He opened the front door and ran on to the path without looking back. Behind him the door slammed shut on the silent, empty rooms.

C
HOKE

O
f course it seemed different once he was on the train.

In the brightly lit compartment, and among other people, he realised that there could be a normal explanation for everything. He knew that static electricity could produce strange effects, and the engineer had said there was a lot of it in the house. He had frightened himself before by staring at something quite ordinary in a poor light. “Come off it, Roland. You’re always imagining things.” That was a family joke.

When he reached home Roland put the Treasures on a high shelf in the garage, where they would be unnoticed until they could be hidden in the loft over the bathroom.

By now most of his fright had dropped away. He left the garage, crossed to the house, and shut the kitchen door behind him, all rather quickly, but already the impression of what he had seen was becoming very confused. The shadows were not so clearly shadows; they could have been faults in the wall plaster shown up by the
torchlight, or an effect of the dust and the static electricity: somehow.

Friday was the best day of the week. After tea, homework could wait: the first cloud would not appear before Sunday morning. A whole evening lay ahead to be enjoyed.

The children washed up while their mother arranged sandwiches and cake on a trolley for supper. Mr Watson went out in the car to buy a box of chocolates to celebrate their first week in the cottage, and then he brought in coal and stoked the fire.

“Did you get them?” said David to Roland.

“Yes, they’re in the garage.”

“What is it on TV tonight, Frank?” said Mrs Watson from the sitting room.

“I’m just looking, dear,” Mr Watson answered.

“Do you know anything about static electricity?” said Roland.

“A bit,” said David.

“There was an engineer from the post office at the house. He said there’d been complaints. He said the house was full of static electricity, and—”

“It’s the circus; then a play; and then ice skating,” said Mr Watson.

“Oh, good! Hurry up, children! The circus is on in a few minutes. And there’s a play, and ice skating.”

“—and he said there must be a generator—”

“Right, Mum!” said David. “Coming! A generator wouldn’t give static.”

“But there were sparks everywhere: little blue ones.”

“Never mind,” said Nicholas. “Leave it. Dad’s just switched on.”

The family settled down by the fire. The box of chocolates was passed round; Mrs Watson sited her footstool; Mr Watson polished his glasses with a special cloth impregnated with silicones; they all sat in expectation.

The first thing that happened was that as the television set warmed up it gave out an electronic howl, which climbed the scale until it was like a knife driven through the teeth, and then sank to a scream.

“It’s a tuning note,” said Mrs Watson.

“Doesn’t sound like it to me,” said David.

“Turn it down a bit, Frank, till it’s warmed up,” said Mrs Watson. “It’ll be all right.”

The scream died, and broke into a staccato cough.

“That’s not a tuning note,” said David.

The television set blinked, and for a second they glimpsed the head and shoulders of an announcer, and then it looked as if a motor cycle had ridden over his face, leaving the tread marks on the screen and dragging his nose and ears sideways out of the picture.

“It’s the Contrast, Frank.”

Mr Watson heaved himself from his chair and began to turn the controls. He was too near to see if he was doing any good. It seemed to be raining in the studio.

“That’s better,” said Mrs Watson. “No! You’ve gone too far. Back. Oh, that’s no good. Try the other way.”

The screen became alternately a dazzling silver and a blackness shot through with meteorites.

“Let me have a go, Dad,” said David.

“Don’t interfere,” said Mrs Watson. “Your father knows what he’s doing. Now. There. There, that’s better.”

It was still raining, but they could tell that some horses were galloping round a circus ring.

Mr Watson went back to his chair. At that moment the picture began to float upwards. It was followed by another. A leisured string of pictures: plop; plop; plop.

“Your Vertical Hold’s gone,” said David.

Mr Watson tramped across the room, and turned another knob with gentle fury. The pictures slowed. Mr Watson was breathing through his moustache. The picture stopped – half out of frame: a black band through the middle of the screen: above, were galloping hoofs, below, horses’ heads and nodding plumes.

“Ease it up,” said Mrs Watson. “It’s coming – it’s coming. Too much!”

The pictures shot into a fuzz. Mr Watson spun the knob in both directions, but it had no effect. He turned all the controls separately and together. He switched the set off and on again several times. He tried other channels. Nothing worked.

“Oh, leave it off,” said Mrs Watson. “It would happen on a Friday.”

“Never mind,” said Mr Watson. “I’ll phone the shop first thing in the morning.”

“That’s not now, is it? What are we going to do?”

“There’s tonight’s paper, dear, if you’d like to look at that—”

“Oh, very well.—Thank you.”

Mrs Watson took the evening paper, and made a point of reading it. Every minute or so she would turn the pages fretfully, and hit them into shape, as if they were responsible for the television breakdown.

Mr Watson sat in his chair, gazing at the fire.

David and Roland brought themselves books from upstairs.

Nicholas started to glance through a pile of magazines.

Helen doodled on the cover of one of the magazines, giving a film star a moustache, beard, and glasses.

“Isn’t it quiet?” she said.

“I’m going to listen to my transistor,” said Nicholas.

“That’s a good idea,” said Mrs Watson. “Fetch it down, Nick. It’ll be nice to have some music if we’re reading.”

“I think I’ll just try the TV again,” said Mr Watson. “You never know.”

“Don’t,” said Mrs Watson. “It’ll only make you bad tempered. We’ll listen to the wireless, and then I’ll bring the supper. I shan’t be sorry to have an early bed tonight. It’s been a tiring week.”

“Have you messed up my transistor?” said Nicholas from the doorway. He was looking at David, and his face was hot.

“Why should I want to touch your puny transistor when I’ve built a real wireless of my own?” said David.

“Someone has,” said Nicholas. “Is it either of you two?”

“Not me,” said Roland. “What’s wrong with it?”

“You listen,” said Nicholas, and he pushed the button of his portable radio. A whooping noise rose and fell against a background of atmospheric crackle that drowned any broadcast. “It’s the same on all stations. It was OK this morning, so who’s wrecked it?”

“Wait a minute,” said David. He put down his book and ran upstairs.

“I promise we’ve not touched your wireless,” said Helen.

“No one’s been in your room all day, Nick,” said Mrs Watson.

“That’s another wash-out, then,” said Nicholas. He flopped into the chair and snatched open a magazine.

“My radio’s conked, too!” David called. “It must be a magnetic storm.”

“Would it stop the TV?” said Mrs Watson.

“No,” said David. “That doesn’t work the same way.”

Nobody could sit still for long. It was so unnatural for the room to be quiet; there was a tension in the silence, as if a clock had stopped.

Mr Watson thumbed the pages of a gardening catalogue. He whistled a tune to himself, but it wasted away.

Every small movement made someone look up, and every sound was an irritation. Then into this silence there broke the noise of a car engine. It hiccupped on one cylinder, hesitated, and the remaining cylinders fired. Mr Watson dropped his catalogue.

“That’s our car,” he said.

“Nonsense, Frank.”

“I tell you, it’s our car!”

He pulled back the curtain that stopped the draught from the front door, slid the catch, and ran out on to the footpath in his carpet slippers.

“Frank! You’ll catch your death!”

They all chased after Mr Watson, and came upon him standing outside the padlocked garage door. Inside the garage the car engine throbbed, about to stall.

“Go and bring a torch and the key, Nick,” said Mr Watson.

The engine picked up again.

“Who can it be? How’s he broken in?” said Mrs Watson.

“I don’t know, dear,” said Mr Watson. “It’s very funny.”

“Perhaps it’s a ghost,” said David.

“David!” said Mrs Watson.

“Oh, no! Do you think it is?” said Helen.

“Of course not. You see what happens when you say stupid things?”

“Sorry, Mum,” said David. “Only a joke.”

Even so, when Nicholas had brought the key and Mr Watson unlocked the door, everyone felt a creeping of the scalp as the door swung open.

The car stood in a haze of exhaust smoke. Nobody was in the garage. The ignition was switched off, and the key was in Mr Watson’s pocket. He sat in the driving seat and frowned at the dashboard.

“Aha,” he said, with an attempt at understanding. “Ah.”

“What is it, Dad?” said Nicholas.

“I’d not put the choke right back in.”

Mr Watson stuck his finger against one of the knobs. The engine died.

“There’d be just enough petrol seeping through to fire the engine,” he said. “Now then, all inside out of the cold! The mystery’s solved! Come along!”

“But, Dad,” Roland heard David say as he helped Mr Watson shut the door, “you’d still need the ignition on to start the motor. Wouldn’t you?”

If Mr Watson replied, Roland did not hear him.

The diversion made half an hour pass. It was good to come to the fire from the dark, and they gathered round the hearth, warming their hands, and talking away the uneasiness they had all felt in front of the locked garage.

But the heat of the fire drove them apart to their own little islands in the room. Mr and Mrs Watson faced each
other in armchairs. David and Roland, with their shoes off, were competing from behind their books for an unfair share of the sofa. Nicholas sat on a leather pouffe, reading the advice columns in all the magazines. Helen was drawing heads in profile looking to the left. She could never draw them looking to the right.

The evening dribbled by.

“Hark,” said Mrs Watson. “What’s that?”

“I can’t hear anything,” said Mr Watson.

“It’s upstairs.”

The whole family listened.

“Oh, yes,” said Helen. “It’s a – a sort of buzzing.”

“Shut up a minute, then,” said David. “I can’t – oh, yes—”

“Go and see what it is, Frank,” said Mrs Watson. “The immersion heater may not be plugged in properly.”

“Then shall we have supper?” said Mr Watson. “I could do with a bite.” His soft, heavy tread creaked on the stairs.

“Now what’s your father up to, I wonder,” said Mrs Watson after several minutes. “Has he gone to bed? It’d be just like him.”

“No,” said Roland. “He’s coming. That noise is louder, too.”

Mr Watson came downstairs as slowly as he had climbed. He halted in the doorway of the room: his face was blank with unbelief. In one hand he held his electric
razor. The razor was working, although in his other hand Mr Watson held the loose end of the flex.

“It’s my razor,” he said.

“Well, can’t you stop it?” said Mrs Watson. “Can’t you switch it off?”

“There’s nothing to switch off. You plug it into the light.”

“But that’s ridiculous, Frank! It’s not plugged into anything. You must be able to switch it off.”

“I can’t, dear. It works from the mains.”

“Then what’s it doing now?”

“I don’t know, dear.”

Mr Watson put the razor on the table. Its vibrations made it turn like the head of a tortoise.