Mr Mumbles (12 page)

‘Ameena!’ I called after her, doing my best to catch up. ‘Ameena, wait!’

I climbed over the entrance gate and ran out into the adjoining street. The wind whistled along it, bending trees and swirling discarded scraps of sparkly wrapping paper into the air.

Halfway across the road I stopped and squinted against the rain in both directions, but Ameena was nowhere to be seen. Mr Mumbles was stuck, but he’d get out sooner or later,
and Ameena was nowhere to be seen.

I hurried back through the broken front door of the police station and ran up to the desk. The mosaic of blood-stained glass still lay on the floor, but the policeman was gone. Where was he? Had he woken up? Could he have somehow crawled away? No, he would have left a blood trail on the floor behind him if he had.

I searched through the other few rooms of the station, just in case he was hiding in there somewhere. I found no one. Wherever the policeman had gone, I was on my own.

Alone.

Just like I’d been in the house.

That was it!
The house. Mr Mumbles had first turned up in the house, and that was where I’d found his picture too. If there was a way of stopping him for good, that was surely where I’d find it.

A jolt of fear travelled the length of my body, but there
was no way of escaping what I had to do next. There was nothing else for it. I had to go back.

I had to go back into the attic.

I
t took me almost ten minutes to make my way home, what with the wind and rain. They worked together, hammering into me and keeping me from running. I wasn’t sure if I had enough energy left to run, anyway, so I spent most of the trek with my head down, only looking up to get my bearings now and again.

As I walked I went over the events of the last few hours. Too much had happened that night for me to get my head round it all, but maybe if I broke it up into smaller chunks I’d be able to make proper sense of it all.

The cracker had been a warning. But how was that possible? How could someone have known to tell me to ‘duck’? It didn’t make any sense, but then not much
about tonight made much sense.

When I thought about the cracker my mind turned to thoughts of Mr Mumbles, creeping in through the broken doorway, dead eyes fixed on mine. I quickened my pace, suddenly convinced I was being followed. The weather made it hard going to keep up the faster speed, and I found myself slowing back down again almost immediately. There was no way Mr Mumbles was getting free of the wreckage any time soon, so I had no need to worry.

Sure,
I thought.
Keep telling yourself that.

There was no sign of Mum’s car when I finally arrived at the house. I didn’t know whether to be relieved or disappointed. I’d have felt safer with her around, but I couldn’t stand the thought of putting her at risk. I wanted her to be as far away from the danger as possible. I only wished I could do the same myself, but if Mr Mumbles was going to be stopped, I would have to be the one to do it.

I glanced across at the Keller House, searching for any movement or sign of life inside. Nothing. Either Ameena wasn’t there or she was lying low. I thought about going
over to see if she was around, but decided against it. She was right, this wasn’t her fight. She’d saved my life over and over again tonight, but she’d had enough, and I had no right dragging her back into my problems. Besides – stupid as it sounded – the idea of going into the Keller House terrified me more than the idea of going into the attic.

I took a deep, steadying breath and began walking in the direction of my front door. It still lay wide open, the house itself dark and silent. My legs tried to hesitate at the gate, but I forced them to keep walking. This was it, then.

I was going in.

The electricity was still off.

Fantastic. As if heading back to the attic wasn’t bad enough, I had to do it in the dark.

I crept slowly up the stairs, the flickering candle in my hand my only source of light. Shadows flitted and scurried up the walls on either side, bending and warping as I passed. The wind whipped in through the broken living-room window
and howled up the stairs, pushing me on like an invisible hand on my back.

At last I creaked my way to the landing. Below me, the darkened stairway opened wide. It looked almost like a giant, cavernous mouth getting ready to swallow me whole.
Great,
I thought.
Creep yourself out even more, why don’t you?

Pushing the image from my mind, I reached overhead and unclipped the flimsy catch of the attic trapdoor. The hatch swung free, and the familiar stench of damp rolled down from the dark confines of the attic.

Standing on tiptoes, I stretched my free arm up into the gloom. My hand found the ladder and I slowly eased it all the way down to the floor. I hesitated, my foot poised on the bottom rung, the candle held tightly in my trembling hand.

Despite the cold, I noticed a thin film of sweat spreading out across my forehead. This was crazy. I should be getting hold of the police up in the town, not clambering into the attic to look for clues! It was madness, if not suicide.

But no, if there was a way to stop Mr Mumbles for good
it’d be up there among the dust and the junk and the small, furry rodents. If I didn’t stop him, I’d always be running, always be hiding, always be afraid. I had to go through with it.

Gritting my teeth and tightening still further my grip on the candle, I stepped on to the next rung, said a silent prayer to anyone who’d listen, and pulled myself up into the waiting darkness.

Nothing. For twenty minutes I searched through old boxes, ripped open plastic bags and generally tore the attic apart. Nothing. There was nothing up there which looked even vaguely capable of stopping a homicidal maniac, imagined or otherwise.

The most interesting thing I’d found was an envelope containing photos of Mum when she was younger. She was happy and smiling, like she didn’t have a care in the world. I realised I’d never seen her looking quite like that before. Not that she was miserable or anything, I’d just never seen her looking quite
that
happy. I stuffed the photos into my
pocket and made a note to ask her about them later. Assuming I lived that long.

I stood in the gloom, casting my eyes over the mess I’d caused. Good job no one came up here too often. Deflated, I sighed and felt my shoulders fall. I’d been sure this was where I’d find the answer, but there was nothing. The loft held nothing but old paperwork, baby clothes and boxes of toys.

Toys.
Something about toys. A sleeping memory stirred at the back of my mind, then dozed off again. I screwed my eyes tight, trying to catch the thought before it disappeared for good. What was it about my old toys?

Tucked away in the corner was a large wooden box. It had once been painted white, but now was covered in hundreds of colourful doodles. Here and there I’d scratched my name into the paint. Though I couldn’t remember scraping my name, I remembered the box. Even here, it made me feel strangely warm, as if it had absorbed all of my old happy memories, and was now letting them seep back out.

It had been one of the first things I’d looked in when I’d
clambered up into the attic. I don’t know what I expected to find, but when I’d seen it was overflowing with die-cast cars, toy soldiers and plastic dinosaurs I’d left it alone. Now I went to it again, not sure what I was looking for, but certain the action figures and vehicles weren’t it.

Searching through the box would take forever. Since I didn’t have that long, I took hold of one side and pushed. The box was heavy, but with a couple of big shoves it tipped all the way over. A mass of Power Rangers, trains and balls of various shapes and sizes slid like an avalanche on to the bare wooden floor.

I dug into them, pushing and throwing them to the side one by one. They were all familiar, but not what I needed. Reaching into the box, I dragged more and more toys free. A roller skate. A teddy. A pirate hat. Wrong. All wrong. Not what I was looking for. There had to be something in here. There
had
to be!

My fingers brushed against rough material and I had to twist my hand to get a proper grip. It took three pulls to dislodge the thing from the bottom of the box, where
two tanks and a transforming helicopter had it tightly trapped.

It was a bag. An old school bag by the look of it. A full one, too. I had just turned it over in my hands, hunting for the zip that would open it, when I spotted the note. It wasn’t easy to miss, being written on an A4 piece of paper and taped directly over the mouth of the bag.

Written on the note in big, childish, red crayon letters were the words:

in case of

emergunsy

And below the writing, in thick, black crayon, was the outline of a man in a hat and a long flowing coat. An outline that had been warped and distorted in the years since then, but which was still familiar.

Mr Mumbles.

My heart skipped a beat. I knew then that I’d found it. I’d found the thing that would stop him.

I set my candle down on the floor, ripped the note off the bag and yanked on the zip. It moved stiffly, but I managed
to wrestle it open. Apprehensively, I reached inside and pulled out the first thing I found.

For a long time I knelt there, staring at the worn rubber suction cup of the plastic arrow, not sure how to react. The bag held four or five of the arrows, along with a tiny toy bow, just like in the drawing I’d discovered earlier. There was a short sword in there, too. It was just as plastic as the bow and the arrows, and just as useless. Maybe they could hurt the Mr Mumbles of my five-year-old imagination, but this one was real, and plastic weapons weren’t going to stop someone who’d survived being run over by a car. Twice.

‘Useless,’ I hissed, snatching up as many of the toys as I could hold in both hands. ‘It’s all
useless.’

I quickly stood up, arms raised, ready to hurl the plastic junk across the attic. The bag had been my last hope – my
only
hope – and it had turned out to be just another dead end.

I snapped my arms forwards, throwing the things as hard and as fast as I could. Or trying to, at least. But as I threw,
my fingers refused to open. The play weapons stayed right where they were in my hands.

Again I tried to lob them. Again my grip didn’t budge. A third attempt ended the same way. Try as I might, I couldn’t throw the toys away.

I looked down at my hands. They were holding on to the toys so tightly my knuckles were white. I had wanted to get rid of them, but some part of me refused to let go. Something deep in my subconscious mind was making sure I held on to the contents of the bag.

Shaken, I stuffed the toys back in the satchel and swung one strap over my shoulder. If my subconscious was so determined to keep it around then maybe the bag
would
come in handy. OK, I couldn’t see how, but it might. Stranger things had happened today, and I’d been slap bang in the middle of most of them.

The tiny flame flickered in irritation as I picked up the candle and took one final look around the attic, hoping to spot some other clue to defeating my former friend. I knew in my heart, though, that there was nothing else to find.
There was no magic wand I could wave to make Mr Mumbles go away. I would have to find some other way to stop him. Whatever it took.

I made my way back to the hatch, and was just about to step on to the ladder when I heard it: A slow, regular
thud, thud, thud
from down below. I sucked in my breath and leaned back away from the hole in the floor. I didn’t want to make any noise, so I squeezed the flame of the candle out between two fingers – something I’d always thought looked cool, but which I’d always been too scared to try in the past.

It wasn’t cool. It bloody hurt.

But burnt fingertips didn’t seem like anything worth worrying about now. Instead I could concern myself with the fact that someone was in the house.

And they were coming up the stairs.

In the blackness I waited, unable to move for fear of drawing attention to myself. My breathing sounded louder than the gales outside. My heart thudded with more force than the rain on the sloping roof above my head. Already I could feel my legs wobbling. Any minute now they’d give up
on me completely. Any minute after that, I’d be dead.

Thud, thud, thud.
The footsteps were almost right beneath me now. Next I’d hear the creaking of the metal ladder, and then that ugly head of his would appear through the hatch. Since there was no other way out of the attic, I’d be trapped.

There’d be no escaping this time.

T
he thudding stopped at the top of the stairs. Aside from the weather outside, there was nothing but silence in the house. I held my breath until it felt as if my lungs were about to go pop. Just a few seconds before they did, the quiet was shattered.

‘Coo-ee!’ called a familiar voice. ‘You up there, Kyle?’

‘Nan!’ I cried, leaning over the hatch and peering down into the gloom. Her wrinkled face gazed up at me, illuminated by a candle of her own. Right at that moment, she was the most beautiful sight I’d ever seen. ‘Nan, what are you doing here?’ I half climbed, half jumped down the ladder, and gave her a grateful hug.

‘The way was blocked,’ she explained. ‘A tree’s on the
road.’ Her grey eyebrows furrowed as she thought about this for a second. ‘Or something like that.’

She was wringing her wrinkled hands together, obviously worried. ‘I hope Albert’s all right.’ Her eyes were distant again, like a barrier had come up behind them. ‘Poor Albert. I’ve got such a feeling something terrible’s happened.’ A single tear rolled down her wrinkled cheek. ‘Oh, Albert!’

‘Nan?’ I kept my voice soft so as not to startle her. ‘Nan, are you OK?’

Her eyes seemed to swim for a moment, as if they were trying to focus. When they finally found me I saw their usual sparkle was back. ‘Stuck there for ages, we were,’ she smiled, ‘but your mum managed to get us turned round in the end.’