Mr Mumbles (13 page)

I smiled, glad to have the real Nan back so quickly. ‘That’s good. Is Mum with you?’

‘Course she is, sweetheart. She’s downstairs. Fixing the lights.’

I wanted to jump for joy. Even though I hadn’t wanted Mum in danger, it was a relief to hear she was near. She’d
know what to do. She’d sort it all out. She always did.

‘We tried phoning the police station to find out what was happening. With the road, like.’

‘The policeman’s been hurt. Maybe killed,’ I said, stopping short of any other explanation. Saying it out loud made my body shake and my mouth go dry. Hot tears sprung up behind my eyes. The policeman could be dead. Properly dead.

‘Oh,’ Nan nodded, matter-of-fact. ‘That’ll be why he wasn’t answering, then.’

We both jumped as the electricity suddenly clicked back on, flooding the house with light. A few seconds later, Mum appeared at the bottom of the stairs, her cheeks flushed red from the cold.

‘Mum!’ I jumped down the first few steps. ‘You’re here!’

‘Kyle,’ she gasped, moving up to meet me halfway, ‘what happened to your head?’ I winced as she gently touched the cut on my forehead. I’d completely forgotten about it, but now she’d mentioned it I could feel it throbbing away. I saw the concern in her eyes and
everything I’d been holding back all night burst free all at once.

‘Mum, I’m sorry I got cut and wrecked everything but it wasn’t my fault I had to get out he was after me and he kept coming he kept coming and the policeman…the policeman got hurt and that’s my fault because I shouldn’t have gone there and now he’s going to come after me again and he’s going to get me.’ I was babbling uncontrollably, unable to hold back my emotions.

‘Wait, wait, slow down,’ Mum comforted. ‘The policeman’s coming to get you?’

‘No,’ I said, my voice a hoarse whisper, ‘not the policeman.’

‘Who then?’

I wiped my tears away and looked her right in the eye. ‘Mr Mumbles,’ I whispered. ‘Mr Mumbles is coming to get me.’

Mum stared back at me, her jaw slack. She didn’t say anything for what felt like forever. Her eyes darted across to Nan, then back to me.

‘What did you say?’ she asked in a low whisper. Her eyes looked hard, like a defensive wall had come up behind them. ‘Mr Mumbles,’ I repeated. ‘He’s come back. He wants to kill me.’

Mum stepped back and covered her mouth with her hand. It trembled slightly as she held it there, no longer looking at me.

‘Kyle,’ she spoke flatly, ‘Mr Mumbles isn’t real. We’ve been through all this.’

‘He is,’ I insisted.

‘Don’t do this to me, Kyle.’ Her eyes were pleading now. ‘Don’t do this. Not again.’

‘He’s real! He is!’ A thought suddenly struck me. ‘The window!’ I exclaimed, ducking past her and running down the stairs. ‘He broke the window, come see.’

I stumbled into the living room and skidded to a stop. Mum appeared quickly behind me, with Nan eventually joining us several seconds later. I shook my head in disbelief as I checked over the window.

‘It was broken,’ I protested, running my fingers over the
ice-cold pane. ‘There was glass all over the floor!’

‘It looks all right now, sweetheart,’ Nan said, softly. ‘Maybe you imagined it.’

‘You don’t just imagine a psycho with stitched-up lips crashing through your living-room window!’ I snapped. ‘He was here. I tried to escape, but he was strangling me and—’

‘That’s enough,’ said Mum, sternly.

‘And a girl saved me,’ I continued. ‘Her family have bought the Keller House and are going to move in, and she saw me—’

‘No one’s bought the Keller House,’ Mum dismissed. ‘I’d have heard about it.’

‘But the policeman! What about the policeman? At the station. He was hurt.’

Mum jolted forwards as if there were pins beneath her feet.

‘I’ll call the station in town and find out if anything happened,’ she announced, curtly. ‘Where’s the phone?’

‘I dropped it—’ I started to say, but I stopped when Mum lifted the handset from the top of the TV.

‘Must’ve picked itself up again,’ she said. I watched her punch in a short series of numbers. She kept her eyes on me as she held the phone to her ear and waited.

‘Ah yes, hello,’ she said, when someone finally answered. ‘I wonder if you can help me. I’m calling from Kincraggie village. I’d heard the officer on duty tonight was involved in some kind of accident, and I wanted to check if—’

The person on the other end interrupted. Mum’s eyebrows raised. She nodded, slowly. ‘I see. No, that’s fine. Not to worry. Thanks for your help.’

The phone gave a faint
beep
when Mum slid it back down into the cradle.

‘Well?’ I asked.

‘There was no one on duty in the village station,’ Mum said. ‘It’s been locked up all day.’

‘What? No!’ I protested. ‘There was someone there. I saw him. I spoke to him! He went out looking for Mr Mumbles, but he got hurt.’

‘So where is he now?’ Mum asked.

‘He…’ I hesitated. Where
had
the policeman gone? One
minute he was groaning on the ground, the next he was gone. ‘He just kind of disappeared,’ I said.

‘Kyle,’ Mum said, her voice softer now. She leaned forwards and took hold of my shoulders. ‘I don’t know what you think you saw, but trust me, there’s no such thing as Mr Mumbles. When you were young you imagined him, but then we…then you…then he went away. You stopped imagining him. You forgot about him.’

‘So what are you trying to say?,’ I sneered, pulling away. ‘I’ve hallucinated the whole thing, have I? It’s all just been my imagination playing tricks on me, has it?’

‘Well, it wouldn’t be the first time!’ Mum snapped. She immediately leaned back, biting on her lip. Anxiety flitted across her face before she forced a smile and began to make a move towards the kitchen. ‘Now,’ she sang, ‘who fancies a cup of tea?’

‘What do you mean, “it wouldn’t be the first time”?’ I asked. ‘Has something like this happened before?’

‘Hmm? Oh, no, forget I said anything,’ she beamed. ‘How about some hot chocolate? I think I’ve got some—’

‘You should tell him, Fiona,’ Nan said. Her voice was sober. The wrinkles on her face were deep with worry. ‘He deserves to know.’

‘Know what?’ I demanded. ‘What should I know?’

Mum paused in the doorway, her back still to me. She inhaled deeply, and let out a long, quiet sigh. When she turned round, her cheeks were wet with tears.

‘What do you remember,’ she began, ‘about the Keller House?’

The Keller House had been known as the Keller House for as long as I could recall, and not without good reason. There were various legends which circulated about how the house got its name, but they all boiled down to one thing: something terrible had happened within those walls, and it had happened to Mr Keller.

The stories were all slightly different. Mr Keller had been murdered by an intruder. Mr Keller had set himself on fire and burned alive. Mr Keller had died of a heart attack, then been eaten by his dogs. Whatever version of the tale you chose to
believe, it always had an unhappy ending for poor Mr Keller.

Since then – and probably because of the stories – no one would move into the house. And so there it had stood, right next to ours, rotting and decaying over the years as the legends became more and more extravagant. The last one I’d heard had claimed Mr Keller had been doing experiments on deformed children, and they’d broken free and killed him, but most people found that hard to believe. Mr Keller was a solicitor, not a scientist.

Or he may have been a taxi driver, depending on who you believed.

‘He was a retired businessman,’ Mum corrected, once I had filled her in on the various versions of events I’d heard. ‘Owned a few shops when he was younger, I think.’

The three of us were sitting on the couch now; me in the middle, Mum and Nan sandwiching me on either side. ‘Sold everything up before moving here,’ she continued. ‘Just after you were born.’

‘Was he murdered?’ I asked. ‘Did his dog eat him?’

‘No, nothing like that.’

‘Well, what then?’

Mum looked across at Nan, then swallowed hard. ‘There was an accident in his swimming pool. A bad one. Someone…someone drowned. They died.’

‘Mr Keller?’ I asked.

‘No, not Mr Keller.’

‘Well, who then?’

Mum rested her hands on top of mine. Her expression was one I’d never seen before. ‘You, Kyle,’ she said. ‘It was you.’

I blinked. My eyes darted over Mum’s face, looking for some flicker there that would tell me she was kidding.

‘But…but I’m not dead.’

‘You were. For a minute or so. Mr Keller found you; pulled you out and gave you mouth-to-mouth. He brought you back. He saved you.’

I shook my head, hardly able to believe what I was hearing. ‘How did it happen?’ I asked.

Mum glanced over my shoulder at Nan. I heard her make
some small movement – a nod, maybe.

‘You said it was
his
fault,’ Mum said, her voice choked with emotion. ‘You said it was Mr Mumbles. Told us he tried to kill you. It was a shock, because you hadn’t mentioned him for a while before that. We thought you’d forgotten about him.
Hoped
you’d forgotten about him.’

And suddenly there it was again – that st irring in the darkest corners of my mind, as something struggled to come to the surface. Something I’d kept locked up back there for years. A memory I’d tried so hard to forget.

But not hard enough.

I am five. Five-and-a-half, maybe. In the front garden. Shivering. Breeze cold on my bare skin. Arm bands squeezing tight around my arms.

Running. Running in my trunks. Mum walking behind. Far behind. Grass squidging between my toes. Laughing. Arm bands like big muscles. I am Superman.
I am the Hulk!

Don’t bother to knock on the door. Never bother to knock.
Knows I’m coming. Push it open and run for the water. Want to jump and splash and play!

Mr Mumbles stands by the pool – good old Mr Mumbles, my best friend. Haven’t played with him in a long time. Nearly forgot him. When I see him there I am happy. I laugh.

He doesn’t.

His big hand scurries through my hair like Eensy Weensy Spider. He pulls, tighter and tighter, making me cry and scream; drags me to the edge. I am still crying as he forces me below the surface. Still crying as the water swirls into me. Still crying until the world goes dark and my head goes light and I can’t cry any more, not even if I wanted to.

‘I remember,’ I gasped. ‘The pool. I remember. That’s why I’m scared of water, isn’t it?’

‘You never went swimming again,’ Mum nodded. ‘Mr Keller came through and found you floating there. He pulled you out and brought you back.’ Tears rolled down her cheeks. ‘Oh, God, Kyle, I thought I’d lost you.’

‘What happened to Mr Keller?’ I asked.

‘What?’ Mum looked surprised that I was even asking. She looked up at Nan.

‘No idea,’ Nan said with a shrug.

‘He moved on again a little while after,’ Mum said. ‘I’m not sure where. The accident shook him up quite badly.’

‘It wasn’t an accident,’ I said. ‘It was Mr Mumbles.’

‘That’s what you kept saying at the time,’ Mum nodded. ‘But it
was
just an accident, Kyle. You slipped and fell into the pool.’

Angrily, I pulled my hands away from under hers and stood up. I crossed to the window and gazed out at the storm. For the first time, I noticed the CD player was back on the table and completely intact. Another of tonight’s mysteries.

‘Tell me about him,’ I said.

‘Mr Keller?’

‘Mr Mumbles.’ I turned back to the couch and looked down at Mum. ‘When did he appear?’

She scowled and leaned back on the couch. ‘I don’t think this is—’

‘Please,’ I urged. ‘I have to know.’

Mum tilted her head towards the ceiling and closed both
eyes. She sat like that for a few long moments, deep in thought. Finally, just as I was about to prompt her again, she started to speak.

‘You were three, going on four,’ she began. ‘You’d been in playgroup a few months but…I don’t know, you weren’t really settling in.’ She shook her head and opened her eyes. ‘We shouldn’t be going over this.’

‘Mum,’
I begged. ‘Go on.’

‘Right. Fine,’ she said with a sigh. Her eyes were distant – unfocused – as she blew the dust off the pictures in her head. ‘You didn’t like it because the other kids…some of the others there, they couldn’t understand you properly.’

I frowned. ‘How come?’

‘Speech problems,’ said Mum.

‘You were a terrible lazy speaker,’ Nan chimed in. ‘A real mumbler. Like you were talking with a mouth full of custard sometimes.’

‘I could understand you fine,’ Mum was quick to point out. ‘I didn’t notice a problem at all, but apparently everyone else did.’

Suddenly everything made perfect sense. ‘And so I dreamed up an invisible friend with the same problem as me! That’s when I started seeing him.’

‘Pretty much,’ Mum nodded. ‘The doctor said it was harmless. It was your way of trying to deal with the problems you were having. He said it’d pass soon enough.’ She glanced away as she recalled a visibly painful memory. ‘But it didn’t. It got worse.’

‘In what way?’

‘You started taking him with you everywhere. You’d talk about him all the time. And I mean
all
the time. Mr Mumbles did this, Mr Mumbles did that.’

‘I didn’t see it as a big problem,’ Nan told me.

‘Maybe it wasn’t,’ Mum admitted. ‘Not then. Not until you started the speech therapy.’

‘What happened?’

‘He changed, you said. Became angry and started to scare you. I’d hear you screaming in the night and you’d say Mr Mumbles had come through your window. You’d say he was going to hurt you if you kept going to the sessions.’

‘You were nearly five then,’ Nan added. ‘About to start school. We didn’t know what to do. At our wits’ end, we were.’

‘We got you help,’ said Mum. ‘Professional help.’

‘What, like a psychiatrist?’ I gasped.

‘A psychologist. A child psychologist. They tried to help you get rid of him.’

‘Did it work?’

Mum shook her head. ‘Got worse again, if anything.’

‘So what happened?’ I demanded. ‘How did I get rid of him?’