The Grasshopper's Child (5 page)

A door closed, the eerie glow vanished. Heidi looked down again, and couldn't see a thing: the Bedroom Floor was now pitch dark. She carried on, without her candle. Down to the front hall, down to the basement, and into the night kitchen: where she dared to strike a match (it sounded incredibly loud) and light her candle again. All was quiet. Everything looked midnight-strange, as if the pots and pans had been playing all kinds of tricks until the moment she struck a light, but she saw her phone immediately.

She grabbed it. Mission accomplished!

In the dank well with the three doors she crushed the candle flame, between fingertips toughened by years of doing that job, stuffed the candle away, and listened. She couldn't exactly hear anything, but she could feel that sea-sound: like the echo of a whispered, sinister conversation; somewhere close. Something weird's going on in this house, she thought. She switched on her phone's torch, and held it up.

The Steel Door gleamed. In her nightmares Dad was behind there. Dad was dead, but still choking on his own blood, lying in the Garden House basement, smelling of rotten meat. And then something alive, with cold wet fur, brushed against her ankles—

Heidi didn't scream, she didn't drop her phone, but she bolted: up all the stairs, all the way back to her attic: practically without drawing a breath until she was sitting on her bed, gasping in the dark, with the door shut—

For about half a second she felt safe. But she could smell the stink of decay, and
something
was making a scratching noise over by the window.

It had been waiting for her in the basement. It had followed her back upstairs. It was here.

Whatever it was, it wasn't ghostly silent. And I'm awake this time, thought Heidi, grimly.
She switched on her torch and saw a dark, fuzzy shape scrabbling at the cardboard mend.
Dropping the phone on her bed she crossed the room in a bound and
pounced
. Too slow! The cardboard fell down, the broken window spat cold rain: the fuzzy shape had vanished.

But Heidi's door was shut. It hadn't escaped. ‘I've had enough,' said Heidi, aloud. ‘I'm sick of this. I'm going to
get
you.'

She dragged the broken wheelback over and used it to wedge the cardboard mend back in place. She lit all six of her candles, and stood them round the room, dripping wax to fix them upright. The effect was surprising: a proper blaze of light. Gripping the Rock Mouse, both a weapon and her one true friend, she searched.

This took about ten seconds: there was nowhere to hide.

Then she
listened
, and heard a tiny sound from behind the rickety bookcase. Still clutching the Mouse, she shifted old copies of Gardener's World. The backboard inside the bottom shelf was loose. There was a space behind it. The thing was dead quiet now, but Heidi could feel it crouching there, praying not to be found. She yanked the loose board, thrust her arm into the dark, and
closed her fist on fur
.

It struggled but it didn't attack. It was timid, and Heidi was far stronger.
The nightmare was a cat. A smelly old big black cat, with paws like saucers, flat ears, a snub nose, and two huge, sulky, pleading orange eyes.

‘It was you all along, wasn't it,' said Heidi, shaking it. ‘
Stupid
cat. You don't look a bit like my mother. Bad dream cat, where do you normally live? Out on the roof? Well, I'm sorry, but my window is staying shut from now on.'

She dumped it on the floor: noticing, regretfully, that with six candles ablaze the room was almost warm. But it was a long time to the end of the month. When she'd finished putting the candles away the cat was hiding under her bed. Heidi decided she didn't care. She left the door a little open, so it could get out to do its business wherever it normally did; and lay down. Her phone was safe. The Nightmare was just a stray cat. She could sleep. Within about ten seconds she felt a stealthy humble weight settling beside her, and smelt a poisonous waft.

‘Oh, no you don't,' muttered Heidi. ‘You can't sleep there, Mr Bad Dream. Not now I know.
You
stink
.'

She got hold of it, and sat up. It hung damp and limp, the dull gleam of its eyes begging for mercy. It was trembling like mad. ‘No.' said Heidi; but she said it gently. ‘Out of the question, mate.' A puzzle struck her. ‘Hey, cat, my window was shut. How did you get into the house just now?'

Suddenly it started fighting to get free: silently, but like a cat possessed.

‘Okay, okay, forget it,' said Heidi, dropping it on the floor.

Then she heard what the cat had heard: the faintest of stealthy footsteps. Somebody was coming. Heidi lay down, pulled the limp duvet to her chin and
listened
, as if the Cat had infected her with its superhuman hearing as well as its fear — as something
terrifying
came creeping, from far, far away: up hundreds of stairs, out of the bottomless pit.

It seemed like forever, it seemed like there couldn't be enough stairs in the world, before the stealthy tread reach her attic steps. No tacks, thought Heidi. But these feet weren't bare, anyway. Just purposeful; measured; and very quiet.

She lay on her side, her head in shadow, facing the door.
Through her lashes she saw the hand first. It gripped the door frame, sinewy, big; and pale in the light of a torch or candle that was out of sight. Then the face, a white man's stark, commanding face with deep-set eyes that were just holes under frowning brows. No beard, a gash of a mouth. It looked at her, the man looked at her, and she knew he was making up his mind. She could expect no mercy, no pity. Whatever he wanted, he would do it, he had no limits.

The face and the hand, disembodied, stayed there motionless: longer than Heidi thought she could bear. She could have heard their owner breathing,
if he breathed at all
. Then they withdrew, disappeared, and the footsteps sank down into the pit again. Heidi sat up, staring into the dark, her hands pressed to her mouth so hard it hurt.

What'll I do?
she thought.
What'll I do if he comes back?

If she caused trouble, Mum would have nobody.

People like you and your mum are lucky to be alive

England was supposed to be different now, people like Heidi and her mum and dad were supposed to be safe. But Mum was so helpless. When the cat crept, trembling, back up onto the bed, Heidi just took it her arms, glad of any company. Miraculously, with that warm, smelly, terrified bundle of fur curled beside her, she fell into a dreamless sleep.

5: A Traveller On The May

The boy called Clancy arrived in the water meadows above Mehilhoc towards sunset.

He'd been keeping out of sight and hadn't seen a road sign for a day or two, though he'd passed under roads: but he knew where he was. The river May moved slowly here; a rising tide pushed against his gentle progress. He shipped the oars and trailed his fingers in the water: comparing what he saw to the OS map spread on his knees.

Once the May had been navigable. Barges had been pulled up and down, carrying loads of brick and coal. You could still see the old banks: topped by bent-elbowed alders, and washed head-height by a high-tide of flood litter. In mediaeval times ships from France had sailed right up to the inland port, where the castle stood.

Tall trees climbed the slopes on either side of the meadows. To Clancy's right, they overtopped the wall of the National Trust Gardens. To his left, the Carron-Knowells estate was deer-fenced. Clancy disliked fences and walls, but he could tolerate an old, weathered wall as a neighbour. He licked his fingers.

‘Salt,' he said to himself, aloud. ‘Close enough.'

Pulling over to the Gardens bank he disembarked, and made fast to a stout root under a hawthorn. The rain had cleared, the afternoon felt almost spring-like. The valley was very quiet. No grazing livestock. A blackbird sang, far off in the trees. Wood pigeons churled softly,
take
two
cows taffy
,
take
two
cows taffy
. A chaffinch called in alarm,
pink, pink, pink,
and followed up with a flurry of hurried music. Clancy watched the May's quiet flow.

‘No reason why I shouldn't stay for a while,' he murmured.

Tomorrow he'd choose a site and make camp, which was not something to be hurried.
Tonight he'd sleep in the boat. He shifted the rowing bench, spread his sleeping bag on the bottom boards and lashed the tarp into place: completing these tasks with the speed and neatness of long practice. The next hour or so was spent cutting and carrying armfuls of dead bracken from the rusty stands at the foot of the wall, and spreading them over the boat until there was nothing to be seen, for anyone passing: only a heap of winter debris caught against the bank. He didn't think anyone was going to bother him, but better safe than sorry.

Daylight had seeped away by the time he was satisfied. He pulled his pack from under the tarp, and prepared for dinner by making an offering to the river. A fragment of smoked Polish sausage sank at once. A hunk of bread and a small piece of cheese were adopted by the tide —which had turned while he was making ready for the night— and went dancing off down to the sea. His gifts were accepted, the omens were propitious.

He ate his own share slowly, a woolly scarf muffling his chin; hood well down. He'd have liked a hot drink, but he'd run out of stove fuel, and Clancy never lit a fire in the open.

The stars came out. He tried to name them, alternately lying on his back and sitting up to consult his Planisphere with a shaded penlight. (He knew that in country darkness the tiniest light leaps out at people, and can attract unwelcome attention). Betelgeuse, Aldebaran and Mars: Astrology and Astronomy both appealed to him. Do the stars and planets send us messages? Do they
know
what patterns they are making; from the point of view of human eyes? Are they really talking to the people who look out from the surface of this blue dot, in the family of an ordinary sort of star called the Sun? Like a complicated, aeons-long-distance kind of mirror-writing. If they do make signals for us, he thought, I bet they make mistakes too. Did we send
disaster is nigh?
Oops, typo! We meant,
delight
is nigh. Prepare for the end
of the world: prepare for better times. But he should turn in, the March night was cold and he was getting chilled.

Cocooned in his sleeping bag, he made up the log and marked his personal map. Tuesday, approx. 16.00 hrs arrived at destination. When he'd put his colours and inks away, with the map and notebook, in their waterproof box, he turned off his wind-up, and lay awake. He was glad there were no cattle. Cowpats, Clancy
hated
cowpats. Was that the sound of footsteps? Sometimes he wished he had a dog, or a cat (if you could get a cat to accept this way of life); just for the early-warning system. He heard an owl, and felt his demons gather.

It was always hard to sleep in the boat, with the tarp almost on your nose. In the end he abandoned the fight, wriggled out of his cocoon, and clambered onto the bank.

The stars had vanished. The moon, some nights past the full, was rising in a veil. White mist filled the meadow. He waded up to his thighs, his cargo pants getting soaked. Two dark shapes raised their heads above the foam; antlers like springing thorns: roe deer. They leapt away, reached the wall and bounced right over it, as if on springs. Clancy laughed, slipped, and fell on his face in the wet grass. Ouch. His right palm had connected with the edge of something hard, smooth and squared. He sat up, shook his penlight so he could see what he was doing, and dug the thing out. It was a cigarette lighter. He rubbed dirt from an inscription he couldn't read, and thumbed the wheel as a matter of form. A gout of fire sprang up. He was so astonished he flamed it three times before he realised what he was doing.

Lighter fuel, he thought. Is somebody around here selling contraband?

It was an intriguing item, anyway. He stowed it in an inside pocket.

Heidi had found her window's missing panes, in the old fireplace behind the bookcase: glass diamonds tangled in a dusty knot of lead strips. At home she'd have looked up ‘Mending Leaded Windows' on the internet. She would have a go, anyway. Smooth out the lead with a hammer, track down some heavy-duty glue, maybe in that Utility Room:something that would stick metal to glass. It was a project to pursue.

She'd taken a good hard look at Stubbly Chin, under cover of serving breakfast, lunch and supper. The monster must have been him, who else? But everything's always different in daylight. Old Wreck Roger didn't look all that dangerous, and nothing had
happened
, he'd only peeked. She'd decided to hope for the best. He was probably harmless.

The cat had not pooed in her room: although the hole in the window was now securely covered. It must have other exits and entrances from its rooftop home. Maybe that's why the whole attic floor was so cold. She leaned out as far as she could. The moon, no longer her enemy, had risen blurred in cloud. A long way off, deep in the dark, she saw a tiny flash.