The Collected Short Fiction of Ramsey Campbell Part 52

The first thing his dad said when we went in was "Wipe your feet," though we hadn't come from outside. It was only him there, because Andrew's mum was going to come back soon so he could go to a meeting. Then he started talking in the kind of voice teachers put on just before the holidays to make you forget they're teachers. "I expect your friends would like a Halloween treat," he went and got some baked potatoes out of the oven, but only Andrew had much. I'd just eaten and besides the smell of apples kept getting into the taste of the potatoes and making me feel funny.

There were apples hanging from a rope across the room and floating in a was.h.i.+ng-up bowl full of water on some towels on the floor. "If that's the best your friends can do with my Hallowe'en cuisine I think it's about time for games," Andrew's dad went and took our plates away, grousing like a school dinner lady. When he came back, Andrew went "Please may you tie my hands."

"I don't know about that, son." But Andrew gave him a handkerchief to tie them and looked as if he was going to cry, so his dad went "Hold them out, then."

"No, behind my back."

"I don't think your mother would permit that." Then he must have seen how Andrew wanted to be brave in front of us, so he made a face and tied them. "I hope your friends have handkerchiefs too," he went.

He tied our hands behind our backs, wrinkling his nose at Jill's handkerchief, and we let him for Andrew's sake. "Now the point of the game is to bring down an apple by biting it," he went, as if we couldn't see why the apples were hanging up. Only I wished he wouldn't go on about it because talking about them seemed to make the smell stronger.

Jill couldn't quite reach. When he held her up she kept b.u.mping the apple with her nose and said a bad word when the apple came back and hit her. He put her down then quick and Colin had a go. His mouth was almost as big as one of the apples, and he took a bite first time, then he spat it out on the floor. "What on earth do you think you're doing? Would you do that at home?" Andrew's dad shouted, back to being a teacher again, and went to get a dustpan and a mop. "Where did you get them apples?" Colin went to Andrew. Andrew looked at him to beg him not to ask in front of his dad, and we all knew. I remembered noticing there weren't any apples on Mr Gray's tree anymore. We could see Andrew was trying to show us he wasn't scared, only he had to wait until his mum or dad was there. When his dad finished clearing up after Colin, Andrew went "Let's have duck-apples now."

He knelt down by the bowl of water and leaned his head in. He kept his face in the water so long I thought he was looking at something and his dad went to him in case he couldn't get up. He pulled his face out spluttering and I went next, though I didn't like how nervous he looked now.

I wished I hadn't. The water smelled stale and tasted worse. Whenever I tried to pick up an apple with just my mouth without biting into it, it sank and then bobbed up, and I couldn't see it properly. I didn't like not being able to see the bottom of the bowl. I had another go at an apple so I could get away, but Andrew's dad or someone must have stood over me, because the water got darker and I thought the apple bobbing up was bigger than my head and looking at me. I felt as if someone was holding my head down in the water and I couldn't breathe. I tried to knock the bowl over and spilled a bit of water on the towels. Andrew's dad hauled me out of the bowl as if I was a dog. "I think we'll dispense with the duck-apples," he went, and then the doorbell rang.

"That must be your mother without her keys again," he told Andrew, sounding relieved. "Just don't touch anything until one of us is here." He went down and we heard the door slam and then someone coming up. It wasn't him, the footsteps were too slow and loud. I kept tasting the appley water and feeling I was going to be sick. The footsteps took so long I thought I wouldn't be able to look when they came in. The door opened and Jill screamed, because there was someone wearing a dirty sheet and a skull for a face. "It's only Mummy," Andrew went, laughing at Jill for being scared. "She said she might dress up."

Just then the doorbell rang again and made us all jump. Andrew's mum closed the door of the flat as if the bell wasn't even ringing. "It must be children," Andrew went, looking proud of himself because he was talking for his mother. Jill was mad at him for laughing at her. "I want to duck for apples," she went, even though the smell was stronger and rottener. "I didn't have a go."

Andrew's mum nodded and went round making sure our hands were tied properly, then she pushed Jill to the bowl without taking her hands from under the sheet. Jill looked at her to tell her she didn't care if she wanted to pretend that much, Jill wasn't scared. The bell rang again for a long time but we all ignored it. Jill bent over the bowl and Andrew's mum leaned over her. The way she was leaning I thought she was going to hold Jill down, except Jill dodged out of the way. "There's something in there," she went.

"There's only apples," Andrew went. "I didn't think you'do be scared." Jill looked as if she'd have hit him if she'd been able to get her hands from behind her back. "I want to try the apples hanging up again," she went. "I didn't have a proper go."

She went under the rope and tried to jump high enough to get an apple, and then something tapped on the window. She nearly fell down, and even Colin looked scared. I know I was, because I thought someone had climbed up to the third floor to knock on the window. I thought Mr Gray had. But Andrew grinned at us because his mum was there and went "It's just those children again throwing stones."

His mum picked Jill up and Jill got the apple first time. She bit into it just as more stones. .h.i.t the window, and then we heard Andrew's dad shouting outside. "It's me, Andrew. Let me in. Some d.a.m.n fool locked me out when I went down."

Jill made a noise as if she was trying to scream. She'd spat out the apple and goggled at it on the floor. Something was squirming in it. I couldn't move and Colin couldn't either, because Andrew's mum's hands had come out from under the sheet to hold Jill. Only they were white and dirty, and they didn't look like any woman's hands. They didn't look much like hands at all.

Then both the arms came worming out from under the sheet to hold Jill so she couldn't move any more than Colin and me could, and the head started shaking to get the mask off. I'd have done anything rather than see underneath, the arms looked melted enough. All we could hear was the rubber mask creaking and something flopping round inside it, and the drip on the carpet from Andrew wetting himself. But suddenly Andrew squeaked, the best he could do for talking. "You leave her alone. She didn't take your apples, I did. You come and get me."

The mask slipped as if him under the sheet was putting his head on one side, then the arms dropped Jill and reached out for Andrew. Andrew ran to the door and we saw he'd got his hands free. He ran onto the stairs going Come on, you fat old toad, try and catch me."

Him under the sheet went after him and we heard them running down, Andrew's footsteps and the others that sounded bare and squelchy. Me and Colin ran to Jill when we could move to see if she was all right apart from being sick on the carpet. When I saw she was, I ran down fast so that I wouldn't think about it, to find Andrew. I heard his dad shouting at him behind the tenements. "Did you do this? What's got into you?" Andrew had got matches from somewhere and set light to the bonfire. His dad didn't see anything else, but I did, a sheet and something jumping about inside it, under all that fire. Andrew must have crawled through the tunnel he'd made but him in the sheet had got stuck. I watched the sheet flopping about when the flames got to it, then it stopped moving when the tunnel caved in on it. "Come upstairs, I want a few words with you," Andrew's dad went, pulling him by the ear. But when we got in the building he let go and just gaped, because Andrew's hair had gone dead white.

In The Trees (1986).

Threlfall saw the aftermath of the crash as he slowed for the detour. Beyond the police cars and their orange barrier, smoke veined with flames smudged the gray sky. Braking, he thought of matches a child had been playing with, matches spilled from a box. They were telephone poles that had fallen from a lorry, blocking both westbound lanes of the motorway and smas.h.i.+ng a car. He hoped the driver had got out before the car caught fire, hoped the police hadn't recorded his own speed before he'd seen them. He cruised past them off the motorway, off his planned route.

He was already late for the next town, the next load of unpopular books. He stopped in a parking area with a padlocked toilet and a bin surrounded by litter, and dug out his road atlas from among the week's newspapers. It looked as if the most direct route was through the green blotch on the map and the horizon: pines.

He swung onto the road with a screech of gravel. The road ploughed through the flat landscape, past stubbly fields relieved only by a couple of derelict farmhouses and rusty sc.r.a.ps of cars, and the forest seemed no easier to reach than the blob of sun in the sky. When at last he came to the forest, he had to drive alongside for miles, until he began to suspect that the road through was closed. No, here it was, and he braked fiercely as he turned.

The trees cut off the sunlight, such as it was, at once. He hadn't realized the road would be so gloomy. He might have felt the trees were closing their ranks against him and his vanload of books, pulped wood on the way to be pulped again, books returned by the bookshops because they were too late for the fads they'd been written to cater to. Still, he didn't suppose butchers felt uneasy driving meat past animals. He switched on his headlights and was picking up speed when the children walked into the road.

The sight of the coach parked by the road must have alerted him, for he was braking almost before he saw them-luckily for them, since they dawdled on the road as if he weren't there or had no right to be. They were boys in their early teens, a cla.s.sful of them accompanied by a disheveled teacher whose long legs seemed bent on tripping him up as he scurried after his cla.s.s. "Hurry up," he cried. "Stop talking. Leave him alone, Selwyn. On the bus, all of you. Double quick."

He saw Threlfall's car and held up one hand. "Could you let them cross?" he shouted. "Would you mind?" Perhaps it made him feel less ineffectual. He turned on the boys behind him. "Leave that, Wood," he cried.

Or it might have been "Leave that wood," for the three boys who were arguing about how many fish and chips they could afford were dragging what looked like a branch. They stared blankly at him and dropped it. "Not in the road, you chump," he yelled and flung it toward the trees.

It wasn't just a branch, it was carved. Threlfall could see that much before he got out of the car. He felt ent.i.tled to be outraged by the boys, who'd piled onto the bus and were opening the windows so as to throw out the wrappers of chocolate bars, and by their teacher-all the more so when he saw that the carving at the thick end of the branch was a face. Why, it must have taken days of careful work, more than you could say for too many of the books in the van. "You aren't just leaving that there," he protested.

The teacher thumped on the window nearest the culprits. "Do you hear? You were told to leave those things alone. They weren't rubbish at all." To Threlfall he said apologetically, "You can't tell them anything these days. I'd make them put it back but we're already late."

"Sodding right we are." The coach driver climbed down, hands on hips, and glared at Threlfall. "He isn't a ranger, he's just interfering. Make up your mind if you're coming. Put it back yourself if you like it round here," he growled at Threlfall, and pushed the teacher up the steps.

The bus roared away, its headlights slas.h.i.+ng at the dim trees, its windows spilling litter and the clamor of the schoolboys, three of them still arguing over two fish and three lots of chips, no, let's have three chips and two fish... Threlfall went back to the car, started the engine, stared at the dashboard clock, then abruptly he parked off the road and went to pick up the carved branch.

He didn't much care for it now that he looked at it closely. The eyes bulged like knots in the wood, the face looked tormented, struggling to open its mouth. At least someone had felt something while it was being made, not like the hacks whose failures filled the back of the van. It didn't matter that he didn't care for it, he still had a duty to save it: anything else was vandalism.

The overcast was tattering. Sudden sunlight picked out the trail the branch had made as it had been dragged through the pine needles, beyond a map carved on a board at the side of the road, a map of woodland walks distinguished by markers of different colors. He memorized the positions of the walks before hefting the branch and starting down the slope.

The nearest path was marked by a yellow post. The trail of the branch crossed the path and led under the trees. He had to slow down once the dimness closed in, chill as water. When his eyes adjusted he saw how he appeared to be surrounded by paths, a maze of s.p.a.ces between the trees. Most of the apparent paths led into long waterlogged hollows. More than once the branch had been dragged through hollows, and he had to jump across.

Soon the trail crossed another marked path. It should be marked red, and when he peered along it, past the glare of sunlight on its stony surface, he could just make out that it was. Now he could hardly see the trail, even when he was among the trees and the glare had drained from his eyes. The piny smell made him think of a hospital, long dim deserted corridors that led nowhere. He stumbled under the weight of the branch and slithered into a hollow, ankle-deep in mud. He could no longer see the trail, either in front of him or behind him, but wasn't there a stony path between the trees ahead?. He had to stagger onto it before he was sure there was.

What was more, it led to a building. He could see a corner of the wall beyond the furthest bend in the path. Even if the building wasn't where the carving had come from, whoever was there could take it-Threlfall had spent too much time already in the woods. Which path was this? It ought to be the green one, as he recalled, and soon he pa.s.sed a post that looked green, though with moss. Whoever was in the building would confirm the way back to the road.

He rounded the bend nearest the building, and nearly dropped the branch for throwing up his hands in frustration. The hut was in ruins: not a wall was left intact, and there was no roof. All the same, the interior looked crowded with figures, too still to be people. He went forward, trees whispering behind him, the face with its knotted eyes lurching in his arms.

The hut had no floor. The earth between the walls was planted with carved sticks that looked as if they were growing there, not sticks but stunted trees with atrophied branches. All had faces; some had more than one. All the faces gave the impression of being not so much carved as straining to free themselves from the wood.

He stepped through a gap between two walls. Tall gra.s.s snapped beneath his feet. If he couldn't find the spot where the branch had been stolen from he would have to leave it wherever there was room. He held it above his head and s.h.i.+vered with the chill that was sharper than under the trees. Perhaps he was s.h.i.+vering a little at the tortured faces too. Of course the carver must have based them on shapes in the wood, that was why they gave the impression of growing. No wonder they were so grotesque, especially the one that looked like a mother whose child's face was growing on her cheek.

He turned away and frowned, realizing that there was no s.p.a.ce within the hut where the faces could have been carved. Something else was odd: seen from inside, the hut seemed less ruined than partly built and then overgrown. One side of the hut might almost have been a bush that had grown into the shape of a wall; weren't those its roots in the gra.s.s? But he was wasting time.

He'd grasped his stick in order to lay it down when the voice said, "What do you think you're doing?"

At first he didn't realize that it was a voice. He thought it was a crow that had made him start and glance round, or a chainsaw, or even a frog croaking close to his ear, especially since he could see no one. "Where are you?" he demanded.

"You'll find out, I promise you."

Perhaps the speaker thought Threlfall hadn't asked where but who. Was the voice coming from the wall that looked most like a bush? "I'm putting this back," Threlfall said.

"Putting it back now, are you? Too late."

"I didn't take it," Threlfall said, resisting a nervous urge to tell the speaker to show himself. "Some children stole it. I brought it back."

Himself or herself-with such a voice one couldn't tell. "You'll do," it said.

Threlfall felt obscurely threatened. He had a sudden unpleasant notion that someone was about to lift one of the carved faces above the wall, a face with its jaw moving. "Look, I'm leaving this here and I'm going," he said sharply, s.h.i.+vering. He laid the branch down carefully, then he fought his way through the gra.s.s between the carvings to the gap in the walls.

n.o.body had appeared. n.o.body was in sight when he looked back from the bend in the path. It wasn't worth trying to retrace his route through the trees; it wasn't worth the risk-he couldn't locate the trail he'd followed-and in any case the green path would soon join the red and so lead him back to the road. He turned the third bend and found that the green path petered out in undergrowth.

On the map the green had crossed the red twice. He could only go back, staring fiercely at the hut as he pa.s.sed, doing his best to shake off the impression that a face was watching him from among the crowd of carvings. Perhaps one was, he hadn't time to see. He was glad when a bend intervened.

The deserted path wound on. Was there anyone in the woods beside himself and the unpleasant carver? The creaking that made him glance round must be wind in the trees. He hurried on, searching for a junction to interrupt the endless silent parade of trees, trees beyond counting on either side of him, trees ma.s.sing away beneath their canopy until they merged into impenetrably secret dimness. There-a marker post in the distance, a reason for him to run-but when he reached it and stood panting he found that it didn't mark a junction, only the path he was on, and it was painted orange.

It must have been red until it was weathered. He was sure there hadn't been an orange path on the map. He must have walked at least a mile from the hut by now; surely he had to be near the road-and yes, he could hear voices ahead, where a dog was sitting patiently beside the path. It took him five minutes of running, giving way frequently to jogging, before he was close enough to be certain of what he was seeing. The dog was a tree stump with a root for a tail.

Then the voices had been wind in the trees. If he let himself, he could imagine that he was still hearing them further down the path, laughing or sobbing. Movement in the trees beside him made him turn sharply, but it was a display of inverted trees in a pond, intermittently illuminated as the clouds parted and closed again. He hurried on, past the sound that wasn't voices. Whatever was making that sound in the murk beneath the trees, he hadn't time to look.

The road couldn't be much further. Wasn't that a car pa.s.sing in the distance ahead, not a wind? He was walking as fast as he could without running, his feet throbbing from the stony path. It must be the sound of traffic, and there at last was the junction with the yellow path. Nevertheless he hesitated, for the sound had seemed to come from directly ahead, beyond the next bend in the orange path that must once have been red.

He shouldn't turn now. Not only was he sure where the road was, but he could see shadows moving on the path where it curved back into sight for a few yards beyond the bend, shadows of people among the unmov-ing shadows of trees. Thank G.o.d that's over, he thought vaguely, and almost called out to the people round the bend-had his mouth open to speak as he rounded the curve and saw that the shadows were of bushes, so grotesquely shaped they looked deliberately sculpted.

They weren't shaped like people. He hadn't time to decide what they were shaped like, even if he wanted to, nor how their shadows could have appeared to be moving. It must have been a trick of the light, but it wasn't important, especially when he looked away from the bushes. A few hundred yards beyond them, the path came to a dead end.

He ran to it, not thinking, and stared into the endless maze of trees, then he took a deep breath and ran back to the yellow path. That had to be the way, though the paths seemed to have nothing to do with the map. He ran, lungs aching, round a curve and then another, between the trees that he could almost believe his run was multiplying, and let out a gasp so fierce it momentarily blinded him-a gasp of relief. There ahead, where a car swept round the dim curve past a filling station, was the road.

Thank G.o.d for the filling station too. He could ask his way back to the map and his car: he didn't trust himself to judge which direction to take along the road.

He looked both ways before crossing to the forecourt, though the curve prevented him from seeing very far along the silent road. He could see someone moving beyond the grimy window of the office. For a moment he'd been near to panic as he realized that the pumps were rusty, the filling station obviously disused.

He grasped the shaky handle of the office door, and cursed. The office was bare and deserted. What he'd taken to be someone was a torn poster, in fact several layers of posters, flapping restlessly on the office wall. He caught sight of a telephone on the crippled table that was the only remaining item of furniture, and he was struggling to open the door in case, miraculously, the telephone might still be working, when he saw that it was nothing but a knotted stick. Were they posters on the wall? Now he peered through the dusty gla.s.s, the figure looked more like layers of bark, and all at once Threlfall was walking away, round the bend in the road, which led to a few sawn logs and a forester's hard hat. The sawn logs would have been blocking the road if there were a road, but beyond them were pathless trees and growing darkness.

It was still a road, he told himself desperately. It must be a foresters' road: that explained the vehicle he'd seen pa.s.sing. It had to lead somewhere, it was preferable to the paths, at least it was wider. He ran back past the disused filling station, and there, surely, was a forester, presumably the one who'd left his hat: certainly someone was standing in a thicket by the road and watching Threlfall through the dark green leaves.

Threlfall turned his back and waited for the man to finish relieving himself. Thank G.o.d for someone who would know the way out of the woods. He waited until he began to wonder if the man had been watching after all. Perhaps he hadn't seen Threlfall, but then why was he taking so long in there? Either he was breathing heavily or that was wind in the trees.

Threlfall cleared his throat loudly before turning. The man hadn't moved. "Excuse me," Threlfall said: still no response. He walked around the thicket, making as much noise on the pine needles as he could, without being able to catch sight of the man's face. "Excuse me, are you all right?" The unresponsive silence dismayed him so much that it took more effort to step forward than to force his way through the bushes.

Twigs sc.r.a.ped his skin, the touch of dank leaves on his face made him s.h.i.+ver. Twigs hindered him as he gasped and struggled backward out of the thicket, which felt all at once like a trap. He hadn't seen the body of the figure, only its face grinning at him, the eyes bulging like sap. He hadn't time before he recoiled to be sure, and couldn't make himself go back to determine, that the carved face bore a distorted, almost mocking resemblance to his own.

He ran stumbling along the road, which gave out after a few hundred yards. He peered wildly into the depths of the trees until they seemed to step forward, then he fled back past the figure in the thicket, past the filling station where the figure on the wall was still moving, onto the yellow path. Why him? he thought distractedly, over and over. Why not the schoolboys, the teacher, the coach driver, the hack writers, the publishers, the booksellers, the bookseller who'd given him back the study of English forests with the comment, "I thought this would be different from his other mystical rubbish"? If only Threlfall had that book now, with its maps of walks! But it was in the van, wherever that was.

He had to stay on the yellow path, it was the only one he knew. There must be a junction he'd missed, there must be a route that didn't lead back to the hut and the tortured faces and, presumably, their torturer. The trees or the darkness between them closed in, urging him faster along the path, yet he felt as if he were still in the darkening thicket, not running, not moving at all. He'd mistaken several trees or roots beside the path for marker posts or figures waiting for him when a crumpled piece of paper came sc.r.a.ping toward him around a bend, along the path.

He couldn't have said what made him pick it up: certainly not tidiness-perhaps that it seemed infinitely more human than anything else in the woods. He unfolded it and stared, for the moment past comprehending. It was a map, a tracing of the carved map of the walks. It seemed a vicious joke, since he couldn't locate himself on it in order to find his way. He was preparing dully to throw it away when he rounded the bend and started, seeing where the map had come from. A man was leaning on a stick at the side of the path.

He had a long brown weathered face that hardly moved, a twisted nose, large ears. Threlfall stumbled up to him and handed him the map while he struggled to be able to ask the way, to speak. The man took the paper and displayed it to him, his cracked brown thumb tapping the paper to show where they were, then tracing a route: right here, left, turn back on yourself ... He handed it back to Threlfall, nodding stiffly, having spoken not a word.

Something about his eyes made Threlfall mutter a hasty thanks and hurry away-something about the way the man was supported by the stick. The route seemed more like the solution to a puzzle, and Threlfall wasn't even sure that he remembered it correctly as the dark welled between the trees, the wind s.n.a.t.c.hed at the map until the paper tore, a croaking in the trees behind him began to sound like words as it came closer, first "Give that here" and then, almost at his back, "Look at me." That was the last thing he would do; he couldn't even have looked back at the man with the twisted nose once he'd realized how alike in appearance the stick and the man's weathered skin had been. Here was a junction where he could see no colored markers, and he had no idea which way to go. A wind took him unawares and carried the map away down one path, and a last instinct made him flee along the other, up a slope that seemed to be growing steeper, actually tilting, as he caught sight of the road beyond it, and his van. He almost dropped his keys as he reached the van, almost lost them again as he locked himself in. As he started the engine he thought that something like sticks clambered swiftly onto the road beside the carved map, croaking.

All the same, as soon as he was out of the woods he stopped the van. The bookshops he was supposed to fit in today would have to wait until tomorrow. He unlocked the back of the van and rummaged through the cartons, where eventually he found the book on English forests, published posthumously, he saw now. It said little about the woods he had escaped except that they weren't worth visiting; perhaps the author had felt that to say more might attract the curious. Threlfall closed the cartons and locked the back of the van and slipped the book into his pocket, then he let out the deep breath he'd had to take before turning to the photograph of the author. This was one book he wouldn't see destroyed, that he would always keep. He climbed into the driving seat and drove away, still seeing the photograph he'd already known was there: the long weathered face, the large ears, the twisted nose.

Bedtime Story (1986).

Soon Jimmy grew bored with watching his parents holding tiny saucers and sipping coffee from tinier cups. They looked awkward as grown-ups playing tea-parties. He could tell that they wanted him out of the way while they talked, and so he ventured upstairs, though he wasn't sure his grandmother would want him to. All at once he was breathless, because there was so much he hadn't seen before: an attic full of objects made mysterious by dust, polished banisters that begged to be slid down, a small room halfway up the house, that faced onto the park. Down in the rose garden paths split the lawns into pieces of a giant green jigsaw, over by the lake trees waited in line to be climbed, and suddenly he wished this was his room-but when he turned, there was already someone in the room behind him.

It was only himself in the wardrobe mirror. The dusty sheen of the gla.s.s made it stand out from the backing, made it look like a mirror into another room. He stared until his face grew flat and glary, until he felt as papery as his reflection looked, and very aware of being only seven years old. As he crept downstairs his father was saying that once he found another teaching job he was sure they'd get a mortgage, Jimmy's grandmother was saying she had friends who would bring his mother work if she learned how to sew, and Jimmy thought they'd finished wanting him out of the way.

From her look he thought his grandmother was about to tell him off for going upstairs. "Well, James, you're going to live with me for a while. Will you like that?" she said.

He could feel his parents willing him to be polite. "Yes," he said, for it was the first week of the summer holidays and everything felt like an adventure. Even living here did, especially when he found he was having the room with the mirror. It was as though finding himself already in the mirror had made his wish come true. He didn't even mind when that night his mother stayed downstairs while his grandmother tucked him into bed and gave him a wrinkled kiss. He made a face at the mirror, where he could just see himself in the light from the park road. Then she turned in the doorway to look at him, that look which made him feel she knew something about him she wished were not so, and he hid under the sheets.

Next morning he ran into the park as soon as he was dressed. It was like having the biggest front garden in the world. Soon he'd made friends with the children from the flats next door, Emma and Indira, who had to wear trousers under her skirt, and Bruce, who was fat and always sniffing and would blubber gratifyingly if they pinched him when they were bored. The children made up for being put to bed too early by Jimmy's grandmother who had somehow taken over that job, for having to be exactly on time for meals, which were formal as going to church. Then his mother started her job at the nursery, and his father kept having to go for interviews, and Jimmy realized his life had scarcely begun to change.

At first she only fussed over him and told him not to do things, until he felt he couldn't breathe. Once, when he lifted down his father's first examination certificate- the gla.s.s gleamed from her polis.h.i.+ng it every day-she cried "Don't touch that" so shrilly that he almost dropped it. Worse, now he was forever catching her watching him as if she was trying not to believe what he was.

One day, when a downpour crawling on the windows made even the trees look gray, he went up to the attic. Behind a rusty trunk he found several paintings, one a portrait of his father as a child. Before he knew it she was at the door. "Must you always be into mischief, James?" Yet all he was doing was feeling sad that she must have taken weeks over each painting only to leave them up here in the dust.

That night he lay wondering what she'd thought he would do to her paintings, wondering what she knew. The dusty reflection reminded him of a painting, the dim figure still as paint. It was a painting, and that meant he couldn't move. By the time he managed to struggle out of bed he didn't like the mirror very much.

Downstairs his grandmother was saying, "You must say if you think I'm interfering, but I do feel you might choose his friends more carefully."

Jimmy could tell from his father's voice that he'd had another unsuccessful interview. "Who do you mean?"

"Why, the children from the fiats. The darky and the others."

"They seem reasonable enough kids to me," his mother said.

"I suppose it depends what you're used to. I'm afraid the cla.s.s of people round here isn't what it was when I was young. I know we aren't supposed to say that kind of thing these days." She sighed and said, "That sort of child could make life difficult for James if they found out what he is."

Jimmy realized he'd been clinging to his bedroom door, for as he crept forward to hear better it slammed behind him. "I'll see what's wrong," his mother said sharply. "You've done enough for one day."

Jimmy hurried back to bed and tried to look as if he hadn't left it. In the dimmer bed, someone else was hiding beneath the sheets. His mother tiptoed into the room. "Are you awake, Jimmy?"

"I heard granny. What did she mean? What am I?"

"b.l.o.o.d.y old woman," his mother whispered fiercely. "I was going to have you when we got married, Jimmy, that's all. It doesn't mean a thing except to people like your grandmother."

As she kissed him goodnight he saw her stooping to the dim face in the mirror, and suddenly it seemed more real than he was. Whatever was wrong must be worse than she'd said, for how could that make his grandmother watch him that way? After that night he could never be quite sure of Emma and her friends. He was afraid they might find out what he was before he knew himself.

One day they came into the house. His grandmother was in the park, calling "Mrs. Tortoisesh.e.l.l" after a lady who appeared to be very deaf. Jimmy had grown bored with watching the chase when the others came to find him. "I've got to stay in until she comes back," he said. "You can read my comics if you like."

He led them up to his room. Bruce had to read everything out loud, though he was two years older than Jimmy, and the best he could make of Kryptonite was "k, k, kip tonight." Jimmy laughed as loudly as the others, but he didn't like the way they were crumpling his comics. "I know where we can go," he said. "There's a great cellar downstairs."

There were mountains of coal, and a few graying mops and pails that looked stuck to the walls by shadow, and the furnace. That was a hulk like a safe, taller than his father, overgrown with pipes. Jimmy wished it were winter, because then he could open the door and watch the blaze; now there was nothing inside but a coating of soot and ash. The three of them were hiding from Bruce to make him blubber when Jimmy's grandmother found them.

"Don't you dare come in here again. Just you remember the police are only up the road." She warned Jimmy that she'd tell his parents when they came home, but they didn't seem very concerned. "I can't see what you have against his friends," his mother said.

His father clenched his forehead against a headache. "Neither can I."