I’d even been there, after New York, which he probably knew, useless looking for traces of Alan. A pretty old stone village on the banks of Lake Coniston. A red post box in front of a done-up jumble of barns like in Scritch, a big house where the troll lived in Scritch, a big locked gate I couldn’t open. An old woman in the cottage next door telling me the family were away.
But that wasn’t the only Jenny 2, right Chris? There’d been another one too, that only he and I knew about, that he and I’d made up, back when we were first at it and needed some place private, our own world away from everyone, the broken house he’d found. The actual smashed-up shell of an old workman’s cottage by the water almost at the start of the town, kind of on its own island, with a staircase you couldn’t go up, the broken house of rubble we cleared and started calling Jenny 2 to fob off others. Later in J2. The mattress on the ground. Which this stump thing with me ought to know.
‘Come on,’ he said, the scar under his eye ever so slightly different in the harsh light it seemed or did it? reaching over to pat my neck so my hairs stood on end.
‘How come you got a copy of the map in the car?’ in my new high voice.
Get out. Hand in the pocket for the car key, up the stairs, run.
‘Just a hunch. I knew I might need all Alan’s things to… decode any messages he might leave me. I’ve come to know the map’s part of it.’
So why not know the Jenny 2 right off? ‘And now you got the Alphabet too.’
‘We got it.’
‘And you got me to decode things.’ I had to get away from him and his grip. ‘If you’ve got the map with, if you knew you might need it, why didn’t you know what I was talking about when I said “Jenny 2”?’
‘I forgot. They fucked with my head, I’m not who I was. Understand,’ taking my hand, making me touch the top of his head, feel the big dip in his skull under the hair, under the skin. ‘They took stuff out. A while ago.’
Me frozen there, fingering the hole in his head, him holding my green boot box under his arm. Him with bits missing, and me locked down there with him, something wonky from their underground labs?
The hole was a perfect circle, machine-tooled, cut out of his skull under the skin.
I tried to pull my hand away.
‘You got to believe me,’ grabbing my wrist, pulling me close. ‘Else they’ve got us, don’t fall for it. It’s you and me trusting each other or they win. Fuck knows it’s freaky, you’re freaked out, course you are. We’ll talk but not now, we’ve got to get out of here right now, see if we can’t find some trace of Flora.’
‘Grag Medusa.’
He looked at me. ‘No frighteners, I swear. For real. Come on.’
‘What are the rest?’
‘Of?’
‘What heroes need.’
He sighed and shook his head, looked deep into me. ‘A Grag Medusa: a frightener, to distract. A flying horse to make you fast. A cloak of invisibility. A knife to kill. A mirror to trick. And the eye, so you can see into people and can’t be tricked. Look at me. Stop testing me. I’m old bad me. Under a shitload of extras.’
Something massive crashed down above us. We froze, he let go of my wrist, put his finger to his lips. He switched off the new torch then killed the overhead bulb from a wall switch and crept into the big room and switched off the light there. I followed him.
Absolute blackness, something above us, mushroom air. He reached for my hand. We stood there frozen, straining for the slightest sound for a long while. Then he began to edge forwards, inched us blind to the bottom of the cold steel steps. We stood, listening to our fast breath. Otherwise absolute silence, nothing more from above, him next to me, them ready to what? Gouge us out?
He pulled his hand free, I grabbed for him. He pulled free again, pressed my shoulder down as if to tell me to wait there, put his foot on the first step, waited to see if his weight would make it creak.
He inched up, going where, with my box and the book, to join them? I stood there holding the bottom of the steps, feeling the shake as he climbed up away from me with the green box under his arm and his solved message to do what? Leave me down there? I’d be able to breathe, there was air, the caravan pipe ventilation. There was food for a year if it was just me, I’d go mad or get hoisted away, carted off in a lorry, snatched in the claws of some huge machine. I started to climb up too behind him. Then a new noise: him sliding the bolt, trying to raise the hatch door.
‘It won’t open,’ he whispered.
I joined him with dry mouth, short breaths, pushed up at the hatch with him. The bolt was open, it was the door that wouldn’t budge, something huge and heavy blocking it.
Trapped down there with him and his missing bits in our new home.
Bad panic in my stomach, I was sweating. ‘Is it…them?’ I whispered
‘Dunno. Push.’
Push and find what up there? But we couldn’t stay trapped, had to see. We pushed hard together from the top of the steps, then pushed again, there was the slightest movement. We strained, he pushed his shoulder against it and together we inched it open, felt the weight of whatever was blocking us shift and slip slightly. A pale slit of light lit up his eyes. He held up his stump, made me stop, together we listened. No sound of anything or anyone except us.
‘Hello,’ he said, eventually.
Nothing.
He forced the door up a little wider. New cold mildew air, more light, whatever was blocking us being pushed up by our force.
‘The bed,’ he whispered, putting his head through the gap, forcing the hatch up more. ‘One of the beds fell down.’
I could let go, let the hatch snap down on his neck.
But I didn’t and he pushed up more, waist-high, showing how one of the beds I’d folded up against the wall, hooked securely in place with the fitment, had slipped down. He was looking round the caravan from our gap in the floor sniffing the air.
‘The door’s open.’
A scuttle.
‘It’s a cat.’
Tigs, their orange cat, scampering off through the open caravan door the moment she saw us emerging.
I pushed past him, squeezed through the gap into the mouldy humming empty caravan. No one else there. That I could see. Maybe they were outside. I wanted to go outside, find Tigs, hug Tigs, could Tigs have pushed the bed down? What was physics, what was possible? I didn’t know anything anymore.
He came up behind me, folded the fallen bed back up against the wall, refastened the hook, whispered: ‘Are you sure you did it properly before?’
Pretty sure.
‘Look.’
I crawled to where he was, looking out the open door to where he was pointing: something stuck to the hedge at the back that we’d crawled through, a white bit of material the size of a pillowcase with a red diagonal line drawn down it.
‘Fuck,’ he said.
Red on white: the red warn, the sign of danger in Scritch. You made it with whatever you could, with your own blood if you had to, drew your finger down something pale. You saw that sign in Scritch it meant one thing: get out now.
‘Was it here before? Is it new?’ he said.
‘Don’t know.’ Too much information, my poor brain. The hedge was behind us when we’d crawled into the field. I hadn’t looked back, I didn’t think, no reason to look back.
A coincidence, could it be? Some daub by Poppy.
‘Let’s go,’ he said.
The red line diagonal, pointing down.
Sometimes you drew them so they pointed down at buried stuff.
I set out, he tried to hold me back but I crawled out of the door and back down into the outside and the grass, away from that caravan, crawled up to where the pillowcase was on the fence and started scabbling in the freshly-dug ground there, digging a hole in the place in the earth where the red diagonal pointed, a place that someone else had recently dug. Let them find me, I didn’t care. I wanted to see them.
My fingers hit something hard. A red pla
stic pencil case decorated with white kittens. A box,casket or other object hidden in the earth, like we did in Scritch, that we called ‘terma’. Secret messages Alan hid round the place that could tell you massive information, words that were clues, sometimes coded up using the Alphabet. Or pictures. Or another object that meant something. Or who the fuck knew.
He was next to me. ‘What is it?’
With dirty muddy trembling hands I yanked it open, the zip getting stuck on something: a folded up bit of paper I pulled out, him right next to me, peering over. Inside: a note, lined paper, torn from a notebook, ragged edges, Flora’s handwriting, if they could disappear homes they could fake handwriting, would be watching us right now:
Gone to stay with Jenny for two weeks.
15
I crouched there holding the note in my dirty hands. The same instruction, the world talking to me. Really playing Scritch for real. In which case: what should I do next?
Blow this unholy place.
Get out now, away from red warns, find a safe space to think in, get my bearings, with this note, that Flora might have left me. A trail laid by Alan—or someone who knew Alan’s games.
Where is safe?
The big question, there by the hedge in the middle of nowhere with stump Chris, the bunker and gone house behind us, the note in my hand.
Find some clump of trees, go back to the car? The car they must have seen. The Dons watching us right now, me with him, the forgetful glitcher with the head hole clutching my green box who’d read all my emails, looking just like the Chris I’d grown up with and crouched next to digging up clues when we were kids, knowing just a little bit less than he ought to. Jackdaws, the grey sky. I crouched by the pillowcase with the note. No map, no sense of where we were. Flora nowhere. All the old rules gone.
Talk to me Alan.
‘Back to the car,’ he said.
Get out while you can.
It started to rain, fat splodges. I mangled the splattered note back into the pencil case, did one last look back at the blank and went back through the hedge, him with his holes alongside. Park him for now. Down on my belly, snout to earth, feeling like the trees and hedges could scoop me up any moment, casting my mind wide. Cased back through the years to try to find stories to help me, my brain calling out into big emptiness, everything I’d tried to park back with a vengeance and me not remembering enough. SOS.
Move.
We slithered on the wet red earth through the cut crops, getting scratched, the rain getting heavier, bare minimum cover, heading for the trees as soon as we could: more cover and shelter, those regular evergreen firs. Running down through Christmas trees drenched by plump splats, the world tilting, rain sliding down my face, blinding me.
Towards the car, which had maps and food and clothes and shelter. If it was still there, full of them. Leap in, close the doors, the window that wouldn’t close, speed away, winnow out the ten thousand thoughts later. Or else what? Crouch here drenched in this new world I didn’t know, head for the hippies, no idea where we were, ripe for plucking?
Flora.
Jenny 2. Scritch. Training. Telling us sideways. The Corpse Dog Clan. Zita, that I’d never mentioned. Nodding along in the evenings, keep the old man company, Ann Wynn and Clarice, thinking about Chris. A weird childhood in a weird place—teaching us ways and codes now of use versus secret world rulers? Tell me Alan. Alan maybe out there, drawing me in? Don’t let him down this time. My whole ridiculous life having some purpose and meaning after all. If only I’d listened properly.
What was this? What was my life? What was the world?
I stood frozen by trees in the fat rain, it was like being on drugs.
Mushrooms.
So cold and wet and scared and tired and jittery.
He was with me, wiping rain from his gaunt face with his stump hand: ‘You OK?’
‘What have you done to me?’
He shook his hooded head.
‘Did you drug me?’
‘No. Come on.’ His eyes, scar, desperation. He pulled me close to him so I felt his warmth and smell and fast-beating heart keep pace with mine for a moment. ‘I’m me.’
He grabbed my wrist and yanked me down on behind him through the rain. We saw the flash of white that was the car.
We stopped. Something known, away from the rain. Escape.
But.
‘Are they here?’ I said, great splashes drumming through my thin anorak, my mud-drenched socks and slippers, the tang of earth and pines rising up, him holding the green box under his anorak. ‘Have they been here? Why haven’t they found us?’
‘Maybe they have. Maybe they’re watching us.’
To see where we went next, what we’d do. Blurred fear, so creepy: hidden audiences, solving clues for them.
He pinched into my wet hand: NEED NEW CAR.
Get out. Any direction. See what happens. Work it out later. ‘Drive,’ he said, handing me the key.
Slamming the doors, closing off the outside and the rain. Anorak and sodden slippers off, wet socks, pushing my wet hair out of my face, backing away, driving us off in any direction, speeding up hills, squeaky windscreen wipers pushing off torrents, him pulling off his wet hoodie and t-shirt to fug the car with heavy B.O. His pink stump on the atlas planning backwater routes, craning up at the sky, telling me not to drive madly, trying to give me directions.
‘To where?’
‘North, to Ickthwaite, you know we are.’
I didn’t know anything.
‘How do we know the note’s really from her? Why would she go there?’
He shrugged. ‘They sent her a message too. Or she sensed something wrong. The “chemical spill”. Or Sean turned up pretending to be me, she didn’t like it, cleared off up there.’
‘To play Scritch for real?’ After all this time. ‘She didn’t take the book.’
‘She didn’t need it.’
‘Who are you?’
‘I’m Chris,’ looking at me square, stump to nose. ‘Please believe me. What can I say? What do you feel?’
Skidding there in the rain on those windy roads I tried to feel him, see inside. It felt wrong. But everything felt wrong. And it always felt wrong with Chris.
The big wet empty land, only black jackdaws watching us. That I could see. Rain beating down and into the car with us, empty Welsh countryside, no way of knowing anything. Me sounding mad the moment I tried to tell anyone any of this.
‘Tell it to me,’ I said in my wet clothes. ‘The whole thing. From the start.’ Then I’d make up my mind. ‘Tell me the truth. If you lie I can’t help you. What is this?’
‘You know what this is. You always knew it. Nothing’s real. The world’s a lie. Don’s in charge.’
‘And you’re Don’s clone and Sean’s your clone and Alan stole you and might be alive. What’s Don up to? What does he want?’
‘I don’t want to tell you things they could cut out of you.’
‘You’ll tell me everything, Chris, if you want my help.’
He put on dry clothes from his back seat store, told me I should take off my wet clothes, put dry stuff on or I’d get ill.
‘I want to go to the police,’ I said.
‘The police aren’t the police, don’t you get it? Even if they were, what we gonna say? “They stole her house”? Flora’s told us where to go, we’re going there, to Alan. We only trust us now. Fuck the police.’
‘We don’t know it was her who wrote it.’
‘The same message. We’re going.’
‘What about Tal?’
‘What about Tal? I told you: they’ll have him by now, he’ll be strapped down somewhere pumped with blab juice telling them everything.’
Telling them Scritches and red warns and terma.
I wanted to stop and call Tal’s hospital, check. But there was no way, he said: ‘no phones, not even phone boxes, specially calls to Tal’. And anyway there were no phones, there was nothing except rain and trees and hedges
and fields and streams and stone walls and hills and jackdaws. And then a sudden new bad feeling out there in the nowhere.
‘Is this real? Is this drugs? Or are we…is this…some’—what? Cooked-up Silicon Valley nightmare, us in headsets in some California lab, cut-and-pasted houses, tall tales, new product beta testers, can you ploy the person who least trusts you? ‘Better not be.’
‘This is real. You can feel it. You can always tell.’
It felt real and wrong. But what did I know: disappearing homes. What Alan used to say: if you have to ask if it’s a dream then it’s always a dream. This wasn’t a dream, I knew it wasn’t. But I was still asking.
‘What’s all this about?’
‘It’s about the old knowledge.’ Stump to nose. ‘What people used to know. The fragments from…before.’
‘Fuck off Chris.’ I reached across, tried to open his car door and push him out onto the road. We swerved into a bush, he pushed me back and grabbed the wheel. I pushed him off.
‘I’m telling you,’ he said when we calmed. ‘It’s about things from the deep past. That you don’t know, that dumdums don’t, that Don wants. Secret knowledge, about the world. For Don to feed his machines. That Alan used to forage for. For Don. Go left,’ because we were at a junction. ‘Look,’ pointing ahead. ‘What do you see?’
Some tiny country back road, single lane in green nothing. Hedges, trees, fields, dead periwinkles in dry stone walls. A stone ruin atop some hill in the distance.
‘Yeah what’s that?’ he said. ‘Ruined castle. Pretty. Bet it’s got a nice tea room. Who built that castle?’
‘Don? Fuck off Chris.’
‘Not Don. The English? The Welsh? And who are the Welsh, exactly? All those “warlike tribes”? So many old castles and forts in Wales. Can’t go five minutes without banging into one: Norman, Roman, Iron Age, Bronze Age, older, all over Wales and west Britain at the mouths of rivers, high up, controlling the land. Crumbled now but still there in plain view. Dumb land, overgrown secrets. Guarding what? What’s here?’
‘Fuck off Chris.’
‘I’m telling you. What’s Britain really? What’s Wales? There’s clues. What’s the symbol of Wales? What d’you see everywhere, signs, flags, pubs? Dragons. And what are dragons, really, in Wales, in China, everywhere, George and the dragon?’
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