“Let me just assure you that as far as the school knows he’s kept his promise. We’ve had no more complaints from parents.” As I closed a hand around my sleeve to prevent myself from looking at my watch, Mrs Dixon said “I was meaning the stories he writes.”
“I haven’t seen those. I don’t believe he’s brought them home.”
“That’s what I was afraid of. I’m sure you must know he’s an imaginative boy, a literate one as well. It’s no wonder he’s so far ahead in his writing.”
“I’m happy to hear that, but you were saying you were afraid.”
“Yes, that if he isn’t taking his work home to show you and Mrs Sheldrake he may be destroying it.”
I wasn’t sure I wanted to learn “Why would he do that?”
“I suppose because he’s been made to feel guilty about his imagination.”
If this was any kind of accusation, the truth was too complicated to address. “What are the stories about?” I said.
“Other worlds and that sort of thing. I expect it has to do with all these Star Wars films and the rest of them. They’re not my taste, but I know children like them.”
“Toby hasn’t seen any. Mrs Dixon, are you saying his stories are like the ones he was telling the other children?”
“I should think so. I don’t really know enough about sci-fi, isn’t that what they call it, to judge. It’s always dark, and it goes on for ever, and there are creatures living in it that you can’t even measure. Not my sort of cup of tea at all.”
I wanted to be gone, but I had to ask “Do any of his friends write stories like his?”
“I think he’s one on his own, Mr Sheldrake.”
No doubt this was intended as a compliment. “Not Claudine, for instance,” I persisted.
“Certainly not her.” Mrs Dixon glanced around and lowered her voice, so that I expected to hear worse than “She’s years behind your Toby in her writing.”
“I’ll talk to him later. Thank you for alerting me,” I said and hurried out of the shrilly clamorous schoolyard.
I couldn’t delay any longer. I was already worried that I mightn’t have enough time. This was one of the days when Lesley was the mother who collected Toby and Claudine from school and took them to her home, and my first chance to do what I was sure had to be done. As I drove out of the city I could have fancied that every hindrance I’d encountered while driving Toby to Safe To Sleep had grown worse—a set of traffic lights that scarcely turned green before reverting to red, a parked lorry the length of a block of shops, twice as many roadworks holding traffic up with temporary signals—and I fell to muttering if not snarling words that weren’t yet in everyday use. I was on edge until I reached the open countryside, where the buses that picked the children up were nowhere to be seen. I was almost in sight of the Safe To Sleep house when I turned along a side road.
Spiky hedges several yards tall hid my car at once. I’d located the road on a map in the university library, and it would take me behind the house. I drove as fast as I dared, braking hard at bends, which were far more numerous and sharper than the map had shown. When the hedge on my right gave way to a stretch of aspen trees I drove onto the grass verge alongside and lowered the window. Between the silvery trunks I could see splinters of amber—sections of the distant sandstone house.
I climbed out onto the slippery unyielding verge to retrieve the binoculars I’d hidden in the boot. I almost hadn’t realised I needed to buy a set yesterday on the way home. I tried not to make much noise in shutting the boot, despite how far away Safe To Sleep was, but the thud sounded no more muted than my pulse. I strapped the binoculars around my neck as I moved into the copse, and had the unwelcome irrelevant thought that the first time I’d read the word in my childhood I had taken it as saying corpse.
The grounds of Safe To Sleep were on the far side of a field beyond the trees. At least the grass in the field was almost as tall as me. It was less than a hundred yards away, and I hadn’t expected it to be so hard to reach. Most of the gaps between trees were too narrow for me to squeeze through, and as I searched for a route to the field I could easily have fancied that the hindrance was deliberate. It didn’t help that almost as soon as I entered the copse I’d begun to feel as if there were more trees at my back than I’d passed. Perhaps this was an effect of the gloom that the close growth produced, a closeness that seemed to have trapped a marshy chill among the clenched skeletal roots. By the time I’d struggled halfway through the copse I was wishing I had tried to breach the hedge instead. I felt not much better than lost in a maze, and so desperate to be out of it that I tried to force some of the thinner trees apart, which only dislodged chunks of bark undermined by lichen. I soon gave that up, because I didn’t want to touch the pallid objects that squirmed out of the exposed timber. I was almost ready to turn back when I saw that the nearest the copse had to a path led away from the direction I was following and ended at the edge of the field. I dodged along it, almost tripping over roots that I hadn’t thought were raised so high, and lurched out of the copse.
A chill breeze pursued me out of the trees, where leaves whispered in chorus and pallid catkins writhed like the parasites I’d uncovered beneath the bark. The house was in clear sight beyond the hedge across the field, and as I ducked it felt like being forced to imitate the Noble mannerism. Pale grass fat with seeds swayed around my face as I peered towards Safe To Sleep. I would have to cross the field with my head bowed if I didn’t want to risk being seen.
In just a few paces I saw what lay under the grass: molehills everywhere I looked. I could only think the wind that made the heavy grass-blades grope at me was also causing the mounds to emit a noise I wasn’t even certain I was hearing—a faint deep murmur that appeared to range here and there before closing around me once again. I hadn’t realised moles left the tops of their mounds open, but presumably the wind across the holes was producing the phenomenon. I was more troubled by a sense that although I was out beneath the pale May sky, the gloom of the copse had stayed close at my back. No doubt keeping my head down helped cut off the already muffled sunlight. Every so often I strained my eyes up without lifting my head, hoping I hadn’t much further to tramp through the oppressive vegetation—the swollen stalks that kept nodding closer, the smell that reminded me more of mould than grass, the omnipresent barely greenish pallor that made the field look like a faded representation of itself. I wasn’t far beyond the middle of the field when I heard a distant but familiar noise—the engine of a minibus.
Despite the underlying murmur of the field I could tell that the bus was approaching Safe To Sleep. I did my best to sprint across the field, snapping grass-blades and dodging around mounds, while the binoculars dealt me thump upon insistent thump until I clutched them to my chest. Once I nearly tripped over a mound, which felt firmer than loose earth—more like a hummock in a marsh—and yet quivered with the impact. I thought I must have widened the hole in the mound, since the indistinct murmur seemed to converge, lending an unnatural voice to the grass that had grown restless all around me. For some moments the low ominous sound and the agitation of the grass kept pace with me as I made for Safe To Sleep.
The hedge bordering the grounds stood several feet higher than the grass. Well before reaching it I was able to raise my head. The twigs were even spikier than the hedges on the side road, and so black and glossy that they put me in mind of insects. They didn’t bear a single leaf or any fruit or blossom, as if they were so thickly entangled that nothing other than the polished black claws could emerge. I heard the bus draw up beyond the house, and I was searching for a gap through which to spy on the proceedings when the doors of the bus opened with a gasp like an expression of relief.
That was all. I should have been hearing the chatter of children as they piled out of the vehicle, but I wasn’t even sure I could hear feet on gravel. I was dismayed by how glad I felt that Toby wasn’t among the abnormally muted children. As a distant gravelly whisper ceased I found a gap b
etween the twigs, just large enough to make it worth pressing the binoculars against the hedge. While one lens showed me only a blurred spiky tangle of blackness, the other let me focus on the sleeping room.
Open curtains fringed the high wide windows. I was afraid someone might draw them, but perhaps leaving the room unconcealed meant nobody thought the activity could be seen. Children had begun to gather in the room, and I was twisting the screw to bring their faces into sharper focus when I glimpsed movement on the floor above. A man had stood up, and I saw his back as he left the upstairs room.
Whether he was the owner of the house or just a tenant, I wanted to know who he was. I concentrated on the upstairs window in case he returned, and was peripherally aware of how the children in the sleeping room disappeared as they lay down. The man hadn’t reappeared by the time the last child took her place on a mattress, and I was waiting for him to show up when he came into the sleeping room.
He was tall and thin and greying, but I couldn’t see his face. He had his back to me while he talked to Phoebe Sweet at the door. She closed it as he moved along the room, leaning down to speak to each of the hidden children. He was growing more recognisable as he advanced; his stoop was—that swift fluid stoop. He inclined his upper body towards the mattress by the window where I guessed the youngest child lay, and I remembered how he’d stooped to his daughter in her pram in the graveyard, exactly as he was bending towards his grandson.
I didn’t realise how close I was pressing to the hedge until I saw and heard and felt thorns scrape the lenses of the binoculars. As I recoiled, Christian Noble straightened up. I was about to lower the binoculars in case any gleam on the glass alerted him to my presence when he moved down the room and sank out of sight with a deft lithe motion that looked positively reptilian. I guessed he’d lain down on a mattress, and now I saw Phoebe Sweet cross the room to lie down opposite him. They must be about to begin the Safe To Sleep treatment, and I wouldn’t be able to see what they did unless I ventured closer to the house.
I’d already seen there was no way through the hedge I was at. Had I time to return to my car and search further? I’d no idea how long the session might last or how likely it was that anyone could trespass unobserved. I was straining my eyes in a last look through the binoculars, willing some activity to become visible, when I heard a new sound.
At first I wasn’t sure if it was separate from the murmur that the wind was raising from the mounds of earth. Once I recognised that it was beyond the hedge I peered through the binoculars, but the sleeping room might have been deserted for all I could see. I let the binoculars drop and was disconcerted to find I hadn’t noticed molehills lying low among the bushes that stood sentry in the grounds of Safe To Sleep. I thought they might be producing the unidentifiable sound until I realised I was hearing words, however faintly. I cupped my ears, leaning as close to the hedge as I could risk, and made out Christian Noble’s voice.
It wasn’t by itself. A woman was intoning words with him, and there was a third voice, higher but no smaller. I knew it must belong to Toph, which I found doubly unnerving—although the infant was audible, none of the other children were. He was speaking in absolute unison with the adults, repeating at least a dozen words over and over. I felt the repetition ought to let me make them out, especially the one the voices chanted loudest. I strained my ears until they ached and cupped my hands closer around them, and the word seemed to swell towards me out of the hypnotic repetitions. All at once it was far too familiar, because I’d heard Christian Noble shout it in the Trinity Church of the Spirit more than thirty years ago: Daoloth.
So he was teaching his grandson the faith just as he’d taught his daughter, and involving the other children as well—involving my son. The notion appalled me so much that it seemed to have left me unable to move. Now that I’d identified the name I heard it more clearly each time it recurred. It sounded as though it was rising out of the otherwise incomprehensible chant, and I could easily have fancied that it was reaching for me. I found myself lifting the binoculars, which brought me the impression that the sleeping room had grown as uninhabited as a void. Of course I could see nothing of the sort, though I might have imagined the room had grown darker. I was trying to decide when I heard and felt thorns clawing at glass.
As I let the binoculars fall on my chest and retreated a step I was confused by thinking I hadn’t been sufficiently close to the hedge for the thorns to reach. Or had I momentarily lost my balance? Certainly the ground felt as if it had shifted stealthily underfoot. No doubt this was vertigo brought on by straining my eyes too hard, and the writhing of the grass-blades all around me didn’t help. They appeared to be groping for patterns at least as elaborate as the tangle of the hedge that bordered Safe To Sleep, and I was further distracted by the murmur of the mounds, a chorus that I could have thought was growing increasingly rhythmic. Surely the chant from the house was confusing me, since this was the rhythm that the murmur seemed to have adopted. I felt uneasy for more reasons than I cared to define, and thought I’d seen and heard enough.
I’d hardly set off across the field when the murmur ceased, isolating the chant at my back. The stillness around me felt unpleasantly watchful, as though I was observed not just from every side but from beneath. I couldn’t avoid brushing against the swollen grass-blades, which made me feel as if seeds were gathering on my skin. The sensation suggested insects too, but I could see nothing there at all. As I struggled through the clinging grass the chant fell silent, and I wondered nervously what might be taking place at Safe To Sleep. The chant had lodged in my skull, and the unknown syllables together with the name I knew too well were still resounding in my mind when at last I reached the copse.
Perhaps the chant befuddled me, because I couldn’t see the way back. I could almost have imagined that the trees had rearranged themselves since I’d used the path. I had to turn away from the direction I’d been certain was the right one, and even once I managed to slip between the trees I felt as if I were trapped in a maze far larger than the copse. The sight of my car parked beside the road only maddened me by looking close but feeling increasingly remote. A wind that I couldn’t sense was enlivening the foliage, which responded with a whisper unnecessarily reminiscent of the kind of hush you might address to a child who was unable to sleep. As the dangling catkins writhed they might almost have been striving to imitate the insects I saw everywhere I looked, squirming out of the trees but remaining embedded as if rather than nesting in the timber they might be extensions of the material. I was desperate not to touch them, especially those that reared up towards me, revealing how transparently gelatinous they were, as I tried to sidle past the trees. When a bloated tendril found my cheek it felt like a cold dead tongue, somehow animated. The touch unbalanced me, and I fought my way through the trees, grabbing sections of the trunks where no activity was visible, hauling them apart so furiously that I felt them splinter. When I reached my car I spent minutes tearing grass out of the verge to wipe my hands, by which time all movements in the copse had ceased; even the grubs had withdrawn inside the trees. At last I was ready to drive, and had to remind myself where I was going—to visit my father in hospital and then to the university for my afternoon tutorial, not yet home. Just the same, the thought of Lesley made me realise that however much I’d learned today, it mightn’t be enough to persuade her. I had to do something that would.
10 - A Consultation
As Lesley came into the hall I said “I’m afraid my father’s not so good.”
She was only starting to respond when Toby followed her out of the kitchen with a crayon in his hand. “How bad is he, daddy?”
It wasn’t just the question that dismayed me, it was my son’s grin. I had the appalled notion that he might welcome my father’s death for the same reason Christian Noble would. “How bad would you like him to be?”
His grin collapsed as if pierced by my sharpness. “I only meant has he been naughty.”
“What else d
o you think he could mean, Dominic?”
“I’m sorry, Toby. I’m a bit worried, that’s all.” This was certainly true, though not the understatement. “You don’t need to be,” I assured him.
“Shall we talk about it later, then? Toby’s got something to show you.”
Lesley steered me towards the kitchen without quite touching my arm. The table was arrayed with crayons, lined up in the order of the spectrum, though I couldn’t recall when Toby had started arranging his crayons that I way. He’d been filling in an enormous yellow full moon that hung above a row of spiky black trees. “He’s illustrating his story,” Lesley said.
A sheet of paper next to the picture was covered with his small handwriting, which had already earned him Mrs Dixon’s praise for neatness. I read the first words and felt as though the breath I’d taken had lodged like an obstruction in my chest. Once upon a time there lived a boy called To who could fly. Every night he flew past the moon and all our planets to play with the stars. Before I could restrain myself I demanded “Why is he called that?”
“Why would he be, Dominic? What do you think it could be short for?”
Of course Lesley meant Toby. No doubt this was likelier than Toph, but I wished she had let Toby answer for himself. I read to the end—the boy To rode away on a comet, which carried him through galaxies and eventually into a black hole from which he emerged earlier than he’d begun his voyage across the universe, letting him return home for a full night’s sleep to be ready for his parents when they came to waken him. “Very imaginative, Toby,” I said, trying to mean no more than that. “It’s better than I could have written at your age.”
“Just finish off your moon,” Lesley said, “and then we’ll have dinner.”
Born To The Dark Page 9
