Despite all this, despite everything I knew and everything I suspected, there was one thing keeping me from agreeing with Mum’s plan.
‘But… I don’t want to.’
She squeezed my hand and glanced towards the window. Before she turned away I saw the softness in her eyes. A butterfly of excitement fluttered in my belly as I realised she wasn’t going to go through with it. She couldn’t.
When she turned back, though, her expression had changed. The softness was still there, but a wall of determination had been built in front of it.
‘I’m sorry, Kyle,’ she said in a voice that told me the debate was now over. ‘But you’re going to have to leave.’ She gave my hand another squeeze, before adding: ‘It’s for the best.’
Ding ding, I thought, as the first of the tears broke through my defences and trickled down my cheek. We have a winner.
Four hours later I was on a train, wedged in tight against the window by one of the fattest men I’d ever seen in my life. The carriages were all pretty busy, and I had considered myself lucky to find a seat at all. Now, jammed there with my arms pinned to my sides and my face almost touching the glass, I wasn’t so sure.
He’d joined the train at the stop after mine. From the second he squeezed himself into the carriage I knew he’d end up next to me. There were two or three other seats free, but I knew my luck wasn’t good enough for him to choose one of those. Sure enough, he heaved himself along the aisle until he was level with my seat, then plopped down next to me with a heavy grunt. No matter which way you looked at it, this really wasn’t shaping up to be a good day.
The track clattered by beneath us; a regular rhythm of clackety-clack, clackety-clack. The train shifted left and right on its wheels. Every time it swung left I found myself squashed further by the bulk of the behemoth beside me.
It was an hour or so to Glasgow, where I would have to get off this train, go to another station, and get on a second train. Then it was nearly three hours until my stop, where I would be met by Mum’s cousin, Marion. From there it was a ten-mile drive to Marion’s house, where I would be living for at least the next month.
Mum had shown me the place on the map. It was a remote little house located slap bang in the middle of nowhere. Apart from the train station there seemed to be nothing within twenty miles in any direction. Mum had described it as ‘perfect’. I guessed ‘painfully dull’ would probably be much more accurate.
I still didn’t want to go, but Mum’s reasoning for sending me to Marion’s did make sense, I had to admit.
It was our house, she said. Huge chunks of the horrors I’d experienced in the past few weeks had taken place in the house, and Mum believed just being there was what was making the bad memories so vivid. Vivid bad memories, it seemed, led to very bad things happening.
She reckoned being around her and Ameena could also be contributing. It was just after she said this that she dropped the bombshell about going to live with Marion. She hoped the change of scene would help me to stop conjuring up anything that might try to kill me. I’d probably just die of boredom instead.
Marion didn’t have any children, which was another reason for sending me there. Mr Mumbles had been my imaginary friend, and Caddie had been Billy Gibb’s – a boy from my class in school. If they only came back when the child who imagined them was around, then taking me away from children should keep me safe from any more homicidal visitors. At least, that was the theory.
‘Nice view.’
The huge man in the seat next to me was leaning into my space, admiring the scenery as it whizzed by the window. His face was red and sweaty, as if he’d just completed a marathon. He was completely bald, and as he breathed I could detect a definite whiff of milk. Stick him in a giant nappy and you could have passed him off as the world’s largest baby.
I quickly pushed the thought away. The last thing I needed was for that mental picture to become a reality too.
‘Yeah, it’s nice,’ I replied, looking out at the fields.
‘See the little birdies?’ he asked, jabbing a podgy finger against the window. ‘Pretty.’
Ignoring the urge to point out to him that he wasn’t talking to a three-year-old, I followed his finger. A large flock of black birds was flying parallel to the train, about thirty or so metres away. They moved as one, all soaring in perfect time together, as if taking part in some carefully orchestrated dance.
‘How are they keeping up?’ I mumbled, not really expecting an answer. ‘We must be doing eighty miles an hour.’
‘They’re crows,’ he said, as if that somehow explained things.
‘Are crows that fast?’
He made a sound like air escaping from a balloon. SSSS-SS-SS. It took me a moment to recognise the sound as laughter. ‘Them ones are.’
I kept watching the crows. I doubted they could keep up this pace for long. Any second I expected them to fall back and be left behind by the train, but they remained level for several minutes. If anything, they seemed to be pulling ahead a little, although I couldn’t be certain of that.
‘Where you off to?’ The man-baby’s voice was close by my ear and I gave a little jump of fright. We were so close he must have felt my sudden jerk, but he didn’t let on if he did.
‘Glasgow,’ I said, not wanting to give away too much information.
‘Big city,’ he said. Every word he spoke seemed to make him more and more breathless. I realised that was why he used as few of them as possible. If a sentence had more than four words in it he had to stop for air halfway through. ‘Shopping?’
‘Something like that.’
‘Young lad. On his own. Big city,’ the man wheezed. ‘Dangerous.’
‘I’ll be meeting friends,’ I lied. I was keeping my gaze pointed out of the window, hoping he’d take the hint.
‘Yes. You will be.’
I turned to face him, struggling against the bulk of his arms. ‘Sorry? What did you say?’
‘I’m sure you will be,’ he panted. ‘Meeting friends, I mean.’ His mouth folded into a gummy smile and I realised for the first time that he had no teeth. Maybe he really was the world’s biggest baby.
‘Tickets, please.’
I was glad the ticket collector chose that moment to appear. Anything to save me from having to talk to the weirdo next to me.
I felt like a circus contortionist as I tried to squeeze my hand down between the man and me so I could reach into my pocket. He must have realised what I was trying to do, but he made no attempt to make things easier. Bad baby. I thought, and I couldn’t help but smile.
My ticket was a little crumpled when I finally managed to haul it from my pocket. I straightened it out as best I could before holding it up for the ticket collector.
‘Sorry,’ I said, ‘it got a bit squashed.’
‘No problem,’ the collector said. He clipped a hole in the ticket, then handed it back to me. As I reached out to take it I almost yelped with surprise. The ticket collector turned and moved along the aisle, but not before I caught sight of his face and realised who he was.
I’d seen him three times before. Once in the police station when I’d been chased by Mr Mumbles, then twice at the school when I’d faced Caddie and Raggy Maggie. I had no idea who he was, but as I watched him move along the train I knew one thing for certain.
I was going to find out.
Chapter Four
JOSEPH
‘Excuse me, can I get past?’
The mega-baby scowled at the question. ‘Why?’ ‘I need to see the ticket collector,’ I said with some urgency in my voice. The man-of-mystery didn’t seem to be bothering with anyone else’s tickets, and was instead walking casually along the train to where a sliding door led through to the next carriage.
With a sigh of annoyance and a grunt of effort, the obese man shifted his immense weight in the seat. His breath became laboured as he caught hold of the headrest in front of him and began to ease himself upright. Huge flaps of blubber wobbl
ed below his arms like fleshy wings. His face contorted in effort as he pulled himself into a standing position.
I moved to pursue the ticket collector, but the bulk of my fellow passenger still blocked the aisle.
‘I’m up,’ he grunted. ‘Might as well go to the bog.’
I pushed my fist into my mouth to stop myself shouting in frustration. The toilets were in the same direction as I was trying to go, and there was no way of squeezing past the waddling beast of a man. I had no choice but to follow behind as he plodded his way along the train, his massive girth brushing against the seats on either side of the aisle.
He was too big even to see past. I hopped into the air a couple of times, but his height and the sheer expanse of his back stopped me seeing if the ticket collector was still in the carriage.
After what felt like a decade we arrived at the end of the compartment, where the aisle widened a little. I squeezed my way past the man and hit the control for the door. It slid open with a shhht and I hurried through. Behind me, the mega-baby forced his bulk through the door and stopped by the toilets.
‘If you’re not back,’ he managed to wheeze, though he sounded like the effort might kill him, ‘window seat’s mine.’
I nodded without looking back. My luggage was in a rack at the end of the train and I had left nothing in my seat. Now that I was free, I had no intention of going back to sit there.
I heard the toilet door close and lock, and tried hard not to imagine the horrors about to be unleashed inside that unsuspecting little room.
A glass door led into the next carriage. I could see right along that aisle and the next one, where the train ended. There was no sign of the ticket collector anywhere.
My hand was halfway to the button that would swish open the door when a voice to my right stopped me.
‘Looking for someone?’
I hadn’t noticed anyone standing in the little alcove where the exit door was, and my shock must’ve been visible on my face when I whipped round. The ticket collector gave a self-satisfied smirk, as if he’d been deliberately trying to surprise me.
‘You, actually,’ I said, recovering quickly.
He nodded and pushed back his hat, revealing a head that was almost – but not quite – as bald as the man-baby’s. ‘Well, you found me.’
The ticket collector was short and a little on the podgy side. He looked to be around sixty, but stood with the type of slouch usually reserved for teenagers. It rumpled his uniform and made it look two sizes too big. He smoothed the edges of his thick, bushy moustache while he waited for my reply.
‘Who are you?’ I asked, unable to come up with a less obvious question.
‘Ticket collector,’ he said with a smile. ‘Tickets, please. See?’
‘Who are you really?’
‘I told you, I’m a ticket collector,’ he insisted. ‘Always have been.’ I opened my mouth to argue, but he kept talking. ‘Just like I’m a policeman and always have been. And just like I will for ever be standing behind the curtain in your school canteen, waiting to untie you.’
I blinked slowly. ‘Nope,’ I said. ‘You’ve lost me.’
‘It’s OK,’ he chuckled, ‘it’s not easy to understand. It’ll be years before you figure it out. Forty-four, to be exact.’
My brow was knotted into a frown. I’d come looking for answers, but all I was getting was gobbledegook. ‘Right,’ I stumbled. ‘So… who are you?’
‘The ticket—’
‘What’s your name?’ I sighed, growing tired of this. The man across from me, on the other hand, seemed to be enjoying every second.
‘I’ve got lots of names.’
I glared at him. ‘Pick one.’
He thought for a moment. ‘Kyle Alexander.’
‘That’s my name,’ I said.
‘Oh yes,’ he said with a wink. ‘So it is. How about… Joseph?’
‘Joseph. Joseph what?’
‘Just Joseph will do for now,’ he smiled.
The door next to me slid open and a woman came through. She was about my mum’s age, and looked almost as strung-out as Mum had looked as she’d waved me goodbye. A boy of around three was in the woman’s arms. He fiddled with her long hair, not paying us the slightest bit of attention.
The woman gave us a faintly embarrassed smile as she made for the toilet door.
‘Out of order, love,’ Joseph announced. ‘Sorry. The one further along’s fine, though.’
A flicker of irritation flashed on the woman’s face, but she thanked him and carried on along the train.
‘Why did you tell her it’s out of order?’ I asked.
‘Because it will be in a minute,’ Joseph answered. I assumed he was anticipating a big clean-up job when the mega-baby finally emerged. ‘Now I need to get back to work,’ he told me. ‘Lots of tickets needing to be collected today. Was there anything else?’
I had too many questions to ask. They buzzed like a swarm of bees inside my head – one big collective noise that was almost impossible to break down into its component parts.
I fumbled for words. ‘Just… just… everything. What’s happening to me? What’s going on?’
‘Wow, straight for the biggies then,’ Joseph said, sucking in his cheeks. ‘What do you think is happening?’
‘I don’t know!’ I cried, launching into a full-scale rant. ‘That’s why I’m asking you. First my imaginary friend comes back and tries to kill me, then someone else’s appears and tries to do pretty much the exact same thing. I find out my dad’s actually my mum’s imaginary friend, and, I mean, I don’t even want to begin to think about how that’s even biologically possible. I’ve suddenly got these… these… powers, and now it’s like either they’re going crazy or I am, because everywhere I look I’m seeing Mr Mumbles or Caddie or… or…’
‘Or me?’
‘Right,’ I said, my tirade running out of steam. ‘Exactly. Or you.’
Joseph nodded thoughtfully, his eyes studying the smooth lines of the train’s ceiling. He gave a final nod and turned back to me.
‘Yep,’ he said.
I waited expectantly for him to continue. ‘Yep what?’
‘Yep,’ Joseph said, ‘that’s pretty much what’s happening to you. Couldn’t have put it better myself. You hit the nail right on the head.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘Now, if you’ll excuse me—’
‘What, that’s it?’ I spat. ‘You’re not going to tell me anything else?’
‘I think you’ll do a fine job of figuring it out all by yourself.’
He tipped his hat towards me and made for the door that led to the next carriage. I watched him, dumbstruck.
‘I thought you could help me,’ I told him. ‘I thought that was why you were here.’
He paused at the door. For a long moment there was no sound but the clackety-clack of the train on the track. When Joseph finally spoke, the lightness was gone from his voice.
‘I am helping you, Kyle,’ he said. ‘I’m doing everything I can.’
‘Not from where I’m standing.’
He turned round and straightened from his slouch. There was an intensity to his expression that seemed to change the entire shape of his face.
‘You think so?’ he asked, his voice flat and emotionless. He nodded towards the door to the toilet cubicle. ‘Look in there.’
‘What?’ I gasped. ‘No way! There’s someone in there.’
‘You sure?’
‘Yes! I saw him go in. Couldn’t exactly miss him.’
‘There’s a window,’ Joseph said.
I snorted. ‘What, are you saying he’s climbed out? That guy?’
One of Joseph’s eyebrows raised so high it almost disappeared beneath the brim of his hat. ‘I’m not saying he went anywhere.’
Joseph took a pace forward and swiped a credit-card sized piece of plastic across the face of the door control button. The light around the switch blinked from an occupied red to a vacant green. ‘Go on,’ he urged, stepping away
. ‘Open it.’
I looked from the door to Joseph and back again, my mouth flapping open and closed like a fish out of water. ‘You can’t be serious!’
‘You say I’m not helping you. That I’m doing nothing. I’ll show you,’ Joseph said. There was an authority to his voice I’d never heard before, even when he’d been dressed as the policeman. The bumbling oaf persona had slipped away, revealing a much more commanding presence lurking behind it. ‘Open the door,’ he said. ‘Open the door and see how I help you.’
‘By showing me fat people on the toilet?’ I muttered, but I was already staring at the circle of green. Already knowing I was going to do it. Already reaching for the button.
The door clicked off the catch as my finger brushed over the switch. The toilet door didn’t slide sideways like the others and I had to give it a push to start it swinging inwards.
The smell that rushed out to meet me stung my eyes and caught in my throat. My gag reflex kicked in and I had to pull my jumper up over my nose and mouth to stop myself throwing up.
As the door swung all the way open I felt my whole body go rigid. The sight I had expected to see when I opened the toilet door had been bad enough. The sight that did greet me was worse. Beyond worse.
Way, way beyond.
What was left of the mega-baby lay twisted on the floor, the vast flapping limbs contorted into impossible positions, the head bent awkwardly sideways, as if his neck was made of rubber.
He was slumped on the lino like a big wobbly blob. There was no rigidity to him. Nothing solid. It was as if something had crawled inside him and devoured every one of his bones. All that remained was a mound of blubbery skin. It swayed hypnotically with the movement of the train.
The man’s mouth was wide open, but his eyes were wider. They looked beyond me, devoid of life, but pleading for… I don’t know. Mercy or dignity or something.
There wasn’t a spot of blood anywhere on the floor or the walls. A broken window was the only sign of a struggle. The hole in the glass would have been too small even for me to fit through, so I didn’t know how it fitted in with the rest of the grisly scene.
The Crowmaster Page 3
