by Diane Janes
I was caught between the devil and the deep blue sea. It was already growing dark outside. I didn’t want to join in with the excursion to Bettis Wood; but neither did I want to stay on my own in the house.
‘I’m up for it,’ Simon was saying. ‘We don’t need any special equipment, do we, Trudie? Joss sticks? Candles? Medallions of St Theresa of the Roses, anything like that?’
Trudie took it in good part. ‘Nothing at all – only torches.’
‘We don’t have to wait till midnight, do we?’ asked Danny. ‘Because I’ll be asleep by then. I’m absolutely knackered.’
‘Worth it though,’ said Simon. ‘All we’ve got to do is layer in the sand tomorrow. Then we’ll be ready for the concrete man, the day after.’
‘We can go now, if you want,’ said Trudie. ‘The time is almost right for something to happen. I can sense it. In fact things are happening for some people already.’
I glanced at her nervously. Several times during our meal she had come close to saying too much. Simon was watching me and I experienced the alarming sensation that he knew exactly what Trudie was getting at. I felt the colour rising in my face.
‘So,’ said Danny. ‘It’s agreed. Tonight’s the night for the ghost hunt.’
‘How about you, Katy?’ Simon’s eyes were still on me. ‘Are you coming with us or not?’
‘Of course,’ I said. ‘Count me in.’ Safety in numbers. At least the others would be with me in the wood – better than staying alone in the big empty house.
There was quite a delay before we set out. Trudie and I both decided to put some warmer clothes on, but whereas I dithered in the bedroom uncertain what to wear, she must have changed quickly and was already standing in the hall with Simon when I came downstairs. They had evidently been talking, but as I approached he cut off abruptly and went into the kitchen. I caught his last words though – ‘. . . get hurt if you don’t leave her alone . . .’
‘What’s he talking about?’ I hissed, as I joined her in the hall.
‘He’s just being an old woman,’ she said. ‘He’s got a problem with you and me.’
‘What do you mean – you and me? You haven’t told him, have you?’
‘I didn’t have to. He walked past the bedroom this afternoon and saw us.’
‘Oh God,’ I whispered. ‘He’ll tell Danny for sure.’
‘Well, someone’s got to,’ said Trudie. She spoke so carelessly – as if it didn’t matter at all.
‘No,’ I said. ‘He mustn’t ever find out. Don’t you understand? You’ve got to make Simon promise.’
Trudie just looked at me and laughed. She pushed open the kitchen door and went sailing in. I trailed in after her, praying that she would keep her mouth shut, but knowing full well that she might choose to say something at any moment – she was utterly irresponsible.
We found both the boys in the kitchen, faffing about because the batteries in the smallest torch were nearly dead. Some spare batteries were finally located on the top shelf of the pantry and inserted into the torch, after which there was still the whole locking-up-the-house fandango. Only when we were standing outside the locked front door did Simon extract his torch from the car boot, at which point it became evident that it had been in there for some time. When he switched it on it emitted no more than a sickly orange glow, which faltered a couple of times before settling into a jaundiced beam.
‘It needs new batteries.’
‘Have we got any the right size?’
‘Oh, do come on,’ I exclaimed. ‘Let’s go if we’re going. At this rate we’ll be hanging around all night.’
Simon hesitated. No one appeared to be inclined to unlock the door and embark on another search for batteries, so he shrugged and said he thought it would be all right and we finally set off. The footpath which ran down the side of the field looked strange and unfamiliar – as if it took on a completely new aspect after dark, showing a side of its character we didn’t normally see. Not frightening, I told myself – just different.
Trudie led the way as eager as a child on a trip to the circus. I had chosen clothing which I thought appropriate to the undertaking – jeans with a long-sleeved cotton shirt buttoned over the top – but Trudie had gone for the Bus Stop look: full-length skirt, smock top, floppy cardigan and a long silk scarf wound round her neck. She had commandeered the small torch and as she set off along the footpath, I saw it cleaving the darkness like a pale spear. Danny walked immediately behind Trudie, carrying the big flashlight; then came Simon, assisted by his much feebler beam, and I was last in line – without any means of illuminating the path at all. Under normal circumstances Danny would have been alongside me every step of the way, but I guessed he was teaching me a lesson.
Simon’s torch was focused well ahead of where I was putting my feet, so I found it best to keep my eyes away from the lights and concentrate hard on where I was going. Noises play tricks in the dark. I almost convinced myself that I could hear someone breathing behind me on the path; but when I stopped to listen there was nothing there. I hurried on again, not wanting to be left behind.
Once inside the wood we were surrounded by the sound of the trees. Their movements seemed louder at night. Branches creaked as if taking advantage of the darkness to stretch and flex more freely than they felt able to do in daylight. Now that we were no longer confined to single file, I manoeuvred myself so that I was walking slightly to the right of Simon. Until then he had been between me and the others, and it was only when I drew level with him that I realized Trudie had got some way ahead of us.
‘Trudie,’ I called. ‘Hang on. We don’t want to get separated.’
I don’t think she heard me. My words had not emerged as loudly as I intended, and the noise of the trees increased at just the wrong moment.
‘It’s okay,’ said Simon. ‘She said the playground was the place to go. We know where it is. We’ll soon catch her up.’
‘If you go down to the woods today, be sure of a big surprise,’ sang Danny.
Trudie was getting too far ahead. ‘Trudie,’ I called again.
At that moment the two torches alongside me were both extinguished. Someone – Danny, I was almost sure – emitted one of those maniacal cackles of laughter: the stage villain about to pounce on his prey.
‘Come on, guys,’ I said. ‘Stop pratting about.’ My voice sounded hollow and squeaky in the dark, a strange mixture of annoyance and pleading. No one responded. There was a rustle to my left and I braced myself for whatever surprise was about to come out of the dark. I hated them in that moment – hated all three of them. Any minute now they were going to jump out and make me scream. It was the sort of stunt my big brother used to pull all the time. I stood rigid in the darkness, experiencing a familiar sense of rising panic, while fighting down the urge to cry. My tears had always been big brother’s victory. Katy’s such a cry-baby. ‘Come on,’ I said again. ‘You’re not being fair. I’m the only one who hasn’t got a torch. Switch them back on.’
I was greeted by another mad cackle of laughter, which appeared to come from further away than the first. This was followed by Simon’s voice from somewhere on my left. ‘Fuck it. The battery must have gone.’
He sounded genuine. I clenched my hands at my sides. There was no need to panic. Danny was close at hand with a big flashlight.
‘Danny,’ I called out.
The silence mocked me.
‘Danny.’
The stupid sod. He was obviously determined to carry his little joke through to the end. A treacherous voice in my head whispered that it was all my own fault. If I had made it up with Danny, I wouldn’t be standing in the dark right now. I decided to appeal to Simon instead.
‘Simon,’ I called.
‘Katy – where are you?’ His reply came from further away than I had expected and I couldn’t determine the exact direction.
‘I’m here.’ Even as I said it, I knew how useless a response it was.
‘My torch has come back on again but it’
s really faint. Can you see me?’
I cast around desperately. Surely I ought to be able to see his light, however dim. He couldn’t be more than half a dozen yards away.
‘I can’t see you.’ I felt around with my hands -encountered nothing – took a couple of steps forward, then recoiled as something brushed against my face. ‘I can’t see you,’ I repeated, a note of hysteria rising in my voice despite my attempts to suppress it. ‘I’ve lost the path.’
‘Don’t worry. Stay put and I’ll get Danny to bring the big torch.’
‘No,’ I shouted. ‘Simon, wait.’
He didn’t answer. Guessing that Danny had gone on ahead, Simon presumably intended to carry on along the track until he found him. He was going to leave me completely on my own.
Just then I caught sight of the small torch beam moving between the trees. Trudie – the architect of this whole disastrous undertaking – was somewhere not far ahead. I stumbled towards the light and fell heavily, my knees crashing on to something hard – probably a fallen log. It hurt so much I thought my kneecaps must be shattered, but tentative experiment demonstrated that I could still move them. I felt the knees of my jeans and found they were cold but dry, so I evidently wasn’t bleeding to death either. I scrambled to my feet and peered into the darkness again, trying to pick up the light of her torch where I thought I had seen it last. My fear was subjugated by anger. I remembered the mischief in her eyes – how she had flirted with us one after another – but it was me who had succumbed. And now she was going to let Danny know what had happened at the very first opportunity.
I glimpsed the flicker of a torch ahead of me again and began to follow it: a will-o’-the-wisp treacherously leading me deeper into the wood. I soon lost sight of it, but not before I had regained the path. At least that was something – all I had to do was stay on it until I reached the playground. Even without the confusing brightness of the torches there was barely enough light for me to pick my way forward and the shifting shadows of the branches made everything uncertain: creating an illusion of movement, so that the ground itself appeared to be undulating to and fro. The wind had risen and the trees responded with louder moans, but these and every other noise were instantly obliterated by Trudie's scream. She only had time to cry out once, but the sound seemed to echo around the wood for an eternity.
TWENTY
Pam’s shrieks of laughter echo all over the pool. They bounce down from the ceiling, reverberate from the plate glass windows, chase unsuspecting patrons into the changing rooms. I despise this squealing over nothing, long for the restoration of tranquillity. Until Pam’s return, we ‘Early Bird Swimmers’, as the poster advertising the session describes us, plodded up and down in relative peace and quiet – but now she is back, ripping up our eardrums until I long to shout, ‘Be quiet. Shut up, for goodness sake, and give us all a break.’ Marjorie joins in with this dawn chorus of merriment. Squawking along in disharmony, loving every minute. I try not to wish Pam ill, but I cannot help thinking that another bit of knee surgery would be such a reprieve for the rest of us.
Almost a week has gone by since I was last in the changing room with them: quite long enough for Marjorie to have forgotten all about the episode in Menlove Avenue. This morning it is Pam who wants to corner me, with a story about her granddaughter. She doesn’t know what the schools are coming to -looks to me for confirmation of the parlous state into which the education system has descended. It appears that the grandchild’s teacher has entirely failed to appreciate her brilliance – is positively holding the child back. Pam appeals to me for agreement – I must recall meeting little Jolene, back in the Christmas holidays when she was staying up here and Pam brought her swimming. I must have noticed how bright she is.
I do remember Jolene – a suet pudding of a child, with whom I had a brief conversation about her Babar the Elephant sweat shirt. Jolene had not been aware that Babar was a character in a book. I make non-committal remarks, until rescued by Marjorie’s intervention: naturally she too has a story about the general incompetence of the teaching profession. I realize that a theory has evolved between Pam and Marjorie that I chose to retire early because of the falling standards they equate to modern-day schooling. This is untrue. My own standards never wavered. Do your best to get through the day and try to stay sane.
I’m just about to escape the pair of them, when Marjorie changes tack completely – abandons the education system in favour of the very last thing I want to hear about. It transpires that, in my absence, she and Pam have been talking about the mysterious sighting of a vehicle identical to mine, apparently parked where I could not possibly have been. This conundrum has injected some interest into their otherwise dull lives, and they have worked it up between them until it has acquired the status of a Matter for Mutual Concern. Marjorie asks whether I have considered the possibility that someone is impersonating me.
It’s so preposterous that I burst out laughing. Marjorie looks a bit huffed by this, and explains that what she really means is that someone has made up false number plates and is using them on a car similar to my own. Not, she says, to specifically impersonate me, but for ‘criminal purposes’. Pam chips in with confirmation that she has read about such things in the Sunday newspapers.
This time I am ready for them. Numbers are often allocated to car dealerships in batches, I say. This means that cars of the same make and colour sometimes have registrations which are only one digit apart. Surely that must be the solution here. I bought my car locally, so it is highly likely that there is another one driving round the city with virtually the same registration. Pam seems quite taken with this idea, but I can see that Marjorie isn’t convinced. Apart from anything else, my solution relies on Marjorie having made a mistake – albeit a small one. Nor does she want to be robbed of a juicy morsel of excitement by the production of a simple rationale.
On the walk home I start to imagine all sorts of scenarios. Marjorie, who is very active in her Neighbourhood Watch, might work herself up to reporting this mysterious occurrence at her local police station – ‘just in case’, as she would say. Not that they would take any notice. I can almost hear the stalwart desk sergeant thanking her for coming in, while politely shifting into anti-nutter mode. But somehow I can’t quite convince myself and the memory of our conversation stays with me all day.
At badminton that evening I play a blinder and kid myself I’m over the jitters. When the session is over I stick around as usual to help put things away and lock up the hall.
‘Fancy a drink?’ asks Carolyn, our club secretary.
‘No, thanks. I’m going to have an early night.’ I give her a cheery wave from across the car park. Liar, says my conscience. You know you’re not going home.
I don’t usually come here twice in close succession – let alone three times in the space of barely a week. I’m uneasily aware that it is getting out of hand. It was the letter. That was what started it all. Meddlesome old women, Mrs Ivanisovic and Marjorie both. What would I do if Marjorie’s car was to come round the bend now? Suppose she parked right in front of me. I imagine her getting out of the car, approaching to see exactly who is sitting here in the dark, and me panicking – gunning the car into life and pulling out – not meaning to hit her of course.
Time to put the brakes on.
I have always tried to avoid making my presence too overt. I generally favour the summer months, usually leaving it late, waiting for dusk. The street lamps don’t give too much illumination at that time of the year, because the trees cast dappled patterns across the road, half hiding the car in a jigsaw of shadows. Of course winter evenings are also pretty safe because drawn curtains hide me from them, just as they do them from me.
I don’t have to see inside the house to know when they are there. There is always the telltale car parked on the drive or lights in the windows. Occasionally I see one of them coming in or going out, but that hasn’t happened for a long time. I tell myself that I don’t need to come. That
there isn’t any point really. I can’t achieve anything by it – but I am drawn back here all the same. I know the house hasn’t changed hands because I check the phone book periodically. Once you have tracked someone down, it isn’t so very difficult to keep tabs on them.
But coming here is a two-edged sword. On the one hand it reassures me a little to know where they are – to be so close. Yet equally it focuses that sense of an ever-present danger – the knowledge that a phone call or a knock on the door is all it would take. Up until a few days ago I didn’t think anyone had ever noticed me sitting here. If anyone does walk by I’m just a woman waiting in a car. I don’t always park in the same place – or come here all that often. I don’t look like a stalker – no ski mask or night vision goggles – just an ordinary woman who has grown old waiting. And so long as no one knows about my visits, what possible harm can it do?
Maybe secrets can make stalkers of us all. They say that knowledge is power but secrets are more powerful still – drawing us, holding us in their grip of steel. You can never quite break free despite the passage of the years, because secrets have a life of their own and a way of working themselves to centre stage. The danger is always there, that one way or another a secret is going to find a way out.
TWENTY-ONE
After the scream there were a lot of other noises. A sound of crashing like someone running or falling over. Then voices shouting – I heard Simon calling our names: ‘Trudie’ and ‘Katy’ in that order. I found that I couldn’t answer him. I had sunk down to a crouching position. Afraid to move. Afraid to breathe. For a moment there was silence again – then I heard Danny’s voice. ‘Si, Si, where are you? Katy . . .’ He began yelling out my name repeatedly. ‘Katy . . . Katy . . .’
‘I’m here.’ When I stood up I saw there was a blob of light coming towards me, winking in and out of sight between the trees. I shouted again and the torch swung in a wide arc, spotlighting trees, clumps of weeds, finally me.
‘I’m coming.’ I careered towards the figure behind the light, not caring how much I scratched and bruised myself in the process. As I reached Danny and fell against him, Simon loomed breathless out of the darkness. ‘My torch has packed up again. Where’s Trudie?’
