Written on the note in big, childish, red crayon letters were the words:
in case of
emergunsy
And below the writing, in thick, black crayon, was the outline of a man in a hat and a long flowing coat. An outline that had been warped and distorted in the years since then, but which was still familiar.
Mr Mumbles.
My heart skipped a beat. I knew then that I’d found it. I’d found the thing that would stop him.
I set my candle down on the floor, ripped the note off the bag and yanked on the zip. It moved stiffly, but I managed to wrestle it open. Apprehensively, I reached inside and pulled out the first thing I found.
For a long time I knelt there, staring at the worn rubber suction cup of the plastic arrow, not sure how to react. The bag held four or five of the arrows, along with a tiny toy bow, just like in the drawing I’d discovered earlier. There was a short sword in there, too. It was just as plastic as the bow and the arrows, and just as useless. Maybe they could hurt the Mr Mumbles of my five-year-old imagination, but this one was real, and plastic weapons weren’t going to stop someone who’d survived being run over by a car. Twice.
‘Useless,’ I hissed, snatching up as many of the toys as I could hold in both hands. ‘It’s all useless.’
I quickly stood up, arms raised, ready to hurl the plastic junk across the attic. The bag had been my last hope – my only hope – and it had turned out to be just another dead end.
I snapped my arms forwards, throwing the things as hard and as fast as I could. Or trying to, at least. But as I threw, my fingers refused to open. The play weapons stayed right where they were in my hands.
Again I tried to lob them. Again my grip didn’t budge. A third attempt ended the same way. Try as I might, I couldn’t throw the toys away.
I looked down at my hands. They were holding on to the toys so tightly my knuckles were white. I had wanted to get rid of them, but some part of me refused to let go. Something deep in my subconscious mind was making sure I held on to the contents of the bag.
Shaken, I stuffed the toys back in the satchel and swung one strap over my shoulder. If my subconscious was so determined to keep it around then maybe the bag would come in handy. OK, I couldn’t see how, but it might. Stranger things had happened today, and I’d been slap bang in the middle of most of them.
The tiny flame flickered in irritation as I picked up the candle and took one final look around the attic, hoping to spot some other clue to defeating my former friend. I knew in my heart, though, that there was nothing else to find. There was no magic wand I could wave to make Mr Mumbles go away. I would have to find some other way to stop him. Whatever it took.
I made my way back to the hatch, and was just about to step on to the ladder when I heard it: A slow, regular thud, thud, thud from down below. I sucked in my breath and leaned back away from the hole in the floor. I didn’t want to make any noise, so I squeezed the flame of the candle out between two fingers – something I’d always thought looked cool, but which I’d always been too scared to try in the past.
It wasn’t cool. It bloody hurt.
But burnt fingertips didn’t seem like anything worth worrying about now. Instead I could concern myself with the fact that someone was in the house.
And they were coming up the stairs.
In the blackness I waited, unable to move for fear of drawing attention to myself. My breathing sounded louder than the gales outside. My heart thudded with more force than the rain on the sloping roof above my head. Already I could feel my legs wobbling. Any minute now they’d give up on me completely. Any minute after that, I’d be dead.
Thud, thud, thud. The footsteps were almost right beneath me now. Next I’d hear the creaking of the metal ladder, and then that ugly head of his would appear through the hatch. Since there was no other way out of the attic, I’d be trapped.
There’d be no escaping this time.
Chapter Fourteen
REVELATIONS
The thudding stopped at the top of the stairs. Aside from the weather outside, there was nothing but silence in the house. I held my breath until it felt as if my lungs were about to go pop. Just a few seconds before they did, the quiet was shattered.
‘Coo-ee!’ called a familiar voice. ‘You up there, Kyle?’
‘Nan!’ I cried, leaning over the hatch and peering down into the gloom. Her wrinkled face gazed up at me, illuminated by a candle of her own. Right at that moment, she was the most beautiful sight I’d ever seen. ‘Nan, what are you doing here?’ I half climbed, half jumped down the ladder, and gave her a grateful hug.
‘The way was blocked,’ she explained. ‘A tree’s on the road.’ Her grey eyebrows furrowed as she thought about this for a second. ‘Or something like that.’
She was wringing her wrinkled hands together, obviously worried. ‘I hope Albert’s all right.’ Her eyes were distant again, like a barrier had come up behind them. ‘Poor Albert. I’ve got such a feeling something terrible’s happened.’ A single tear rolled down her wrinkled cheek. ‘Oh, Albert!’
‘Nan?’ I kept my voice soft so as not to startle her. ‘Nan, are you OK?’
Her eyes seemed to swim for a moment, as if they were trying to focus. When they finally found me I saw their usual sparkle was back. ‘Stuck there for ages, we were,’ she smiled, ‘but your mum managed to get us turned round in the end.’
I smiled, glad to have the real Nan back so quickly. ‘That’s good. Is Mum with you?’
‘Course she is, sweetheart. She’s downstairs. Fixing the lights.’
I wanted to jump for joy. Even though I hadn’t wanted Mum in danger, it was a relief to hear she was near. She’d know what to do. She’d sort it all out. She always did.
‘We tried phoning the police station to find out what was happening. With the road, like.’
‘The policeman’s been hurt. Maybe killed,’ I said, stopping short of any other explanation. Saying it out loud made my body shake and my mouth go dry. Hot tears sprung up behind my eyes. The policeman could be dead. Properly dead.
‘Oh,’ Nan nodded, matter-of-fact. ‘That’ll be why he wasn’t answering, then.’
We both jumped as the electricity suddenly clicked back on, flooding the house with light. A few seconds later, Mum appeared at the bottom of the stairs, her cheeks flushed red from the cold.
‘Mum!’ I jumped down the first few steps. ‘You’re here!’
‘Kyle,’ she gasped, moving up to meet me halfway, ‘what happened to your head?’ I winced as she gently touched the cut on my forehead. I’d completely forgotten about it, but now she’d mentioned it I could feel it throbbing away. I saw the concern in her eyes and everything I’d been holding back all night burst free all at once.
‘Mum, I’m sorry I got cut and wrecked everything but it wasn’t my fault I had to get out he was after me and he kept coming he kept coming and the policeman…the policeman got hurt and that’s my fault because I shouldn’t have gone there and now he’s going to come after me again and he’s going to get me.’ I was babbling uncontrollably, unable to hold back my emotions.
‘Wait, wait, slow down,’ Mum comforted. ‘The policeman’s coming to get you?’
‘No,’ I said, my voice a hoarse whisper, ‘not the policeman.’
‘Who then?’
I wiped my tears away and looked her right in the eye. ‘Mr Mumbles,’ I whispered. ‘Mr Mumbles is coming to get me.’
Mum stared back at me, her jaw slack. She didn’t say anything for what felt like forever. Her eyes darted across to Nan, then back to me.
‘What did you say?’ she asked in a low whisper. Her eyes looked hard, like a defensive wall had come up behind them. ‘Mr Mumbles,’ I repeated. ‘He’s come back. He wants to kill me.’
Mum stepped back and covered her mouth with her hand. It trembled slightly as she held it there, no longer looking at me.
‘Kyle,’ she spoke flatly, ‘Mr Mumbles isn’t real. We’ve bee
n through all this.’
‘He is,’ I insisted.
‘Don’t do this to me, Kyle.’ Her eyes were pleading now. ‘Don’t do this. Not again.’
‘He’s real! He is!’ A thought suddenly struck me. ‘The window!’ I exclaimed, ducking past her and running down the stairs. ‘He broke the window, come see.’
I stumbled into the living room and skidded to a stop. Mum appeared quickly behind me, with Nan eventually joining us several seconds later. I shook my head in disbelief as I checked over the window.
‘It was broken,’ I protested, running my fingers over the ice-cold pane. ‘There was glass all over the floor!’
‘It looks all right now, sweetheart,’ Nan said, softly. ‘Maybe you imagined it.’
‘You don’t just imagine a psycho with stitched-up lips crashing through your living-room window!’ I snapped. ‘He was here. I tried to escape, but he was strangling me and—’
‘That’s enough,’ said Mum, sternly.
‘And a girl saved me,’ I continued. ‘Her family have bought the Keller House and are going to move in, and she saw me—’
‘No one’s bought the Keller House,’ Mum dismissed. ‘I’d have heard about it.’
‘But the policeman! What about the policeman? At the station. He was hurt.’
Mum jolted forwards as if there were pins beneath her feet.
‘I’ll call the station in town and find out if anything happened,’ she announced, curtly. ‘Where’s the phone?’
‘I dropped it—’ I started to say, but I stopped when Mum lifted the handset from the top of the TV.
‘Must’ve picked itself up again,’ she said. I watched her punch in a short series of numbers. She kept her eyes on me as she held the phone to her ear and waited.
‘Ah yes, hello,’ she said, when someone finally answered. ‘I wonder if you can help me. I’m calling from Kincraggie village. I’d heard the officer on duty tonight was involved in some kind of accident, and I wanted to check if—’
The person on the other end interrupted. Mum’s eyebrows raised. She nodded, slowly. ‘I see. No, that’s fine. Not to worry. Thanks for your help.’
The phone gave a faint beep when Mum slid it back down into the cradle.
‘Well?’ I asked.
‘There was no one on duty in the village station,’ Mum said. ‘It’s been locked up all day.’
‘What? No!’ I protested. ‘There was someone there. I saw him. I spoke to him! He went out looking for Mr Mumbles, but he got hurt.’
‘So where is he now?’ Mum asked.
‘He…’ I hesitated. Where had the policeman gone? One minute he was groaning on the ground, the next he was gone. ‘He just kind of disappeared,’ I said.
‘Kyle,’ Mum said, her voice softer now. She leaned forwards and took hold of my shoulders. ‘I don’t know what you think you saw, but trust me, there’s no such thing as Mr Mumbles. When you were young you imagined him, but then we…then you…then he went away. You stopped imagining him. You forgot about him.’
‘So what are you trying to say?,’ I sneered, pulling away. ‘I’ve hallucinated the whole thing, have I? It’s all just been my imagination playing tricks on me, has it?’
‘Well, it wouldn’t be the first time!’ Mum snapped. She immediately leaned back, biting on her lip. Anxiety flitted across her face before she forced a smile and began to make a move towards the kitchen. ‘Now,’ she sang, ‘who fancies a cup of tea?’
‘What do you mean, “it wouldn’t be the first time”?’ I asked. ‘Has something like this happened before?’
‘Hmm? Oh, no, forget I said anything,’ she beamed. ‘How about some hot chocolate? I think I’ve got some—’
‘You should tell him, Fiona,’ Nan said. Her voice was sober. The wrinkles on her face were deep with worry. ‘He deserves to know.’
‘Know what?’ I demanded. ‘What should I know?’
Mum paused in the doorway, her back still to me. She inhaled deeply, and let out a long, quiet sigh. When she turned round, her cheeks were wet with tears.
‘What do you remember,’ she began, ‘about the Keller House?’
The Keller House had been known as the Keller House for as long as I could recall, and not without good reason. There were various legends which circulated about how the house got its name, but they all boiled down to one thing: something terrible had happened within those walls, and it had happened to Mr Keller.
The stories were all slightly different. Mr Keller had been murdered by an intruder. Mr Keller had set himself on fire and burned alive. Mr Keller had died of a heart attack, then been eaten by his dogs. Whatever version of the tale you chose to believe, it always had an unhappy ending for poor Mr Keller.
Since then – and probably because of the stories – no one would move into the house. And so there it had stood, right next to ours, rotting and decaying over the years as the legends became more and more extravagant. The last one I’d heard had claimed Mr Keller had been doing experiments on deformed children, and they’d broken free and killed him, but most people found that hard to believe. Mr Keller was a solicitor, not a scientist.
Or he may have been a taxi driver, depending on who you believed.
‘He was a retired businessman,’ Mum corrected, once I had filled her in on the various versions of events I’d heard. ‘Owned a few shops when he was younger, I think.’
The three of us were sitting on the couch now; me in the middle, Mum and Nan sandwiching me on either side. ‘Sold everything up before moving here,’ she continued. ‘Just after you were born.’
‘Was he murdered?’ I asked. ‘Did his dog eat him?’
‘No, nothing like that.’
‘Well, what then?’
Mum looked across at Nan, then swallowed hard. ‘There was an accident in his swimming pool. A bad one. Someone…someone drowned. They died.’
‘Mr Keller?’ I asked.
‘No, not Mr Keller.’
‘Well, who then?’
Mum rested her hands on top of mine. Her expression was one I’d never seen before. ‘You, Kyle,’ she said. ‘It was you.’
I blinked. My eyes darted over Mum’s face, looking for some flicker there that would tell me she was kidding.
‘But…but I’m not dead.’
‘You were. For a minute or so. Mr Keller found you; pulled you out and gave you mouth-to-mouth. He brought you back. He saved you.’
I shook my head, hardly able to believe what I was hearing. ‘How did it happen?’ I asked.
Mum glanced over my shoulder at Nan. I heard her make some small movement – a nod, maybe.
‘You said it was his fault,’ Mum said, her voice choked with emotion. ‘You said it was Mr Mumbles. Told us he tried to kill you. It was a shock, because you hadn’t mentioned him for a while before that. We thought you’d forgotten about him. Hoped you’d forgotten about him.’
And suddenly there it was again – that st irring in the darkest corners of my mind, as something struggled to come to the surface. Something I’d kept locked up back there for years. A memory I’d tried so hard to forget.
But not hard enough.
I am five. Five-and-a-half, maybe. In the front garden. Shivering. Breeze cold on my bare skin. Arm bands squeezing tight around my arms.
Running. Running in my trunks. Mum walking behind. Far behind. Grass squidging between my toes. Laughing. Arm bands like big muscles. I am Superman. I am the Hulk!
Don’t bother to knock on the door. Never bother to knock. Knows I’m coming. Push it open and run for the water. Want to jump and splash and play!
Mr Mumbles stands by the pool – good old Mr Mumbles, my best friend. Haven’t played with him in a long time. Nearly forgot him. When I see him there I am happy. I laugh.
He doesn’t.
His big hand scurries through my hair like Eensy Weensy Spider. He pulls, tighter and tighter, making me cry and scream; drags me to the edge. I am still crying as he forces me below th
e surface. Still crying as the water swirls into me. Still crying until the world goes dark and my head goes light and I can’t cry any more, not even if I wanted to.
‘I remember,’ I gasped. ‘The pool. I remember. That’s why I’m scared of water, isn’t it?’
‘You never went swimming again,’ Mum nodded. ‘Mr Keller came through and found you floating there. He pulled you out and brought you back.’ Tears rolled down her cheeks. ‘Oh, God, Kyle, I thought I’d lost you.’
‘What happened to Mr Keller?’ I asked.
‘What?’ Mum looked surprised that I was even asking. She looked up at Nan.
‘No idea,’ Nan said with a shrug.
‘He moved on again a little while after,’ Mum said. ‘I’m not sure where. The accident shook him up quite badly.’
‘It wasn’t an accident,’ I said. ‘It was Mr Mumbles.’
‘That’s what you kept saying at the time,’ Mum nodded. ‘But it was just an accident, Kyle. You slipped and fell into the pool.’
Angrily, I pulled my hands away from under hers and stood up. I crossed to the window and gazed out at the storm. For the first time, I noticed the CD player was back on the table and completely intact. Another of tonight’s mysteries.
‘Tell me about him,’ I said.
‘Mr Keller?’
‘Mr Mumbles.’ I turned back to the couch and looked down at Mum. ‘When did he appear?’
She scowled and leaned back on the couch. ‘I don’t think this is—’
‘Please,’ I urged. ‘I have to know.’
Mum tilted her head towards the ceiling and closed both eyes. She sat like that for a few long moments, deep in thought. Finally, just as I was about to prompt her again, she started to speak.
‘You were three, going on four,’ she began. ‘You’d been in playgroup a few months but…I don’t know, you weren’t really settling in.’ She shook her head and opened her eyes. ‘We shouldn’t be going over this.’
‘Mum,’ I begged. ‘Go on.’
‘Right. Fine,’ she said with a sigh. Her eyes were distant – unfocused – as she blew the dust off the pictures in her head. ‘You didn’t like it because the other kids…some of the others there, they couldn’t understand you properly.’
Mr Mumbles Page 10
