Graham Masterton - Prey.html

by Prey (lit)

As we sat drinking tea, I thought I felt Fortyfoot House give a prolonged shudder; and somewhere right on the very edge of my perception I thought I could hear a child screaming. Yet when I really listened, there was nothing. Only that odd kind of emptiness that you can hear when a train has gone completely out of earshot.

  Dreams, I thought. Imagination. But when I went to the sink to rinse out my mug, I thought I glimpsed a shadow in the garden that wasn't a shadow at all, but a man in a tall black hat hurrying off into the shelter of the oak trees, like a man hurrying for his life, a man too frightened to turn around to see what unimaginable predator might be rushing up behind him.

  6 - Head Hunter

  There was a brisk postman's knock at the kitchen door. I looked up from the Daily Telegraph; and Danny solemnly raised his eyes from his bowl of Honey Nut Loops, the curved sunshine reflecting from his spoon on to his cheek.

  It was the ratcatcher, Harry Martin, his face reddened, out of breath, holding a floppy tweed hat in his hand and wearing a thick tweed herringbone suit. He carried a large leather satchel, fastened with buckles, with the initials HJM burned on to it,

  ''Mr Martin, come on in," I welcomed him. To tell you the truth, I was extremely glad to see him, after everything that had happened last night. "I've just made some fresh tea, if you want some. Or there's lemonade. You look rather hot in that suit."

  He put down his satchel, dragged out one of the kitchen chairs, sniffed, and sat down. "This is my ratcatching suit," he announced. He pinched up the sleeve between finger and thumb. "See this? There aren't many rats can bite through that. Not like these nylon overalls they wear these days. Feel it," he urged Danny, and Danny reluctantly felt it. "What do you think on that?"

  "It's hairy," said Danny.

  "That's right, hairy, like a rat. A rat suit for catching a rat."

  I poured him a cup of tea. "Sugar?" I asked him, and he said, "Three for me."

  He stirred the tea around and around until the tinkling of the spoon grew so irritating that I was tempted to tell him to stop it.

  He suddenly put down the spoon and stared at me, one eye narrowed, one eye wide, "You had some trouble last night, then?" he asked me.

  I nodded.

  "I could see the lights in the sky. I couldn't hear nothing, on account of the wind blowing in the wrong direction. But I guessed you was having trouble."

  "We did have some noises, yes," I said; glancing at Danny. "Noises, and a few lights. Dannydo you think you could finish your breakfast in the sitting-room?"

  "I'm watching Play School."

  I switched the television off. "You were watching Play School. Now you're not watching Play School. So finish your breakfast in the sitting-room?"

  "Here, here, not to fuss," said Harry Martin. "Let's take our tea out into the garden, don't want to spoil the young fellow's telly for him."

  "If he watches any more television his eyes will drop out," I retorted. But all the same I followed Harry out through the kitchen door on to the patio, and we sat on the wall overlooking the downsloping garden and the lichen-encrusted sundial. The early sun shone scarlet through Harry's hairy ears.

  The sea sounded strangely reassuring, like a mother shushing a feverish infant.

  "What kind of noises?" asked Harry.

  "Screams, and bumps, and roaring noises. Children's screams. And a very deep sound that was almost like somebody talking, but very slowly. You knowlike a slowed-down tape. I also sawor thought I sawa young girl in a long nightgown. But I think that was probably a trick of the light.

  I hesitated. "At least I hope it was a trick of the light."

  Harry took out his tobacco-tin and rolled himself a cigarette. "Have you listened to your wireless this morning?"

  "Can't say that I have, no."

  "I always listen to the wireless in the morning. Keeps me company before Vera wakes up."

  "And?"

  "There was a news item this morning how a nine-year-old girl from Ryde disappeared last night. That was part of the reason I thought I'd come along up here to see you."

  "I'm not sure that I understand."

  Harry lit his cigarette, and sniffed. "According to the wireless, see, this young girl was locked in her bedroom as punishment for staying out late. The window was locked, too. But somehow she got out. There was a dent in the bed where she'd been sleeping, but that was all. And the only clothes that was missing was her nightgown, the one she was wearing."

  "I'm still not with you."

  "It's happened before, children going missing," said Harry, patiently. "Whenever there's lights and noises at Fortyfoot House, believe you me, year in, year out, children go missing."

  "You really think there's some kind of connection? Children go missing all the time."

  "They don't go missing the way these children go missing. These children vanish; and nobody sees nor hears of them ever again. Not even bodies."

  He looked at me levelly. "You mark my words. Whenever there are lights and noises at Fortyfoot House, I always listen to the wireless and keep a weather-eye on the newspapers. And every time, children go missing. One, or two. And they vanish for good, like they never was."

  "Have you told the police?"

  "Told the police? I couldn't count the number of times I've told the police. But all they do is laugh, see. They think I'm just a loony old ratcatcher, that's what they think. Thirty-five years of Warfarin's gone to my brain-cells, that's what they say. I always ring them up and tell them, every time it happens, but they always laugh. Thick as shit, some of these modern coppers."

  I turned around on the wall and stared up at the roof.

  "So who's taking these children, do you think? Not Brown Johnson?"

  "Brown Jenkin," he corrected me. "That's it's name, Brown Jenkin. Andyesthat's the one who's doing it. They've been telling that story in Bonchurch for years. Frightening their children, like. Eat your carrots or Brown Jenkin will get you, and carry you off. You heard what my Doris said."

  "Yes," I nodded. "Something about being carried away where even the clocks couldn't catch you."

  "That's right," said Harry. "Off in the future, back in the past, who knows? They say there are places where everything's the same as it is here, only different. Like the Queen's a blackie and nobody ever discovered how to fly."

  "Alternative realities," I said. "YesI read about that, too. There was a long article in the Telegraph about it."

  "Load of old rubbish, I'd say," Harry remarked. "But them children vanish all right, and nobody ever finds so much as a shoe, nor a footprint, nor a fingernail."

  Liz came out on to the patio in khaki shorts and a white T-shirt through which the darkness of her nipples showed. "Do you want some more tea?" she called, her hand lifted against the glare of the sun.

  Harry shook his head. Liz came over and sat on the wall beside us. "You haven't come to catch our rat, have you?" she asked. Her hair was washed and brushed and shining, and she smelled of Laura Ashley perfume.

  "I don't know about catching it today, but I've come to take a look," said Harry. "I've always had a hankering to catch Brown Jenkin. Same as fishermen get a hankering to catch one particular monster pike. Or Captain Ahab had a hankering to catch that Moby Dick."

  "Your wife made me promise I wouldn't let you," I told him.

  "'Course she did. But then you know what women are like. They don't understand duty."

  "What duty?" asked Liz.

  "He's a ratcatcher," I explained. "If he catches Brown Jenkinwell, that'll be the climax of his whole career. They'll never forget him. Not in Bonchurch, anyway."

  "That's not it," Harry contradicted me. "It's not fame I'm after. Not a bit of it."

  "Oh," I said, put out.

  Harry relit his cigarette, with a sharp sucking noise. "The sort of duty I'm talking about is family dutyduty to my brother."

  We waited, and listened. Harry cleared his throat, and said, "My young brother William disappeared when he was eight years old. We slept in t
he same room, William and me, and all he did was go to the kitchen for a glass of water. It was one of those nights when there was lights and noises at Fortyfoot House. I could see the lights, see, shining on the clouds, and I could hear the noises too, like growling under the ground.

  "William got up 'cause he was thirsty. The very last I ever saw of him, he was opening the bedroom door in his nightshirt. I can see him now. I can see him clear. Reddy-brown hair, he had, and a skinny little neck. But you know something, I can't remember his face."

  "And you never saw him again?" I asked.

  "Never saw him again. Not hide nor hair. But the kitchen door was locked, from the inside; and the front door was locked, from the inside; and only the fanlight in the larder was open, and even a cat couldn't've squeezed through that."

  "How long ago was that?"

  There was a long, long pause. Then Harry swallowed, and said, "Fifty-six years, next Michaelmas."

  "And you think that Brown Jenkin took him?"

  "I heard my mother say it, to the vicar. She was sure of it. She was all for going up to Fortyfoot House and tearing it down brick by brick until they found our William. But my father said that she was demented, like, and that Brown Jenkin was no more than a rat, or p'raps no more than a story about a rat, and that it was the Lord who giveth and the Lord who taketh away, not rats. But I knew different."

  "How was that?" asked Liz, sympathetically. It was obvious Harry was still distressed and agitated by his brother's disappearanceeven though it had happened more than a half-a-century ago.

  "The very next day I found two footprints in the flower-bed, outside the kitchen wall. Footprints like rat's claws, only bigger, three times bigger, four times bigger. One of them was plonk in the middle of the pansies, but the other one was only half a print, and looked like it came out of the kitchen wallaway from the kitchen wall, d'you seejust like an animal had walked straight out of the wall without even caring that it was there."

  "Did you show these footprints to your father?"

  "I was going to, but he was out all day with the police, searching for William on the cliffs, and that night it rained all night, and the next morning the footprints were washed away. I couldn't prove nothing to nobody, and that was when I had to say to myself that I had to forget what had happened, and think no more on Brown Jenkin, whatever Brown Jenkin was, because I might have lost my mind, else, the same way my mother almost did."

  I finished my tea. "But now you've come to look for it?"

  "Thought I might, if you didn't object."

  "Of course not." I didn't know whether I believed that Brown Jenkin came out at night and stole children through solid walls, but I did believe that there was something very unpleasant and disturbing up in the attic of Fortyfoot House, and the sooner we managed to dislodge it, the better.

  "Well, then," said Harry, standing up. "Let me go and introduce myself, eh?"

  "I'm afraid the lights don't work in the attic, and I haven't got a torch. I meant to buy one yesterday, but I forgot."

  "That's all right. There's one in my bag, along with all the rest of my tackle."

  He walked back into the house, hefted up his leather bag, and unbuckled its straps. "Got everything you need in here," he said, rummaging noisily around. "Traps, wires, poisoned bait. Even a damn great mallet. Best way to kill a rat you can think of, a damn great mallet."

  I said, uncomfortably, "Your wife did say that I shouldn't ask you to look for Brown Jenkin, and I shouldn't let you, either."

  Harry produced a long chrome-plated inspection torch. "You didn't ask me, my friend; and there's no question of letting me. You're not the master here, are you, you're the decorator, that's all, and what I want to do, well, I do it. So that lets you out."

  I glanced at Liz, but all Liz could do was shrug.

  "You don't have to go up there," I said. "I've got Rentokil coming later."

  Harry laid a firm hand on my shoulder and looked me straight in the eye. "Rentokil, my friend, is for ants, and cockroaches, and dry-rot. This is proper ratcatcher's work." He tapped his forehead. "Psychology, that's what you need, for a creature like Brown Jenkin. You've got to think on your feet, stay one step ahead of him."

  "Well . . . if you say so."

  At that moment Danny came in with his empty cereal-bowl. "What, are you going to do with the rat when you've caught it?" he asked Harry. "Can you put it in a cage and keep it as a pet?"

  "Not this rat," said Harry.

  "I was going to shoot it with my water-pistol but Daddy forgot to buy a torch."

  Harry gave me a sloping, bashed-up smile. "Probably just as well, sonny."

  Danny went outside to play, and I led Harry, puffing, up to the landing. As his leathery old hands grasped the banister-rail, I saw that the end joints of right index and middle fingers were both missing. Some rat got a bashing with the mallet for that, I bet.

  "What made you decide to come up here?" I asked him.

  He grunted. "That boy of yours."

  "Danny?"

  "That's right. After you visited yesterday, I walked around to Bonchurch to take another look at the houseyou know, just to remind myself. Haven't walked round this way for two, three years; maybe more. I stopped outside the back gate and saw your boy playing by the fishpond. He had his back to me, like. And just for one second" He paused, and swallowed, his exaggerated Adam's-apple going up and down.

  "Just for one second I thought it was my brother William."

  He didn't have to explain himself any further. I opened the catch of the attic door, and he switched on his torch. "Be my guest," I told him. "But for goodness' sake be careful."

  Harry sniffed the draft that blew steadily down from the darkness of the attic. "I can't smell rats," he said.

  "What do they smell like, as a rule?"

  "Oh, you get to know it. They smell of sour piss and sawdust and something else, something especially rat-like, like death and babies, all mixed together."

  "Aren't you going to take your mallet?" I asked him.

  "Not this time. I just want to take a look, this time. I just want to get the measure of what I'm up against."

  "A sodding great rat the size of a cocker-spaniel, believe me," I warned him.

  Heavily, he climbed the stairs, probing the darkness with his torch. I followed close behind him, although quite honestly I would have given anything to go back downstairs, and out into the sunshine, and forget that I had ever heard or seen anything. Supposing that girl were still up here? Supposing she were realabducted and sexually assaulted and murdered? How the hell was I going to explain that to anybody?

  Supposing the local stories were right, and Brown Jenkin was a beast that was capable of carrying off children? All I had to protect me was a wheezing 67-year-old ratcatcher with a torch.

  Coward, I chided myself. But then I thought: too damned right, I'm not ashamed of being frightened.

  Harry reached the top of the attic stairs and leaned on the banisters and looked around, the beam of his torch probing into every corner. I saw a diseased-looking rocking-horse, its yellow-glass eye gleaming, its mane thinned by time and the tugging of children's hands. I saw a green school trunk, stencilled with the name R.W.J. Wilson, Headmaster's House. I saw tea-chests crammed with old books. Far below, faintly, I could hear Danny laughing as Liz chased him around the garden.

  "Last night, it was like hell let loose in here," I told Harry. "Flashing lights, noisesand then that little girl. Or what I thought was that little girl."

  Harry reached behind him and clasped my hand. I felt his horny fingers, and his missing finger-joints. "You don't have to make excuses to me, my friend. You know what's real and you know what aintjust the same way that I know for certain what took away my brother. Some things you're just sure about, that's all, no matter what anybody says. Maybe I can't smell rat, but I can smell Brown Jenkin."

  "What are you going to do?" I asked him.

  "I'm going to search around," he said. "Even the
cleverest of rats leaves some trace behind."

  "Well, for God's sake be careful, that's all."

  I waited on the stairs while Harry shuffled and bumped around the attic, lifting dust-sheets and shifting furniture. "No droppings," he said, after a long while. "Usually, there's droppings."

  "Perhaps it isn't a rat, after all," I suggested.

  "All vermin leave droppings," Harry retorted. "Just like all humans leave litter."

  I suddenly thought of the Ripple bar wrapper I had tossed out of the car window yesterday, and felt guilty.

  Harry bumped around some more. I couldn't see him nowhe was in the furthest recesses of the attic, over my bedroom. Occasionally I saw the beam of the torch cross the sloping ceiling, but that was all.