Darkside

by Tom Becker

  Jonathan made a mock-Scout salute. “On my honour.”

  She started up the engine, and within an hour they were back outside Jonathan’s house in a leafy area of North London. Its imposing walls stood firm against the onslaught of the rain, and the knotted undergrowth of the garden remained unmoved by the howling protest of the wind. Jonathan started to get out of the car, and then paused.

  “Thanks,” he said finally.

  She smiled. “That’s OK. It’s not easy being you. I know that. But you’re doing fine.”

  He gave her a humourless chuckle, and slammed the car door shut.

  Jonathan had lived here for as long as he could remember. In a rare moment of openness, Alain had said they had lived somewhere else when he was a baby, some small, unnamed town up north. Where he had found the money to pay for this house was a mystery. There certainly wasn’t much now; barely enough for food and school uniforms, let alone holidays and doing up the house. Jonathan noted that the weeds were winning their battle with the driveway, and that the house was in desperate need of a lick of paint and some new guttering. He fumbled around in his pockets for the front door key, and entered his home.

  It was only slightly warmer inside than it had been outside, but at least he was out of the rain. A draught came charging across the wooden floor to greet Jonathan, gnawing hungrily at his ankles. Shivering, he flicked the hall switch on, and a bulb flickered into life high up on the ceiling. In the gloom familiar things assumed ominous, alien shapes. Up the grand staircase, the pitch-black landing seemed to be hiding secrets and dangers. Jonathan felt a sudden urge to break the silence. “Hello?” he called out.

  There was no response.

  He shrugged. This was ridiculous. It was his house, after all. It wasn’t as if he was a toddler. Jonathan had spent many nights alone, not knowing whether Alain was in the house, locked up in his study, or whether he had gone out somewhere. He hadn’t got scared then – if anything, he had enjoyed the space. Most kids would love to have his freedom. Getting the creeps now seemed a bit pathetic.

  He wandered into the kitchen, flicking lights on as he went. It was nicer there, in the cleanest and most modern room in the house. The fridge hummed comfortingly. Jonathan poured himself a glass of orange juice and thought about making some food. He hadn’t eaten since lunch, and it was getting late. On the other hand, he wasn’t feeling very hungry and he couldn’t be bothered making himself anything complicated. He compromised on a packet of crisps and an apple.

  Outside, a black van rolled slowly up the street and came to a stop outside the Starling house. The driver switched off the headlights, but no one got out of the car.

  Jonathan sat at the table and munched on his apple thoughtfully. Mrs Elwood had promised to phone the school tomorrow, so he was free until the weekend at least. No need to go to bed early tonight. He flicked through the TV guide, but there was nothing good on. For the hundredth time he cursed the fact that his dad had refused to pay for satellite television. Jonathan wasted a couple of weeks trying to persuade him, before concluding that Alain had no idea what it actually was.

  There must be something he could do. Jonathan didn’t mind spending time on his own – most of the time, he preferred it that way – but tonight he wanted to do more than lie on his bed and daydream. He didn’t have a computer, though Mrs Elwood had promised him that he was going to get a PlayStation for Christmas. Alain disapproved of computers. He told Jonathan that people should spend their time reading books instead. Nearly all of the rooms in the Starling house were crammed with books; mostly tatty old volumes with long titles, missing pages and a strange fusty odour to them. Alain was happiest when he was lost in a book, legs sprawled over the side of an armchair. Apparently he had used to be an academic of some sort, though he didn’t teach now. Instead he spent most of his days locked up in his study – and Jonathan had no idea what he did there. He had never been allowed in, and it was the only room in the house with a working lock on the door.

  The wind had changed direction, sending the rain crashing against the kitchen window. Jonathan got up and pulled the blinds shut. As he did so, he thought he caught sight of something moving in the garden. It was difficult to be sure, amongst the tangle of the undergrowth. Probably just the cat from next door, Jonathan reassured himself. Nothing to be worried about. All the same, he double-checked that the back door was locked before he left the kitchen.

  He decided to go to his room and watch TV in bed. Even if there was only some boring documentary on, or a house makeover show, it was better than moping around down here. He went through all the rooms on the ground floor, drawing the curtains and checking that all the windows were closed. The weather was still filthy outside, but he couldn’t see any more movement. When he thought everything was secure, Jonathan went up the stairs.

  The landing was in a dishevelled state. The rug covering the floorboards had been crumpled and one of paintings had been knocked askew. Jonathan suddenly remembered that his dad had suffered a darkening here that day. The mess must have been caused by the paramedics as they tried to get him out. He straightened the painting and shook the rug flat, trying not to imagine the scene.

  He was cleaning his teeth when he heard a soft thud from somewhere near the back door. Whatever it was, it didn’t sound like a cat. Outside the bathroom window, it was so dark it was hard to see, but he was convinced that there was something out there, a shape hunched by the side of the house. Had they tried to open the back door?

  Jonathan reached for his mobile and called Mrs Elwood.

  “Jonathan? Is everything all right?”

  “I know it sounds stupid but . . . I think that there’s someone prowling around outside. Should I phone the police?”

  “Not yet. It might be nothing. Stay where you are. I’ll be over as soon as I can.”

  She hung up. Jonathan raced around the first floor, checking all the windows. Now every sound, every creak of the floorboards and every splash of rain on the windows, had a menacing tone to it. A click from the downstairs stopped Jonathan in his tracks. It sounded like a door being quietly shut. The front door! He had forgotten to lock it! And now someone was in the house.

  Jonathan’s heart began to race wildly. He needed to find somewhere safe to hide until Mrs Elwood got here. His first thought was to go somewhere in his bedroom, but hiding under the bed was for little children. Instead, Jonathan moved to the opposite end of the landing. He was wondering about trying to get on to the roof through his dad’s bedroom window when he noticed that the door to the study was ajar. That must have been where Alain had experienced his darkening! For the first time in his life, Jonathan could enter the study.

  He crept inside, closed the door, and carefully twisted the key in the lock until it clicked. There was definitely someone in the house. Though they were trying not to be heard, Jonathan could make out a careful tread of footsteps on the stairs. He sat on the floor with his back to the door, and waited. It felt fairly sturdy, but would it be enough to keep out someone trying to get in? Around him everything was in darkness. Despite his situation, a voice in Jonathan’s head whispered to him to turn on the lights and explore the study. This might be his only chance.

  The footsteps began to explore the first floor, spending a couple of minutes in Jonathan’s room. Then there was silence. He pressed himself flat to the floor, and looked out through the crack underneath the door. First all he could see was the bathroom door, but then suddenly a pair of black shoes came into view. Jonathan lay very still, trying not to breathe, alarmed by the clamouring of his frantic heartbeat.

  Above his head, the door handle began to turn slowly, until the lock stopped it. He hoped fervently that a locked door would put off the intruder, but the handle began to turn again, more forcefully this time. There was a high-pitched whining noise from the landing that sounded more animal than human. He froze as the door began to rattle violently. Abando
ning all hope of hiding, Jonathan raced across the room to the desk and, straining with the pressure, pushed it across the door. On the landing the whining got louder, and there was an explosion of scratching on the door. The sound of the high-pitched scrabbling on the woodwork set his teeth on edge.

  Jonathan began blindly piling objects on top of the desk: a chair, a heavy wastepaper bin, anything that could help to create a barrier. The intruder hammered on the door, which trembled under the force of the blows. Jonathan ran to the window and looked down at the ground, wondering if he could survive the jump to the garden. Then the banging and the scratching suddenly stopped. There was a pause. He held his breath in the silence.

  “It’s OK, Jonathan. It’s me!”

  It was Mrs Elwood. He had never been so relieved to hear her voice. Jonathan pulled the objects away from the door and opened it. She was standing in her dressing gown and slippers, with a golf club in her hands. Seeing the fear in his eyes, she started.

  “My God! What’s going on?”

  “There was a burglar!” Jonathan gasped. “Someone broke in. . .”

  Mrs Elwood gave him a dubious look. “I didn’t see anyone. Are you sure your mind wasn’t playing tricks on you?”

  “Positive! There was someone here,” Jonathan said desperately. “I’m not making it up! Look at the door!”

  Mrs Elwood peered up at the woodwork. The lacquered surface was criss-crossed with long, white scratches. Her jaw hardened. “I see. Nasty. Come on. You can stay in my spare room tonight.”

  She took him gently by the arm, and Jonathan allowed himself to be led away, but not before he had locked the study door behind him. It might be a futile gesture, but it was the best he could do. For now, he had to leave the study and all its secrets intact.

  4

  Mrs Elwood hummed cheerily as she bustled around the kitchen, stirring and flipping and buttering. She used a small stepladder to reach things down from the high cupboards, scurrying up the steps with practised ease. On the stove a pan of baked beans was bubbling away, and the air was heavy with the smell of fried bacon. In the background the radio was playing a pop song that had been a massive hit a few years ago. The morning had dawned bright and cold, and the room was filled with pale light.

  At the kitchen table Jonathan blew on his cup of tea and took a cautious sip. It was hot and sweet – perfect. Lots of things seemed right about this morning, which made it all the more difficult not to feel a bit stupid about what had happened the night before. He felt less sure about what had been real and what hadn’t. OK, something had happened to the study door, but had there really been an intruder? Mrs Elwood hadn’t seen anyone. Maybe it was just something to do with the wind. Maybe he had dreamed the whole thing up. Those terrified patients at the hospital must have got his imagination working overtime.

  Mrs Elwood brought over a plate of fried breakfast and sat down opposite him. Jonathan didn’t usually bother eating breakfast, but today he attacked the food voraciously.

  “Careful. You’ll give yourself indigestion.”

  Jonathan ignored her, and tore himself another mouthful of toast.

  “So I phoned the school this morning, and explained the situation to them. I have to say, they weren’t very understanding. They asked a lot of questions, almost as if they didn’t believe me. Do you know why that would be?”

  He took a quick, guilty sip of tea. With his attendance record, he wasn’t surprised no one believed her. “Dunno. Teachers are like that.”

  “Well, eventually they listened to me, and they said that you don’t need to worry about coming in for the rest of the week. What are you going to do with yourself? You can’t sit with Alain all day long.”

  “Not sure yet. I want to go back to the house this morning. It’s a bit of a mess, and I kind of want to sort it out. You know, if he gets better quickly and everything is a state. . .”

  Mrs Elwood nodded. She hadn’t mentioned last night once, for which Jonathan was immensely grateful. “Of course. I’ve got to go into town later this morning, but I could come with you before then, if you wanted.”

  “Nah. I’ll be all right.”

  She smiled, and left him alone to finish his breakfast.

  At ten o’clock Jonathan made the short trip home. He hadn’t been entirely honest with Mrs Elwood. He did want to tidy up the house, but the real prize was his dad’s study. After all these years, this was his chance to explore it properly. His heart rate pulsed faster just thinking about it. The house looked as decrepit as ever, but a little less foreboding than it had done during the night. There’s no way that an intruder would dare to return here in daylight, its windows seemed to wink at Jonathan, burglars are cowards like that. Still, he double-checked the road as he walked up the driveway. At this time of the morning, everything was quiet, and the only visible people were an elderly couple, presumably on their way to the shops, and an au pair pushing a baby along in a pram.

  Jonathan let himself in, and this time he made doubly sure the front door was locked behind him. He put one of his favourite CDs on in his bedroom to keep himself company, and turned the volume right up. Trying to keep calm, he busied himself with simple tasks: taking the rubbish out, doing the washing up. Then, before he knew it, Jonathan was standing in front of the study, trying to ignore the raking scars that still marked the door. He took a deep breath, unlocked the door, and went inside.

  It was dark in the study. The blinds had been pulled down over the window, so only the faintest chinks of light could shine through. There was a dank smell to the room, as if it hadn’t been aired for years. Jonathan walked across the room, pulled up the blinds and opened a window. Sunlight and biting fresh air streamed into the room. Immediately he felt better.

  To all intents and purposes, the study had been Alain’s world for the past few years. He worked here, ate his meals, often fell asleep here. While Alain sat quietly, leafing through books, Jonathan drifted through the rest of the house like a ghost. If he wanted to speak to his dad, he had to knock three times on the door. If Alain had to leave the room he would swiftly lock it behind him, to prevent his son from catching a glimpse of what was going on inside. If Alain left the room of his own accord – to go to the toilet or make himself a drink – and bumped into Jonathan, he would give him a brisk nod of recognition.

  “Hello son. Everything all right?”

  “Fine.”

  “Good. Keep it up.”

  And with that, he would slip back inside and lock the door.

  Jonathan had come to terms with his unusual family situation. He wasn’t a great talker himself, and if there were any practical problems, there was always Mrs Elwood. He would have been lying if he’d said that things were perfect, and that he didn’t wish that his mother was still around, or that Alain was more of a normal dad. But that was just the way things were. He coped.

  But now he was here, here in his dad’s private sanctum, and it was difficult to resist the urge to trash the room that had kept his dad away from him for so long. In actual fact, it was an unremarkable space. Bookshelves lined every wall, and were stuffed with the sort of old, weighty books that had colonized the rest of the house. Yellowed newspaper clippings had been stuck on the walls, with lurid headlines that screamed “TWO DIE IN COLLAPSED BUILDING HORROR”, “GRUESOME BLOODBANK ROBBERY” and “LONDON WOLFMAN: AMAZING NEW SIGHTING!”. To Jonathan’s left there was the heavy wooden desk that he had forced across the door last night. He tried to push it back to its original place, but without the panic and the adrenalin pumping through his veins he could barely move it an inch. In the chaos pieces of paper had been scattered all over the floor, and there were pencils and biros everywhere. Whatever Jonathan had been expecting – some sort of mad dungeon perhaps, with chains hanging from the wall and a rack in the centre of the room – this certainly wasn’t it.

  As he looked round the shelves a framed photogr
aph caught his eye. He lifted it up and inspected it. It was a picture of a young couple, their arms wrapped around each other. They were standing in the rain in front of a grimy building with the sign “Bartlemas Timepieces” daubed in white paint across it, but they were smiling and happy. Jonathan stared at for a few seconds before realizing that the man in the photograph was Alain. Well, it wasn’t the Alain that Jonathan knew. This man had blonde hair, not grey, and he was standing upright, not hunched over. He didn’t just look younger – he looked like a different person. Jonathan wondered what sort of man he had been back then, whether he had fooled around and told jokes.

  The woman he didn’t recognize. She was young, with thick black hair that fell down to her shoulders. Two large gold, hooped earrings poked out through the dark curls. She was wearing a strange gypsy outfit, with a white blouse and voluminous red patterned skirt. Must have been the fashion in those days, he guessed. There was a sense of mischief in her smile, and her eyes were grey and defiant.

  Grey eyes. With a jolt Jonathan realized that he was looking at a picture of his mum. He had never seen a picture of her before. Alain had always said that there weren’t any. He had been lying all this time. At once all the resentment, the bitter anger that Jonathan had spent so many years keeping trampled down rose to the surface. He threw the photo against the wall, and sank to his knees as the frame shattered. For the first time in his life, he began to cry.

  Feeling a bit embarrassed, Jonathan blew his nose on a ragged tissue and tried to pull himself together. This wasn’t achieving anything, although, in a strange way, he felt better for having cried. He went over to the photograph. The frame was ruined but the photograph was untouched. Carefully, he extracted it from the frame and placed it on the writing desk.

  Why had his dad lied to him? Jonathan could understand why Alain had not wanted to talk about his wife’s disappearance, but lying about a photograph? It didn’t make any sense. It just seemed pointlessly cruel. He looked around at the books and the scraps of paper. Maybe the answer lay in here somewhere. At random Jonathan picked up a book and began to read.