It was a mistake to have started running. She had forgotten about the fiends that spring to life at the impact of a running footstep; the shapes that come baying at the heels of one whose nerve has cracked.
“Get ’er! Get ’er!” she seemed to hear them shrieking. “Carve ’er! Push ’er face in! …”
*
“Mummy! Mummy!” Penny thundered through the front door and collapsed, gasping, on the bottom step of the stair. Never had she felt such gratitude for her safe home, such relief. “Oh, Mummy … Mummy …!”
“Penny, darling, is that you? I’ve got such exciting news for you! That boy—that nice boy Barry Findlater that you went out with—he’s rung you at last! I was beginning to be afraid that he never would! He asked me to tell you that he’d be calling round one night soon, and …”
*
It was four—no, five nights now—since her mother, all smiles, had delivered the death-blow. Penny raised herself in the bed, reached under the pillow for her watch, and peered at it in the bland, silvery light of the moon.
Two o’clock. The hour at which, during the first nights of her vigil, she had found it almost impossibly hard to stay awake; but not now. Now, she felt that she would never sleep again. Her brain seemed to have turned into barbed wire, she could not imagine rest.
They were after her. From the moment her mother had told her, so blithely, about the telephone message from Barry Findlater, she had known that she was doomed.
He was out of prison, then. He was back with his gang—double-crossing them or not, it made no difference now. The point was that he had found out about her; had learned of the existence of this weird girl who claimed acquaintance with him. She was dangerous; that’s what they’d have told him; she knew too much. Somewhere, out there in the moonlit street, they would be waiting.
They wouldn’t wait for ever, though. For the last four days she had not stirred outside her home, pretending to her mother that she felt ill, too ill to go to school, or to her piano lessons, or anywhere. What would they do when their patience was exhausted … when they got tired of waiting out there day and night, like cats at a mouse-hole?
“Tell her I’ll be calling one night soon…. Tell her to expect me …” This had been the message which Mrs Haddon had so joyously passed on—her head, no doubt, a glowing kaleidoscope of sherry, home-made cakes, coffee—all the traditional lures by which mothers the world over attempt to capture suitors for their slightly sub-standard daughters.
For Penny, the message held no such festive overtones. It was a warning. “Tell her to expect me—” and here she was, expecting him.
Expecting him hour after hour in the glittering, sleepless moonlight; expecting him in every creaking board, in every whisper of the frosty air, in every withered leaf rustling to its death beyond the window. Expecting him until her ears rang with listening, and her eyes stared into the darkness until they could stare no more—until the shadows in the grey room danced before her sight, writhing and gyrating in time to some strange rhythm in her own brain … spinning … whirling … faster and faster, towards the very edge of sanity….
And all this was only the prelude to terror. The reality was still to come. Sooner or later … with warning or without … in the evening or in the night … it would happen.
Almost, she prayed that it would be soon. And it was soon.
*
“Penny! Penny, darling, come along down! He’s here! He’s arrived …!”
The summons came the very next evening; and though this was the moment she had been awaiting, in mounting terror, day and night, for nearly a week now, nevertheless when it actually came, it was as if she was completely taken by surprise.
“No! Oh, Mummy, no!” she tried to say, but the words choked in her throat; and only now did she notice how strangely her mother was looking. No longer joyous and triumphant, but stiff with disapproval! What on earth could the visitor have done—said—thus to shatter in seconds Mrs Haddon’s life-long, unshakable tolerance of absolutely everything?
He hadn’t done or said anything. It was his white hair and his wrinkles that had thrown Mrs Haddon into such a state. Was this her daughter’s boy-friend, this ageing, stooping man …? Was this the long talked-of Barry Findlater?
The father, of course, not the son. “Mr Findlater” was what he’d said on the phone, and it was Mrs Haddon’s own star-crossed imagination that had instantly supplied the “Barry”. He was here to find out what was all this about his son having escaped from prison? The lads hadn’t come out with it straight away, he explained, but it was plain enough that they were worried; and at last he’d got it out of them about this girl who said she’d been meeting Barry since he’d been sent to prison. Had he escaped, or what? Of course, Mr Findlater had soon checked with the prison authorities that nothing of the sort had occurred (“And I’ll tell you the truth, I’ve never been so relieved in my life, even though he’s my own flesh and blood; it’s right he should learn his lesson”); but he was still worried. Who was this girl, and what was her motive in spreading such stories about his son? Who was it she’d been whistling for that night on the tow-path?—she’d scared the living daylights out of the lads, they’d thought she must be a police decoy, and there wasn’t one of them who mightn’t just as easily have copped it as his Barry, and well they knew it….
Never had any confession been so difficult. After half an hour of Penny’s stumbling efforts, Mr Findlater still seemed at a loss, and Mrs Haddon looked absolutely stupefied. Lies within lies … fantasy piled on fantasy … Kitty of the Lower Fourth herself was not more removed from reality than this vast superstructure of terror that Penny had succeeded in piling on top of her own lies, and the brief fright she had received upon the tow-path.
After Mr Findlater had gone, still puzzled, but somewhat reassured, Penny dared at last to look at her mother. Really look at her, right into the hurt, bewildered eyes. Mummy, too, she suddenly realised, had been building up a vast superstructure of fantasy, and had watched it topple: in her case, a fantasy of what a “teenage daughter” ought to be like.
The time had come for that talk, those tears.
“Mummy,” she said, turning towards the kitchen, “I’m going to put the kettle on.”
Copyright
This ebook edition first published in 2014
by Faber and Faber Ltd
Bloomsbury House
74–77 Great Russell Street
London WC1B 3DA
All rights reserved
© Celia Fremlin, 1974
Biographical Sketch © Chris Simmons, 2014
The right of Celia Fremlin to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly
ISBN 978–0–571–31267–2
By Horror Haunted Page 16
