“Go,” she said. “Stay until after dark and see the lights. Then
come on back and tell me what they look like. Michael’ Ill be by about half-past eight.”
It was ended then, and whether I wanted to go or not, she had already made the decision and there was nothing I could do about it. She’s funny that way, she is. And when I come to think about it, I decided I wouldn’t mind spending a few pennies at that.
So, when Michael came around practically dragging that girl of his, I was dressed and scrubbed and ready. The girl — Charley, they called her because her stupid name was Charlene — takes my hand right off, and before I knew, it was hustling me between them to the fair.
In case you don’t know the place, there’s a roundabout directly past the town’s center, and two roads coming off it have between them this big field of grass that stretches toward Windsor and climbs up a hill into a lot of trees. Off the road on the left is Egham, where I live, and off the road on the right that goes to Windsor is the Thames. Well, dead in the middle of this field was a large circle of caravans with their inside walls open for games of chance and things like that. There was a Big Wheel, some rides for kids littler even than me, and on the side of the circle with its back to the river was a wagon that was supposed to have a scary Fun House. Only it wasn’t scary, I went through twice, and I know. There was a lot of people, it being Saturday night and all, and as soon as Michael and Charley walk me into the place where all the colored lights were, they patted me on the head, said ta and made me promise to look for them once an hour to see that I was all right.
This didn’t bother me, though, because they know I can pretty much take care of myself, and I didn’t always care for the way Charley liked to mother me.
So I changed my quid for pennies in the gambling arcade and played a few of the machines and lost a bit, then did a ride on the bumper cars, which wasn’t much fun because there was no one there I knew good enough to really bump into. I tried throwing some hoops around these blocks of wood to win a goldfish for my mother, threw a couple of darts at some balloons, and just was mucking about when, during my wandering, I saw this small wagon tucked in sort of by the side of the Wheel. There was this sort of old man sitting on a chair under a sign that said he could make me a ten if I wanted to pay.
“Hey, mister,” I said to him. He looked up and smiled. He hadn’t shaved in a while, and his eyes kind of looked like my dad’s when he’d had one pint too many, but I didn’t smell nothing in the air. So I took a step closer and asked him what a ten was and how much did it cost.
“Well, lad,” he said, reaching into his hip pocket and pulling out a pipe what looked like it’d been dropped a hundred times from the top of Windsor Castle. “I’ll tell you something you don’t know,” he said, “a ten is whatever you want it to be. You want it to be a special wee gift for your mum, then that’s what it’ll be. You want it to be something not so fine for the chappie what steals your lunch, then that’s what it’d be, too.”
He laughed, then, and I backed away a bit. I wasn’t scared or nothing, you see, but when you get to be the man of the house at my age, you got to learn pretty quick who wants to do you out of a fiver and whose hand you’d better shake quick before he slips it into your pocket.
“That don’t make sense what you said,” I told him. “That’s silly.”
“No, it don’t make sense,” the old man admitted, sucking on that pipe and staring at the blue smoke coming out of the bowl. “And that’s the gem of it, you see. It don’t make sense, and that makes it better than some flippin’ doll or a bag with a goldfish in it, don’t it?”
I didn’t really know what he was saying, but there was something about him that wouldn’t let me get away. It was then he waved me closer, and I realized we’d been near shouting all the time to be heard over the people laughing and shouting, and the music and the noise. So I moved right beside him, and he reaches into a sack by his feet and pulls out a big handful of little boxes no bigger than my thumb.
“Tens,” he said. “They cost tenpence each,” and he laughed, and I could see his yellow teeth and smell the dead leaf smell of his tobacco. I kind of gave a shudder, and he stares at me before holding up the boxes. “They’re numbered, you see,” he said, “one through twenty. The odd ones are for your enemies, the others for your friends.”
I tried to look close, but he pulled them back just enough so I couldn’t touch. For tenpence maybe I could get something nice for mum, I thought, and I was going to pick out number twelve when I looked into his face. He was still smiling, the old man was, but there was nothing behind it, and when I saw those eyes the color of the river at night, everything kind of went away and I just stood there. Then I got awfully hot, and I started to feel dizzy and sickly like I’d had too many sweets. I felt myself holding out a hand and saw him picking out the pennies before he grabbed my other hand and dropped a box into it.
“What do I do with it,” I said, sounding like I was far away at the top of the hill.
“You’ll think of something,” he said, “and mind you be careful with it, brat.” Suddenly the smile went away and he pushed at me with the end of his pipe. “Now go away, boy, and let someone else have a go.”
“But —”
“Go on,” he said, “before I have to call the manager.”
I got mad and wanted to ask for my pennies back, but he kept staring at me all the time, and so I quick turned away and went to look for Michael and Charley. I didn’t feel so big anymore, and I wanted Charley to take my hand for a bit. The lights, the noise of the rides, the people’s faces all twisted and funny — the fair wasn’t much fun anymore. When I finally found them at the shooting gallery, I asked Charley to take me across the road to the river, and she did it without asking why because that’s the way she is. We walked along the bank past where they mow the grass for people to sit and watch the pleasure boats go by, and then I stepped into the weeds a little ways and threw the box into the water.
It wasn’t, heavy at all, but it sank right away.
“Now why’d you go and do that?” she said as we walked back to the fair.
I shrugged. “It weren’t worth nothing,” I said.
“Where’d you get it, Jaimie?”
“Over there,” I said, pointing when we reached the Wheel. But when she asked again and I looked, the old man was gone and the sign was away, too. Even his small wagon.
“I think you’ve been taken, Jaimie m’boy,” she laughed, and I felt bad at that for a minute, but then she grabbed me under the arms and lifted me over her head. “You’ll not get down until you give me a kiss.” she said, and when I stuck out my tongue at her, she laughed again.
“Hey,” Michael said, coming up behind us while I was pretending to hit Charley after she let me down, “do you mind if I hit her a few myself, or is this a private party?”
“Jaimie got taken,” said Charley, dodging around him to get away from me.
“Who?” Michael said, suddenly very mad and kneeling down to look at me straight on.
“I don’t want no trouble,” I said. “I shouldn’t have done it, but he looked at me funny, and it was only tenpence —”
“I don’t care if it was a hundred pounds Jaimie,” he said. “You got taken and that wasn’t right.”
I looked at him, saw his black eyes frowning, and grinned; I think that if I had any friends left in the world, Charley and Michael would be all of them.
“He was over by the Wheel,” I said, “sitting by a wagon. There was a sign, too, but they’re all gone now.”
He put a hand on my shoulder, and we moved over and could find nothing but the smoking leftovers of the pipe tobacco in the grass. “He was right here,” I said, looking around. “He was —”
Suddenly there was a scream, louder than the ones from the dumb girls on the Wheel, one that made the ones close to it turn around and look.
It was getting dark outside the caravan’s circle, and the lights in the middl
e made it so bright that nobody could give a good account later of what they saw. But there was this man, this... something standing just in the shadow of the Fun House wagon, getting up from a bundle lying on the ground. Charley told me not to look and pushed me behind her, but I had already seen that the bundle was a lady and her face was all red and shining, and you couldn’t see her eyes or her mouth for all the red.
Then the man-thing ran away across the field toward the hill, and it was a long time before anyone got enough nerve to follow him or call the police.
Of course, Charley took me home straight away and dragged my mother into the kitchen, but she was so excited and crying and looking at the back door that mum calls me in, knowing I was hiding in the hall listening.
“Tell me, Jaimie,” she said.
So I told her.
She gave us a kind of funny look and said, “What did he look like?”
“Big,” I said, “tall as a house he was. He had a black thing on, like a greatcoat, but it was all wet. And, and his face was all... bones... and...”
And before I could help it, I was crying worse than Charley with shivers that wouldn’t quit even when mum held onto me.
I didn’t sleep well that night.
I kept seeing that face.
It had no eyes.
Well, the next day my aunt and uncle took us to Windsor Great Park to see the polo matches, and everyone there was talking about the excitement at the fair, and when we got home we saw in the papers all the stories about the murder. The police finally came after we’d left, and they chased after the guy, but they never caught him. They lost him, it said, in the forest park at the top of the hill. The funny thing was, a lot of people must have seen him, like me, but in all them papers there weren’t no pictures at all. Not the camera kind, but the kind like they have them artists draw. All they said was: a man of unusual description.
Two days later, over in Englefield Green, a pharmacy was broken into and the two people living upstairs were killed. The papers said their faces were smashed.
The fair was still on, but hardly anyone went. Even my mother decided she didn’t want to go, even when I told her I had a good time.
Since we was into the summer holiday, I didn’t have to go to school. So when I wasn’t running errands for Mr. Harrow’s shop, I spent a lot of time in the small front yard helping my mother with our roses, which were the largest ones on the whole street. The neighbors were always coming over and asking me how I do them so well. Then, all they talked about was the killer. My nights hadn’t been all that good since that day. So when they started into talking like that, I always left. But one day Michael came around and told us that the killer had murdered a whole family, parents and two kids, on the other side of town. Egham being the size it is, that wasn’t too far away. He said they weren’t going to put it in the papers anymore because of the terrible things done to the people and the police didn’t want to scare anyone. But he knew a chum in the station who told him everything that was happening.
I started to ask Michael some questions about it, but my mother all of a sudden got mad and sent me inside to put on the kettle. She always did that when she didn’t want me to hear anything bad.
It rained that night, and I could hear the police sirens just a couple of blocks away, down by the train station.
I kept having those dreams about the box.
That face.
One night I told Mum I had to go out for a quick errand for Mr. Harrow, but instead I ran over to the fair. There was maybe ten people there, not counting the hawkers, but when I asked a couple of the workers where the man with the wagon was, they only shoved me away and told me I was too little to be out so late. I could see they was getting ready to pack it in, but then one man said I was too young to drink, that there wasn’t any old man like I said, and there never had been.
“Then what about the box I bought,” I said, grabbing at his coat before he could walk away like all the rest.
“What box?”
“The one I bought from him,” I said. “For tenpence.”
“Oh? Well,” he said with his face telling me he thought it was all a joke, “well, where is it?”
“I threw it in the river,” J said.
“Oh, well, then,” he said, patting me on the head like I was a little boy. “It’ll come back to you, then. Anything you drop in there always comes back. Didn’t you know that?”
I ran all the way home.
When I finally got to my block, I started to walk, trying to keep my face from getting all red, otherwise mum would think I’d been up to doing wrong. All the houses were close together, you know, with two families in a house side by side, and unless you knew the numbers or the colors of the shutters or something, you really couldn’t tell one place from another.
But when I turned into our gate, I saw the box.
It was sitting in the middle of the walk. There was a puddle of water around it. I looked at the roses, but they were dry. So was the little bit of grass we had.
I looked up at the house, then across the hedge to Mrs. Daniels’ yard. Then I kind of snuck up on it, feeling my heart getting ready to break through my shirt and my fingertips getting all tingly. It wasn’t hot that night — there were clouds and all — but a drop of sweat stung my eye, and I jerked my head to clear it away. I moved another inch and stuck out my foot to tip the box over. The number three was still on one side, but the bottom had been ripped off. I kneeled down so I could look inside, but it was just at sunset and I couldn’t see anything very well.
And when something tapped my shoulder, I let out a horrid yell and fell over the box, felt it under me and rolled away, trying to crawl to the front door before that man-thing could get at me. But these hands grabbed me and pulled me to my feet, and I started punching and screaming until I opened my eyes and saw Michael ducking away from my fists.
“Hey, come on, come on.” he said. “Settle yourself, Jaimie, it’s only me, it’s only me.”
I got mad at him then, just as mum came running outside to see what all the noise was about.
"Why’d you go and scare me like that,” I said, puffing like I'd just run in from London. “I could have done you harm, Michael.”
He looked at me dead serious and nodded before turning to my mother, who was demanding that someone please say something she could understand. “Sorry,” he said, “I guess I spooked him a little.”
“Well,” she said, wiping her hands on her apron, “you come in for a cuppa. The state he’s in, I’m not going to spend the rest of the night alone with this vicious devil. And bring Charley with you.”
I poked my head around Michael’s waist, and there she was, leaning against the front hedge trying not to laugh at me. I frowned and poked a fist at her. She poked one back and came through the gate.
“You’re out to kill my man,” she said, cuffing the side of my head.
“No such thing,” I said, pushing her away.
“Inside, all of you,” mum said, and we were pushed into the kitchen before she really got mad. And we attacked some scones until I remembered the box and Michael said something about the fair closing down because no one was going. So I told mum what had happened outside, and Michael got up right away and went to the front, and I could hear him on the stoop before he suddenly slammed the door and came back in. His face was more white even than mine, and he told mum real quietly to bolt the latch and check all the windows. Charley he sent upstairs to do the same, and he waved for me to follow him into the parlor where he picked up the telephone and dialed 999.
“Michael, what’s happening?” I must have sounded scared because he put an arm around me and pulled me close while he told the policeman who answered the emergency number that there was a prowler around our house and would he hurry and send a man round to check it. There was a mumbling I couldn’t hear, and Michael nodded and rang off.
“Jaimie,”- he said, “I want you to go into the kitchen and turn off all the lights. You do
n’t stop for anything. You come right on back.”
“Michael?”
“It’s all right, son,” he said, and for the first time I didn’t mind him calling me that even though he’d just started going to university himself. I did what he said as fast as I could, grabbed a tin of biscuits from the cupboard and ran back. Charley and my mother were sitting on the sofa when I came in. And even though it was still summer, someone had lit a small fire. I didn’t say anything; I was cold, too. The curtains were drawn tight over the windows, and the only light other than the fire was the small lamp in the corner.
“We’ll just have to wait now, for the police,” Michael said, “and I’ll show them that box.” He was standing in the middle of the room, his hands behind his back, kind of rocking on his heels like he was a mate on a ship. On the mantel over the fireplace I could see the box. It still looked wet.
Suddenly there was a smashing of glass, and mum says, “That’s Mrs. Daniels.”
Michael ran to the window and pulled back the curtain a little, but he said he couldn’t see anything.
But we could hear enough. There was a thumping, and one long scream that made me drop to the floor. We could hear plates breaking against the wall, and then something heavy, and it sounded like that whole half of the building was going to come down on Mrs. Daniels’ head. There was another scream that Charley made, quietly, and then there was nothing.
Michael licked his lips and pointed me to stand by the fireplace. Charley and mum were holding onto each other tight, and Charley looked like a little girl and mum like she was a hundred years gone. I could see there were tears on her face, too. I watched while Michael picked up the poker and held it like a bat, but I could see he was almightly scared, and that made me scared, too, because if Michael couldn’t do anything to help us, who could?
Tales from the Nightside Page 16
