Creeping Jenny

by Jeff Noon

  The two men looked at each other through the hexagonal mesh. Nyquist felt he was being scrutinized, as the other man’s eyes moved from one feature to the next. But too much was at stake; despite the day’s ruling he could no longer stay quiet. “I need to talk to you,” he began. But the pigeon fancier shushed him with a single finger raised to his lips, a gesture of more gentle persuasion than the covering hand of the other villagers, but an order nonetheless. Nyquist kept quiet. Close up, he could see the lines of stress written on the man’s face: he had lived a life of struggles. His cheeks were as pockmarked as the exposed wall of his house and his eyes were narrowed into slits pressed between pulps of blue skin.

  Nyquist watched as the man came out of the cage and led the way through a back door of the house, into a warm kitchen. Every single space was occupied by some object or other. A wood-fired stove was roaring, and a pot of stew bubbled on a gas stove. Around this the crates, gadgets, utensils and bric-a-brac crowded in: this was the house of a hoarder. The hall corridor and the other rooms were the same, all packed to the walls and ceilings, with only narrow channels to give access. Nyquist had to turn sideways to squeeze through. Many of the items had a handmade look to them. Sadler was a craftsman.

  Nyquist was surprised by the titles of the books on a set of shelves: Mrs Dalloway, A Shropshire Lad, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, The Waste Land, and many other such classics. He had to adjust his thoughts about the man who led the way through the crowded rooms. They took a flight of steps down into a cellar. It was dark, no windows, a smell of damp. Nyquist banged his knee on a box and held back from cursing out loud.

  Stay silent, follow the rules: gather what you can.

  His mind pressed forward, even as his hands groped blindly. A light was clicked on, a single bulb that hung low over a table placed in the center of the floor. A multitude of objects were crammed in around this central area: suitcases, stuffed animals, a ragged Union Jack flag, the top half of a human skeleton, African masks, a set of congas, a tailor’s dummy, a miniature garden under a glass dome. Nyquist had to negotiate his way carefully, but at last he reached the table. The other man gestured for him to sit. He did so, and now they faced each other in the semi-dark and the silence.

  Not quite silence: something skittered among the hoarded goods. Nyquist didn’t like to think about what it might be.

  The branch of a tree was laid across the tabletop. It was a dead branch, years dead, the bark powdery and gray, devoid of sap. No leaf would ever grow from this surface. And yet the owner of the house placed one hand on this branch and made a sign with the other that Nyquist should copy his lead. It only took the barest touch.

  “Len Sadler’s the name. How do you do?”

  It was a thick working-class accent, deeply burred. Sadler was in his mid-forties, with sparse reddish hair visible now the flat cap had been removed.

  Nyquist responded, “We can speak?”

  “We can, but always keep a hand on the branch.”

  “So this is a branch from the special oak tree, from the Blade of Night?”

  Sadler smiled. “Blade of Moon. Also, we never use the definite article.”

  “Right. I was speaking with some teenagers earlier, on the green.”

  “Now don’t go thinking that I’ve stolen this myself, that I took a hacksaw to the sacred oak. I would never do such a thing.”

  “I understand.”

  “I found this in the household of an old woman who died last year. The saints alone know how she got hold of it.”

  “But how do you know it’s the real thing? It might be any…”

  “Any old piece of wood, is that what you’re saying?”

  “Well, yes.”

  “In which case, we’d just be two daft blokes sitting here in silence. Is that what you want? No, I didn’t think so.” Sadler settled in his chair. “So then, what would you like to buy?”

  Nyquist leaned forward. “You think that’s why I’m here?”

  “It’s the only reason anyone comes to visit me. As you can see, I have many things on offer, all very reasonably priced. Although I should warn you…”

  “Yes?”

  “Not everything’s for sale.” This was said with a sly grin which gave the statement a philosophical twist.

  Nyquist placed the photograph on the table. “I found this today. It shows your house.”

  Sadler didn’t even glance down. “Does it?”

  A finger pointed to the various areas: “The street sign: Dovecote Lane. The number of the house: 23. The parked van–”

  “Yes, yes. I believe you. Where did you find this?”

  “In a photographer’s studio, belonging to Thomas Dunne.”

  Now Sadler looked at Nyquist. His brow creased into lines as he ran a hand nervously through what was left of his hair. A few strands came free and he looked at them in an absent way and muttered, “There’ll be none left soon.” He gave a nervous laugh.

  Nyquist cut right to it: “I’ve come here in search of my father.”

  “I see. I see, yes. Interesting. And your name is?”

  “John Nyquist.”

  The answer startled Sadler.

  “So you know who I’m talking about?”

  “I do. Or at least, I did. But I haven’t…”

  Nyquist felt a breath catch in his throat. “What are you saying?”

  “I haven’t seen him in a while.”

  Nyquist didn’t know whether to believe him, or not. His old street knowledge, built up over years of city living, meant next to nothing out here in the wilderness. But he had to know more! He had to check.

  “What can you tell me about him? Don’t you know where he is?”

  Sadler held up his free hand, calling for silence. He looked again at the visitor’s face, this time studying it in even more detail than he had in the pigeon coop. And then he said something that almost made Nyquist weep with joy, or fear.

  “Yes, you do look like him.”

  The dust settled in the cellar. Even the skittering behind the boxes had stopped.

  “I thought there was something familiar about you.”

  “You knew… you knew my father?”

  “Oh briefly, briefly.”

  “I need to know, the whole story. If you’re lying…”

  “There’s little to tell.”

  The words jabbed deep like a needle. Nyquist’s hand rose from the branch in his anger. “I need to know everything!”

  Sadler leaned back and raised his hand to his mouth, not a single finger as before, but the full hand covering the lips.

  Nyquist groaned.

  Sadler kept his mouth covered. He wouldn’t even look at the rule breaker. Not until Nyquist’s hand had returned to the branch.

  “Saint Meade bids you be silent, unless Blade of Moon allows otherwise.”

  Nyquist was calm now. He had to be, he had to let the story be told as it may, in the right manner. He said quietly, “I saw one of your pigeons, at the photographer’s.”

  “Oh yes? Which one?”

  “The gray one.”

  “They’re all very different, you do know that?”

  “There was a canister attached to its leg. I unscrewed it.” He had Sadler’s full attention. “I have the message here.”

  He placed the unrolled piece of paper on the table. Sadler hesitated and then reached out. He read the message quickly to himself, his lips moving, his eyes crinkling in pain.

  “Leonard? I take it that’s you?”

  “Everyone calls me Len. Everyone that is, except for Agnes.” He smiled a little at a memory. “She always insisted on using my full and proper name. Perhaps it made what we were doing together more, well… proper.” He read the message a second time. “But I haven’t seen her, not for weeks now.”

  “So, Agnes is Thomas Dunne’s wife?”

  Sadler grimaced. “That’s right. I was certain I could persuade her to leave him, for me. But she… well, she never made it to th
e Mocking Gate.” Tears were staining his face. He looked at Nyquist through their glitter and took a deep breath. “What happened to the pigeon, do you know?”

  “It flew away, through the window.”

  Sadler smiled a little. “Sweet Kira. She is the most talented of all my birds. She will never give up.”

  “You mean…”

  “She’s been flying around ever since, searching for Agnes, to hand over the message.”

  “Perhaps Kira will find her one day.”

  “Yes, maybe. And then we’ll all be together.”

  The scratching sound had started up again from a pile of boxes. Sadler cocked his head at the noise and a muscle twitched on his unshaven cheek. He took a moment to shake off his sadness – the act of pure will was visible on his face, and in the tightness with which he clung to Blade of Moon. “Everything you see here,” he said, “and in the other rooms, they’ve all come from houses in the village. My target is to have one item at least from every house in the area. Lower, Upper, and all surrounding environs, farmhouses, remote cottages. If it’s on the Hoxley map, I will have been there, I will have collected something.” He raised one hand in protest. “But never stolen, mind, well, unless the place was deserted, but that doesn’t count. No, the majority were given freely as gifts or swapped in fair exchange for work undertaken, painting, household repairs and so on.”

  “Will you tell me how you know my father?”

  Sadler hesitated, as though worried by what he was about to say.

  “What’s wrong, Len? Do you need payment? Is that it?”

  “Payment?”

  “I don’t have a lot.” Nyquist took out his wallet.

  “All the saints alive! What kind of man do you take me for?”

  Nyquist didn’t know how to answer, especially when Sadler held up the message taken from Kira’s metal canister.

  “This! Bringing this back to me. Payment enough, believe me.”

  “I’m sorry. I understand. I think I do…” Nyquist looked away.

  Sadler made to speak, to continue the argument, but then stopped himself. He found other words instead, saying, “You tell me, sir. You tell me about your father. Because I’ll bet you know more than I do.”

  Nyquist turned back. “I haven’t seen him in more than twenty years. I thought he was dead. So there isn’t much to say. Only memories.”

  “Tell me one good thing.”

  The choice came easily. “He was like you, Len. He liked to build things. But nothing useful. Just bizarre objects made out of junk and whatever he found on his travels. But he thought they had a purpose, he really did. I liked that side of him. As a kid, it was magical, even if these machines never actually contacted Mars, or captured the voices of the dead.” Nyquist frowned. “Looking back, I used to think he was entertaining me. But nowadays, I really think he was crazy. His mind was elsewhere.”

  Sadler nodded.

  Nyquist continued, “A few days ago I received news that he might be alive. It was a shock. But I don’t know. I’m just trying to find out, yes or no. Alive or dead?”

  Sadler lifted his hands off the branch. He kept them raised an inch or so above Blade of Moon. They hovered there. His eyes never left Nyquist. And then the hands lowered again, and he told a story.

  “Earlier this year I was called out to a house in Ouslemere, a village further down the Hale valley. It was a decorating job. The first day’s work took a while and it was dark by the time I set off back home. There are no street lights out that way, so it was pitch black. But I saw a light in King’s Grave field. There’s an old cottage there, but it’s stood empty for a long time, for years. No one will buy it. I was curious, so I took the off-road and drove up to the house. It’s not an easy drive, because the access road is in a sorry state, but my van managed it. I had to drive across a field.”

  Sadler paused and listened with half an ear to the noise in the boxes.

  “The light in the window had gone out by the time I got there. I don’t mind telling you, I was pretty scared. But I felt it my duty to investigate. I had my torch with me.”

  Nyquist asked, “What did you find?”

  Sadler continued, “The door of the house was unlocked. Inside, it looked empty. But there was evidence of someone living there. A bed, a little stove, a few tin cans. I had the impression that I was being watched, by a pair of eyes in the shadows.”

  Nyquist whispered, “Who was it?”

  “I didn’t know, not at that time. But the following night, I was once again driving back and I saw the same light on, glowing yellow across the field. I made my way to the cottage and went inside, and I waited in the room, where the bed and the stove were, and I waited and waited, until at last a man stepped forward.”

  Nyquist could hardly breathe. He didn’t dare to speak.

  Sadler went on, “There was a hell of a look about him. Like he’d traveled a long, long way to get here, and paid a heavy price for it. I mean, his face… the way he stared at me. It was unnerving. But a great yearning lay in those eyes of his, a need to connect.”

  “You talked to him?”

  “I did. I gave him my name, and I asked for his. And he told me: George.”

  Nyquist’s hand tightened on Blade of Moon. “That’s right. My father’s name.”

  Sadler nodded. “George Oliver Nyquist. He pronounced all three names, like they had equal importance.”

  “Yes, he liked to do that.”

  But Nyquist had to make sure. He took the photograph of his father from his pocket and placed it on the table and said, “Is this the man you spoke to?”

  There was the slightest pause from Sadler. And then: “That’s him. That’s him, in every detail.”

  It was enough, recognition. This wasn’t a game, it wasn’t a joke. It was real! His father had been here, he was alive… he’d been alive all this time, while Nyquist had thought him dead. Twenty years. His eyes closed as the idea took hold, the very promise of it!

  He looked again at Sadler and said, “I need to know what you talked about, everything, please, every word.”

  “I’m not sure–”

  “Just talk to me, will you?”

  “I can’t remember–”

  The table shook as Nyquist brought his fist down on it.

  “Do you hear me! Every bloody word!”

  Sadler nodded, his tongue licking nonstop at his lips, his face screwed up against the sudden noise and the cloud of dust that lifted from the tabletop and the dead branch of the oldest tree. And he said, “I’ll… I’ll try.”

  “Good.”

  “He… well, here’s the thing, he didn’t say that much. I’m telling the truth, mister, I swear. You have to believe me.”

  “Keep going.”

  Sadler gathered himself. “We met a few times, three altogether. That’s all. But I was only there for an hour or so each time, and then he would dismiss me. Always at night, this was. He seemed to like that for some reason. Maybe the sunlight disagreed with him? He always kept to the shadows.”

  Nyquist gestured: carry on.

  “He said very little. I wouldn’t call him lonely, because I think he was used to such a state. But he liked to listen to me talking, he liked to hear the news, about things that were happening in the village, just gossip really, the little things that ordinary people get up to. Who was arguing with whom, who was having an affair, who was losing their wits, that kind of thing. Ordinary life, as he called it, one time. Ordinary life…”

  Sadler’s voice trailed off.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I need a drink. My mouth’s dry.”

  Nyquist nodded consent and Sadler got up from the table and walked over to a sink set in the wall between a rusting bed frame and a crumbling garden statue. A mechanical figure of Punch looked on, as tall as a grown man, its yellow painted eyes staring from the shadows. Sadler poured himself a tumbler of water and returned to the table. Now the two men sat facing each other again and Sadler’s h
and returned to Blade of Moon.

  “At other times he wanted to hear about the wider world, about politics and culture and things like that, and from events of the last few decades. He was fascinated by that. I got the impression… how can I put this… that he’d been away for a time, a very long time.”

  “Where had he been, did he tell you?”

  Sadler shook his head. “No. I did ask one time, but he wouldn’t answer.”

  “He must’ve said something to you. He can’t just have listened.”

  “There was one thing…”

  “Let me hear it.”

  “He talked about his wife.”

  “His wife? You mean…”

  “Darla.”

  Nyquist had to smile at this. “It was a term of endearment. Darla. Her real name was Dorothy.”

  “Yes, well… he told me how he missed Darla… Dorothy… how he missed her still, even after all this time.”

  “My mother died in a road accident. When I was young, a boy.”

  Sadler puffed out his cheeks. “You’ve had a life and a half, I’m gathering.”

  “Go on. What did he say about her?”

  “Just that. That he missed her.”

  Nyquist collected his thoughts. “What happened after the third night?”

  “I went back a fourth time. In truth, I liked the man. I’m alone most days, and your old man was good company, a good listener. I told him all my problems, and he nodded his head and gave me little encouraging smiles, things like that. Sometimes, even, words of advice.”

  “What happened this last time?”

  “He was gone. The cottage was deserted. The bed was still there, the stove, his books.”