Creeping Jenny

by Jeff Noon

  “Books?”

  “Didn’t I mention that? He liked to read. There was one particular subject. Right from the start he asked me if I had any suitable guidebooks I could lend him. So I plucked one off my shelves and brought that along, on my second visit. It was a book about ornithology. Birdwatching, you know. Chiffchaffs, dunnocks, the lesser spotted woodpecker.”

  “My father had an interest in such things?”

  “Very much so. In fact, that was the subject that drew us together, once he found out about my pigeon colony. He wanted to know all the details of how my birds were getting on: Little Tess and Lord Montague, and dear sweet Broodie, and Old Mrs McIntyre–”

  Nyquist stopped him in mid-flight. “When did all this take place?”

  “Late summer. September. A few months back.”

  “Why did he leave the cottage?”

  “I can’t tell you that. But he seemed very agitated on that last visit. He argued with me. He didn’t like me mentioning Agnes, I really don’t know why.”

  Nyquist thought about this. Because of the photographs, he knew that his father and Thomas Dunne were connected in some way, as was Agnes Dunne. But he couldn’t work it out, not yet.

  “He asked me to leave,” Sadler continued. “Demanded it of me, actually. Which pissed me off, no end, let me tell you. His face shivered strangely in the dim light. I thought he was having a breakdown, or something. And that was the last time I saw him.”

  Nyquist tried to stay calm. He touched at the photograph of his father and asked, “Did you send this picture to me?”

  “Of course not. Why would I do that? I’ve only just met you.”

  “He didn’t tell you to get in touch with me?”

  “I swear! Absolutely not.”

  Nyquist pulled another photograph from his pocket. “What about this one, of the black tower? Do you recognize that place?”

  Sadler shook his head. “No. I’ve never seen it before.”

  “But why would it be sent to me, if it’s in a different village, or a faraway field? It doesn’t make sense.”

  “How much of anything makes sense?”

  Nyquist ignored the comment. He pushed his village atlas forward and said, “I’d like you to mark where the cottage is, where you met with my father.”

  Sadler turned the pages. His pen hovered over an empty space well outside the built-up areas. “It’s not on the map,” he said. “Like I said, it’s abandoned–”

  “Mark it.”

  The pen nib came down and made a small cross in the middle of a field. “King’s Grave. There’s a turning off Ousle Road, but I’m warning you, it peters out in a dirt track.”

  “Don’t worry about that. I’ll get there.”

  Nyquist studied the map. A simple question needed to be asked, and it took him a moment to get up the courage.

  “Did my father mention me?”

  “What?”

  “Did he mention my name? Or did he talk about me, his son, his only child? Well?”

  Len Sadler looked nervous. “No. I can’t recall such a thing. Not directly.”

  “What do you mean, not directly?”

  “There was one time…”

  “Go on.”

  “When he talked about the book of birds. He mentioned that it would make a nice gift for someone, a young boy.”

  “That’s it?”

  “That’s all. Isn’t that… isn’t that enough?”

  Nyquist took his hand off the branch. His head bowed down. The scratching sound filled the silence. Some kind of animal was living here, amid the junk: the noise of it probed at his brain.

  “What’s wrong?” asked Sadler.

  No reply was given.

  “I know, you’re frustrated, Mr Nyquist. You’re lost. You must feel that way. We all do, we all feel lost from time to time.”

  Nyquist’s head remained downturned. He didn’t speak. But then his hand moved. It came to rest on the branch and his fingers wrapped around it tightly. He wasn’t thinking, his mind was a blank. But the branch felt good in his grip. He had the feeling he might lift it up, raise it high and do some damage with it. He imagined Sadler’s brow splitting open. And even before the miserable thought had ended, the very action had taken him over. He was standing over the table, both hands gripping the branch now, ready to swing it down.

  Sadler didn’t call out. Carefully, slowly, both of his hands came up to his mouth, to seal his lips shut. He was doing the only thing he could: to follow the saint’s ruling.

  The gesture had an effect. Nyquist fought to get his anger under control. And at last he lowered the branch back to the table. His hand was still touching it, which allowed him to speak. “I just need to find my father.” It was a simple desire. And with the saying of it, Nyquist was a boy again, a boy of six or seven, a running boy, a crying boy, a boy with dirt on his hands and knees and the streaks of tears down his grubby cheeks, he was a boy leaping over walls and balancing on the lip of a shed’s roof, he was the soldier at war, he was the fighter plane, the Spitfire, arms outstretched, making the noise of the engines and the guns, he was the cowboy, the lone jungle explorer, the first astronaut to ever walk on the moon. And his father was there for every mission, urging him on and fighting and patrolling with him, and then gone, gone, no longer a companion, no longer at his side, and the young boy played on alone, alone on the streets of light and dark, a game with no ending, no known outcome, not until the final shadows closed in.

  He sat down once more and spoke again, quietly this time.

  “I need to find him.”

  Sadler didn’t respond. His eyes darted to one side. The creature was at play again, moving around, shuffling. Scratching. It was a quiet sound, but in the silence it was heard clearly.

  “Do you hear that?” Sadler was whispering.

  Nyquist nodded.

  “Well… I think it’s calling to you.”

  “I don’t… I don’t know what you mean.” Whispering also.

  The noise continued, louder now.

  Sadler stood up. He walked over to a shelving unit and pushed aside a carriage clock. He pulled out an object from the dark of the shelf and he brought it back to the table. It was a wooden box, the kind of souvenir people brought back from their travels abroad. A jungle cat was carved in the lid.

  The noise was coming from inside.

  Sadler explained, “I found this in the house of a man who died earlier this year. He was called Mr Holroyd.”

  “I’ve never heard of him.”

  “I don’t think that matters. Please, take a look…”

  Nyquist clicked open a brass catch and lifted the lid.

  Immediately, the noise stopped.

  He peered aside, at the object that lay within, fitted snugly in a green baize bed. For a long moment he could not comprehend what he was seeing. He looked to Sadler for an answer, but the other man stayed silent.

  Turning his attention back to the object, he said, “It’s a service revolver. Enfield make. Double action. Looks like Army issue. Point 38 caliber.”

  “You know about guns, then?”

  “A little. I owned one for a while, but it was taken from me.”

  “Maybe this is meant to be a replacement?”

  “I’m not sure I want it.”

  “Well then, neither do I. Not now.”

  Nyquist pulled the revolver from the box and examined it in more detail. Straightaway he saw that the gun was still attached to the baize by a green cord. It was identical in every aspect to the tendril he’d found in the teacup at the Bainbridge household. He pulled the handgun further away from the box and the fibrous material stretched out and then detached itself from the baize with a quiet pop and sprung back towards the revolver, wrapping itself around the barrel.

  Both Nyquist and Sadler were staring at the gun and its strange occupant.

  The only moving object in sight was the tendril as it tightened and loosened its hold on the revolver.

 
“This is the creature that was making the noise?”

  Sadler nodded. “Yes. It’s been quiet ever since I took the box home. But now, as soon as you arrive, it starts to call out. Here, take a look.” He handed a magnifying glass to his visitor. Using this, Nyquist could see that the parasite, or whatever it might be, was attached to the outside of the trigger guard: it actually seemed to be fused with the metal. The other end of the tendril waved in the air, tipped by a collection of hair-like fibers. They trembled as an insect’s antennae might, seeking a new surface to cling to. It was alive. Nyquist lowered the glass. He had never seen anything like this, not in all his years.

  “Be careful. It’s moving!”

  Sadler’s voice startled him. The tendril unravelled from the barrel at speed. Nyquist couldn’t help himself, he dropped the revolver and it clattered on the tabletop. The creature was writhing around, almost whipping from side to side at speed.

  “Jesus.”

  “Indeed, and all the saints.” Sadler’s brow was covered in sweat.

  At last the creature settled once more, stirring slightly, its body undulating.

  Nyquist asked, “Do you know what this is?”

  “I’ve seen it before, yes. Once before.”

  “You need to start talking.”

  “I am talking. Can’t you hear me–”

  “Louder, more clearly. To the bloody point!”

  Sadler wiped the sweat from his upper lip. Then he pointed to the tendril and said, “This is a prime example of what people around here call Creeping Jenny. Or at least, a small part of her.”

  “I’ll need more than that.”

  “The gun is linked to you in some way. And nothing, nothing at all, is going to sever that connection. Not ever! Don’t you see?” There was an excited look in Sadler’s eyes. “The Creeping Jenny tendril connects the gun to your story. That’s why it came alive, when you entered the room.” He moaned with pleasure. “Oh my, it’s so rare, and such a beautiful thing to witness.”

  Nyquist felt his grip on reality weakening.

  “You’ve handled a few of these?”

  “Just the one. I sold a hunting knife some years ago, to a man not that dissimilar to yourself. The handle of the hunting knife had the same thing attached to it. Other than that, I’ve heard stories. We all have.”

  “Tell me about them.”

  “I’m not sure that would be helpful.”

  Nyquist said, “The thing is, I’ve already seen this creature before, on another object.”

  “Really?”

  “Not a gun. But on a teacup. That’s all. Just a normal teacup.”

  Sadler’s eyes lit up. “Oh, but this is incredible! I’ve never heard of this before. Two objects! Two objects joined to the same person, to the same story! And you know what the old songs say?” He supplied his own answer: “Once Creeping Jenny calls you, there’s no escaping her.” He started to sing. The tune was suitable for a childhood chant, but Sadler’s raspy tenor gave it a poignant melancholic air.

  By weed and by hook

  By candle and book

  By wood and by weir

  Creeping Jenny is near.

  As the song continued, Nyquist checked the revolver’s cylinder: five empty chambers, and a single cartridge loaded and ready to fire. He closed it up again and heard the satisfying sound of the parts clicking back together: it was well-made and well looked after. But the tendril was disturbed. It seemed to be reaching out for Nyquist. He let it happen, allowing the fibers to move across the back of his hand. It tickled, but nothing more. It wrapped itself lightly around his index finger. He was now joined to the gun by this living, organic material. It gave him the strangest sensation: he thought of a story unfolding, a pathway branching in two, and two again, and again, and so on, ever onwards, and then twining together with other pathways, other stories, from now until the moment when the trigger was pulled and the hammer met the firing pin causing the powder to explode and the cartridge to shoot forth and to meet with flesh or whatever the target might be.

  A cry of pain and shock, a spray of blood…

  It felt real in his mind, like the gunshot was actually happening there and then. So real. Until the song ended, and then the tendril moved away from his finger to float back to the revolver’s barrel, and the vision faded as quickly as it had come.

  “I think the gun belongs to you,” Sadler said. “I don’t want it in my house anymore.”

  “Tell me about the other item you sold, the hunting knife?”

  Sadler hesitated.

  “What is it? Did the owner hurt someone with it?”

  “You could say that. He killed himself.”

  THE FARAWAY MAN

  The moorlands were a great weight, a beast pressing down on the earth. Nyquist kept to the pathway, almost stumbling a few times, and was grateful to hear the river moving in its brook, the water lit with silvery aspects like a disturbed mirror in a blacked-out room. He used it as a guide, keeping the sound to his right, but even then, he thought he might be lost. All land was the same land, all darkness the same darkness, himself a darkened figure in the dark landscape – and the inside of his head held the same darkness. But he kept on, until he could make out a pattern of yellow dots far ahead: lamps and lighted windows. Now a firefly buzzed in his mind and flitted over the things he had learned from Sadler and his hoard of curious objects. He ranged over the mysteries: the threads of cotton woven into a photograph, the missing name that Sylvia Keepsake had given him, the reason for his father’s appearance in this village after so many years, and so away far from his home. Most of all he saw again the image of Sadler’s house emerging on the sheet of paper in the developing tray. Somebody was sending him clues, that was all he could think. But why?

  One step, another, in the dark, the pattering of the stream, a night bird calling lonesome in the moors, the moon almost full but hidden by clouds. The swan pool. The stone bridge across the river. He was back in Hoxley-on-the-Hale. It was a Friday night and the high street was busy with people enjoying the start of the weekend. The windows of The Swan With Two Necks glowed with a cheery light. But of course, nobody spoke, nobody made a sound. The revolver weighed heavy in Nyquist’s jacket pocket and he was shamefully aware that he was carrying a loaded firearm through this supposedly peaceful little village: he felt more out of place than ever. Couples walked by, some of them hand in hand, their bodies wrapped in wool and fur to keep out the cold. He peeked in at the door of the public house and saw the drinkers at the tables and the bar, all in silence, each person making their hand signals, telling jokes, spreading gossip, arguing and flirting, but all in gestures only. Nigel Coombes didn’t join in with the merriment, but he served everyone efficiently, with a professional landlord’s smile in place. Nyquist was tempted by the atmosphere, but he wasn’t ready to settle down just yet. His hands were empty of words. And he had one more job to do that night.

  He walked along Pyke Road until he reached the Bainbridge household. His plan was simple; he would wait until eight o’clock, when Saint Meade lost her control over the village, and then he would knock loudly on the door of Yew Tree Cottage and demand to know why the Bainbridges possessed that particular teacup, the one with the tendril attached. If Len Sadler was to be believed, then cup and gun were linked. A chain looped around in his mind: myself, the cup, the gun, the cup, the gun, myself, the gun, the cup, the gun, myself…

  Damn it to hell and back! The Bainbridges had to know something.

  He waited until twenty to the hour, and grew restless. He walked on a little way and came to the community center, where the night’s lecture was in progress. He paid a shilling at the door and stood in the semi-dark watching images flicker on a screen set up on a small stage. The place was only a quarter full. Nyquist ignored the empty seats and walked over to the tea and refreshments table, but only a pair of stale-looking pink wafers were left on the plate, surrounded by the crumbs of finer biscuits. He ate what was on offer, and stood with his
back to the wall watching the lecture. A young man was working a magic lantern from the center aisle and an older woman was standing on the stage, indicating various details with a pointer. Not a word was uttered, not a sound was heard, only the clicking of the lantern as one photographic slide after another was slotted into place, and a new picture appeared on the screen. Even when one image was shown upside down, nobody made a comment, not even through laughter. Shadows danced on the viewers’ rapt faces. Nyquist saw birds in flight and children playing with hoops and the moon above a forest and the high street strung with bunting and a lone black tower and a smiling man and white-clad cricketers on the green and the wave of a hand from a soldier marching off to war and a young woman arranging flowers on a grave and the church of Hoxley decked out for the harvest festival. But he couldn’t for the life of him work out what the sequence meant or why people would sit here and look at such things. It was hardly Bride of Blood, or The Moonstruck Corpse starring Jack Hawkins.

  Five minutes of random images was enough. He left the hall and made his back to the Bainbridges’ cottage. Only a short time remained until the day’s silence came to an end. The atmosphere seemed heavy, drained of all noise. Not a single animal cry or bird call disturbed the purity of that moment; even the wind had died down. Nyquist could hardly dare breathe in case he ruined the effect. And he wondered if everyone would suddenly make a loud noise and all start talking at once, when the clock struck eight, in recompense for all the hours of being mute.

  He thought of the wordless lecture he’d just witnessed and was certain that he’d missed something in the flicker of images, something he needed to focus on.

  Was that the same dark tower as…

  The noise came too soon.

  He wasn’t prepared. It scared him. His heart leapt.

  The noise, the scream. It came too soon, three minutes too soon.

  The night was cut open by it.

  He imagined blood pouring from silence, from wounded silence.

  The scream continued. A woman’s high voice in pain, in terrible pain.

  At last Nyquist was able to move. He ran to the door of Yew Tree Cottage and banged on it with his fist.