The Song From Somewhere Else

by A. F. Harrold

  The thought sat there looking at her. After a moment, it said, ‘Look, I’m so crazy an idea, aren’t I, that you wouldn’t think me, would you, Frank?’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘I wouldn’t.’

  ‘And yet here I am,’ said the idea, holding out its hand for her to shake.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, shaking the idea by the hand. ‘Here you are.’

  It was a good firm handshake.

  ‘You’re probably dreaming,’ said the idea. ‘That would explain it.’

  ‘Yes, it might,’ Frank said, seeing the sense. ‘I can imagine dreaming an idea like you.’

  ‘Well, that’s settled then,’ said the idea, climbing back inside her head.

  It’s as simple as that, Frank thought: I’m probably still asleep.

  You’re not responsible for your dreams. No one can blame you if you do bad things in your sleep world. It doesn’t hurt anyone; it doesn’t affect anyone. No one need ever know about it.

  In your dreams even your Neil Nobles are defeatable. No one can stop you playing dirty, saying the things you really think, kicking the boys where it really hurts.

  Although, all that being said, and all that being true, even in Frank’s dreams Noble still won, usually.

  Her mind made up, she ducked out from the curtains, back into her room and, in the dark, pulled her dressing gown on over her pyjamas, then tiptoed out on to the landing, down the stairs, through the lounge, into the kitchen and over to the back door.

  Beside it was the under-the-stairs cupboard and she pulled a pair of trainers out and slipped them on her feet.

  The key hung on the hook and she reached it down, unlocked the door.

  She closed it behind her, just pulling it shut, not locking it, leaving the key on the inside.

  She lifted her bike from where her dad had told her not to leave it on the patio and walked it out the gate. She thought of when she’d been a little kid, back before Hector was born, thought of all those times she’d declared that she was running away from home, when she’d packed a rucksack and got as far as the dustbins before turning back.

  Tonight she wasn’t running away and she wouldn’t turn back.

  She’d never cycled at night before, not in a dream-night nor a real-night. She still pretended she wasn’t sure which sort this was.

  There were no streetlights across the park, but the tarmac path reflected the moonlight like a winding glass stream with dark gulfs of grass on either side.

  She couldn’t imagine Neil and his cronies hanging out by the swings at this time of night (the kitchen clock had said it was two), but she cycled fast anyway. Her stomach turned over uncomfortably inside her as she thought of them, as she glanced across at the rec, as they didn’t appear.

  Out through the hedges she followed the path as it became pavement, bounced down into the road without looking. The night was almost silent, the only noise was the regular zwoosh of her wheel rim against the brake pad.

  Shadows ran alongside her between the streetlamps, like dolphins racing a boat.

  The school playing field was on her left, behind a chain-link fence. She thought of the times she’d had to run round it, the times she’d sat beneath one of the trees at lunchtime trying to read while Noble ‘accidentally’ kicked a football at her.

  Now it was asleep.

  She could hear it breathing gently as it dreamt her cycling past.

  She turned right, pedalling slower now, cycling up the middle of Nick’s road. All the houses were unlit, their curtains drawn, their doors locked. They were asleep too. There were cars parked on either side of the road. They were dreaming metal dreams, winning great races in far-off lands. At intervals, behind the cars and narrowing the pavements, were tall, dark trees, and behind them front gardens and wheelie bins, all fast asleep.

  She unhooked her leg and scooted the last few metres with one foot on a pedal, the other just touching the ground. She lifted the bike between two cars and on to the pavement, walked it down the passage at the side of the Underbridges’ house, round into the back garden.

  She laid it down on the grass, gently, quietly.

  For a moment she stood there, wondering what happened next, almost wondering why she’d come here, and then she knelt down on the grass.

  In front of her was the dip down to the cellar windows.

  They glowed.

  It wasn’t reflected moonlight, wasn’t the night shining. The glow came from within. There was something happening in there.

  She lay on her belly, scooched forward.

  With her hand she waved aside cobwebs. Spiders woke suddenly and found themselves in new places, rolled over, assumed they were dreaming too and went back to sleep.

  She could see in.

  And now she could hear it. Faint through the closed window, but sharp in the night air, there was the whisper of music. Of the music.

  Oh goodness!

  It was new, it was different, it was ancient. It poured into her like fresh orange juice, sharp and cold and full of vitamins. She knew it was doing her good, gulp by gulp, glass by glass. Each cluster of notes, each diving, vanishing melody, each odd change of rhythm wiped clean her soul.

  Moving around in the cellar was a great shape. The troll was at the desk, but, as Frank had thought the last time, it wasn’t just a desk: it was a computer or an instrument, or both, a keyboard of some sort. There was a screen the great, ugly, flat-faced monster was peering at. It adjusted things with its huge fingers (long as well as wide) and the music shifted, changed, moved about. Frank didn’t understand it exactly, but the troll was making it happen, was making the music.

  It’s a troll composer, she thought, smiling, then wondered why this had seemed odd.

  Being a troll, after all, wasn’t a job. No more than being a human being was a job. It seemed obvious that you’d get trolls who did all sorts of things. It just made sense. There’d be baker trolls and butcher trolls and music-maker trolls. Why not?

  The troll leant back in its chair, rubbed at the bridge of its fat-flat grey nose.

  Beyond the troll, Frank could see the faint outline of the cellar, of the real junk-filled cellar under Nick’s house, but it was like looking at mist, at shadows in the evening, when everything’s blue and far off and hard to see. And then she saw Nick.

  He was sat on the second to bottom step of the stairs, far over on the other side of the room.

  She saw him in sharp focus, for a moment, and then he faded again, became part of the ghost scene, behind and beyond the troll scene.

  But she’d seen him and knew what he was doing. He was listening.

  ‘This is a problem,’ said the cat.

  She was surprised that she wasn’t surprised. She hadn’t heard the cat approach, but then, of course, that’s the whole point of cats.

  She rolled on to her side and looked at it.

  ‘Quintilius Minimus,’ she said. ‘What are you doing here?’

  She didn’t ask what, later on, seemed the more obvious question: ‘How come if you can talk you’ve never talked before?’ or even: ‘Where have you been?’

  The cat blinked its odd coloured eyes, licked a foot, rubbed a tatty ear and said, ‘Someone is going to notice that window is open before long.’

  But the window isn’t open, Frank thought. She’d wiped away cobwebs but hadn’t even touched the glass or the frame. And then she realised that Quintilius Minimus was talking about what was happening in the cellar. The window that let them see into wherever the troll was.

  ‘It’s more than a window,’ the cat said. Its voice sounded haughty, bored, as if it wanted to be somewhere else, as if it had something better to be doing. ‘It’s almost a hole. That’s another world on the other side. And where there are holes, or almost-holes, there are always interested parties searching.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ she asked.

  Quintilius Minimus sighed, as if tired of explaining things, then said, ‘Holes can let things in. And let things out. Shado
ws, for example. Little ones. Harmless ones. Easy to catch. Taste of nothing.’

  ‘Uh-huh,’ she said.

  ‘But there are other things out there, people maybe, or maybe-people, looking for a place like this: a window they can open even wider. And not all of them have your best interests in mind,’ the cat said, looking over its shoulder. ‘A secret only lasts so long.’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ she said. ‘What are you talking about?’

  The cat said no more. It sat beside her and looked through the cellar window.

  ‘Are you going to come home?’ she asked.

  The cat didn’t answer, and when she next looked at it it was chewing at something dark, something that wriggled like a mouse might, but which wasn’t a mouse.

  They watched until the light began to fade and the music began to drift away.

  The huge troll woman leant forward, tapped at some keys on the keyboard, picked up a mug and took a swig of what might’ve been tea, what might’ve been coffee, what might’ve been something else entirely, and simply vanished.

  The cellar was plunged into darkness, the right and proper darkness of a basement at night.

  Frank didn’t see Nick turn and slowly climb the stairs, wearily heading up into the house, back to his own bed, but she could imagine it.

  After sitting and listening and watching all that, would he feel elated, would he feel good about himself, would he be happy, or would he feel something else? Would he be sad now that the music was gone, now it was over? Would he remember what his days at school were like? Would it all come back to him?

  And now the music was gone, she felt colder. She remembered Neil Noble. And then she imagined being her dad, getting up for a pee in the middle of the night and just peeking round his daughter’s door on his way back to bed and finding her room empty.

  She looked around and saw that Quintilius Minimus had gone too.

  She hadn’t noticed him go.

  It was like waking from a dream in a strange place.

  ‘Go home,’ her stomach said. ‘Go home now. This was the wrong thing to do.’

  ‘I know,’ she said, even though she wasn’t entirely convinced.

  She jumped to her feet.

  She pulled her bike up and climbed on, tucking her dressing gown under her bum, only now worrying that it might catch in the back wheel.

  The air was cold against her skin. This wasn’t a dream; this was late at night and she should be at home, should be in bed, should be asleep.

  She pedalled without looking back, without wondering whether Nick had lifted his curtain before he climbed into bed, whether he’d seen her cycling away, whether he’d wondered about that as he went to sleep.

  Shadows moved as she passed them by. Curious shadows slid out of gardens and across the road behind her. Watched her go past. Shadows with nothing there to cast them.

  WEDNESDAY

  After breakfast she knew she was going to go back to Nick’s house. She had no choice. Her heart was uneasy with how she’d treated him.

  She’d lied to him yesterday when she’d said she’d seen nothing in the cellar. He knew she’d heard the music, so why had she lied about what she’d seen? Because he’d be angry, she’d thought, about her sneaking around his house without asking. But maybe she’d have to face that anger in order to understand what was going on.

  Now, after she’d seen him in the basement, seen him seeing the same thing she saw, she knew she couldn’t pretend nothing had happened. It was clearly his secret, but she knew too and it was unfair of her not to let him know that she knew. Wasn’t it?

  And what about what Quintilius Minimus had said? All that stuff about other worlds and shadows and … It was hard to remember exactly what the cat had said; come the morning it was misty in her mind like a dream, even though she knew it had happened. Hadn’t it?

  Oh! It was all tangling up in knots.

  She didn’t want to go. She didn’t want to be friends with him. She didn’t, truth be told, want all the weirdness, but … but she did want to hear the music and she did want him to like her. There was something special about him, about his house.

  She didn’t have a choice, did she?

  She told her dad where she was going and got on her bike.

  Frank turned the corner into the park with the usual questions fogging her brain: would they be there?

  They were.

  Neil Noble and not only Rob and Roy, but half a dozen other lads too. They were set up on the grass with a pair of dropped-jumper goalposts, kicking a football back and forth.

  For a moment she’d hoped, with no real hope in the hoping, that the presence of the other boys, boys who’d never been mean to her, some of whom she’d never even seen before, might hold Noble in check.

  Her anti-hope instincts, however, were correct.

  As she pushed off with one foot and began pedalling down the path as fast as she could, she heard that lisping hateful version of her name roll out over the grass.

  ‘Fwancethca!’

  And then, with unnatural aim, and a hollow noise like a gymnasium, the ball hurtled out of nowhere and hit her back wheel.

  The bike wobbled, skidded, slid out from under her and she went tumbling across the tarmac and on to the dry, dusty summer-worn grass. The bike clattered away from her, pedals banging on the path, a faint ding from the unrung bell hanging in the air.

  There was laughter, and through the stinging pain she heard her name coming closer.

  ‘Fwancethca, Fwancethca!’

  ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Where’d you learn to ride like that? Clown school?’

  ‘You OK?’

  ‘What an idiot!’

  There was a crowd of them round her. They kept blocking and unblocking the sun as they moved about. It flickered in her eyes like an interrogation.

  She had the impression some people were holding hands out for her, but all she could hear was the laughter, the jeering of Neil and his pals.

  ‘Cut it out, Neil,’ one boy said. ‘She came a right cropper there. Look at her knee.’

  ‘Don’t worry about that. Fwancethca’s not afraid of a little blood,’ Noble leered. ‘Are you?’

  Her knee stung. Looking down, she saw it was grazed. Deep red blood pooled dark in the cut and she felt sick and pale and clammy seeing it.

  She pushed her way to her feet. There was blood on her hand too.

  ‘You OK?’ someone asked, maybe the boy who’d just spoken.

  ‘Of course she’s not OK, dumbo,’ Noble sneered. ‘Look, she’s still breathing.’

  Rob and Roy grunted approval at this.

  ‘Now, come on, Neil, that’s not nice.’

  Noble turned to the boy he’d been playing football with a minute earlier and pushed him backwards with both hands.

  ‘What’s wrong, Johnny,’ he simpered, batting his eyelashes and nibbling a fingertip between words. ‘Is you in love with the little –’

  Frank took this opportunity to pull her bike upright and lean on the handlebars. It rolled forward. The back wheel went all the way round. She threw a leg over and scrabbled her feet on to the pedals.

  Blood dribbled down her shin. It was warm and dripped on her foot as she pedalled.

  Behind her the two boys were scuffling on the grass.

  Someone kicked the football at her again, but this time it missed, rolling alongside her for a while until she turned with the path, skirted the rec and zoomed out the park’s other entrance.

  Frank was breathing heavily and still pedalling fast as she approached Nick’s house.

  She was afraid Noble and his pals would have finished their squabble in the park and have started following her. Those sorts of things never lasted long when there was tastier prey around. It was just boys showing off, being idiots.

  She freewheeled to a stop, her heart slowing, as she saw Mr Underbridge in the street. He was helping a man in brown overalls put packages into the back of a van.

&nb
sp; ‘Morning, Frank,’ he said when he saw her.

  Then he noticed her pale face, her bleeding knee, her bloody leg.

  ‘Are you OK? What happened?’ he asked, coming over and bending down beside her.

  ‘I fell off,’ she said, not tearfully, telling all the truth that needed to be told.

  ‘Nick’s in the house somewhere,’ he said. ‘Take your bike round the back and just go in the kitchen. Shout for him. I’ll be in in a second.’

  He turned to the man, who was straightening one long, flat bubble-wrapped package against the others in the back of the van.

  ‘Bill,’ he said. ‘There’s only a few more in the hallway. You OK getting them out here yourself? I’ll be back in a minute.’

  Frank walked her bike up the side of the house and round to the back.

  As she lay it down on the lawn, she glanced at the cellar windows.

  The overgrown grass in front of them looked flattened, a bit. The windows seemed cleaner, or at least less cobwebby.

  ‘What happened to you?’ Nick asked, coming out the back door.

  ‘I fell off my bike,’ she replied and said no more.

  They went into the kitchen. Nick’s dad had already got a green first aid box out of a cupboard.

  ‘You’d better wash your knee,’ he said.

  She ran the hot tap and tore off some kitchen roll.

  Once the blood was cleaned away the graze didn’t look so big after all. The blood on her hand had been from her knee, not from another cut. She still felt a little sick, but sitting down helped.

  Mr Underbridge held her leg firmly as he dabbed it with antiseptic, found a plaster just the right size and shape, and stuck it over the wound. She noticed that his nails were unevenly cut and speckled with multi-coloured paint. He didn’t speak as he did it, just got on with the job.

  The man with the van, Bill, called for him from the front of the house.

  ‘You’ll be OK now, yeah?’ he asked. ‘I’ve got to go do some work.’