Until She Sleeps

by Tim Lebbon

  They did not know the village like he did. They viewed it with grown-up eyes and jaded adult perceptions, and deep inside he knew that he would too, and all too soon. He wanted to be grown up, allowed to drink and drive and screw, but already he was mourning the passing of childhood preoccupations. He wondered if he’d ever dam a stream at eighteen, or scrape his knees falling from a bike, or collect frog spawn and overrun his mum and dad’s garden with baby frogs.

  There were new and greater adventures facing him, he knew that. But for now he loved the old ones best.

  He heard his mother rummaging around in her wardrobe and wondered just what she was looking for. She was never too concerned about what she looked like  she was careful about her appearance, but never vain  and Andy wondered why she needed to change out of her shorts and blouse just to walk down to the square.

  He heard her curse, the actual words hidden behind a whisper.

  Stig and his mum passed the kitchen window, and that gave Andy the chance he’d subconsciously been seeking. He waved to them but did not call out, ducking instead into the hallway and tiptoeing across the floor. They’d be at the back door soon, knocking and entering, and his mum would hear them and stop whatever it was she was doing.

  Andy wondered where all this suspicion was suddenly coming from. You pick up on things, his mum had told him.

  He had to be fast.

  The knock came just as he pressed his face to the crack between bedroom door and frame. He saw his mother hurriedly jam a handful of clothes and old magazines back into the top part of the wardrobe, dust herself down and drop from the chair she’d been standing on. She glanced guiltily over her shoulder  Andy didn’t like the look on her face, he hated the idea of her doing something she had to feel guilty about, it meant she was fallible  and then turned and came for the door.

  “Hello?” Stig’s mum called from the kitchen.

  Andy slipped quietly into the bathroom and pushed the door to behind him, flushing the toilet and opening the door again straight away. “Thought you were getting changed?” he asked his mum as he met her in the hallway. It felt bad covering up his spying on her with an allusion to her own lie.

  She shrugged. “Nice day, may as well leave my shorts on. Get a tan on these old lady’s legs, eh?”

  “Mum,” Andy droned, and then Stig and his mother appeared in the kitchen doorway.

  “There’s something in the ditch,” Stig’s mum said. She was a short, squat woman, her cheeks always ready to wobble, her hair as messy as a bird’s nest no matter how much she brushed. She had a big nose and big ears, and Andy always thought of The Lord of the Rings when he saw her.

  “Hi Ruth. What did you say?”

  “Something back along the road, in the ditch.” Andy heard the quaver in her voice and watched her cheeks and chin take it on board. He looked at Stig. His friend was staring at him, red eyes wide, and he gave Andy a slight nod.

  What was that? Andy thought. But then he thought he knew. He knew that Stig meant, Now they’ll believe us.

  Only minutes later, Andy would wish that their adult disbelief was catching.

  Nightmare

  Kurt Howards had seen frightened kids before  God knows most of his own childhood seemed to have been spent looking at himself in the mirror, wondering just what the hell it was all about  and he knew that these two were as scared as could be. They were riding their bikes like bats out of hell, the tubby one lagging behind looked like he’d been crying, and as he watched them freewheeling down the slope toward their homes he knew what he should do.

  They were teenagers. Teenagers didn’t react like that or flee so quickly unless they’d done something wrong, or something had scared them badly. Kurt knew Andy, knew his mother and father too, and he would willingly have sworn in court that he was a good kid.

  That just left scared.

  He had to go and see that they were all right. Business was slow today, anyway, and it being lunchtime he could justifiably lock the shop for half an hour while he strolled down the to the kid’s houses, had a chat with their mothers … Andy’s mother at least. Because Andy’s mother did things for Kurt. True, only in his dreams and imagination, but wondrous things nonetheless. It had taken him a while to come to terms with having such a crush when he was pushing seventy, but now he simply smiled at her, dreamed his dreams, revelled in the adolescent innocence of it all.

  He had lived alone since his wife died. It would harm no one.

  It was certainly a hot one today, yet though the village sat quiet and simmering in the heat, there was expectant air about the place. As Kurt walked down the road he could not quite place exactly what was happening: he expected a flock of birds to take flight at any minute; a dog to come charging from someone’s front gate; a tree to topple in the orchard to his left. The promise of movement, of occasion, imbued everything. Yet all was still.

  He walked a little faster.

  When he came to the tubby one’s house he paused for a few seconds, leaning against the orchard fence opposite whilst deciding what to do. He thought he heard a cry from the house, but the heat seemed to melt it into a memory. He looked around, wiped the sweat from his brow and then continued onward. Andy’s house was only a couple of minutes’ walk from here, around the next corner. Kurt would see his mother, she would perhaps fetch him a cool drink while they discussed what was wrong with her boy, and Kurt’s dreams would be given fuel for a few more days and nights.

  Then he saw something in the ditch.

  Something moving.

  He stopped and leaned forward. The ditch was dry at this time of year, overgrown with bushes and weeds that found sustenance in its rich bed, any water left now hiding just beneath the surface of the ground and awaiting the rains to fill the ditch once more.

  There was a pale shape down there beneath the rampant knotweed. It flipped back and forth, reminding Kurt of a fish landed on a riverbank.

  “Now what the hell is that?” There could be no fish down there, he knew, even when flooded the ditch was home only to frogs and the tiniest minnows. He leaned closer, then knelt so that he could bend down and get closer still. Road-grit stung his knees and bit into his palms as he rested his whole weight on them.

  He could reach out to pull some of the undergrowth aside. It would maybe make his perch right on the edge of the ditch even more precarious, but at least then he’d be able to see. That paleness, flipping around down there in the dank dark, hidden from the world yet just barely visible to him.

  Kurt yawned, his eyes screwing shut as if night had come. And suddenly everything came into focus and he knew what he was looking at. It was a baby, hidden at the bottom of the ditch. At that same moment he brought one hand to his mouth to stifle the yawn and lost his balance.

  He tumbled headlong into the ditch.

  It was only three feet deep but he seemed to fall forever, spinning in the air, rolling over and over, but whichever way he turned his eyes were locked with those of the baby. Its black eyes.

  Kurt tried to cry out but he was still yawning. And falling. The baby looked at him and as he neared it – his short fall impossibly endless – he nudged aside bushes and fronds and gained a clearer view. The child’s skin was split around the joints: knees; elbows; shoulders; neck. It looked as if a larger person had been shoved and forced into this infant’s body.

  And its eyes … black as sleep, dark as a the starless night at the end of time.

  Just as Kurt struck the baby and kept falling, he saw its mouth open wide in a terrible scream. He recognised that voice and added to it.

  He screamed.

  It was weak and pitiful, because his pain was so great and paralysing. He lay along the bottom of the ditch, kicking his arms and legs in an effort to haul himself out, but something held him down. There was a weight on him and he realised as he spied his legs and arms that the weight was him. He was too heavy for his muscles to move, too large for anything other than sprawling and crawling, because hi
s hands had gone small and chubby, his legs shrunk back into his trousers, and he could feel his skull beginning to creak as his scalp tightened. His body was being hauled down and in, compressed and regressed, and yet none of it could keep pace. His thighs and shins cracked and arced through his skin under the pressure, raw ends grinding together and crumbling wet bone-dust across the stream bed.

  Still the scream was trapped. His throat was closing.

  He felt his ribs drawing inwards, plucking at his organs as they shrank too slowly, and then he could scream, his voice was back and he let out a weak, plaintive baby’s cry into the hot blue sky.

  Beneath him, the baby had gone. And yet, Kurt knew, it was still there.

  That was when he felt his skin splitting at elbow, knee and neck.

  Six

  The boys’ mothers went first. The two boys trailed behind, walking close together but remaining silent. Andy was desperate to ask Stig just what he’d seen, why it had scared his mother so, but somehow it seemed only right not to ask. Like in a church, Andy thought. It feels respectful.

  “There,” said Stig’s mum. The boys stopped, while the two mothers went to look in the ditch.

  Andy was terrified. He could see Stig shaking next to him, could almost feel the heat of fear radiating from him in waves. His friend was still topless, his skin thoroughly reddened by the sun, but Andy could still see goosebumps on his arms and across his stomach and sides.

  He had to see what had terrified his friend so much.

  “What is it?” Andy heard his mum mutter as he paused just behind her. He stared between the women and down into the ditch, breathing quietly so that they could not hear him and tell him to move away. He shouldn’t see this, they’d say, this wasn’t for him, not for kids. But he was thirteen for God’s sake, he was almost a man, was a man if jerking off was one of the provisos. Anything they could see he should be able to see …

  It was bloodied and shapeless and twitching, a mass of something once alive but now almost dead, giving off a terrible stench that Andy did not recognise. Cloying but clean, meaty but disgusting. The smell of insides, Andy thought, that’s what it is. Insides out.

  “Oh fuck,” he whispered, and both women turned as one to look at him.

  “Maybe it’s a dog been hit by a car,” his mum said, too shocked to tell him to stop swearing or move away. They looked back down at the dead thing in the ditch … and it moved.

  It mewled.

  They backed away to where Stig stood on the other side of the road.

  “It said help me,” Andy said.

  “No,” his mum said.

  “It did.” Andy jumped as Stig grasped his arm, looked at his friend and saw fresh tears streaking his cheeks. He wondered if tears ever ran out.

  “What the hell is it?” Stig whimpered. “I heard it too.”

  “It’s someone,” Andy said. “Mum, it’s someone and they’re hurt. We have to help them.” He ran forward, knowing right away that he was wrong, certain in the knowledge that helping whatever it was down there was the very last thing he should be doing. Not because it didn’t need help – whoever or whatever it was, they were opened up and dying – but because to try could be fatal. To all of them.

  Mercy killing, his dad had once told him as he crushed a rabbit’s head beneath his heel. They’d run it over on the way back from town one day. The thing’s feet had been kicking and scraping at the Tarmac as its insides leaked out. Mercy killing.

  “Andy!” someone said, but the voice was so stunted by shock that he couldn’t know who called him.

  For a second he merely stood beside the ditch, staring down at the thing, watching it shifting slightly in the heat, steaming, making wet popping sounds as what must have been a mouth opened and closed. Smaller, he thought, it’s smaller than it was just now.

  A hand fell on his shoulder and tried to pull him back, but sometimes his mum forgot just how old he was. She forgot that he was a teenager now. He stood his ground, strength of body band mind demanding that he see.

  “It’s getting smaller,” he said.

  It shrunk before his eyes. The sounds ceased. The vocal sounds at least, because something was crackling and popping as the thing seemed to fold in upon itself. Blood soaked into the ditch bed and the plants seemed to quiver in anticipation of a fresh, unique meal.

  “Smaller still,” his mum said.

  “What’s happening?” Stig and his mum were standing together behind them, holding onto each other for comfort.

  “Smaller,” Andy said. “It’s shrinking. Maybe it’s a weird plant bloom, or something …” He trailed off because he knew how wrong he was. Plant bloom, yeah, right, well if that’s the case then it’s straight out of a fucking John Carpenter movie.

  The thing vanished beneath the undergrowth. It may still have been there, Andy knew, getting smaller and smaller still, and maybe at some point it would vanish altogether. Or perhaps it would just go on shrinking forever; halving its size again and again but never arriving at nothing.

  “Can we go to the square now, Mum?” he asked, still looking down into the ditch. “Can we go and talk to the police?”

  “I think so,” his mother said. And under her voice she muttered: “This is a nightmare.”

  A nightmare.

  “What was that thing?” Stig whispered as they trailed behind their mothers. “Andy, what was it?”

  “Whatever, it’s gone now.”

  Stig was silent for a few seconds before he replied. “That just makes it more frightening.” And he said no more.

  They passed by the corner shop and Andy noticed that it was closed. Back in ten minutes, the sign on the door said. He could do with a drink now. The early afternoon sun was merciless, making his already burnt neck and arms tingle even more. He should have smeared on more sun cream when he was at home. Maybe when his mother had been was searching her bedroom for some guilty secret, something that hadn’t been looked at or thought about for quite some time because it was hidden in the top of her wardrobe, still there now, still undiscovered.

  Their walk to the square was punctuated by several unusual occurrences. None of them were too disturbing or serious on their own, but combined they went to prove that something was very wrong in their little village that afternoon. The place was always quiet on a weekday; many folks were in work, either on the farms surrounding the village or further away in town. Kids made some noise, especially now during the summer holidays, but it was early afternoon and they were normally having lunch around now. Either that or they were off hiding somewhere, exploring, playing, making memories.

  Today, the place was silent. Things were … off kilter.

  Andy thought it may have been the things he and Stig had seen this morning conspiring to drive the day mad.

  Whatever … his mother could no longer deny what was going on.

  The school was closed for the summer, but they saw a cleaner in one of the demountable classrooms. It appeared that she could not see them. She was standing on a chair by the windows, naked, reaching up to the top panes and scrubbing, wiping, scrubbing, wiping again, swapping an old cloth in her right hand for a fresh one in her left. Always the same window. The glass was sparkling clean, yet still she worked. Her huge veined breasts pressed against the lower panes, threatening to cracks them and send spears of highly-polished glass into her flesh. They could not see her face, but the sweat running down her sides was obvious.

  Nobody said anything, the mothers or the boys. Andy felt Stig glance at him, but he did not return his friend’s look. He was sure that none of them felt like laughing.

  They passed by the stream. At first glance it appeared to be flowing uphill, but Andy shook his head. He’d forgotten the way it ran, that was all. There was barely a trickle down there beneath the bushes and rushes, a gurgling flow that caught the sun and lit up the grey things bobbing on its surface. Barely a trickle, and yet the fish were at least six inches long, all of them. And all of them were dead.

/>   Andy had never seen fish that big in the stream, even in the autumn when it ran full and fast and local kids fished with crab-hooks and earthworms and even adults chanced their luck, further down near the main road where the stream widened out.

  “Dead fish,” Stig’s mum said blandly, and Andy heard his mother grunt in acknowledgement. Neither of the women turned to look at their sons. They walked with a purpose in their step, and yet they were cautious as well. Andy realised with mixed feelings of shame, pride and fear, that his mother was guarding him.

  A minute later they came to the railway bridge that passed over the road. The brick arch was high and old, many of the bricks had crumbled and weeds sprouted from the ever-widening cracks. And there was something else up under the arch, hiding from the sun in dankness and hanging there, waiting for something, patiently waiting like a troll under a bridge with a taste for trains.

  None of them could see it, but Andy was sure they all felt it. He scanned the old brickwork, not sure exactly what he was looking for but certain that there was something there … and that he was being watched. Some of the weeds hung by nothing more than a root where they had been pulled out, and on the road a sprinkling of damp earthy dust lay drying in the sun.