TWICE

by Susanna Kleeman

  ‘We can’t. You said. They’ll be there.’

  ‘I’m going.’

  ‘I’ll drive you.’

  ‘I’m going to walk,’ I said. ‘They’ll see cars. Crawl. Go low.’ Scritch-style, prowling through woods. I didn’t care if he came or not. Cut the lumber loose. He was nothing now, gone like water, other worries. I turned my back on him and set off, walking fast, alert, trying to stay low, keep to trees, stay practical up the hill on my pilgrimage through the gridded forest till I got to hers, where hers should be, trying to remember why Rhodri was so suspicious of the world, remembering Tal and his spiders.

  He lolloped after me: ‘What’s this? More shit? You got people waiting for me up there?’

  ‘I got to see if they’re there. And maybe the book’s down there.’

  ‘Or you’re just saying. Who are you, what is this? You said you didn’t know where she put the book.’

  ‘Course I said that. I wasn’t going to tell you.’

  ‘You’re telling me now.’

  ‘Course I’m telling you now. Someone’s nicked her fucking house.’

  13

  It took maybe ten minutes through the neat forest, who could tell, ragged breath, blurred green and mud, the pump of my blood. At the end was a wooden fence broken in places and a field beyond, their hedge ahead, impossible to see yet if there was a house. Beyond that was another hedge enclosing Margi’s house, if that was still there. We crawled through into the field, edging round to the back of their land, away from the road, where the caravan should be, keeping down, slithering on our bellies on wet red earth, through rough cropped stalks, getting covered in mud, scattering jackdaws.

  We stopped at the hedge and pushed our faces through.

  Green grass, no red cottage, no trace. Where it should have been: lush regular lovely grass, too lush.

  The wonder.

  ‘Thick turf carpet,’ he whispered next to me, ‘laid over mess, you could lift it up, if you went close.’

  I was almost glad, to see it again, that it was real.

  Grag Medusa. Get a fucking grip.

  But no matter what, this wasn’t how the world worked, how I’d thought it worked. Disappearing homes, like magic. His mad chat spooling out true in front of me.

  Two of them. Mr Debonair Finger-Perfect up in my flat.

  ‘I’m sorry Chris,’ I said, my side vision going black, my stomach cramping.

  The caravan was still there, that the bunker had been under, not far from where we were: a cream and white run-down caravan you’d attach to a car. Rhodri liked fixing them up, guests stayed in them. But not this one, his secret hatch door, set out by itself towards the back away from the trees and their roots, facing away from where the house had been. In case of emergencies.

  I edged forwards into the hedge, he pulled me back, listening for something, looking round, white and panicked.

  ‘I’m going,’ I said. To the caravan, to see if the bunker was still down there, if Flora and Rhodri and the kids were down there. To get closer, see what the fuck had happened, bow down to it, bear witness. I just had to.

  ‘You don’t know the risk.’

  I didn’t know anything, in this new world. But he was scratching himself through the hedge alongside me, wanting to come too, for the book. Of course he was. And maybe that was right, maybe there was a message from Alan reaching out to us to help, to make sense of this.

  We burrowed towards the caravan on our bellies. The grass back here felt old, mucky, not newly-laid, solid in the earth when you tugged at it. Nothing seemingly around, nothing up in the sky. The caravan looked normal: no wheels, dumped on the ground, dirty shut curtains at the window. An old TV aerial on the roof next to a tall brown metal pipe poking up: secret ventilation for what lay beneath.

  We lay on the old grass next to it. I looked at its base: metal stuck in earth, moss and grass overgrown round it, deep embedded, not recently cut-and-pasted. It seemed. He was fiddling about with the bottom of the door, trying to jimmy it open from the base. Then he leapt up quick and kicked the door down in one neat move, pulled me in with him, made us stay low, shut the door behind us, peered round quick through dirty windows and then inside at everything.

  Brown, seventies, thick mildew air, stains and patterns sporing up your nose, down your throat every breath you took. Damp mouldy fug that felt undisturbed for ages, but what did I know, maybe they had sprays.

  ‘What feels off?’ he said.

  So much in general but nothing I could see here. Everything like the one time I’d been there before, Rhodri showing it off. A cramped run-down old caravan: bedroom and kitchen, old brown-stained mattresses, musty old bedding, damp. The hum though—the electrics still worked, was the giveaway: connected by underground wires by Rhodri to their generator that must still be working.

  ‘Was anyone here?’ I said.

  He shrugged, went for the fridge, opened the door, stuck his head inside: ‘I dunno. Nothing in here. That I can see.’

  Except there was plenty inside that fridge with its light on: medicine bottles all neatly lined up, antibiotics and whatever post-apocalyptic essentials recommended to Rhodri by the internet.

  ‘I mean: no messages. That’s what they do: leave messages in fridges, if they’ve been, if they need to, for each other.’

  ‘For who? What messages?’

  ‘Them. Don. Messages to each other. It’s their way. Every place has a fridge, or a cold box or a cold place where you keep food. Head to the coldest place, see if anyone’s left you anything. Fridge-postboxes. It’s a good system. Their version of Scritch.’

  He touched his temples. He crouched down, wrapped his arms round his head, doubled up in pain.

  ‘Chris?’

  He crouched there rocking himself. ‘It’ll be OK. Give me a minute.’

  The mushrooms, whatever, were back in the car in the trees at the bottom of the hill. I touched his shoulder but he shook me off. He rocked himself.

  He took deep breaths and stood up slowly, his face red and sweaty. ‘I’m OK.’ He stood there breathing, getting normal.

  Caught up in this with this malco.

  I needed this over. I hooked the hinged beds up against the wall, he helped me. I rolled up the dirty old carpet and showed him the metal hatch door beneath, padlocked shut with a massive iron lock.

  ‘It means they’re not inside,’ I said, a bad lump inside me. ‘If they’re inside they take the padlock in with them, bolt it from the inside. Unless someone’s locked them in.’

  We stared at the lock, me wondering how you could tell if it had been recently opened.

  ‘Knock,’ he said, calm now.

  ‘You knock,’ I said.

  He looked at me, knelt down and knocked, the five and the six. No reply. He knocked it again. ‘You know where they keep the key?’

  Somewhere in the gone house. Or on the big jangling ring attached to Rhodri’s belt. Wherever Rhodri was.

  He got something out his pocket, a blackened metal wire he fiddled into the lock.

  ‘What’s that whirr?’

  He pulled out the wire and held it to me. A normal wire. The end felt hot.

  He shifted the lock out, yanked open the hatch. New smells of deep cool rot rose from the darkness. I knelt next to him, called down to them, felt the boom.

  Nothing. Maybe the whole underneath was gone.

  I called again down into that black well in the middle of the caravan floor. He pushed me aside, got a matchbox out of his pocket, struck and lit a match, threw it down the hole where it flamed the metal steps down before snuffing out.

  ‘Were they there before?’ meaning the steps. I nodded. ‘You know where it is down there? If everything’s still down there?’

  He meant the book. That’s what he cared about. Fuck Flora.

  I shook my head.

  ‘Tell me where she put it,’ he whispered. ‘I’ll go check. See if they’re there. You stay here, keep watch. Shout if you need.’


  ‘I don’t know where she put it. I don’t even know it was here, for sure. Stay, I’ll go down,’ though I didn’t want to. ‘Give me the matches.’

  ‘Who knows what’s down there,’ moving into the hole, shifting round, getting his feet on the slats, going down.

  14

  I went down after him. He stopped and reached up past me to lower the hatch above us and then latch it shut with the sliding bolt built into the door from inside. Well noticed.

  Me and him on the ladder in the pitch dark.

  He lit another match, whispered, ‘Any other way in or out?’

  ‘Not that I know,’ reaching behind him to flick the switch Rhodri had built on the wall. It still worked. The bare bulb above flooded the place with light to show everything as it should be, not craned away. Like before: a big storehouse, the door to the other room, a sealed underground concrete box set into earth, enough stuff to support a family of four for six months or was it the other way round?

  Them maybe above us now, ready to claw us out or seal us in.

  Park it, for now. Focus on what’s real.

  We moved down the ladder, him first. No sign of Flora or Rhodri. No sign of disturbance, but what could I tell: disappearing homes. Tins and rotting root veg in crates lined up against the wall. No apples—they gave bad gas, according to Rhodri. Supposedly you could keep root veg for years.

  I was starving, not quite yet ready for raw swedes but getting there. No tin openers that I could see, they’d be somewhere. Chocolate and crackers and energy biscuits in sealed containers somewhere, I remembered that. Powdered noodles. Vats of water.

  ‘What’s behind the door?’

  A second room, the kind of bedroom, also security: you could lock it from the inside. He opened the door, no one in there, but mattresses in plastic rolled up against the wall and Flora’s big plastic storage tubs stacked on top of each other.

  ‘Here?’

  He meant the book.

  ‘Maybe.’ I flicked on the light.

  He pulled down crates, rifled through fabrics, tools, yarns, weather proof clothes, tins, equipment, books, candles and matches wrapped in plastic, old baby clothes, old photos, dolls and crochet made by Jassy, Flora’s mum. A torch. And the big green welly box I’d put my stuff in.

  I lifted up the lid. Letters from him, old words in his scrawl. Bits from Scritchwood: some pics and Polaroids, a leather pouch made by Alan, my half of a broken horseshoe pendant. The big iron ring, small other bits I took after the fire. An old card pricked out in Alan’s Braille that I could still read: Happy Birthday Nimmywim.

  And the book, old, red, gilded.

  He came behind me, snatched it from me, flicked through. ‘The real one? Nothing torn out? Nothing different?’

  Old book smell, rich pictures, creatures of our childhood: the well-dressed ape, the goose in her crinoline. The dedication to me, his biro scrawl, his eternal love. The stiff gilded cover, the marbled insides.

  Birds, Beasts and Fishes

  An Alphabet for Boys and Girls

  Sixpence, or with the Plates Coloured, One Shilling

  ‘It’s ours. I think.’ The same tears and yellowed tape, nothing fiddled with, what did I know? Chris’s book first, belonged to his mum, according to Alan. And then mine, cos Chris gave it to me, with his eternal love.

  I reached for it but he kept hold.

  ‘Let’s go,’ I said. ‘Take it all with. Look at it later. Take food. They’re not here, we got to find them.’

  He stood there with the book and the box. ‘Let’s do it now. In case we can’t do it later.’

  Waiting for me to do his work for him.

  ‘You do it,’ decode his Cuckfield message himself using the book. We’d both grown up with the book, right? We both knew how to work it. If he wanted to decode his message now here he could. ‘You don’t need me.’

  ‘You know I do.’

  His tired scratched face.

  ‘Show me the message,’ I said. Something from Alan, maybe. I’d be the judge.

  ‘Didn’t write it down. Lodged it,’ tapping his temple with his stump, meaning he’d stored it somewhere in his mind bus, the mental image of the inside of Alan’s bus that Alan had taught us to picture and make stories from, so we could store info there for Scritch, for other things. Very useful, later got me a law degree. Stories are stores, Alan said.

  He closed his eyes and spoke from that place, recited what he said was the Cuckfield message, left by Alan’s Scritch alias Leslie Snags in the visitors’ book in the church in Cuckfield:

  A sly bird, a sloven, two sweet singers, and a golden leaf. My second visit with Zita.

  ‘Zita?’ I said.

  ‘Who’s Zita?’ shining the torch at me. ‘Oh yes. Zita.’

  But he never knew about Zita, that was between Alan and me. Later, when everyone else was too old for Scritch and Alan and Chris had fallen out. Zita stories Alan used to tell only me, about a girl rescuing her magician dad from imprisonment in the Fortress of Zoll. I’d never mentioned them to him, I was certain.

  ‘Do it. They’ll be coming,’ he said, whoever he was, me locked down there with him underground behind the disappeared house, his gaunt face and its angles.

  ‘It’s easy,’ I said. ‘You do it.’

  He slumped, so tired, poor him. He picked up the book, shaking his head. His hands trembled. ‘You don’t understand.’ He flicked through all the pages. He smiled. ‘The first one’s J. The sly bird’s the Jackdaw, I’m right, aren’t I?’ pointing to the picture of the jackdaw in schoolboy cap and spotted neckerchief.

  He was right:

  J is the JACKDAW who looks very sly

  When I trust him I hope there’ll be somebody nigh

  The sloven was the stained Elephant with pipe and books:

  E is the ELEPHANT, and very few

  Are so learned, so big, and so slovenly too

  The sweet singers were two Nightingales in crinolines crooning at a piano:

  N is the NIGHTINGALE singing a song,

  I’m sure I could listen for ever so long.

  And the gold leaf was the Yellowhammer beating metal bars at his three-legged stool:

  Y is for YELLOWHAMMER, a goldbeater’s name.

  He hammered the gold leaf that gilds papa’s frame.

  ‘J.E.N.Y?’ he said.

  ‘J.E.N.N.Y. Two singers.’

  ‘Jenny. Right. And “my second visit with Zita?”’

  ‘Jenny 2.’

  ‘Jenny 2?’

  I looked at that blank, whoever he was, locked with me underground. ‘You know.’ He should know. If he was my Chris he’d know all about Jenny 2.

  ‘Stop looking at me.’ The rage in his white face under the neon. ‘“Should”, riddles. They fucked with me. I’m not who I was.’ Then his face changed. ‘OK. I know. I remember. From the map. Of course.’

  ‘What’s the map?’

  ‘Still testing me,’ shaking his head. ‘Come on, let’s go. Alan’s map, from the bus, that we did Scritch off. Alan’s Chinese map of the inner body.’

  ‘Alan’s Chinese map of Britain,’ not the inner body, which this stump Chris ought to have known. Alan’s treasure map of when China ruled Britain thousands of years ago, that he taught us the geography of Britain off, that he told us stories from and that we used to map on the land when we played Scritch outside in the Fall and other tangles of woodland down by the water. Where the White Road came from, for fuck’s sake.

  ‘It’s a map of Britain but it’s also a map of the inner body,’ he said, closing the book, putting it back into my green box with the other stuff, putting the lid back on, putting it under his arm, moving back into the big room. ‘I’ll show you. It’s in the car.’

  ‘Bollocks,’ I said, standing there. Nothing was real. No way he had that map in the car. That map got burnt with most of the rest of Alan’s things the day Alan vanished, when Young Pete set the bus on fire.

  ‘I got a copy, in a book, in the boot.
It wasn’t just Alan’s map. It’s a thing. A Chinese chart of the inner body, called the Neijing Tu. A Daoist chart, Chinese religion, you know, like the Tao and I Ching? Daoists don’t think it’s a map of Britain, they think it’s a map of…energy flow inside the body.’

  ‘It’s a map of Britain.’ It looked just like Britain, who was he? I had to get out of there, I couldn’t be down there with him.

  Poke his eye. Kick him in the balls. One swift blow.

  ‘It’s a map of Britain too but dumdums don’t know that,’ he said. ‘Even Daoist dumdums. Come on, we’ll work it out in the car.’

  But we didn’t need to work anything out. We already knew—I already knew—what Jenny 2 was.

  ‘It’s a place, right, Jenny 2,’ he said, watching me close. ‘Of course,’ he said, as if things were clicking. ‘Kraton’s barn, where Kraton was born, the Ickthwaite Barns, where the Lost Royals go if Kraton disappears, where the Lurkers leave messages, where the troll is, that Enbarr the horse guards. Ickthwaite, which turned out to be a real place, which was where, in the Lake District? Which Tal found out. Where we were supposed to go, where we nearly went, when Alan went AWOL. We had this message before, didn’t we? Alan left it in the shed when he vanished. Right?’

  Right. That bad day looking for the old man, going down to the shed, knocking the five and the six with no reply, smashing down the door, finding nothing inside except a message on red paper: this same message, ‘Jenny 2’ without the Zita bit, just that, waiting for us there. Left by Alan we supposed. Us so confused, Chris saying ‘but we’re already in Jenny 2’, cos when we played Scritch we pretended Alan’s shed was the Ickthwaite Barn, your place of last resort, where you went if things turned bad. And Tal saying ‘well maybe it’s a real place too, in the Lakes’, cos that’s where Jenny 2 was located on the Chinese map, and us looking it up on Ann Wynn’s Atlas of Britain and finding there was a real Ickthwaite, on Lake Coniston. And me and Chris going to New York instead.