“No, she’s not in there.”
She could see the shape of the leather-and-cotton man too. She hadn’t realized he was so close. He was standing on the turn of the stairs below her, halfway up, but he was looking the other way waiting, hand on the rail, for the boy.
“Let’s look in the bedrooms,” said Tom.
He was almost squeaking with excitement now. She saw him flit, tippy-toes, past again, and she saw the leather-and-cotton man go down. She pressed herself against the wall.
There was barely light for her to see anything beyond the landing she stood on. There were doors and another flight of stairs, she could see the dim shapes of those. Some of the doors were open. Barely breathing, she went as quietly as she could along the hallway, peering into each open room she passed, but there was nowhere to hide in any of them—they were all empty. There wasn’t even a closet. She pulled her phone out of her pocket; the screen lit up as she touched it. She clapped her hand quickly over it lest they see its light from below, then opened her fingers a crack and looked, but the little signal bar was empty.
She could hear the sound of the boy and the leather-and-cotton man searching through the rooms below her. They weren’t even trying not to make any noise now.
She went up the last flight of stairs and found herself where the servants must have once lived—the hallway was narrow and the floorboards bare. At the end of it, bolted to the wall like a fire escape, was a thin metal ladder with a hatch above it. She stood on the ladder and pushed at the hatch. It was closed by only a simple bolt. She slid the bolt and threw it open. She could see the tiles of the roof and above them, the sky. She clambered up the ladder and out into the cold, damp air. She was in a gully between sloping roofs with a low balustraded wall at the end of it, and nothing else beyond that but a straight drop to the garden below.
And she realized her mistake.
Through the hatch she could hear the sounds of feet on the bare floorboards inside. The sound of someone climbing the metal ladder. She looked down at the phone in her hand, but even as she did, the head of the leather-and-cotton man poked through the hatch. He saw her and grinned—clambered up and onto the roof. The boy followed him.
“We found you!” he shouted.
Sophie backed away from them. The man, his arms spread wide, started slowly toward her. She could see the whites of his eyes and his grinning teeth. The balustrade wall caught her behind her knee, and as she grabbed at it to steady herself, she felt her phone slip from her fingers.
She saw it slide across the top of the wall and drop.
“No!”
And she saw something else too.
At the bottom of the wall, as though she’d been standing there waiting the whole time, was the girl in the Minnie Mouse T-shirt. Her face was turned up toward Sophie.
She saw Sophie and waved at her.
There was nowhere else for Sophie to go.
“Don’t worry,” the girl called out, “you can jump!”
And even in the dim light Sophie saw the girl’s mouth beginning to part into a huge, cavernous smile—lips and teeth and tongue.
“I’ll catch you,” said the girl.
This time, as the world became real again around him, the boy sat very still and said nothing. The air was cold and sharp now. He could see a sheen on the concrete of the platform, and he wasn’t sure if it was frost or dew.
Next to him, the old man took out the packet of peppermints and popped another one into his mouth, then offered one to the boy, but the boy shook his head.
“Not talking won’t make any difference,” the man said quietly as he put the packet back.
“To what?” said the boy.
The man looked at him, and the silence drew out—long, like a knife.
“To how quickly the time goes,” the man said, suddenly all brightness and smiles. “Seems to go quicker, though, if you’re having a chat, doesn’t it? But it’s always the same; doesn’t go any quicker or slower. I mean, what’s the time now?” He poked his finger at the boy. “You should look on your phone thing. That’ll tell you. Go on, you have a look on your phone.”
“No,” the boy said.
He almost said “I can’t” but he just stopped himself.
“Go on,” the man said encouragingly.
“No—if I don’t look it will go quicker,” said the boy. “Won’t seem so long.”
“Be just the same,” the man answered. “Just your perception of time, that’s all that’s different. You can watch those old hands go around on the clock and some days they drag away the minutes, but if you’re doing something busy—fwoo! They shoot by. They’re always the same, though. Like I said … ” His voice fell again. “Won’t make any difference.”
The boy heard the fall of the words, and he looked uneasily down the platform to the dark end, willing the train to come.
“Rails will tell you when the train’s coming,” the man said, as though he’d heard the thought. “I’ve told you. You’ll hear it before you see it.”
He rolled the mint around his mouth and it clicked against his teeth.
“Toby’s got a clock,” he said.
For a moment, the boy thought the man meant a real clock—a watch—and he couldn’t understand why a dog would have a watch.
The little dog turned his black shiny nose and bright eyes up to him.
“ ‘Tummy time clock’ I call it,” said the man. “He sits by his bowl looking at me and, rain or shine, you can tell the time by Toby’s tummy. I have to laugh when the clocks go back, though, ’cause he’s there an hour early, and I say, ‘You’ve got your tummy time clock wrong, Toby! It’s not tummy time o’clock yet!’ ”
He laughed quietly to himself.
“Hmm, tummy time o’clock,” he said.
He turned and looked at the boy again.
“You at school?”
The boy nodded.
“You do exams and things like that?”
“Yeah.” He didn’t want to talk anymore.
“ ‘Sit yourself down, get your pencil.’ That sort of thing?”
“Sort of.”
The man leaned toward him.
“What’s the capital of Egypt?” he said.
The boy stared blankly at him and shook his head.
“I don’t know.”
“Cairo,” the man said. “What they teach you these days? Cairo. You should know that, that’s where all the pyramids are.”
“We do other stuff these days,” the boy said.
“Well, that won’t help you if you ever need to go to Cairo.”
“I don’t want to go to Cairo,” he said, and he said it more sharply than he’d meant to. “I just want the train to come.”
“Course you do,” said the man soothingly. “Train time o’clock, that’s what you’re wanting. That’s what he’s wanting, isn’t it, Toby? Train time o’clock.”
The little dog looked up at his name and wagged his tail.
The man leaned toward the boy again.
“Oslo,” he said.
“I’m sorry?”
“That’s the capital of Norway. Oslo.”
“I really don’t think I care.”
“That’s just geography,” the man said. “There’s worse things than geography. Worse things than that.”
And he began another story.
The funeral had been the week before. Sammie hadn’t gone, but her mom and dad had. It was sad in the way that only unattended funerals can be, they’d said. Just the two of them and the old lady’s coffin.
They’d had to collect the old lady’s things from the home too, but that was on another day, and Sammie’s mom did it. By the time Sammie got in from school, her mom was back. She’d already dropped a bag of the old lady’s clothes off at a charity shop, but there’d been a photo album too, and her mom had kept that. It was on the counter in the kitchen in a gray plastic bag.
“What relation was she?” asked Sammie.
She pull
ed the album out of the bag and turned it over in her hands. It had a worn, black leather cover and it smelled of stale perfume.
“Grandma’s cousin,” her mom said. “That’s why I kept it—I thought there might be pictures of Grandma in there as a girl. It goes back years.”
“You never told me about her.”
Her mom shook her head.
“She lived most of her life in hospitals and homes of one sort or another—even from her teens. She wasn’t quite right in the head, or something like that. Anyway, it was hers. I thought you’d be interested to see it. They said at the home it upset her if they ever got it out—but they didn’t want to throw it away. It had just been left in a box. We don’t have to keep it.”
“No, I’ll look at it,” said Sammie.
She put the album back in the bag.
* * *
Her mom and dad were out that night—weren’t going to be late, they said, back by ten thirty. So after they’d gone, Sammie had a bath, then settled herself down at the big table in the kitchen with a cup of tea and got the album out again.
The smell was even stronger this time—of old cardboard and stale perfume, like it had been kept somewhere damp for years. She wasn’t so sure she wanted to look at it anymore. The smell got on her hands. It was so strong it almost made a noise in her head—a long discordant note—and she thought it was the fridge, but it was like it was the album and the smell doing it.
She turned a few pages with the tips of her fingers. It was just like any old album—baby pictures, christening, toddler years, dressing up in the yard, days out, school—all neatly written up with where and when. “Patricia’s first birthday,” “Playing in the garden at Bridge Road.” Things like that. Sammie could see the girl growing up with each page she turned.
She was about to close it, had almost stopped paying any real attention to the pictures, when something made her stop and look more carefully.
There’d been five or six pictures now of the old lady when she must have been about Sammie’s own age, and Sammie couldn’t understand why they were in the album at all. In each one the girl’s face was turned toward the camera, and she looked so frightened. Her eyes were wide and her mouth parted as though she’d just drawn a breath, and there was no explanation for any of them—no writing underneath saying where they’d been taken or when, and Sammie wondered why would anyone want to keep those. Why keep a picture of a girl looking so frightened?
She flicked a few pages forward, and dotted through the album were more of the same. Only now they were pictures with nurses in them and shared rooms like little wards. In each one the girl was the only person looking at the camera, and her face was so frightened. Sammie turned a whole load of pages, and there were more still—even when the girl was much older, even as an old lady in the home. There she’d be, sitting in a lounge with other old people, balloons pinned up like it was someone’s birthday, long tables with people sitting at them in Christmas sweaters. And her face was the only one in the whole room turned toward the camera—pale and gaunt and frightened.
Sammie looked up from the album. The kitchen light was on; the rest of the house was dark and quiet. But she could still hear that noise, that long discordant note in her head. The heat must have gone off, because the room was colder now than it had been. She could almost see her breath in the air. The house felt very empty and she felt alone. She looked at the clock on the stove; she hadn’t noticed the time. Her mom and dad were already later than they’d said they’d be.
There were only two more pages of the album left to look at. Almost unwillingly now, she turned the first of them. There was a single picture. It was of the old lady. It was daylight and she was asleep in her bed—her head on the pillow, her eyes shut, her mouth just a little open.
Sammie turned the last page.
It took her a moment to understand what she was looking at, because it was a picture of her mom and dad, only not somewhere she recognized at all. But it had been taken recently, and she was trying to figure out where it must have been. They were both wearing somber clothes. Her dad was looking at a sheet of paper he was holding, and her mom was getting something out of her handbag. Neither of them was looking at the camera. Sammie didn’t see the coffin at first, because it was in the background behind them and it looked just like a table, but it was there. It slowly dawned on her that it was the old lady’s funeral—it had to be. That’s what her mom and dad had been wearing, and that was the only time they had worn those clothes of late, and behind them was the coffin. She thought they’d said they’d been the only ones who went, but there must have been at least someone else to take the photo. Sammie turned the page back and looked again at the picture of the old lady asleep.
She was so still, so pale. Her lips deathly gray.
The phone rang.
The sound of it in the quiet, dark house made Sammie jump.
It was her dad. Someone’s car had broken down and they were going to give the person a lift home. There was no point in Sammie staying up, he said. She tried to ask him about the photo at the funeral, but the line was bad, and he was already saying good-bye.
She put the phone down and went back to the kitchen, closed the album, and slipped it into the plastic bag. She didn’t want to look at it anymore; those last pictures had unsettled her. As she went to bed, she turned on the downstairs lights and left them on. It felt safer like that. Upstairs, in bed in the dark, she couldn’t hear the noise in her head, but she could still smell the album, only it didn’t smell like perfume now—it smelled like stale, cheap aftershave. She got up and went to the bathroom and washed her hands clean, but she could still smell it.
In the morning she tried to explain to her mom about the pictures, but they were late already and her mom didn’t really listen—just said the old lady hadn’t been right in her head, and that probably explained it.
All day, Sammie kept thinking about those pictures of the old lady. They’d really disturbed her. She didn’t know why the girl had looked so frightened or why the pictures were even in the book. Was that what her mom had meant about not being right in the head—was that what being ill in your head looked like?
It made her shiver.
She could still smell the album too—the smell of stale aftershave. Sometimes she couldn’t tell if it was just in the back of her nose or if someone was actually wearing it, and she’d find herself looking around trying to figure out who it was. She’d say to her friends, “Can’t you smell that?” But none of them could smell it.
At the end of the day she had to go back into school to get a top she’d forgotten from the empty changing rooms. She had to hunt around under the metal lockers until she found it, and that wasn’t nice, because she was all alone and she could smell aftershave again. There were little clicks and noises like someone else was there, and that spooked her, so that she called out, but the place was empty.
She was glad to get home. It had been a horrible day.
There was work she had to do in the evening, but she didn’t feel like doing it at all. She lay on the sofa in her comfy socks, going through messages and pictures on her phone while her mom cooked dinner. She was looking at pictures of last summer mostly. She liked them. It was just like the old lady’s album if she thought about it—days out, the river, the town square. She swiped through the pictures. She’d taken some at school in the morning. It made her smile when she found them because there were a couple she hadn’t taken. Her friends would do that sometimes—steal someone else’s phone when they weren’t looking, take dumb pictures, and put it back before the person realized it was gone. There was one of her on the walkway between classes, and another one in class. She couldn’t figure out who had taken them, and it made her smile.
The very last one was of her looking for her top under the lockers in the changing rooms, and whoever had taken that must really have sneaked up, because they’d been standing right behind her. She grinned when she saw it because she’d known someone
was there.
But then her face clouded in a frown.
She’d had her phone then; she was sure of it.
She looked more carefully at the detail in the picture—and yes, she could see the phone, it was on the bench by her hand—so that didn’t make any sense.
She couldn’t figure out how it could have been done. She sent a couple of messages to her friends, but no one would admit they’d done it, and then it wasn’t funny anymore, it was just plain creepy, because that wasn’t a nice trick to play on anyone.
She was still angry about it when she went to bed. She could still smell that aftershave too. She washed her hands and face twice trying to get rid of it.
She’d been asleep for a while when something woke her. She didn’t know what it was. Everything was dark and quiet, and the bed was warm.
She lay very still, listening.
There wasn’t a sound, and though she knew it was a stupid thing and that she was safe in her own bed in her own home, she suddenly just didn’t feel safe at all. She reached out into the dark and turned on the bedside light, but there was nothing there—just her things across the floor where she’d dropped them, her posters on the wall, the chest of drawers. For all that, though, that feeling of unease just didn’t go away. She sat herself up in bed with the light on and looked around. Her eyes kept being drawn to one corner of the room, but there was nothing there. She could hear her mom and dad stirring in their room, but then everything was quiet again. After a while she got up and went down the hall to the bathroom. She could almost have believed that someone was following her and she stopped and looked behind, but there was only the dark hall and the spill of light from her door.
The bulb in the bathroom had gone out that evening and they didn’t have another one, so Sammie sat on the toilet in the dark. When she was done she poured herself a glass of water from the sink. There was just enough moonlight through the window for her to see her own gray, grainy reflection in the big mirror. The feeling of unease still hadn’t left her. She could see herself and the empty room—but she could still smell stale, cheap aftershave. She put her fingers to her nose; it wasn’t on her hands.
The Wrong Train Page 7