Terror in the Night

by J. M. Robinson

  He had fought bravely but, although he wasn’t quite human, he had been no match for the other. She hoped he was alright and that he had taken care of her mother.

  She wondered what her parents thought. Did they believe she was dead or were they looking for her now? Each time the food came she searched desperately for her mothers mind but never found it. She wondered if she was dead.

  They had carried her away from the train, slung over the back of a horse that wasn’t really a horse. She had been tied down and warned that if she tried to escape they would kill her.

  She knew they weren’t going to kill her. Some people did want her dead but not these people. They needed her to be alive and if anything happened to her they would be in trouble. Perhaps they would even be killed themselves. Someone had waited a very long time for her. But she didn’t try to escape because, although they couldn’t kill her, they could hurt her badly. She could tell that some of them wanted to hurt her badly and do other things.

  They travelled for hours before they reached the river. It was cold and she could tell they were being watched and that they didn’t know it. A man in a dress, except he called it a robe, came to them through the darkness. His head was covered so that his face was hidden by shadow but she could tell that he had been hurt. Like her he had been taken as a child but he no longer realised it.

  “Is this her?” he said.

  She was pulled off the back of the horse and one of the men who was not a man held her up so that her legs dangled in the air.

  “Very good,” said the man in the dress. “Was there trouble?”

  “She was protected,” said a voice behind her, a mind that she could not see into. “We dealt with it.”

  “Praise The Lord she wasn’t harmed.”

  “We are doing his work. He will protect us,” said the other.

  “Amen,” said the man in the dress. “Bring her, we have a long journey ahead of us.”

  She hadn’t struggled as she was carried down the bank towards the river. A red canal boat was waiting for them. They carried her inside.

  It was warm inside the boat and a smelled a little bit like a bonfire. There were other people there, she could sense them, but she couldn’t see them hidden away in the shadows. Or maybe they weren’t there at all, at least not physically. It wouldn’t be the first time she had felt a presence like that.

  “Put her in the crate,” said the man in the dress. Flickering candles made the shadows leap around on his face.

  They carried her through the boat and out the front. The box was there. It looked like the sort of thing farmer Miles used to transport pigs to market. She remembered hoping it wouldn’t smell like it and it hadn’t. After more than three weeks she was no longer sure.

  They shut the door and she heard a lock being closed. The darkness was complete which was probably a good thing because, if she had seen how small the space actually was, she thought she might have screamed.

  Sleep seemed impossible but there was nothing to do except curl up on the thin mattress and in the dark she might as well close her eyes. The next thing she was aware of was the movement of the boat beneath her and the clip-clop of horses hooves. She realised that she could sleep and that she might need her energy later. So she let herself drift away on a cloud of dreams.

  Now she was restless. The confinement had left her stiff and alternating rapidly between boundless energy and total fatigue. She searched for other minds but as always found only herself. It was as if she was the only person left in the world.

  CHAPTER 16

  AGNES WAITED. THE ROOM WAS DARK EXCEPT FOR a small lamp on the table. Outside it was night but Graham was still not home. It had been the same for weeks now, since the big argument that had ended with her storming out of the house. She barely saw him any more.

  A part of her wished that he would stop her. She supposed that was why she was waiting now, rather than being out there, looking. Of course there was nothing to find and she suspected Graham had known that. There were no clues just laying around waiting to be discovered, she didn’t even know where to start looking.

  But she refused to back down. Let him come home and try to stop her and she would allow him to talk her out of it. The trouble was he didn’t come home and he didn’t even seem to care that his wife, who had been attacked not so long ago, thank you very much, was wandering the streets alone each night. As far as he knew.

  She sighed and walked to the door, put on her coat and hat slowly, giving him plenty of time to come home and stop her. Of course he didn’t.

  She opened the door and took the long walk through the dark corridor and down the dark stairs. Another night by herself, out in the cold and no hope that she would have anything to show for it. Mrs White was out again, which was probably for the best. The old woman had been very sweet to her but Agnes couldn’t deny that she gave her the creeps.

  It was cold outside. The summer seemed to have passed in the blink of an eye. It seemed impossible that just two months ago Bridget had been running around, playing with her friends. If she had known...

  She closed the back door behind her and shook her head. Playing the ‘if I’d known game’ was stupid. If she had known what was going to happen she never would have got on the train. If she had known what was going to happen they would still be back in Odamere, even if it was just her and Bridget.

  Down the garden path, she hoped that she would see Graham walking along the street but there was no one around. If only he would come home and tell her, just one more time, not to go. Was it so much to ask that he do that and allow her to retain at least a little dignity? She didn’t think so but a mans pride was a funny thing and she knew that she had hurt his badly.

  She followed the road towards town, scanning the faces of the men she passed hoping that one of them would be Graham. In Odamere she had known everyone and anyone that she didn’t she would have felt quite comfortable stopping and introducing herself to. A friendly conversation was never more than a few minutes away. Now the only person she knew was her husband and he was never around.

  The people that she passed kept their heads down and refused to make eye contact with her. The women walked everywhere in impenetrable groups or on the arms of men. The only lone women she had seen were ‘ladies of the night’ and she worried that people would think the same about her. Not that she dressed that way, her coat was conservative brown and long, her hat covered her whole head. There was not so much as a wrist on display. But people got funny ideas and she hated that they might think badly of her, even if she never met them.

  The ground was scarred by great gashes, flimsy rope hung from dirty wooden poles, presumably to stop people falling into the pits, but Agnes could easily believe that dozens had fallen to their deaths in the deep dark holes of the underground. She followed it for a little way, letting her hand trail the frayed rope until it started to burn. Mrs White called the Underground ‘the devils veins’ because of the way they were planned to spread across the city like a vascular system. She said they would encourage the spread of sin and wickedness. Agnes didn’t know what to think, as far as she could see there was evil in every part of the city and it didn’t need any help spreading itself around.

  At the end of the track a group of men stood together, a cloud of smoke drifting listlessly in the lamp light above their heads. They hadn’t seen her yet so she slipped away into the darkness before they did and mistook her for someone she was not.

  It seemed that there were few places in the city where a woman could be alone without arousing suspicion or gossip. She had discovered one that first night when she had stormed away from Graham. A single spot that reminded her painfully of everything she had lost.

  She went there now. The noise peaked, there were more people and lights. Yet somehow she felt inconspicuous, hidden by the hundreds of people who were also there. People with their own lives, their own concerns. Music was playing on a clunky piano and she could hear men’s voices, shouting and
jeering in the public house nearby. She walked towards the platform where she joined the people waiting for the train.

  When the train came there were always people that got on and off but some people remained on the platform from when she arrived to when she left. Vagrants, she supposed, but they didn’t look it. She took her seat among them. They never looked at her or spoke to her and, although she was sure some of them were together, they never spoke amongst themselves.

  That was fine by her. She didn’t want to speak to them, she just wanted a quiet spot where she could sit and think about her daughter. A place where, for a few hours, she could blend into the scenery and become a nobody.

  She sat primly on one of the free seats and stared towards the train track without really seeing it. Her body might have been on the platform with the other passengers but her mind was somewhere else, searching through the world for her daughters mind, hoping beyond hope that she would hear something, anything at all to let her know she was still alive.

  Agnes didn’t hear other minds. She was under no illusion that the telepathy she shared with Bridget came from her daughter and that she had no power of her own. In a way it made it easier, she was just looking for one mind, one voice in the infinite darkness, she didn’t have to avoid others, she could cast her net wide. But it didn’t make a difference.

  “Mrs Kable?”

  She jumped and put a hand to her chest to still her fluttering heart. Someone knew her, someone knew her here. She caught her breath and turned to her left to see who had spoken to her. “Mr Park,” she said with relief. “You startled me.”

  “My apologies dear lady,” he said. He still wore the same suit as he had the night they had met six weeks ago. He was clean shaven and smelled faintly of tea.

  She was ever so glad to see him but retained a stiff expression. “What are you doing here? How did you find me?”

  “I have come to help you,” he said.

  “Help me?”

  “You are looking for your daughter are you not?”

  She nodded.

  “Then let me help you.”

  She shook her head and felt useless. Here was a man, who was almost a stranger to her, offering to help when her own husband, Bridget’s father, wouldn’t lift a finger. She shook with gratitude. “I don’t know where to start,” she said.

  “We can start together.”

  She nodded but for a moment the tears were too close to the surface for her to risk speaking. She wanted to embrace him but even on a train platform full of perfect strangers that would not be acceptable. Instead she composed herself and nodded again. “Why do you want to help me?”

  “I...” he seemed to be about to say one thing but changed his mind at the last moment and trailed off. “I remember what it’s like to lose a child.”

  She nodded as if that explained everything. “Thank you,” she said but hardly any sound came out. She reached for her bag, took out a hanky and covered her face with it while she cried.

  They left the station together and she wondered what people would think. Surely no one could mistake them for husband and wife, he was too old or too young (she couldn’t tell which, only that they were not the same age) for her. But they had seen her go in by herself and now she was leaving with him. Perhaps they would think he was her son or her father. She found that she didn’t care either way. They could think she was ‘lady of the night’ for all she gave a damn. All she needed to know was that Mr Arthur Park had offered his assistance in finding Bridget.

  That night they walked together through the town. The shops were all closed but the drinking establishments were doing a roaring trade. Loud voices, shouting and singing, music on beer sodden pianos drifted through the night air. There were ladies standing on the street wearing clothes that Agnes wouldn’t have let Graham see her in, let alone go out in pubic wearing, lacy things that revealed far more than a girl should. She averted her eyes from the women but twice she saw a man stumble out of a nearby public house, grab hold of one and lead her into a dark alley.

  “Tell me about your daughter,” said Arthur. He walked slowly with his hands behind his back and his chin held high.

  “There isn’t much to tell,” she said. “Her full name is Bridget Diana Kable. She’s eight years old, nine in December.”

  Arthur nodded. “Is there anything, how shall I put this, unusual about her?”

  “Unusual? How do you mean?” she said but she knew full well that there was something very unusual about Bridget. The trouble was she had been married to Graham for nearly fifteen years and had gotten used to that special thing being something that wasn’t spoken of.

  “Abilities that you might not find in a girl her age, or any age come to that,” he said.

  Well that was clearly what he was asking but she didn’t know whether she should tell him or not. Perhaps some of Graham’s paranoia had rubbed off on her because she shook her head and said, “nothing I can think of.”

  Arthur stopped. They were outside a pharmacy that had been closed for the night. Across the street a man lay drunk against a wool shop door. “Mrs Kable I am trying to help you but to do that I need for you to be completely honest with me, do you understand?”

  She nodded.

  “I know full well that there is something unusual about your daughter but I need to hear you explain it. I believe you are the only one of us who has experienced it first hand.”

  “Might it be important?” she said, delaying the inevitable.

  “It might be. We won’t know unless you tell me.”

  She nodded. His face had taken on an expression of anger so primal that she had to look away. When she turned back she saw that he had relaxed into his usual calm demeanour but now it seemed like a mask that she could see through, to the boiling pot of rage beneath. It seemed impossible that she hadn’t seen it before.

  “When Bridget was a year old she was walking but she couldn’t talk. She didn’t talk until she was two and a half, at least not out loud. I was in the kitchen and I thought she was asleep in her cot but I heard her say ‘mummy’. I was excited, I stopped what I was doing and went to her but she was still fast asleep. I thought I must have imagined it. Then I heard it again, this time she said ‘mummy I love you’.” She felt the tears come back to her eyes as she remembered the first time she had heard her daughter express love. “It wasn’t a child’s voice speaking though and she was still asleep. I thought it must have been someone playing a trick on me. But it kept happening.”

  Arthur nodded while he listened. A taxi cab rolled down the street behind them. Across the street Agnes could see her reflection in the shop window but Arthur wasn’t there. She hardly noticed and if she had she probably would have thought it was the angle he was standing at. But if she had turned around and looked in the glass behind her she would have seen that he wasn’t there either.

  “Of course Graham couldn’t hear her and he refused to believe that I did. But I could. She kept talking to me, at first just while she was asleep but then while she was awake without using her mouth. She taught me how to speak back to her using my mind and for a few months I was the only one who really knew her.”

  Arthur nodded and they started walking again. “Have you tried to reach her since?”

  Agnes nodded. “That’s what I was doing when you found me at the station.”

  “And you didn’t have this ability before your daughter was born?”

  She shook her head.

  “Can you hear others?”

  “Only Bridget.”

  Arthur nodded. They passed more closed shops, a tobacconist, a furniture shop, another public house. “What about Mr Kable?” he said.

  “Graham doesn’t believe in things like that,” she said, which she realised didn’t properly answer his question.

  “Does he have any family, your husband?”

  She shook her head. “His mother died two years ago, his father went missing when he was a boy.”

  “Missing?” Ar
thur said. “Did they ever find him?”

  She shook her head and somehow they had gone full circle and stood at the entry to Border Street. She could see the boarding house. There was a light on the fourth floor so Graham was home but she no longer wanted to see him.

  “I think we should call it a night,” Arthur said.

  “But we haven’t even started,” Agnes protested. She had the energy to go on now which was more than she’d had earlier that evening. She thought she could have gone on searching all night.

  “No, you’ve given me a lot of information to get started with,” Arthur said. “Shall we meet again tomorrow evening?”

  She nodded.

  “Until then, then,” he said and bowed slightly to her. It was a strangely old-fashioned gesture but not one that seemed out of place coming from him.

  She turned to look at the house and then back to Mr Park meaning to thank him but where he had stood there was now an empty space. It was as if he had never been there at all and she wondered if that might be the case. Perhaps she was losing her mind with grief, perhaps Mr Park had never existed at all.

  CHAPTER 17

  GRAHAM PACED THE FLOOR TAKING COMFORT IN THE solid clod of his boots on the hard wood. He had all the lamps on and the heat was becoming stifling but he didn’t remove his jacket. Agnes should have been home by now, she was always home from her little ‘search’ party before midnight. He was worried that something had happened to her. She hadn’t been at the train station when Constable Higgs had got there. She was always at the train station.

  Let her prove her point, he’d thought. Let her leave the house for two hours every evening and pretend she was looking for Bridget. Sooner or later she would come to him and tell him that she understood, that there was nothing either of them could do to find her. He was prepared to play her game while he knew she was safe at the train station and being watched.