I gave another nod. I knew one or two things about broken friendships.
‘I was lonely once upon a time, back when I was a girl. No other children for miles. Just my parents for company,’ she said, her eyes taking on that faraway look again. ‘And then he came along. I think I was five or six when he turned up, and suddenly… I wasn’t lonely any more.
‘He was older than me. A lot older, older than my father, even, but it didn’t matter because in many ways he was just like a child. We’d go for walks in the woods. Play games. He loved dressing up. We both did. Disguising ourselves, pretending to be other people. It was exciting. In some ways I think he was only truly happy when he was being someone else.’
‘Didn’t your parents mind, though? You hanging about with a strange man like that?’
‘Oh no, they didn’t really mind,’ she said with a chuckle. ‘How could they? They never saw him. No one ever saw him but me.’
The lion costume seemed to become even tighter around me, squeezing the air from my insides. I shifted my weight on my feet, and realised my back was suddenly clammy with sweat.
‘What do you mean,’ I said hoarsely, ‘no one saw him but you?’
Marion laughed. ‘Makes me sound crazy, doesn’t it?’ She picked up a poker and jabbed it into the fire, sending sparks fluttering up the chimney. ‘I called him Joe Crow,’ she said, smiling wistfully. She looked up at me, and the words she spoke shook me to my core.
‘He was my imaginary friend.’
Chapter Nine
RUDE AWAKENING
My heart missed a beat. I was on the move before it found the next one.
‘The doors,’ I said urgently. ‘Lock the doors.’
Marion’s smile faltered. ‘What? Whatever for?’
I didn’t dare take the time to explain. Instead I ran from the living room and into the kitchen, where I knew the back-door key was waiting in the lock. I turned it, checked the door was shut tight, and doubled back through to the other room.
Marion was still in the living room, but out of her seat and by the door. ‘Kyle? What’s the matter?’
‘Are there shutters on all the windows?’ I asked, slowing but not stopping as I made for the front hall.
‘Most of them, yes, but what’s—’
‘Listen to me,’ I said, locking my eyes on hers, ‘I need you to close all the shutters on the downstairs windows, OK? I’ll lock the front door and do the upstairs ones.’ I pointed to the hot poker she still held in her hand. ‘Keep that with you, and if you see anything moving, whack it until it stops.’
‘What?’ Marion spluttered. ‘Don’t be ridiculous. It might be Toto!’
‘Trust me,’ I mumbled, hurrying through to the hall, ‘it won’t be Toto.’
There was no key in the front-door lock. I glanced around in case it was hanging on a hook or something, but found nothing.
‘Marion, where’s the front-door key?’ I shouted.
‘I’m not sure,’ she replied from right behind me. ‘I don’t really bother to lock it.’
‘What are you doing?’ I demanded, turning to face her. ‘You need to go and close the shutters. Now!’
‘But why, Kyle?’ she asked, making no attempt to hide the concern in her voice. ‘What’s the matter? What are you so afraid of?’
‘I’ll tell you later, I promise. But for now, we need to get the shutters closed and doors locked, OK?’
She hesitated, then gave a brief nod. ‘All right. I’ll get the shutters.’ Her eyes darted to the door at my back. ‘But I really don’t know where the key is.’
‘Don’t worry, I’ll sort it,’ I told her. ‘Now hurry. We might not have much time.’
The sparks were buzzing through my brain before she’d even left the hall. I had barely begun to picture the lock mechanism moving when it gave a solid clunk. Who needed keys when you had an imagination like mine?
I took the narrow stairs two at a time and rushed to the end of the top landing, where a wide window opened out over Marion’s vegetable garden. The wooden shutters closed over easily, clipping in place with a small metal latch. As barricades went, they weren’t the strongest, but they were all we had.
The window in my room had no shutters, so I pushed the heavy oak wardrobe in front of the glass, then wedged the bottom of the bed against it, jamming the wardrobe in place.
There were no shutters in the bathroom, either, but the window was tiny, and I couldn’t see anything dangerous fitting through. I was about to leave it uncovered when I remembered the window in the train toilet compartment. It was just as small as this one – maybe even smaller – but it had been big enough for something to come through and murder the man-baby.
Like a slap to the face, the realisation hit me. The window in the train was too small for a human to get through, but it was big enough for a crow. They’d been flying alongside the train, hadn’t they? One must’ve come through the window and killed the man.
But why? What did he have to do with anything? What was I missing?
I gave myself a shake and focused on the problem at hand. The house had to be secured first. Everything else could wait.
There was a medicine cabinet mounted on the bathroom wall. I unhooked it and jammed it between the window and the metal taps of the sink. The base of the cabinet fitted quite tightly against the taps, so while it wouldn’t put up a lot of resistance if something really wanted to get in, it wouldn’t just fall off at the first push. It wasn’t ideal, but it would have to do.
I rushed through the remaining two rooms – a makeshift study and Marion’s pristinely neat bedroom – fastening the shutters in both. When I was satisfied that upstairs was as secure as I could make it, I wasted a few seconds getting out of the lion outfit and back into my own clothes, then I hurried down to join Marion.
I found her in the living room. She was standing by the shuttered window, holding the telephone to her ear. She gave me a worried smile as I entered the room.
‘Who are you phoning?’ I asked.
‘Your mum,’ she told me, sliding the handset back into its cradle. ‘But there’s no answer.’
I stopped, all thoughts of securing the building temporarily forgotten. ‘What, still? But it’s late. She’s never out late.’
‘Maybe there’s a problem with the phone line or something. It happens.’ Marion sat in her armchair and gazed up at me. The flames in the fireplace threw long shadows across her face. ‘Now,’ she said, ‘why don’t you tell me what all this is about?’
Half a dozen plausible lies popped into my head. It was hard to choose one, so in the end I didn’t. I sat on the couch, gazed into the fire, and quietly told her the truth.
A few hours later, I lay in bed, not quite asleep and not fully awake, listening for anything that sounded like trouble. So far I’d heard nothing unusual, but if Marion’s “Joe Crow” had come back, it was surely only a matter of time before he put in an appearance.
The conversation with Marion had gone about as well as expected. Very badly. She’d been nice enough about it all, nodding when she was supposed to, frowning on cue. But it was an act, I knew. No matter how much she tried to pretend otherwise, she hadn’t believed a word.
And who could really blame her? There I was, a relative stranger, telling her that not only did I see imaginary friends, but that they kept trying to kill me. Did I honestly expect her to believe any of it?
The fact was, I didn’t expect her to believe me, but I didn’t want to lie to her. I’d lied to her already about Toto, and that was bad enough. Even when she’d thought I was a criminal she had let me into her house. She’d been willing to protect me, and if I’d brought danger to her doorstep, I was going to do everything I could to protect her. Even if it did make her think I was crazy.
I’d tried phoning Mum again – partly so she could back up my story, but mostly to set my own mind at rest. She didn’t answer. Nobody answered, not even when I let the phone ring for over five minutes. Marion tried to r
eassure me, but the way the hairs on the back of my neck stood up told me something was wrong. I made up my mind then that I would be on the first train home in the morning.
The lights were off inside the house, and the wardrobe kept all but the faintest glimmers of moonlight out. I lay there with only the glow from the bedside radio alarm clock for company, willing the dawn to come. Marion had given me a candle and a battered old metal lighter. I’d sat the candle on the bedside table, but made sure the lighter stayed in my jeans pocket on the other side of the room, just in case I was tempted to use it. Light – even a weak one – might attract something, and that was the last thing I wanted to do.
My mobile phone was also on the bedside table, charging up so I could keep trying to get through to Mum during the journey home. It was possible there was a fault with the phone line, but I doubted it. It was too much of a coincidence. Something was definitely wrong, and the sooner I could find out what, the better.
It was the warbling of a woman’s voice that woke me up. Her high, operatic soprano squawked sharply from the radio alarm, jolting me upright in the bed.
The dim glow of the morning sunlight squeezed through the narrow gaps around the wardrobe and into the room. I was so tired my eyes felt like shrivelled holes in my face, and I had to blink half a dozen times just to bring the bedroom into focus.
When I could see properly, I checked the clock. It was a few minutes past eight – much later than I had planned to sleep. I took my mobile from the bedside table. It gave a faint bleep as I switched it on.
Even before the phone had finished starting up, I heard the scratching. Instinctively, my eyes went to the ceiling. Mr Mumbles had first shown up in my attic, making his presence known by scraping on the floor, which was directly above my room.
As this scratching continued, though, I realised I was looking in the wrong place. The noise wasn’t coming from above me this time.
It was coming from below.
I lay there and listened, trying to ignore the radio so I could focus on the sound beneath the bed. I’ve never liked opera music, but playing it on the radio at eight in the morning should be against the law, especially as the urgency of the woman’s voice was making me even more nervous than I already was.
As I listened, I realised it wasn’t just a scratching beneath my bed. There was another sound too – the occasional soft thud of something hitting the wooden floorboards.
Cautiously, I edged my head down over the side of the bed. The space beneath it was filled with shadow, and at first I couldn’t see anything. The daylight coming in through the ajar bedroom door took the edge off the darkness, though, and it took my eyes just a few seconds to adjust.
The woman on the radio hit a high note just as I spotted the crow. It was crouching beneath the bed, shuffling awkwardly from side to side. It didn’t seem to notice me as it pecked at a little white ball it had found. Every time it pecked at the ball it would flick it a few centimetres into the air, before catching it in its beak and letting it fall back to the floor with a thud.
I slowly pulled myself back up into bed, being careful not to make any sound. The crow was big, just like the ones that had descended on Toto the day before. I leaned back against my pillows and tried to figure out the best thing to do.
Creak. The springs of the mattress groaned as my weight shifted. With a strangled screech, the crow exploded from beneath the bed. The bird rose quickly, flipped in the air, and pulled off an incredibly tight turn. Its eyes shone like black gemstones as it banked and dived straight towards my face.
I threw the covers up above my head, just as the crow hit my pillow. I heard its claws tear through the fabric, felt its beak pecking furiously at the top of the blanket.
Scrambling down the bed, I wriggled out through the feet-end of the covers, close to where the bed frame was wedged against the wardrobe. The bird looked up at me and gave an angry caw. Before it could attack, I caught the bottom of the blankets and flipped them over the crow. Leaping back on to the bed, I pinned the covers down, trapping the bird beneath them.
For a few long moments there was no sound in the room but my breathing and the drone of the opera on the radio. The only movement was the heaving of my chest. Beneath the blanket, everything was still.
I cautiously lowered my head towards the covers, turning my ear as I tried to listen for anything that would tell me what the bird was doing. The blankets were thick, and the space beneath them tight. With any luck the crow had suffocated already.
Nothing. The bird seemed silent and still. I inched my ear a little closer, trying to tell for sure if—
The beak tore through the blanket with a single peck. I felt a flash of pain and my hand flew to my ear. When I pulled it away, my fingers were wet with my blood.
The crow’s head was squirming through the hole in the covers, each wriggle forcing the tear wider. I leapt backwards off the bed, releasing my pin-hold on the blankets.
Those beady black eyes stayed fixed on me as the bird fought to free itself. I felt the electrical tingle on my scalp, but I was too panicked to know what to do with it. My abilities relied on me using my imagination, and right now my imagination couldn’t come up with anything that could deal with a flesh-eating crow.
Before I could think of something, the bird tore free. It beat its oily wings until it was up near the ceiling. Then, with a demonic screech, it swooped towards me.
The next few seconds became a blur as several things happened at once.
The warbling of the woman on the radio became distorted by the buzzing of some sort of interference. Even as the interference began, the crow was veering wildly off course. It thudded headfirst against the wall just as my mobile phone began to ring. I heard the bird’s neck snap, and knew it was dead before it hit the floor.
I was too shocked to move at first. Quickly, though, I made a dive for the phone, frantically searching for the button to answer it.
‘You have four new voicemail messages,’ a robotic voice informed me. ‘First new message…’
There was a brief pause before Ameena’s voice broke in.
‘Kyle, it’s me. Listen, if you get this, you have to come back. Now. It’s your mum,’ the recording said, and I felt my pulse quicken. ‘On the way back from the station, she was… We were attacked. I tried to stop him, but he was too big, I…’ Her voice was becoming more panicked. She cleared her throat and when she spoke again she sounded a little less frantic. ‘Listen, just come back when you get this, OK?’
The line gave a bleep and the next message began.
‘Me again,’ Ameena said. ‘I’m at the hospital. Where are you?’
Bleep.
‘What’s the point in even having a phone if you don’t switch it on?’ Ameena spat. She was breathless, as if she was running while she was talking. ‘I’ve just left the hospital. The doctors say your mum’s stable for now. I’m going back to the house to get the address you’re at, then I’m coming to find you, so stay put. If the guy who attacked your mum comes for you, I don’t like your chances on your own.
‘Keep your eyes open for him,’ she continued. ‘He’s a big fat guy. Fattest guy I’ve ever seen. If you see him, run. I’ve seen what he can do, and it… Well, just run, OK? See you soon.’
Bleep.
‘Nearly forgot to mention,’ continued the next recording, ‘so you’ll know who to watch out for, he’s bald too.
‘And he really, really stinks of sour milk.’
Chapter Ten
SHEDDING SKIN
I tried calling home, but there was no answer. Not that I was surprised.
I didn’t even stop to turn off the radio, or to do anything with the dead crow on the bedroom floor. Still clutching the phone in my hand I bounded down the stairs, calling out Marion’s name as I ran.
She was standing in the kitchen, looking down at her hands as she flexed and unflexed her fingers over and over again. I could smell bacon and hear the sizzling of a frying pan on the stov
e behind her. A white surgical patch was taped over her right eye. The other seemed to sparkle an even brighter shade of blue, as if working to compensate.
It took a moment for me to realise, but Marion had opened the shutters on the windows. The back door stood ajar too. Anything could have been let inside the house.
‘Marion, you OK?’ I asked, taken aback by her appearance. ‘What happened?’
She brought up her head and lowered her hands. ‘What? Oh, the patch. Pan spat oil at me. Stung a bit, that’s all.’ She glanced at the phone in my hand. ‘Everything OK?’
‘My mum’s been attacked,’ I said. ‘She’s in hospital.’
Marion’s hand covered her mouth. ‘Oh my God,’ she muttered. ‘Oh my God. Is she… I mean…’
‘I don’t know,’ I told her. ‘Can you take me to the train station? I know the windscreen’s broken, but—’
‘Of course I will,’ Marion said. She looked me up and down. ‘Better go get dressed first, though.’
I realised I was still wearing my pyjamas. ‘Back in a minute,’ I shouted over my shoulder, as I turned and rushed up the stairs to the bedroom. Something seemed off about Marion, but I guessed she was just worried about Toto. I should’ve told her the truth.
Still, there was no time now. Mum needed me. Nothing else mattered but that.
I charged into the room and snatched up the clothes I’d been wearing the day before, not wanting to waste time unpacking clean ones. As I got dressed, I thought about Ameena’s messages.
The man who had attacked them had to be the man from the train. How many fat bald men who smelled of milk could there be? He’d joined the train one stop after me, which meant he must’ve been able to move much faster than his size suggested.
Was he Marion’s imaginary friend? Marion had said he was smaller than me, but then the Darkest Corners changed people, so that didn’t rule him out. But he’d finished up as a wobbly pile of dead skin on the bathroom floor, so that probably did rule him out. If he was the one controlling the birds, why had they killed him?
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