He managed to put it out of his mind until he was on the canal path. The late afternoon was dark enough for the lights outside the houses across the water to have come on, except for the pair of lamps closest to the Dibbin house and his. The hide was deserted, but as he reached the house he thought he glimpsed movement in the reflection on the kitchen window. Before he could look his grandmother came to the door almost too hastily to keep her balance. “I’m glad you’re in,” she said, with not much breath. “They’ve been smashing the lights.”
“Who has, Nan?”
“I didn’t look, Jimmy. They might have seen me seeing.”
Jimmy thought he could answer his own question, although why should the Dibbin family feel watched now? He went up to his room, hoping to spend not too much time on his homework. As he drew the curtains he glanced across the canal. Somebody was in the hide.
The occupant wasn’t anxious to be seen. Jimmy had barely made out the shape of a head when it withdrew into its lair. Was there a trickle of moisture on the logs beneath the corner of the gap where the silhouette had appeared? In the dimness between the dead lamps Jimmy couldn’t be sure. He gripped the flimsy plastic curtains and leaned his forehead against the chilly window, and then he dragged the curtains together.
The history project seemed more remote from him than ever. He hadn’t written much by the time his grandmother announced dinner. “What are they making such a row about?” she wondered as the Dibbins carried on an argument in which only all the words she forbade Jimmy to say were audible, and he thought it must be the aftermath of running Blundell off the road into the canal. He was tempted to let his grandmother know, but he shouldn’t make her nervous. He needn’t risk telling anyone at all, because surely the police would track the culprit down.
The murky morning seemed to have cleared the hide, and it was still deserted when he came home, but he saw his grandmother in the kitchen doorway. She was looking for someone, though not him. She gestured at the Dibbin house, and Jimmy was afraid what she might say until she called, “Have you seen the window-cleaner?”
“It isn’t his day, Nan. He came last week.”
“Well, he must have been again, and he didn’t do a very good job. I could do better myself.”
Jimmy tramped across the footbridge and along the towpath to see that a smeary trail led across the kitchen window and the door, ending halfway along the blinded window of the Dibbin house. “He wants to buy himself a new sponge,” his grandmother said.
Jimmy didn’t think the trail looked as if a sponge had made it, and in any case the window-cleaner would have washed it off. It must have been left by an object the size of a man’s face and at about that height. Was the resemblance more apparent where it had come to rest on the neighbouring window? Before Jimmy could risk a closer look, a wind brought a fierce onslaught of rain across the canal, reducing the marks to an indistinguishable blur. “Come in, for heaven’s sake,” his grandmother cried. “We don’t want you catching your death.”
He was in his room when he had to glance out of the window. How could anyone be in the hide? It had been deserted less than a minute ago, and so had that side of the canal for hundreds of yards in every direction. Nevertheless, a head was dimly visible against the glow of a lamp on the road beyond the hide. As it lolled into the gap, the rain on Jimmy’s window made it seem uncertain of its shape. He had the sudden uninvited notion that the watcher had been waiting for him to come home. He shut out the sight and retreated downstairs. “Can I do my homework down here, Nan? It’s cold up there.”
“You do it wherever you like. And if you want the heat up, just you say.”
Working in the front room wasn’t as reassuring as he’d hoped, because he could hear visitors next door. Before long he realised they were all using a signal—two knocks with a long pause after each, and then a pair separated by almost none. He didn’t enjoy feeling like a spy when there was nobody he wanted to inform. After dinner he felt still more uncomfortable, sensing how wary his grandmother was of distracting him from his work. Whenever she turned a page of her library book the timid whisper felt like an apology for making such a noise. He called his homework finished as soon as he could, but he didn’t have much fun watching television. Now that he’d heard the secret knocks he was afraid his grandmother might notice them, and the thought of her ignoring them made him just as nervous.
He had to go to bed when she kept telling him. The only movement at the hide appeared to belong to trickles of lingering rain, and he was letting the curtains sag together when he saw another aftereffect of the storm. A swathe of moisture as broad as a man led from the canal towards his house and disappeared close to if not at the kitchen wall. Jimmy had only to lean out of his window to see how it ended, but instead he made sure that the window was locked before he retreated to bed.
In the night it rained again. On his way to school Jimmy couldn’t distinguish the marks on the window or the trail from the canal. The hide was empty when he passed it, although the left-hand corner looked darker than the rest of the interior. He tried to think the stain was just some of the mist that hung around the canal. He’d started to feel anxious about leaving his grandmother alone in the house, and he hurried home from school, though not fast enough to outdistance the dark. As he came to the hide he saw someone within.
He was grateful that the figure in the corner had its back to him. Was it already there because night had fallen earlier, or was it waiting for him? The way it slumped in the corner reminded him of the bag of potatoes he’d dumped on the shelf in the hide, not least because it looked equally capable of losing its shape; more than its clothes appeared to be sagging with moisture. As Jimmy made to sneak past in the hope of going unnoticed, the figure twitched as if it was hitching itself together. Before it could turn and show its face Jimmy fled to the bridge.
His grandmother hadn’t even let him in when she demanded, “Is something wrong at school?”
“I’ve just got a lot of work to do, Nan.”
“Well, don’t you let them drive you too hard or I’ll be in there for a word.”
He had to go up to his room, where he stayed well away from the window. Next door he heard raised voices, mainly saying words that always made his grandmother wince and grimace. When he watched television with her he kept hearing the secret knock. Lying in bed felt like not daring to go to the window, and suppose the occupant of the hide came over to the house? What if his grandmother saw it from the downstairs window? Jimmy couldn’t even start to fall asleep until he heard her come up to bed.
The nights grew longer, closing like claws around the days, leaving many of them smudged with a twilight of fog along the canal. Jimmy stayed well clear of the path by the hide and used the road instead. Whenever he came home after dark he saw a shape, such as it had, in the corner of the hide. It looked wetter than ever. From the house he sometimes couldn’t avoid seeing a roundish object lurch into the gap in the hide as if to remind him that he was being watched, or that he hadn’t yet fulfilled his mission, or even that he’d been responsible for a death. He could hardly even work at home, never mind at school, for living in a panic as constant as it was dull. He was afraid what his teachers might say to his grandmother when the school had its evening for parents and people who’d taken their place. He was still more nervous of having to explain, in case talking about the reason for his fears brought it closer.
How close would that be? Jimmy kept seeing a moist trail that led from the canal and finding marks on the window. While he was glad that the marks were increasingly blurred, he preferred not to think why they might be. One murky sunless morning he saw an extra elongated smear at the height where he would have expected the eyes of a face to be, as if they had been squashed blindly against the glass and drawn along it. He would have rubbed it off the window if he could have borne to touch it, so that his grandmother wouldn’t see. He was anxious for her all day, and the feeling turned into dread as he came in sight of the hide, bec
ause he could hear her calling, “Mrs. Dibbin. Mr. Dibbin.”
Jimmy dashed to the bridge so fast that he didn’t have a moment to glance towards the hide. As he clattered up the steps he saw that his grandmother wasn’t alone. She was knocking on the back door of the Dibbin house. He faltered on the bridge—he was afraid for her, but even more fearful of the situation—and then he ran down the steps three at a time. He was on the towpath when Mrs. Dibbin flung open her door. “What’s all the noise for?”
“You make quite a lot yourselves, Mrs. Dibbin.” At once Jimmy’s grandmother sounded apologetic. “Have you seen somebody out here?”
“I’m seeing you and him.”
The other person was the window-cleaner, Jimmy saw. “Someone at the windows,” his grandmother said.
“There better hadn’t be.” The woman’s sullen face grew even duller as she said, “Looks like you are.”
“I’m only seeing what someone’s done. They’ve been doing it to my house as well. Surely you’ll have noticed, Mrs. Dibbin.”
“We’ve not noticed much about you.”
This was so plainly a threat that Jimmy was afraid his grandmother would respond to it, but she only pointed at the marks on the glass. “Did you do that?” Mrs. Dibbin accused the window-cleaner.
“It wasn’t me and I wouldn’t leave it like that, either.”
“You can stay away in future all the same. Our Dez can do the windows just as good.”
The man stared even harder at Jimmy’s grandmother than at Mrs. Dibbin before tramping away at a pace that seemed meant to express injured pride. “And you can keep clear of our windows as well,” Mrs. Dibbin said.
“I’m sure I only wanted to look out for my neighbours,” Jimmy’s grandmother protested. “It would be a better world if we all did, don’t you think?”
“We can take care of ourselves, so better give up looking,” Mrs. Dibbin said, and slammed the door.
As Jimmy’s grandmother followed him into their house she murmured, “I don’t know why everyone’s acting as if I’m not right in the head.”
“Watch out what you’re saying to Mrs. Dibbin and them,” Jimmy blurted, before he could stop himself. “They’re the ones that policeman was after.”
“Isn’t he still?” As Jimmy heard a more ominous meaning, his grandmother said, “Never mind, I don’t want to know about it. Don’t look for reasons to take against people. You’ve seen what happens with that.”
“What does, Nan?”
He could see that she regretted having to say “What did with your mother and father.”
Once he was in his room Jimmy risked looking across the canal. The outline of the head that peered out of the hide seemed dismayingly unstable. How much notice might his grandmother’s behaviour have attracted? He didn’t know if he was more nervous of the Dibbin family or of the watcher in the hide. He’d done very little homework by the time he was called for dinner.
Tonight’s burger was stouter than ever. He managed to finish it and some of his salad and chips before hiding his nervousness in his room. How could he leave his grandmother on her own downstairs, closer to any danger? He’d lost his parents—he mustn’t lose her as well. “Leave my nan alone,” he muttered. “She never did you any harm. Remember who did.”
He had to see if his words achieved anything. As he parted the curtains he braced himself for the sight of a head glistening in the dark. There was certainly movement, but it was closer than the hide; it was in the water. Something like a lumpy sack was drifting across the canal. No, it wasn’t simply drifting; despite the current, it was advancing inexorably towards the house. For the moment it was facedown, but Jimmy was terrified that it might raise its waterlogged head. He snatched the curtains together so clumsily that he nearly ripped them from their hooks, and stumbled backwards, recalling words he’d heard: “You didn’t see me.” Just now they felt like a prayer, and he wanted them to apply to him as well.
He was wondering if he should be with his grandmother, for her protection or his—he was afraid there wouldn’t be much of either—when he heard noises beside the canal. A heavy object was being dragged, or rather it was slithering, towards the house. Jimmy couldn’t help thinking that it sounded determined to be solid, if not to hold itself together. He held his breath until his head throbbed, and then he managed to distinguish that the sluggish dragging had passed his house. Surely his grandmother couldn’t hear it from the front room. He was holding his breath once more when he heard the knock.
It was the secret sign, with two long pauses followed by a short one. He hadn’t heard it previously tonight, and now it was at the back door. Perhaps Mrs. Dibbin failed to notice how soft it sounded—sodden, even—because as Jimmy pressed his ear against the wall he heard her grumble, “Is that the mad old bitch again?”
“What’s the nosy cow want now?” Mr. Dibbin complained. “Go and sort her out, Dez.”
Jimmy flattened his ear against the wall and clenched his clammy fists. His pulse was beating so hard that he thought it might deafen him. He didn’t hear Dez Dibbin go to the back door, but Dez’s voice came from that direction—his outburst of disgust and worse. “I’m tripping,” he cried. “You’re not here.”
In a few moments his parents added their own protests, consisting largely of a couple of the words Jimmy’s grandmother deplored. The sounds fled in some confusion out of the front of the house, and Jimmy heard car doors slamming. In the midst of the screech of tyres, did he hear a fresh outburst of cries? The car raced away into the night, and then there was silence until Jimmy went downstairs. His grandmother came out of the front room to meet him. “I don’t know what just happened next door,” she said. “I’ll do as Mrs. Dibbin told me and mind my own business.”
She said nothing further while they watched television. When Jimmy returned to his room he was able to go straight to his window. There was no activity in the hide or the canal. Sleep took him by surprise almost as soon as he went to bed, and his grandmother had to waken him. The silence next door revived his appetite for breakfast, and the desertion of the hide nerved him to use the canal path to school, where he managed to concentrate on his work despite all the clamour around him. He’d had to ignore worse at home, and now he could dare to think that was over.
When his grandmother came to the back door it was evident that she had news. “Well, they’ve gone,” she said, and gave the Dibbin house a disapproving look. “Don’t you ever get mixed up with anything like that.”
“What happened, Nan?”
“The men next door heard they went in the canal. Whoever was driving, they must have been on some of their drugs.”
Jimmy didn’t want to ascertain how much she’d known without admitting that she did, but he felt he ought to learn “Who was in the car?”
“All of them. All dead now.”
He tried not to think that one already had been. “How many, though?”
“All.”
She looked worried for him—presumably she found his insistence odd—and it seemed best to let the subject die. “Time we went shopping,” she said.
The journey to the supermarket was even slower than last week’s. Jimmy wanted to think she was driving that way so as not to be like their late neighbours, but he suspected it had more to do with her age. When he unloaded the groceries at home she realised she’d forgotten to buy apples. “Do you mind going back?” she pleaded. “They’re good for your health.”
Jimmy didn’t want to mind or to dwell on her forgetfulness. He walked back to the supermarket and loaded a carrier bag with enough apples for a fortnight. The burden wasn’t too cumbersome, and in any case he didn’t need it as an excuse to dodge into the hide when he saw lights in the Dibbin house. The police were inside—the real police. No doubt they were searching for drugs. Everything Blundell could have wanted had come to pass, and so why should Jimmy still feel nervous? All at once he recalled what he’d said last night for the watcher to hear. He hadn’t just declared t
hat his grandmother had done Blundell no harm; he’d said, “Remember who did,” and it made him clap a hand over his mouth.
At least for an instant he was able to believe this was the case. Certainly a hand was covering his mouth, and now his nose as well. It smelled of stale water and of what was left of itself. It was as cold as he imagined the mud at the bottom of the canal must feel, and in other ways it felt far too much like mud, as if some of it might be capable of oozing up his nose and between his lips. He didn’t know what he would have swallowed if he’d tried to scream, but his captor didn’t seem to have much strength, and Jimmy managed to struggle free. He reeled out of the hide without looking back as words repeated themselves in his head. “You didn’t see me”—he was desperate for that to stay true. All the way to the bridge the bag of apples thumped his chest as if that could bring him back to his ordinary mundane life. He almost dropped the bag, because he was desperate to keep a hand free. He thought he might never stop wiping his mouth.
For Marty Greenberg and Ed Gorman, with gratitude…
About the Editors
RICHARD CHIZMAR is the founder and publisher/editor of Cemetery Dance magazine and the Cemetery Dance Publications book imprint. He has edited more than a dozen anthologies, including The Best of Cemetery Dance, The Earth Strikes Back, Night Visions 10, October Dreams (with Robert Morrish), and the Shivers series.
BRIAN JAMES FREEMAN is the managing editor of Cemetery Dance Publications and the author of several novels and novellas, along with four short story collections, including an eBook-only exclusive that hit #1 on Amazon.com in the United States, UK, Germany, Spain, and France in the short story categories. His blog and website can be found at: http://www.BrianJamesFreeman.com.
Dark Screams, Volume 1 Page 9