by Chris Mawbey
Mickey nodded absent-mindedly. His attention had drifted to the group of houses beyond the cave; the place to where Mr. Jolly was heading.
“I want a closer look at that village square,” said Mickey. He made to move out of the bus shelter but Pester pulled him back.
“I agree,” said Pester. “But you can’t risk being seen. And you can’t risk going past that cave.”
“Why not?” said Mickey. “It’s dormant now.”
“Aye, but it’ll wake up as you get close to it,” Pester replied. “And though you won’t get sucked into it, Mr. Jolly will know you’re here.”
Mickey thought for a moment. He tried to place where the village square sat relative to the road in the living world. An idea began to grow. There was no guarantee that the streets and pathways would be there, but there was a chance that he could reach the square without having to go past the cave.
“Follow me,” he said to Pester, and set off back the way they had come.
Chapter 20
At the next junction Mickey turned left. He led the way down a street of terraced houses. Each property looked virtually the same except for an occasional different colour of front door or an ornament here and there in a downstairs window. The street was a cul-de-sac, ending in a broken down wooden fence that was becoming overwhelmed by hawthorn and brambles. A faded sign proclaimed the land beyond as private property. The statement had never meant anything to Mickey when he had been a boy and he certainly wasn’t going to pay any heed to it now. He and Pester climbed over the fence, where the bushes were thinnest, onto a disused railway line. The tracks had been taken up decades ago but the stone base layer had resisted the spread of the undergrowth. In amongst the coarse grass, weeds, thistles and nettles, two parallel lines showed where the rails once lay.
Mickey turned left and chose one of the weed free lines. It seemed strange to him how much greenery there was. He’d quickly become used to the barren valley floor. He guessed that what he was walking through was just an illusion, a transplant of his memories and imagination. The cave had most likely been the reality of where Mickey was. Despite that, the vegetation was a welcome sight. The sense of being in a familiar environment, with its associated feeling of normality, was comforting. It was going to be painful for Mickey when the time came for him to leave and continue his journey.
After a few minutes the houses of the square came into view. The transplanted village square sat across the route of the old railway line. Mickey and Pester moved off the easier path and took to the trees and bushes on the far side of the cutting. They edged forward slowly, checking the buildings for signs of movement. The properties seemed deserted so the two men cautiously moved closer; ready to dart back under cover if anyone appeared at a door or a window.
The houses were arranged along three sides of the square. Mickey and Pester moved up to the property on the outer end of the row that faced them.
“We should go inside and try to take a look across the square,” said Mickey.
Pester nodded in agreement. “Just hope that none of Mr. Jolly’s friends are in here.”
Pester and Mickey stepped into the ground floor through the rear entrance. They took each step carefully, trying to make no sound as they moved forward. The layout of the townhouse was the same as Elena’s old home. The scullery opened out onto an entrance hall that had served as the Kovaks’ food store. Unlike Elena’s home though, this townhouse had no food. The front door was locked and bolted. So, though they couldn’t be seen, Pester and Mickey couldn’t see out either.
Pester held a finger to his lips as they stood at the foot of the stairs. Both listened intently for sounds of life from the floor above. The house remained silent and had the feel of being empty. Neither man was prepared to take any risks though. Pester signalled that Mickey should stay downstairs while he went up to check the first floor. Mickey could see the logic of this. If they had to leave in a hurry his injured leg would slow him down. Having any kind of head start would be a help.
Pester had only climbed three steps when there was a loud creak from the stairs. Mickey looked around for something to use as a weapon but the room was bare. When no response or challenge came from above Pester continued his ascent. As Pester disappeared from view Mickey suddenly felt vulnerable. He leant against the locked and bolted front door and watched the rear entrance. He occasionally scrutinised the shadows in the corners of the entrance hall and shot nervous glances up the stairs.
There was silence from the floor above for a long time. Then there was the creak of a floorboard followed by a footstep on the stairs. Mickey looked up only to see the staircase empty. He panicked until he realised that the footstep on the stairs would have been Pester going up to the next floor. After an equally long wait Mickey heard movement on the stairs again.
Pester came halfway down to the ground floor before he spoke.
“You can come up.”
Mickey felt a wave of relief and not just because the house was empty. He had become used to having Pester in close company. He certainly wouldn’t call it dependency but was it becoming companionship?
The front balcony window was half shuttered, throwing much of the living area into shade but allowing a thin shaft of light into the room. Dust motes danced lazily in the sunbeam.
By keeping to the shaded portion of the room, Mickey and Pester were able to see outside without risking being seen. Diagonally across the square were four adjoined townhouses. Two Wights stood sentry outside the second house from the left. Another one stood on the first floor balcony.
“So what do we do now?” said Mickey. Now that he was here he really didn’t have any idea how to get into the townhouse without being caught. Come to that he didn’t even know if Elena was in there.
“We watch and wait,” said Pester. Then seeing the confusion on Mickey’s face added. “We need to make sure that Mr. Jolly is actually here and Elena as well. Then we need to watch the comings and goings before we, or rather you, work out your plan.”
Mickey watched the townhouse for a few minutes. The two Wights on the ground seemed to be staring straight ahead. The one on the balcony was slowly swinging its head from side to side but was looking down towards the ground. Not once did it raise its gaze and look across at the rows of properties flanking it.
“Three of them then,” said Mickey. “Are there likely to be any more inside?”
“No idea,” said Pester. “This kind of thing really isn’t in our job description, you know. If you had something precious to guard how many would you use?”
By ‘precious’ Pester had clearly meant Elena. Mickey wasn’t sure that the context of the word was right from Mr. Jolly’s perspective; but from his own point of view it seemed to fit perfectly. His strength of feeling for someone he had only recently met had caught him completely by surprise. For as long as he could remember he’d focused on looking after his Mum; and, to a lesser extent, Jonno. With that first responsibility taken away had Elena become a substitute for Elaine?
Becoming uncomfortable with where his thoughts were leading him Mickey turned his attention to the question that Pester had posed.
“I’m not an expert on this either,” he said. “But if I wanted to keep things to a minimum, I’d keep her locked up so that I didn’t have to keep an eye on her all the time.”
“Where would you keep her?” Pester asked.
“Top floor. In one of the bedrooms. Keep her out of the way,” Mickey replied without a thought. Then one did strike him. “So if those three aren’t keeping an eye on Elena, what are they doing?”
“Keeping an eye out for you, of course,” said Pester. “Mr. Jolly will want to know as soon as you get near the place. For an educated man you’re a wee bit dim.”
Mickey ignored the jibe, he’d spotted something.
“Look,” he pointed. “At one of the upstairs windows.”
Pester pulled Mickey back into the shade of the room. There was movement at one of the bedroom windows
but it wasn’t possible to see clearly. Mr. Jolly appeared on the balcony on the floor below. The person in the bedroom moved closer to the window. Dark hair framed a pale oval face. Though it was impossible to identify the person Mickey was convinced that he’d found Elena.
Chapter 21
After hours of plotting, scheming and quiet arguing, Mickey and Pester were still nowhere near having a plan to free Elena. The sun had moved round, filling more of the room with light. The two men had retreated to one of the bedrooms where they were less likely to be spotted from across the square.
Mickey limped around the bedroom, desperately trying to come up with an idea. The room was too small for him to work off his frustration so he moved out on to the landing. After a few minutes he glanced through the open bathroom door and froze. A seed of an idea instantly took root.
“I might have found a way to get to her,” he said, re-entering the bedroom.
Pester followed Mickey out to the bathroom.
“There,” Mickey said, pointing to a trap door in the ceiling. “If we can get into the loft space of one of the other townhouses we might be able to work our way over and get in that way.”
“That’s assuming that the loft space is open across the top of all of the townhouses,” said Pester, throwing a potential spanner in the works.
“That’s what we need to find out,” said Mickey. “Give me a hand up.”
Mickey pulled a bathroom stool underneath the hatch. The sound of scraping across the floor was deafening.
Pester winced. “You need to be quiet Laddie. You can’t afford for Mr. Jolly to know that you’re moving against him. There’s no telling what he’ll do to Elena.”
Mickey took the point and moved more cautiously. The hatch opened easily and Mickey was able to pull himself up so far. Pester eased him the rest of the way by pushing on Mickey’s good leg. Though it was dark in the loft space there was enough light seeping through the eaves and gaps in the slates for Mickey to see that the loft extended from gable to gable without interruption. He climbed through the hatch to check the roof beams. They seemed broad and sturdy enough to take his weight. Satisfied, Mickey returned to Pester.
“You were making a lot of noise up there,” said Pester. “The beams seemed to creak with every step you took. Mr. Jolly will hear you even if he’s on the ground floor.”
Mickey looked pained and it wasn’t just the increased throbbing in his thigh that had grown with his exertion in the roof space.
“Fuck. What about Mr. Jolly’s mates?” he asked.
“They’ll hear you just as easily as he will,” said Pester. “Whether they’ll react will depend on what Mr. Jolly’s told them. If he’s only told them to look out for you then you might be lucky. If they hear you they might not realise it’s you and won’t react. It’s a risk you can’t really afford to take.”
“So we’ll have to hope for Mr. Jolly to go out on another of his trips and then keep as quiet as we can,” said Mickey.
“That’s not likely to happen until tomorrow now,” said Pester. “The light’s fading. Mr. Jolly prefers to operate by waylaying people along the road; not searching them out in the dark.”
“We’d better make camp ourselves then,” said Mickey, making his way back to the bedroom.
They ate a meal of cold tinned food from Elena’s backpack. Mickey would have preferred to have eaten warm food but agreed that it was too risky for them to light a fire. His cold meat was in a thick and stodgy sauce which reminded him of cat vomit. He suspected it tasted similar.
“Why do you do this?” Mickey asked. He’d eaten as much of the tinned mush as he could stomach and had set the rest to one side.
“Do what?” Pester replied, having a pretty good idea what Mickey was alluding to.
“Help people, or at least guide them from their death to ...” he struggled for an appropriate word. “... their ending?” was the best he could come up with.
Pester thought about the question carefully before he answered. It was a question that he’d asked himself a lot in recent times. Why did he still do this? At some point, in the long distant past, the answer would have been easy to find. Now though, after so many thousands of travellers, he wasn’t sure that he liked to admit why he did it. He could answer this boy. He could answer anyone who asked. After all, they would never tell; but they would know. And in knowing, they would own a little piece of Pester. He wasn’t sure he wanted that; certainly not with some of them. With this one though...
“I do it because I chose not to go on,” Pester replied eventually. “And instead of becoming a pile of bones by the side of the road I do this instead.”
“Why did you decide not to complete your journey?” Mickey asked, intrigued. It was something that had crossed his mind a few times since his quest had been explained to him. What would it be like to just sit by the side of the path waiting for your body to rot? Would it be painful? Would he get lonely? Bored? Depressed? Worse than all that, would his body be attacked and defiled by passing travellers, animals or the likes of Mr. Jolly and his hideous mob?
“The prospect of my final choice wasn’t looking so good,” replied Pester.
In the growing darkness Mickey couldn’t see Pester’s face too well but the guide’s voice hinted at regret and sadness. Mickey stretched his aching right leg to try to ease the stiffness that was setting in after his climb into the roof.
Pester continued talking. “In my life I wasn’t a good person to know. I brought that attitude over with me and gave my guide a hard time. It was unfair - he was a very nice old man. He used to be a schoolteacher and wanted to carry on helping people even though he’d died. He explained that my door wasn’t likely to be a good one but I still had time to make some amends. I ignored him and got into a big mess. He sacrificed himself to save me. The fact that someone would do that for me hit me hard. I took over his role and have been repaying his kindness ever since.”
As Pester fell silent Mickey felt acute embarrassment. He felt as if he had intruded into a private part of Pester’s existence.
“So your choice was a conscious one,” he said. “It wasn’t to not complete your own destiny but to continue someone else’s.”
“A good way of putting it,” Pester said with a faint smile. “Slightly political perhaps; but still a good point.”
“But with all the good you’ve done, surely your door would give you a much better ending now,” Mickey offered.
Pester’s smile broadened. “You don’t really know if I’ve been good or not. But to answer your question. I decided not to complete my journey of my own free will. I can’t go back on that decision.”
“How long have you been here?” Mickey asked.
“Too long,” Pester replied bitterly. “But no matter. Time has no meaning on this side. I’m the same age as I was the day I died – just the same as everyone else.”
The two men fell quiet. The silence slowly grew, became brooding, threatening to become oppressive. Mickey cracked first.
“Have you had anymore thoughts about how we can get Elena out?”
“Aye, I have,” said Pester. “This is what I think we should do.”
Mickey woke up with a feeling of trepidation. This was overpowering the sense of excitement that he felt at the prospect of being reunited with Elena. He couldn’t really explain why he was so keen to see her again. They weren’t going to be together for long and when they parted again it would be forever.
Mickey’s anxiety was caused by the fact that he would be without Pester again. This would be worse than the day before when Pester had come upstairs searching the house. This time the separation would be further and for longer. When Mr. Jolly left his townhouse Pester was going to shadow him and do whatever he could to slow things down – all without being noticed. If Mr. Jolly once suspected Pester’s involvement he would know that Mickey was attempting to get to Elena. The whole idea was to slow Mr. Jolly down; not drive him back to the village square in a hurry.
After another cold and unappetising breakfast both men prepared for their individual tasks. The three of them, hopefully, would meet up in a car park at the university, a couple of miles or so away.
Around mid-morning Mr. Jolly appeared on his balcony. He barked an instruction to his servant there then went back inside. He re-appeared at the front entrance, where he snapped off some instructions to the Wights on guard there then set off across the square.
“Time to go,” said Pester. Without further ceremony he went down the stairs and slipped out of the back door.
Mickey picked up Elena’s bag and coat then went into the kitchen and selected the largest knife he could find. He thought of it as a bit of insurance. He left the house the same way as Pester and set off along the railway cutting away from the square. After a short distance he turned left and waded through long grass and brambles until he found what he was looking for. The old station platform was virtually overgrown and was little more than a jumble of broken and uneven concrete slabs. Just beyond the rear edge of the platform was a manhole cover that gave access to an inspection tunnel that ran under part of the platform. Mickey and his friends had spent hours playing down there when they were younger. It had been a popular haunt for many reasons and they had often been chased off by older boys who had been able to persuade their girlfriends to venture down into the dark passages.
Mickey worked the cover free of the rust that gripped it. He stuffed Elena’s coat inside the bag and tied it to the top rung of the ladder that was set into the shaft’s concrete wall. The rungs were badly corroded but they looked sturdy enough to take the weight of the bag. Mickey didn’t fancy the prospect of trusting his weight on them though.