Creeping Jenny

by Jeff Noon

  “If you have anything to say, doc, you’d best say it.”

  She glowered at Nyquist. “I don’t suppose you’re going to tell me what happened out there?”

  “A spot of bother. Nothing more.”

  She sighed, and then smiled. “What really gets my goat is that I have two men in my house, neither of them wearing masks. People will talk!”

  “Let them.”

  “They’ll make up stories about us.”

  Nyquist shrugged. He said, “I live in a place called Storyville. The streets are littered with last week’s tales of woe. People soon move on.”

  “It wasn’t cold.”

  This was Teddy speaking, the first proper words he’d said since arriving back at the village.

  The doctor responded: “And what’s that supposed to mean?”

  “The tarn wasn’t as cold as it should’ve been. Don’t you think?”

  Nyquist was noncommittal. “It was cold enough.”

  “No. No it wasn’t! There’s something about that whole area, where the plane crashed, something weird. Nothing goes right out there. Nothing grows properly–”

  His words were cut short by a loud banging at the door and by angry raised voices from outside. The doctor went to see who it was, while Nyquist made a gesture for Teddy to remain calm. The young man rose to his feet, just as Becca and Val made their entrance, both of them wearing their Alice Grey masks.

  “What’s going on here?” Val demanded. “Why is he like this? Where are his clothes?”

  “Teddy was in an accident, out in the fields,” the doctor started.

  “An accident?”

  “But he’s fine, there’s nothing that can’t be cured with a hot water bottle–”

  “We’ll see about that.”

  Val started to pull Teddy’s clothes off the dryer, while Becca went to her brother and fussed over him. He was led from the room. At the door Becca turned and faced Nyquist.

  “I don’t want you anywhere near my brother, do you hear me?”

  Nyquist did.

  “In fact, mister, I think you should leave. Leave the village!”

  She spun on her heel and immediately turned back and shouted at him once more: “And why isn’t Teddy wearing a mask?! Is that your doing as well?”

  He made to speak, but was cut off.

  “You disgust me.”

  And with that she was gone, and the room settled back into quiet. Nyquist finished his drink in a long swallow. The doctor started to cough badly. She wiped at the mouth of her mask with a handkerchief and examined the folds of linen.

  “Are you ill?” Nyquist asked. “Tell me.”

  She nodded and showed him the handkerchief. It was spotted with red.

  “Is it bad?”

  This time she didn’t answer. Nyquist watched her for a moment and then said, “So what do you think, doc? Should I leave Hoxley? Is that for the best?”

  “Who knows?” She touched at her mask; it was coming loose on her face. “Perhaps tomorrow will be Saint Belvedere’s Day, when we all have to be nice to each other, dawn till midnight. Oh no, wait… we’ve already had that day this year. Damn it. Sorry! I shouldn’t swear. Bad form.”

  “What do you know about Teddy?” Nyquist asked. “Or do you want me to keep calling him Edmund?” There was a hard edge to his voice.

  “Oh, well… I think we’ve gone beyond the saint, now.”

  “So tell me about the lad.”

  “He worked at the bakery, up to a month ago.”

  “I can’t imagine him hard at work.”

  “Office job. Actually, he’s got the aptitude for that, when he cares to show it. A good head for figures. But then he gets the sack.”

  “Why?”

  “Rumour has it, he badmouthed the Suttons.”

  “Now that I can believe.”

  Higgs shrugged her shoulders. “Yes, he’s a troubled soul.”

  “What I can’t understand is why he’s still here, still in Hoxley? He obviously doesn’t like the place.”

  She didn’t answer. But she looked at Nyquist strangely and said, “John, you do need to be careful. Things may soon come to a head. And whatever it is you hope to find–”

  “There’s no time for care, none at all.”

  The doctor stared at him, him at her. And they stayed like that until the clock on the mantel struck six times. Higgs smiled weakly.

  “The hour has come.”

  She pressed at her mask again and this time it came off her face easily, clinging to her fingers. “I am myself once more. Irene Higgs, General Practitioner.” There was a sadness in her words.

  Nyquist was looking through his clothes. They were almost dry. He found the atlas in the pocket of his overcoat. Its pages were damp and crinkled. He tried to open it, succeeding only in tearing one of the pages. He asked the doctor if she had a copy of her own, and she did, fetching it from a cupboard.

  “What do you need it for?”

  “To find out where I was today. Teddy called the pool Birdbeck tarn.” He searched for the page he needed. “He was right, by the way.”

  “About what?”

  “The tarn wasn’t exactly freezing, not as I’d thought it would be.”

  “The body acts in this way, for its own protection. Shock, adrenaline…”

  “Maybe. Or perhaps a hot spring?”

  “We did have a spring here, it’s true, but much closer to the village. It dried up in the nineteenth century.”

  Nyquist brought the feeling to mind. “When I sank down below the surface, it was very calm, and warm. I don’t know. It was comforting. No, that’s the wrong word. It was… yes, consoling. Consoling. I felt that I might float there for a long time, at peace with the world. And there were a lot of objects on the bottom of the pool, as though they had been cast there on purpose. Offerings, and the like.”

  “Offerings? I’m afraid I don’t understand.”

  “You know, like in a wishing well.”

  His finger traced a vague route on the page of the atlas, across the field of King’s Grave and beyond the cottage, over the crest of the hill marked Hawley Ridge and down to the shallow valley. But the tarn wasn’t shown: no symbol, no irregular shape of water. The area was represented by an exclamation mark, and he remembered his chat with Mavis Coombes at the pub, when he’d enquired about this, and she’d written a word of warning on his napkin.

  Ghosts.

  Nyquist told this story to Higgs, and she said in reply, “It’s a village pastime, I’m afraid, the weaving of fancy tales.”

  “But it means something, otherwise why mark it on the map?”

  “Yes.” The doctor gave in. “There are apparitions seen up there, by the tarn. And all across King’s Grave. But like I said, stories–”

  “I’ll find out the truth.”

  Nyquist had suffered enough, enough from the day and the rain and the wind, and the masks and the saints. He took up his clothes and put them on in the adjacent room. Then he said goodbye to the doctor and made his way back to the Swan. It was good to see the normal everyday faces of the residents revealed, now that six o’clock had passed. They were smiling happily, chattering, telling each other off, laughing together. A young couple smooched in a doorway. Life in full, viewed in full. More than once he saw discarded masks lying on the pavements, Alice and Edmund cast aside.

  He walked up to his room, turned on the gas fire and hunched over it, warming his hands. He placed the birdwatching book on his bed, and retrieved the handgun and the teacup from their hiding place. His collection of objects was growing. He pictured in his mind a display case of ebony and polished glass.

  Item one: for your delectation – a tea cup.

  Item two: one Enfield revolver, of notable interest.

  Item three: a guidebook of birds, with heartfelt inscription.

  One day soon, in ways as yet unknown, he would need them all.

  He placed the seven photographs on the eiderdown alongside th
e fragments of his torn-up naming card. From these various offerings, his task was formed. Idly, he moved them around, placing the gun in the center, then the cup; he arranged the pieces of card in a circle; each photograph was given a different position around the edge, moving one step at a time, widdershins. Yes, he knew more than he did three nights ago, when he’d arrived, but so much remained a mystery. He tested the bandage on his head, making sure it was tight.

  He opened Auberon’s Guide to the Birds of Great Britain. His father had made lots of marks, scribbled notes, marginalia. From page to page the colored illustrations flickered under his fingers, one species after another: color of eggs, length of wingspan, feathers, eating habits, calls and songs.

  Raven… Corvus corax… commonly known as a bird of ill omen. A handwritten note in the margin read: Keeper of secrets.

  Why had his father left this book for him, in the cottage? For he believed by now that it had been left there deliberately, that his father knew he would arrive in Hoxley one day. It seemed likely that George Nyquist had sent the photographs to him. But why? Why not just write a letter, to make all his intentions plain?

  He reached the page where the pied wagtail was described and pictured.

  Motacilla alba… gathers at dusk in large flocks… eggs are cream-colored, with a turquoise tint, speckled with reddish brown…

  His father had added another note here: Often seen in dreams.

  The tendril slithered across the paper, as though activated by light or air. This time it didn’t reach for Nyquist’s hand, but it crawled to the book’s edge, reaching out. The matching tendrils on cup and gun also stretched themselves, each one reaching toward the other two, making contact. Connection. Twist and bind. Entangle.

  Nyquist felt his body reacting, in a way he couldn’t understand, his hands tingling, his skin itching at first and then settling into warmth. He felt strong, that he could keep on with this task, this quest. He saw clearly the dust motes in the air and the mites on the bed sheets. Every nerve was activated and the hairs on his arms rose and trembled like antennae. The moment lasted for a second or two, no more. And then the three objects separated from each other, and became once more a cup, a gun and a book. As Nyquist became once more a human, a simple person, a visitor, a man on his own in a dingy room above a public house. He moved his collection to the bedside table, undressed and climbed in between the sheets and fell asleep without a moment’s hesitation. It wasn’t yet half past seven. Saturday evening was still in full swing downstairs in the lounge bar and the snug, but the raised voices and the clink of glasses never reached him. He slept on deep into the night.

  The hours passed. His room was dark, moonless. Now the pub was silent.

  Somewhere in the depths of the house a clock struck the hour softly, once, twice. The door to the room opened and the dark-shaded figure glided in, a woman. She held in her hands a pair of thorned twigs taken from the myre tree. One twig rubbed against another and gave off a small sound. She breathed as wood might breathe, as a forest will breathe in the night, quietly, quietly, one bare branch after another, one berry, one seed. The woman stood next to the bed, looking down at the sleeping man. Now she made a whispering sound, a whisper that held a song that held a rhyme and a threat and a promise and a game. Sing along a Sally, O, the moon is in the valley, O. The words lingered. Come what may, come out to play. The two twigs – each adorned with a cluster of moonsilver – were lowered towards the victim. The berries glowed with their inner light, pale on the outside, and crimson inside the skin, filled with poison. The thorns were sharp and slightly hooked at the tips. They moved closer to the sleeper’s face.

  Nyquist shivered. His eyelids flickered.

  His eyes opened.

  His eyes didn’t open.

  He was both asleep, and awake. Asleep, awake. Asleep, awake.

  The edges of the night were blurred and he was caught there, on the borderland.

  Asleep, awake, asleep, awake.

  He didn’t see the visitor, but he dreamt about her. But he didn’t really dream about her, for the visit actually happened. But it didn’t exactly happen, as such, it was more like a haunting. Or rather, something conjured from the sleeper’s mind, his darkened mind, a figment of the imagination. Or not so much imagined, more remembered from his past, his childhood, or from a long-ago story. Not so much a story, and not so much a memory, but more an event that took place in another land, or planet. But not some distant planet, more the planet of the room and the village and the sleeper’s place within it. And so, in this way, the visitation both happened, and didn’t happen, simultaneously. Or perhaps the visit existed somewhere between the two states, happening, not happening, over and over – happening, not happening, happening, not happening, and on and on and on until the sleeper awoke.

  Or didn’t awake.

  Part 3

  WIDDERSHINS

  THE CALLING BELL

  It was strange. Not a sound greeted him, neither from downstairs, nor from outside, but the day was already well begun – he could see sunlight streaming through the part-open curtain. A new saint’s icon was resting on the shelf, a plant in a pot, a kind of miniature tree whose twisted trunk and branches grew into a distinctly human shape with arms extended and its hair and hands made of twigs. The face was carved directly in the bark, a crude mouth, nose and eyes. Nyquist imagined the martyr, whoever he or she might be, must have been bound to a tree for their beliefs.

  He spent some time in the bathroom, lying in the tub until the water grew cold. After getting ready, he went downstairs. He was starving hungry. But the dining room was empty. He sat at the table and waited for a couple of minutes, but nobody came to take his order. There was no sign of Mavis or her father. He looked into the kitchen; it too was empty. The cooking process had been started, and then abandoned. The gas hob was burning. Nyquist turned it off and searched the rest of the building, top to bottom.

  The place was deserted.

  The silence was intense, it settled in each room like a darkness.

  The front door of the public house had been left wide open. He walked outside into the bright steel of the winter sun. Not a person was in sight on the high street. His footsteps echoed on the cobbles.

  Each door was open. Every door of every house as he passed was wide open, inviting him to enter. But instead he kept on, hoping to see another villager, or to hear a call, a greeting; even a shout or a howl of anger would have satisfied him. But there was nothing. He checked his wristwatch and noted without surprise that it was already a quarter to eleven. He had slept for too many hours, far too many.

  It was a Sunday. Perhaps that explained it. The day of rest.

  At the open doorway of the doctor’s surgery he hesitated, and then walked inside, along the hallway into the living room. Only last night this same room had been filled with noise and chatter, human life, a roaring fire, intruders, arguments, accusations. Now silence took charge. He checked the aquarium, but even the goldfish had gone missing. He looked out through the window, at an empty dog kennel and the bare lawn. Every tiny movement that Nyquist made seemed to damage the silence. It was uncanny. And for a good few moments he dared not stir. Nor speak. Nor breathe. Something was waiting for him to make a noise, something or someone, some creature, waiting in the quiet unseen places.

  He turned slowly and saw the icon of the day’s saint growing from a clay pot on the sideboard. It stared at him from behind its face of bark.

  A bird chattered in the garden, a single repeated note song.

  The mood broke and Nyquist moved on, checking the upstairs rooms.

  Empty, empty.

  In the main bedroom he saw an identical icon on the dressing table. This one had a label tied around one the branches: Saint Leander. The name surprised him. He took photograph number seven from his pocket and stared at the blank white image. He turned it over and saw again the legend: St Leander’s Day 1958. So on this day last year, this photograph was taken. No. No, that wasn’t
right. Because Higgs had told him that the saints were chosen randomly; they didn’t follow the normal calendar. Not exactly a year ago then, but whenever Leander had ruled last year. It had to mean something: empty village, empty image.

  He took one last look around the room. He noticed the speckles of blood on the pillow case. He was looking at the doctor’s secret life, and he felt both ashamed, and worried.

  Ten minutes later he was walking along Pyke Road. Again, every single door of every house and building was open. He could hear nothing, nothing at all, not even a child’s laugh or a baby’s gurgle. And yet all the cars were still in place outside the houses or parked in driveways, and the doors of every vehicle, front and rear and boot, had been left open. If the villagers had journeyed elsewhere, they had traveled on foot. Or else he imagined them peeping out from their hiding places, spying on his solitary progress, quietly laughing to themselves at his predicament.

  Nyquist was alone.

  He rapped on the open door of Yew Tree Cottage, but there was no answer. He went inside and saw the birdcage in the living room, empty now of any occupant – the songs had flown away, or been taken into storage: song, feathers, bones, claws and beak, all gone. He called out Hilda’s name: if she answered, she answered in silence.

  A ghost would have a made a louder noise.

  He went back outside and continued on his search for another person, for any evidence of life. He passed the community center and Sutton’s bakery, and then he doubled back. He crossed the village green, past the pond and Blade of Moon, into the school with its empty classrooms, yes, he checked each one. Echoes in the cold air, chalk dust, a column of sums on the blackboard. And he came back outside and wondered to himself if he would ever see another person in all his life; he felt like Robinson Crusoe newly arrived on his island.