Trying to puzzle things out, she could only see two explanations. Firstly, that he’d never been there at all, that she’d imagined his voice, imagined the argument between him and the woman. Or, secondly, that he had been there but had somehow snuck away when she was distracted.
That second option seemed more likely, more realistic, but she was certain she would have noticed. There was nowhere he could have sneaked to. There was no secret way out of the playground. She would have seen him. Definitely.
So what had that stick-creature done to him?
And then she stopped thinking.
The roundabout, which she’d been absent-mindedly pushing, spun something odd into sight.
There was a dark stain on the wooden floor, shaped something like a person. Fuzzier, blurred, but clearly personish.
She reached out and grabbed one of the metal bars that divided the roundabout into sections. As she pulled it to a stop, battling its momentum, it tugged her a few steps along with it.
She staggered, but kept her footing.
When it was finally stationary she knelt on the damp boards and looked closer at the stain. She’d thought at first that it was water – a watermark or a puddle perhaps – but the whole of the wooden floor was wet; the old wooden planks were dark from the earlier rain. And it wasn’t paint or oil or anything like that.
‘It’s just a shadow,’ her stomach said. ‘Let’s go. Let’s go now.’
Her stomach was right, she thought. It does look like a shadow. A person-shaped shadow.
Where her own shadow, cast by the sun, touched it, the two were indistinguishable; they were both shadows, just ordinary shadows. Except whereas she knew she was blocking the light to make the shadow shaped like her, there was nothing casting the other one. Nothing there at all.
‘Normally they fade away,’ Agent Jofolofski had said. But Frank had seen them rubbing round the stick-woman’s legs purposely. As if they were working together somehow.
This shadow wasn’t moving, but it did look person-shaped.
‘You’re an idiot for still being here,’ her stomach said, looking the other way.
‘I feel like I’ve fallen down a rabbit hole,’ she said. ‘The world is upside down and soon there’s going to be a cake with “Eat me” written on it.’
She tried to distract herself from the inexplicable shadow by trying to recall what else happened in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, but she couldn’t remember. It had been her dad who’d read it to her. It was one of his favourites, but then he was a bit odd like that. Her mum laughed at him, not unkindly, because she preferred books without pictures.
‘Wrong book,’ said her stomach. ‘It’s Peter Pan where the shadow gets loose.’
Frank turned away, ignoring it.
She should just go home and lock the door and wait for Quintilius Minimus to turn up.
And then she heard a noise like balloons being squeezed together, like some clown making a balloon animal, but quieter, stranger, and she felt something cold move behind her, a shadow darting past the corner of her eye, and there was a gasping, choking noise and she spun back round to see, curled up and shivering on the damp wooden boards of the old roundabout, a boy.
He was white, not just his skin but his hair too. Even his clothes looked faded, washed out.
It was Neil Noble.
Frank was surprised and not surprised.
‘I told you he was here,’ she said to her stomach.
But she felt queasy.
Like the world was a ship.
And the afternoon was rocking.
Bobbing in a distant harbour.
And she was a new sailor.
And then she heard thin words whisper around her ankles. She couldn’t make them out.
Noble was speaking.
She bent down.
‘What did you say?’ she said.
He spoke again.
He was almost inaudible, like he’d lost his voice on the morning of the school play, but she could just make out the words, ‘I ain’t no grass.’
‘What do you mean?’ she asked. ‘What does that mean?’
He repeated it again, not looking at her, looking past her out into the distance.
‘I-I-I ain’t no g-g-grass.’
And then she laughed. In spite of everything, in spite of who he was, in spite of the glimpses of other worlds or other-worldly things she’d had, she laughed.
She understood what he was saying.
It was the language of the playground. That small defiance in the face of authority, the refusal to tell tales, to snitch, to get the teachers involved. You kept it among the kids, always, no adults allowed or needed.
He hadn’t let on. Hadn’t told tales. Hadn’t spilt the beans.
She imagined it must have been a struggle for him, that choice between owning the secret himself and sharing it. If it was his alone then he could dangle it over Nick’s head, send the ransom note letters, whisper cryptic hints when they were with other people, have his hurtful, hateful fun. But the moment it was out there, the moment someone else knew about it, then all his power would be gone. Was that how he thought?
But had he known what the woman was? (Whatever it was she was.) Had he seen what Frank had seen, seen the stick-thing behind the disguise? He couldn’t have known all the things Frank knew, but maybe he suspected. Maybe deep down inside himself he knew it would be a bad idea to let the woman find the window …
Frank shook her head. Whatever the answer was, she was glad Neil had decided to keep mum.
‘He did a better job of it than you,’ her stomach reminded her, as if she hadn’t already secretly thought the thought.
But now look at him … His hair was white, like a ghost or an old person. In fact, the whole of him looked washed out. What had the woman done? Where had he disappeared to? Trapped in a shadow?
That impossible shadow was gone now. Neil was casting one, but it moved with him, was quite normal. For a moment Frank thought about that, about where the shadow had run off to, why it had released him, but then she smelt a familiar sharp stink, and she let the question go. There was a dark patch on the front of Neil’s trousers. He was shivering.
She couldn’t leave him like this, could she? She wanted to run back to Nick’s house and tell them what she had seen, warn them, save them, but she couldn’t just leave Neil here.
‘He’d leave you,’ her stomach said.
‘No, he wouldn’t,’ she said. ‘Not if I was like this.’
‘No, you’re right. He’d crow. He’d sneer and point and prod you. And then he’d never let you forget that time you peed your pants at the playground.’
‘That’s not what I meant,’ she said, even though she knew her stomach was probably right.
But what did that have to do with anything? This wasn’t about him, was it? It was about her and who she wanted to be. She wanted to be a better person. Better than him at least. And not because it was a competition, just because.
She put a hand under his arm, tried pulling him up.
‘I c-c-can’t,’ he said.
‘Come on,’ she huffed as she heaved.
He was wobbling up on to his feet. His eyes were dark and stared off into the distance.
‘Come on,’ she said. ‘Let’s get you home.’
He leant on her shoulder and felt light, lighter than she’d ever imagined. Rob and Roy were the ones with the muscle, with the bulk. Neil was just the energy behind them, and now that had been drained away.
He was skinny under it all.
‘W-w-where?’ he said.
His trainers squelched as he moved.
‘Get you home,’ she repeated. ‘Where do you live?’
She didn’t know.
He didn’t answer, but they lurched forward together, taking little steps, out of the rec and towards the park exit that led towards Nick’s house.
It turned out he lived in the road before Nick’s.
As they’d left the park an
d staggered round the corner into the street, he’d begun to regain some of his strength.
He’d been muttering, muttering in that distant, quiet whisper next to her ear, but she’d been unable to make out what he was saying. Just the odd word, fearful and confused.
She would have been lying if she denied that a tiny corner of her heart celebrated at the sight of him diminished and broken, but she wasn’t proud of it. She wouldn’t own up to it if she were asked, but she knew it was there and that there was a certain justice in it. But at the same time she was shocked by what had happened to him, terrified it might happen to her, or to Nick, or to anyone.
And then she felt the small weight of the boy lift off her as he staggered forward by himself, staggered off up a front path leading to a neat blue door beside which was a trellis with yellow roses growing on it. He pulled a set of jangling keys from his pocket and held them out at the door.
‘Now can we go home?’ her stomach asked. ‘He’s home. Look. Now it must be our turn. Yes?’
It was right. Frank had done what was needed. She could go home now, except …
Except that stick-creature, that scarecrow-woman was still out there, and Frank knew it was searching for Nick, for the window. She had to stop it.
‘We’re not going home,’ she said to her stomach.
‘But it’s almost tea time,’ her stomach said. ‘I’m hungry.’
She looked at her watch. In fact it was barely even three o’clock.
‘Dad’s not expecting us back for another two hours,’ she said. ‘Plenty of time.’
‘For what?’ asked her stomach.
‘We’ve got to warn them,’ she said, and ran off, leaving Neil scratching the paintwork as he fumbled his key against the lock.
She ran, heading for the corner, heading for the next street along, and her shadow followed her, almost, but not quite, in time with her movements.
Frank went up the side of Nick’s house, round to the back garden.
The back door was open.
Nick’s bike was on the grass. There was an imprint beside it where hers had been.
She’d left it at the rec. Again.
It wasn’t important though.
Looking up, she saw someone moving in an upstairs window next door. It was a semi-detached house, the two of them joined together with a shared wall. She wondered who lived next door: did they have a clue about what was happening?
Now that she knew the world was bigger, stranger, odder than she’d ever dreamt, she wondered what else she didn’t know about. What happened in the house next door to her? What secrets did the other kids at school have?
She shook her head. This wasn’t the time to be thinking; this was a time for doing and she had to go in and warn Nick and his dad about the thing that was looking for them.
But to do that, she thought, would be to admit to Nick that she had told his secret, wouldn’t it? Could she tell him without letting that truth out? Did it really matter? He’d stop being her friend, but still she might save him.
If he and his dad went away before the thing found them, they’d be safe. Or if she could close the window like Agent Jofolofski had asked, maybe that would protect them too. But that would be Frank cutting Nick off from his mum, forever. How could she do that? How could she expect him to let her do that? How could she bear to see his face as she tried to do that?
It was all such a mess, and she was as good at juggling all the possibilities in her mind as she was at juggling flaming torches in real life. Which was ‘not very’.
Her stomach chuckled to itself.
‘If only you’d listened to me,’ it said. ‘None of this would’ve happened.’
And then she heard movement inside and she stopped thinking, stopped worrying, and went up the steps and into the kitchen.
As she did so a part of her shadow peeled off from the rest and lifted what might have been the shadow of a weasel-like nose with no weasel there to cast it. Like a shadow puppet on a screen it turned, sniffed the air, glanced at the cellar window and slid away round the side of the house and off to who knew where. Frank didn’t notice feeling a tiny bit warmer, or if she did she just put it down to going indoors.
Nick’s dad had just lifted the kettle up to pour steaming water into a mug.
‘Frank,’ he said.
‘Where’s Nick?’ she asked.
He put the kettle down and looked at her. His eyes were grey with tiredness, even though it was only the early afternoon.
‘He’s just popped out,’ he said. ‘Just gone to the shops. He’ll be back soon.’
It didn’t ring true, and then Frank remembered that Mr Underbridge didn’t know that she knew. Of course he wouldn’t tell her the truth about where Nick was.
So she told Mr Underbridge about the thing she’d seen at the rec. She didn’t tell him it was her fault or exactly who Neil Noble was. She mixed in some of the things Agent Jofolofski had told her. She told him what she knew. He listened in silence.
‘Oh, Frank,’ he said when she’d finished.
He sipped his tea.
‘I don’t know what to say,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry you got involved in all this. Nick should never have told you. It was supposed to be a secret. It was important.’
‘It was my fault,’ she said. ‘I made him tell me. I heard the music and asked too many questions.’
He shook his head.
‘He’s not gone to the shops,’ he said. ‘We had an argument and he ran off. I thought he’d be all right if he had some time by himself. Time to cool down. I’m sure he’ll be back soon. He always comes back.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Frank said.
‘Don’t worry. I’m not angry,’ he said. ‘Or not with you. Not with Nick, either. Mimi was right. She should have shut the window ten years ago. Right at the start.’
‘We can do it now,’ Frank said. ‘She gave me a thing to put in the cellar. If the window’s not there any more, the stick woman-thing won’t ever find it, won’t be able to do whatever it is she wants to do and you’ll all be safe. Even if Nick’s mum –’
‘But we can’t,’ Mr Underbridge said. ‘It’s not just Nick’s mum. It’s Nick too. If the window to his home closes, he might …’ His words trailed off.
‘What?’
‘What happens to a flower when it’s plucked, or a leaf when it falls off the tree in autumn? As long as they’re attached, just by a thread, they can grow. If Nick’s world is severed, if his link to his home world, to where he was born, is cut, he might …’
‘Die?’ Frank asked.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I think so. I couldn’t do it … couldn’t let her do it when he was just a baby. I certainly can’t do it now. I love him too much.’
Guilt swelled in her throat and she could barely say, ‘What do we do?’
‘I don’t know,’ he said, mumbling. Then, ‘I’ve got to find him.’
‘I’ll help you look,’ she said. ‘But first …’
It was almost embarrassing, but she needed to pee. You never read about this in books, she thought. No spy breaks off in the middle of a mission to use the loo; no wizard on a quest ever pops into a public convenience … But this wasn’t a story: this was real life, admittedly a rather weird and surprising real life, but real life all the same.
She’d been running from one place to another all day, pinged around like that blasted metal ball in the pinball machine. But now she was alone for a minute, a moment’s peace, and suddenly, sat there on the loo, the day caught up with her and her energy drained away. She was exhausted. Her fingertips hummed and she felt clammy and almost sick.
‘It doesn’t matter what he says,’ her stomach said. ‘It’s all your fault. All of this. Oh! It’s at times like this I wish I wasn’t your stomach and was something with legs. My own legs. Then I’d be outta here.’
She didn’t bother to answer because she knew it was right. Stomachs don’t lie.
She thought back to the first time she’d
used this toilet, when the music had come drifting up from somewhere below her, how it had buoyed her feelings up, lifted her out of the water and put her on dry land. She hadn’t realised before then quite how long she’d been treading water, how exhausted she’d become. She wished the music would come again now, but it didn’t; instead that nagging voice kept on talking.
‘You heard him, he loves Nick, loves this weird stolen changeling child he’s claimed as his own, never-you-mind where he comes from. And you’re the one who let the secret slip, the one who’s brought it all crashing down. It doesn’t matter if that stick-woman-thing with the shadows turns up, it’s going to be over for Nick one way or the other. Jofolofski’s not going to leave the window open this time. You heard his dad. It’s all going to be over for Nick soon, the whole of these past ten years a complete waste of time. He’ll hate you. They’ll both hate you. He’ll –’
‘Why are you saying these things?’ Frank asked.
Her stomach was silent for a moment, then it said: ‘You know I’m just you, don’t you?’
The doorbell rang.
She looked up from her feet and stared at the back of the toilet door. It was blue, and she could see the brush strokes in the paint, swirling, waving like fingerprints, like the sea.
Mr Underbridge’s footsteps hurried down the hallway.
Oh! Frank thought. Nick doesn’t have a front door key! Maybe …
But when she heard the front door open there was no joyful, tearful reunion of dad and lost son, rather a voice she could barely make out, low and hushed, hidden, almost whispering.
‘… car’s broken down … can I use your … come in?’
‘Oh,’ said Mr Underbridge. (Frank could imagine the disappointment, confusion even, on his face.) ‘Well, I suppose. But, why’s –’
And then there was a sudden silence, cutting him off, and a darkness filled the hallway. Frank saw it through the crack underneath the toilet door. Where there had been a straight line of white light, a sudden night fell.
There was a thump, a thud, a noise like a scuffle, gasping breaths, a momentary groan, and then silence again.
The Song From Somewhere Else Page 10