Alone with the Horrors Part 5

The Man in the Underpa.s.s

I 'more Lynn. I'm nearly eleven. I was born in Liverpool, in Tuebrook. 'more Lynn. I'm nearly eleven. I was born in Liverpool, in Tuebrook.

I go to Tuebrook County Primary School. This year I've been taking my little brother Jim to the Infants. Every morning we walk to school. It's only six hundred yards away. I know that because our cla.s.s had to find out for Mrs Chandler for a project. We cross one street and then walk up Buckingham Road. At the end we go down the underpa.s.s under West Derby Road. My little brother calls it underpants. And then just at the other end, there's the school.

The underpa.s.s is what my story's all about.

It isn't very high, my best friend June's big sister can touch the roof without jumping. In the roof there are long lights like ice chopped up. That's what Mrs Chandler means when she says something is a nice image. Usually some of the lights are broken, and there are plugs hanging down like buds. When you walk through you can hear the traffic overhead, it feels as if your ears are shaking when buses drive over. When we were little we used to stand in the middle so the buses would make our ears tickle. And we used to shout and make ghosty noises because then it sounded like a cave.

Then the skinheads started to wait for the little kids in the underpa.s.s, so they got a lollipop man to cross us over and we weren't supposed to go down. Sometimes we did, because some of the traffic wouldn't stop for the lollipop man and we wanted to watch our programmes on TV. Then the lady in the greengrocer's would tell on us and we got spanked. I think we're too old to be spanked. June would cry when she was spanked, because she's a bit of a little kid sometimes. So we stopped going down until the skinheads went somewhere else. June's big sister says they're all taking LSAID now.

When we could go down again it wasn't like the same place. They'd been spraying paint all over the walls. The walls used to be white, but now they were like the advertis.e.m.e.nts you see at the films, when the colours keep changing and dazzling you. They were green and gold and pink like lipstick and white and grey and blood-red. They were words we wouldn't say at ------------------------------------com98 home, like t.i.ts, and all the things skinheads say. Like "tuebrook skins rule ok," only they'd painted it over twice, so it was as if something was wrong with your eyes.

June and I were reading everything on the way to school when Tonia came down. She lives in the next street from me, with her father. She used to go to St John the Evangelist, but now she goes to Tuebrook County Primary with us. June doesn't like her because she says Tonia thinks she's better than us and knows more. She never comes round to play with me, but I think she's lonely and her mother doesn't live with them, only a lady who stays with them sometimes. I heard that in the sweetshop before the sweetshop lady started nodding to tell them I was there. Anyway, Tonia started acting shocked at the things they'd painted on the walls. "I don't think you should let your little brother see these things. They aren't good for him." Jim's seen our mother and father with no clothes on, but June said "Oh, come on, Lynn. We weren't looking anyway, only playing," and she pretended to pee at Tonia, and we ran off.

Tonia was nearly late for a.s.sembly. She'd been looking at the man painted on the wall where the underpa.s.s dips in the middle. Mrs Chandler smiled at her but didn't say anything. If it had been us she'd have pretended to be cross, but she wouldn't really mind if we laughed, because she likes us laughing. I suppose Tonia must have been looking at the man on the wall because she hadn't seen anything like him before, she was flushed and biting her lip and smiling at the same time. My story's about him too, in a funny way, at least I think it is. He was as tall as the roof, and his spout was sticking up almost as far as his chin. Someone had painted him in white--really they'd just drawn round him, but then someone else had written on the wall, so he was full of colours. He'd got one foot on each side of the drain in the middle of the underpa.s.s, that the gutter runs down to. Jim said the man was going to pee, so I had to tell him he wouldn't be going to pee when his spout's like that.

Anyway, that was the day Mrs Chandler told us the theatre group was coming to do a play for us. June said "Are they going to make us laugh?" and Mrs Chandler said "Oh yes, they'll shout at you if you don't laugh." Then we had to write about our parents. I like writing about people, but June likes writing about football and music best. Tonia suddenly started crying and tore up her paper, so Mrs Chandler had to put her arms round her and talk to her, but we couldn't hear what she was saying. June got jealous and kept asking Mrs Chandler things, so Mrs Chandler put her in charge of the mice's cage all week. ------------------------------------com99 When we got home Tonia stayed behind in the playground. I saw her go into the underpa.s.s, but the last time I looked she hadn't come out. My mother was still at Bingo, and Jim was crying so I smacked him, then I had to make him a fried egg so he'd stop. When my father came in he said "Should have made me one as well. You're a lot better housewife than," and he stopped. But my mother had won and gave him half, so he didn't shout at her.

After tea I went to the wine shop to get them some crisps. Jim sat on the railings at the top of the underpa.s.s and was seeing how far he could lean back holding on with his heels, so I had to run out and smack him. I broke my arm when I was little, doing that on the railings. Then I saw Tonia coming out of the underpa.s.s. "Haven't you had your tea yet?" I said. She must have been in a mood, because she got all red and said "I've had my dinner, if that's what you mean. We have it exactly the same time every day, if you must know. You don't think I've been down there all this time, do you?" I do try to make friends with her, but it's hard.

The next afternoon we had the play. There were five people in it, three men and two women. It was very good, and everyone laughed. I liked the part best when one of the men has to be the moon, so he has a torch and tries to get into it to be the man in the moon. They borrowed Mrs Chandler's guitar, that she brings when we have singing, and they all sang at the end and we pretended to throw money, then they threw sweets for us. I told Mrs Chandler I liked it, and she said it was from A A Midsummer Midsummer Night Night 'so Dream because it was nearly midsummer. I said I'd like to read it, so she said to ask for it at the library. 'so Dream because it was nearly midsummer. I said I'd like to read it, so she said to ask for it at the library.

Then it was time to go home, and June asked one of the actors to cross her over the road. She told him he'd got a lovely face. Well, he had, but it's just like June to say something like that. She's bold sometimes. She said "Oh, and this is Lynn. She's my best friend, so you can talk to her too." I think she wanted him to come on his own, but he called the others to look at the colours in the underpa.s.s. So we all went down there instead. I saw Tonia watching us, and she looked as if she was going to cry, as if we'd found her special hiding-place or something, then she ran after us.

They all started shouting and gasping like little kids watching fireworks. "Look at the figure in the middle. It's almost a work of art," one of the women said. "Ebsolutely Eztec," a man said. I don't think he really talked like that, he was just trying to be funny. Tonia pulled at the one with the lovely face and said, "What does he mean?" "He means Aztec, love," he said. "I'm not your love," Tonia said. The man looked upset, because he was only being friendly, but he spelt Aztec for her. "Just the place for a midsummer sacrifice," ------------------------------------100 one of the men said. "I don't think the Aztecs were bothered about seasons. They cut hearts out all the year round," another one said. Then they all walked us home and said we should try to start a youth theatre with Mrs Chandler. But Tonia stayed in the underpa.s.s.

The next day I went to the library after school. It's a nice place, except they chase you if you mess even a little bit. The librarian has a red face and shouts at the little kids if they don't understand what he means, and doesn't like showing you where the books are. But the girls are nice, and they'll talk to you and look for books for you. I got A A Midsummer Midsummer Night Night 'so Dream out. I didn't really understand it, except for the funny parts we saw at school. I'd like Mrs Chandler to help me with it, but I think she'd be too busy. I can read it again when I'm older. 'so Dream out. I didn't really understand it, except for the funny parts we saw at school. I'd like Mrs Chandler to help me with it, but I think she'd be too busy. I can read it again when I'm older.

I saw Tonia's father when I was there. He was getting a book about Aztecs for her. He said it was for a project. She must have told him that. It's stupid, because she could have told the truth. The librarian got him a book out of the men's library. "This will probably be a bit advanced for her," he said. Tonia's father started shouting. "Don't talk about what you don't know. She's an extremely intelligent child. I've had more than enough of that sort of comment at home." The librarian was getting redder and redder, and he saw me looking, so I ran out.

Next morning Tonia brought the book to school. "I've got something to show you," she told June and me. Then she heard Mrs Chandler coming, so she hid the book in her desk. She could have shown her, Mrs Chandler would have been interested. At playtime she brought it out with her. We all had to crowd round her so the teachers wouldn't see. There were pictures of Aztec statues that looked like the floors you see in really old buildings. And there were some drawings, like the ones little kids do, funny but you aren't supposed to laugh. Some of them had no clothes on. "Don't let everyone see," Tonia said. "I don't know what you're worried about. They don't worry us," I said, because the way she was showing us made the pictures seem dirty, though they weren't really. It was like a picture of Jesus we used to giggle at when we were little, because he was only wearing a cloth. I suppose she never used to play doctors and nurses, so she couldn't have seen anything, like the man in the underpa.s.s.

When we went out to play at dinnertime she brought the book again. She started reading bits out of it, about the Aztecs using pee for dyeing clothes, and eating dogs and burning people and cutting their hearts out and eating them. She said one part meant that when they made a sacrifice their G.o.ds would appear. "No it doesn't," June said. "They were just men dressed up." ------------------------------------101 "Well, it does," Tonia said. "The G.o.ds came and walked among them." "You're the best reader, Lynn. You say what it says," June said. Actually June was right, but Tonia was biting her lip and I didn't want to be mean, so I said she was right. June wouldn't speak to me when we walked home.

But the next day I had to be specially nice to June, because Mrs Chandler said so, so we were friends again. June was upset all day, that was why Mrs Chandler said to be nice to her. Someone had left the mice's cage unlocked and they'd escaped. June was crying, because she liked to watch them and she loves animals, only she hadn't any since when her kitten tried to get up under the railway bridge where you can hear pigeons, and fell off and got killed. Mrs Chandler said for everyone to be nice to June, so we were. Except Tonia, who avoided us all day and didn't talk to anyone. I thought then she was sad for June.

On Sat.u.r.day we went to the baths by the library. The baths are like a big toilet with tiled walls and slippery floors. We said we'd teach Tonia to swim, but her father wouldn't let her come in case she got her asthma and drowned. We had to stop some boys pus.h.i.+ng Jim and the other little kids in. There must be something wrong with them to do that. I think they ought to go and see a doctor, like Tonia with her asthma. Only June's big sister says it isn't the ordinary doctor Tonia needs to go and see.

Then we went home to watch Doctor Who. It was good, only Jim got all excited watching the giant maggots chasing Doctor Who and nearly had to go to bed. My mother had bought some lovely curtains with her Bingo money, all red and purple, and she was putting them up in the front room so our maisonette would look different from the others. There wasn't any football on TV, so my father went out for a drink and gave us money for lemonade. June had to go home because her auntie was coming, so I took Jim to get the lemonade.

On the way we met Tonia. She didn't speak to us. She was running and she looked as if she'd been sick. I wasn't sure, because it had got all dark as if someone had poured dirty dishwater into the sky. Anyway, I went to the wine shop and when I'd bought the lemonade I looked for Jim but he wasn't there. I didn't hear him go out, because I'd told him to stay in the shop but they'd left the door open to let air in. He'd run down the underpa.s.s. Little kids are like moths when they see a light sometimes. So I went to get him and I nearly slipped, because someone had just been throwing red paint all over the place. It was even on the lights, and someone had tried to paint the man on the wall with it. Jim said it was blood and I told him not to be soft. But it did look nasty. I didn't even want my supper. ------------------------------------102 It rained all Sunday, so nothing happened. Except June brought the Liverpool Liverpool Echo Echo round because one of my poems was in it. I'd sent it in so long ago that I'd forgotten. They only put your first name and your age, as if you didn't want anyone to know it was you. I think it's stupid. round because one of my poems was in it. I'd sent it in so long ago that I'd forgotten. They only put your first name and your age, as if you didn't want anyone to know it was you. I think it's stupid.

Next day when we were coming home we saw the man who empties the bins on West Derby Road talking to the ladies from the wine shop. There's a concrete bin on top of the underpa.s.s, with a band going round it saying litter litter litter. He'd found four mice cut up in the bin. June started crying when we got to our road. She cries a lot sometimes and I have to put my arm round her, like my father when he heard Labour hadn't won the election. She thought they were the mice from our cla.s.sroom. I said they couldn't be, because n.o.body could have caught them.

The next night June and I took Jim home, then we went to the library. We left him playing with the little girls from up the street. When we got back he wasn't there. My mother got all worried but we said we'd look for him. We looked under the railway bridge, because he likes to go in the workshop there to listen to the noise, that sounds like the squeak they put on the TV to remind you to switch it off. But he wasn't there, so we looked on the waste ground by the railway line, because he likes playing with the bricks there more than the building blocks he got for Christmas. He was sitting there waiting to see a train. He said a girl had taken the little girls to see a man who showed them nice things.

Some policemen came to school one day to tell us not to go with men like that, because they were ill, so we thought we'd better tell our parents. But just as we were coming home we saw Tonia with the little girls. She looked as if she wanted to run away when she saw us, then June shouted "What've you been doing with those kids?" "It wasn't anything, only a drawing on the wall," one of the little girls said. "You wouldn't even let Jim look at him the other day," I said. "Well, he wouldn't have wanted to come," Tonia said. "You just let them play next time. Jim was having fun," I said.

The next day a puppy came into the playground and we all played with it. It rolled on its back to make us tickle it, then it peed on the caretaker's bike and he chased it away. Tonia played with it most and when it came back to the playground, she threw sweets out of the window for it until Mrs Chandler said not to. We were painting, and Tonia did a lovely one with lots of colours, instead of the ones she usually does which are all dark. Mrs Chandler said it was very good, and you could tell she was really pleased. But she asked Tonia why the man was standing with his back to us, and Tonia blushed and said she couldn't paint faces very well, though she can when she ------------------------------------103 wants to. I painted a puppy eating a bone and Mrs Chandler liked that too.

When it was time to go home Tonia stayed behind to ask Mrs Chandler about painting faces, as if she didn't know how. We thought she wanted to walk along with Mrs Chandler, but instead she ran out of the school when everyone had gone and went down the underpa.s.s with the puppy. We saw her because I had to get some apples from the greengrocer's. That's a funny shop, because the boards have got all dirty with potatoes, and sometimes the ladies talk to people and forget we're there. So we were in there a long time and Tonia and the puppy hadn't come up. "Let's see what she's doing," June said. Just as we went down the ramp the puppy ran out with Tonia chasing it. She had a penknife. "I was only pretending. I wouldn't kill it really," she said. "You shouldn't have a knife at all," I said. Then she went off because we wouldn't help her find the puppy.

After tea Jim and the little girls were climbing on a lorry, so I had to tell them the man would shout when he came back. They all ran up the street and started shouting "Pop a cat a petal, pop a cat a petal." Little kids are funny sometimes. I asked them what it meant and one of the little girls said "That's what that girl said we had to say to the man on the wall." I told her not to play with Tonia, because Tonia could do things they shouldn't.

Next day I asked Mrs Chandler what it meant. She had to look it up, then she said it was a volcano in Mexico. At dinnertime I asked Tonia why she'd told the little girls to say it. Tonia went red and said it was her secret. "Then you shouldn't have told them. Anyway, it's only a volcano," June said, because she'd heard Mrs Chandler tell me. "No, it isn't," Tonia said. "It's his name. It's a G.o.d's name." "It's a volcano in Mexico," I said. "Lynn should know. She's the best reader, and she had a poem in the paper," June said. "I didn't see it," Tonia said. "Well, I did. It said Lynn," June said. "That could be anyone," Tonia said. "You're making it up." "No she isn't," June said. "She'll have you a fight." So we went behind the school and had a fight, and I won.

Tonia was crying and said she'd tell Mrs Chandler, but she didn't. She was quiet all afternoon, and she waited for us when we were going home. "I don't care if you did have a poem in the paper," she said. "I've seen something you haven't." "What is it?" I said. "If you meet me tonight I'll show you," she said. "Just you. She can't come." "June's my best friend. She's got to come too or I won't," I said. "All right, but you've got to promise not to tell anyone," Tonia said. "Wait till it's nearly dark and meet me at the end of my road."

So I had to say I was going to hear a record at June's, and she had to say she was coming to ours. We met Tonia at nine o'clock. She was very quiet and wouldn't say anything, just started walking and didn't look to see if we ------------------------------------104 were coming. Sometimes I don't like the dark, because the cars look like animals asleep, and everything seems bigger. It makes me feel like a little kid. We could see all the people in the houses watching TV with the lights out, and I wished I was back at home. Anyway, we followed Tonia, and she stopped at the top of the underpa.s.s.

"Oh, it's only that stupid thing on the wall," June said. "No, it isn't," Tonia said. "There's a real man down there if you look." "Well, I don't want to see him," June said. "What's so special about him?" I said. "He's a G.o.d," Tonia said. "He's not. He's just a man playing with his thing," June said. "He probably wouldn't want you to see him anyway," Tonia said. "I'm going down. You go home." "We'll come with you to make sure you're all right," I said, but really I was excited without knowing why.

We went down the ramp where n.o.body would see us and Tonia said we had to take our knickers off and say "Pop a cat a petal," only whisper it so people wouldn't hear us. "You're just like a little kid," June said. "I'm not taking my knickers off." "Well, pull your dress up then," Tonia said. "No, you do it first," I said. "I don't need to," Tonia said. "You've got to go first," I said. So she did, and we all started whispering "Pop a cat a petal," and when we were behind her we pulled our dresses down again. Then Tonia was in the underpa.s.s and we were still round the corner of the ramp. We dared each other to go first, then I said "Let's go in together."

So June pushed me in and I pulled her in, and we started saying "Pop a cat a petal" again, only we weren't saying it very well because we couldn't stop giggling. But then I got dizzy. All the lights in the underpa.s.s were flickering like a fire when it's going out, and the colours were swaying, and all the pa.s.sage was like it was glittering slowly, and Tonia was standing in the middle swaying as if she was dancing with the light. Then June screamed and I think I did, because I thought I saw a man.

It must have been our eyes, because the light was so funny. But we thought we saw a giant standing behind Tonia. He was covered with paint, and he was as tall as the roof. He hadn't any clothes on, so he couldn't have been there really, but it looked as if his spout was swaying like an elephant's trunk reaching up. But it must have been just the light, because he hadn't got a face, only paint, and he looked like those cut-out photographs they put in shop windows. Anyway, when we screamed Tonia looked round and saw we were nowhere near her. She looked as if she could have hit us. And when we looked again there wasn't any giant, only the man back on the wall.

"He wanted you," Tonia said. "You should have gone to him." "No thank you," June said. "And if we get into trouble at home I'll batter you." Then we ------------------------------------105 ran home, but they didn't ask me anything, because they'd heard my father had to be on strike again.

Next day Tonia wouldn't speak to us. We heard her telling someone else that she knew something they didn't, so we told them that she only wanted you to take your knickers down. Then she wanted to walk home with us. "He's angry because you ran away," she said. "He wanted a sacrifice." June wouldn't let her, but I said "You can walk on the other side of the road if you want, but we won't talk to you." So she did, and she was crying and I felt a bit mean, but June wouldn't let me go over.

Sat.u.r.day was horrible, because my parents had a row about the strike, and Jim started crying and they both shouted at him and had another row, and he was sick all down the stairs, so I cleaned it up. Then there wasn't any disinfectant, and my mother said my father never bought anything we needed, and he said I wasn't the maid to do all the dirty jobs. So I went upstairs and had a cry, then I played with Jim in our room, and it was just getting dark when I saw June coming down our road with her mother.

I thought they might have found out where we'd been last night, but it wasn't that. June's mother wanted her to stay with us, because her big sister had been attacked in the underpa.s.s and she didn't want June upset. So Jim slept with my parents and they had to be friends again, and June and I talked in bed until we fell asleep. June's big sister had just been walking through the underpa.s.s when a man grabbed her from behind. "Did he rape her?" I said. "He must have. Do you think it hurts?" June said. "It can't hurt much or people wouldn't do it," I said.

On Sunday June went home again, because her big sister had gone to hospital. I heard my parents talking about it when I was in the kitchen. "It's most peculiar," my mother said. "The doctor said she hadn't been touched." "I wouldn't have thought people needed to imagine that sort of thing these days at her age," my father said. I don't know what he meant.

On Monday Mrs Chandler said we weren't to go in the underpa.s.s again until she said. Tonia said we couldn't get hurt in the daytime, with the police station just up the road. But Mrs Chandler said she'd spank us herself if she heard we'd been down, and you could tell she wasn't joking.

At dinnertime there were policemen in the underpa.s.s. We went to the top to listen. The traffic was noisy, so we couldn't hear everything they said, but we heard one shout "Bring me an envelope. There's something caught on the drain." And another one said "Drugs, by the look of it." Then Tonia started coughing and we all had to run away before they caught us. I think she did it on purpose. ------------------------------------106 When I went home I had to go to the greengrocer's. So I pretended I was waiting for someone by the underpa.s.s, because I saw a policeman going down. He must have gone to tell the one who was watching, because I heard him say "You won't believe this. They weren't drugs at all. They were hearts." "Hearts?" said the other one. "Yes, of some kind of small animal," he said. "Two of them. I'm wondering how they tie in with those mice in the bin up there. They'd been mutilated, if you remember. But there ought to be two more hearts. They couldn't have gone down the drain because it's been clogged for weeks." "I'll tell you something else," the other one said. "I don't think that's red paint on this light." I didn't want to hear anymore, so I turned round to go, and I saw Tonia listening at the other end. Then she saw me and ran away.

So I know who took the mice out of the cla.s.sroom, and I think I know why she looked as if she'd been sick that night, but I don't want to speak to her to find out. I wish I could tell Mrs Chandler about it, but we promised not to tell about the underpa.s.s, and June would be terribly upset if she knew about the mice. Her big sister is home again now, but she won't go out at night, and she keeps s.h.i.+vering. I suppose Tonia might leave it alone now, because it's nearly the holidays. Only I heard her talking the other day in the playground. She might just have been boasting, because she looked all proud of herself, and she looked at the policeman at the top of the underpa.s.s as if she wished he'd go away, and she said "Pop a cat a petal did it to me too." ------------------------------------107

The Companion

When Stone reached the fairground, having been misdirected twice, he thought it looked more like a gigantic amus.e.m.e.nt arcade. A couple of paper cups tumbled and rattled on the sh.o.r.e beneath the promenade, and the cold insinuating October wind scooped the Mersey across the slabs of red rock that formed the beach, across the broken bottles and abandoned tyres. Beneath the stubby white mock turrets of the long fairground facade, the shops displayed souvenirs and fish and chips. Among them, in the fairground entrances, sc.r.a.ps of paper whirled. thought it looked more like a gigantic amus.e.m.e.nt arcade. A couple of paper cups tumbled and rattled on the sh.o.r.e beneath the promenade, and the cold insinuating October wind scooped the Mersey across the slabs of red rock that formed the beach, across the broken bottles and abandoned tyres. Beneath the stubby white mock turrets of the long fairground facade, the shops displayed souvenirs and fish and chips. Among them, in the fairground entrances, sc.r.a.ps of paper whirled.

Stone almost walked away. This wasn't his best holiday. One fairground in Wales had been closed, and this one certainly wasn't what he'd expected. The guidebook had made it sound like a genuine fairground, sideshows you must stride among not looking in case their barkers lured you in, the sudden shock of waterfalls cascading down what looked like painted cardboard, the shots and bells and wooden concussions of target galleries, the girls' shrieks overhead, the slippery armour and juicy crunch of toffee-apples, the illuminations springing alight against a darkening sky. But at least, he thought, he had chosen his time well. If he went in now he might have the fairground almost to himself.

As he reached an entrance, he saw his mother eating fish and chips from a paper tray. What nonsense! She would never have eaten standing up in public--"like a horse," as she'd used to say. But he watched as she hurried out of the shop, face averted from him and the wind. Of course, it had been the way she ate, with little s.n.a.t.c.hing motions of her fork and mouth. He pushed the incident to the side of his mind in the hope that it would fall away, and hurried through the entrance, into the clamour of colour and noise.

The high roof with its bare iron girders reminded him at once of a railway station, but the place was noisier still. The uproar--the echoing sirens and jets and dangerous groaning of metal--was trapped, and was deafening. It was so overwhelming that he had to remind himself he could see, even if he couldn't hear. ------------------------------------108 But there wasn't much to see. The machines looked faded and dusty. Cars like huge armchairs were lurching and spinning helplessly along a switchback, a canvas canopy was closing over an endless parade of seats, a great disc ta.s.selled with seats was lifting towards the roof, dangling a lone couple over its gears. With so few people in sight it seemed almost that the machines, frustrated by inaction, were operating themselves. For a moment Stone had the impression of being shut in a dusty room where the toys, as in childhood tales, had come to life.

He shrugged vaguely and turned to leave. Perhaps he could drive to the fairground at Southport, though it was a good few miles across the Mersey. His holiday was dwindling rapidly. He wondered how they were managing at the tax office in his absence. Slower as usual, no doubt.

Then he saw the roundabout. It was like a toy forgotten by another child and left here, or handed down the generations. Beneath its ornate scrolled canopy the horses rode on poles towards their reflections in a ring of mirrors. The horses were white wood or wood painted white, their bodies dappled with purple, red, and green, and some of their sketched faces too. On the hub, above a notice made in Amsterdam, an organ piped to itself. Around it Stone saw carved fish, mermen, zephyrs, a head and shoulders smoking a pipe in a frame, a landscape of hills and lake and unfurling perched hawk. "Oh yes," Stone said.

As he clambered onto the platform he felt a hint of embarra.s.sment, but n.o.body seemed to be watching. "Can you pay me," said the head in the frame. "My boy's gone for a minute."

The man's hair was the colour of the smoke from his pipe. His lips puckered on the stem and smiled. "It's a good roundabout," Stone said.

"You know about them, do you?"

"Well, a little." The man looked disappointed, and Stone hurried on. "I know a lot of fairgrounds. They're my holiday, you see, every year. Each year I cover a different area. I may write a book." The idea had occasionally tempted him--but he hadn't taken notes, and he still had ten years to retirement, for which the book had suggested itself as an activity.

"You go alone every year?"

"It has its merits. Less expensive, for one thing. Helps me save. Before I retire I mean to see Disneyland and Vienna." He thought of the Big Wheel, Harry Lime, the earth falling away beneath. "I'll get on," he said.

He patted the unyielding shoulders of the horse, and remembered a childhood friend who'd had a rocking horse in his bedroom. Stone had ridden it a few times, more and more wildly when it was nearly time to go home; his ------------------------------------109 friend's bedroom was brighter than his, and as he clung to the wooden shoulders he was clutching the friendly room too. Funny thinking of that now, he thought. Because I haven't been on a roundabout for years, I suppose.

The roundabout stirred; the horse lifted him, let him sink. As they moved forward, slowly gathering momentum, Stone saw a crowd surging through one of the entrances and spreading through the funfair. He grimaced: it had been his fairground for a little while, they needn't have arrived just as he was enjoying his roundabout.

The crowd swung away. A jangle of pinball machines sailed by. Amid the Dodgems a giant with a barrel body was spinning, flapping its limp arms, a red electric cigar thrust in its blank grin and throbbing in time with its slow thick laughter. A tinny voice read Bingo numbers, buzzing indistinctly. Perhaps it was because he hadn't eaten for a while, saving himself for the toffeeapples, but he was growing dizzy--it felt like the whirling blurred shot of the fair in Sat.u.r.day Night and Sunday Morning, Sat.u.r.day Night and Sunday Morning, a fair he hadn't liked because it was too grim. Give him a fair he hadn't liked because it was too grim. Give him Strangers on a Train, Some Came Running, The Third Man, Strangers on a Train, Some Came Running, The Third Man, even the fairground murder in even the fairground murder in Horrors of the Black Museum. Horrors of the Black Museum. He shook his head to try to control his pouring thoughts. He shook his head to try to control his pouring thoughts.

But the fair was spinning faster. The Ghost Train's station raced by, howling and screaming. People strolling past the roundabout looked jerky as drawings in a thaumatrope. Here came the Ghost Train once more, and Stone glimpsed the queue beneath the beckoning green corpse. They were staring at him. No, he realised next time round, they were staring at the roundabout. He was just something that kept appearing as they watched. At the end of the queue, staring and poking around inside his nostrils, stood Stone's father.

Stone gripped the horse's neck as he began to fall. The man was already wandering away towards the Dodgems. Why was his mind so traitorous today? It wouldn't be so bad if the comparisons it made weren't so repulsive. Why, he'd never met a man or woman to compare with his parents. Admired people, yes, but not in the same way. Not since the two polished boxes had been lowered into holes and hidden. Noise and colour spun about him and inside him. Why wasn't he allowing himself to think about his parents' death? He knew why he was blocking, and that should be his salvation: at the age of ten he'd suffered death and h.e.l.l every night.

He clung to the wood in the whirlpool and remembered. His father had denied him a nightlight and his mother had nodded, saying "Yes, I think it's time." He'd lain in bed, terrified to move in case he betrayed his presence to the darkness, mouthing "Please G.o.d don't let it" over and over. He lay so that he could see the faint grey vertical line of the window between the curtains ------------------------------------110 in the far distance, but even that light seemed to be receding. He knew that death and h.e.l.l would be like this. Sometimes, as he began to blur with sleep and the room grew larger and the shapes dark against the darkness awoke, he couldn't tell that he hadn't already died.

He sat back as the horse slowed and he began to slip forward across its neck. What then? Eventually he'd seen through the self-perpetuating trap of religious guilt, of h.e.l.l, of not daring not to believe in it because then it would get you. For a while he'd been vaguely uneasy in dark places, but not sufficiently so to track down the feeling and conquer it. After a while it had dissipated, along with his parents' overt disapproval of his atheism. Yes, he thought as his memories and the roundabout slowed, I was happiest then, lying in bed hearing and feeling them and the house around me. Then, when he was thirty, a telephone call had summoned him to the hole in the road, to the sight of the car like a dead black beetle protruding from the hole. There had been a moment of sheer vertiginous terror, and then it was over. His parents had gone into darkness. That was enough. It was the one almost religious observance he imposed on himself: think no more.

And there was no reason to do so now. He staggered away from the roundabout, towards the pinball arcade that occupied most of one side of the funfair. He remembered how, when he lay mouthing soundless pleas in bed, he would sometimes stop and think of what he'd read about dreams: that they might last for hours but in reality occupied only a split second. Was the same true of thoughts? And prayers, when you had nothing but darkness by which to tell the time? Besides defending him, his prayers were counting off the moments before dawn. Perhaps he had used up only a minute, only a second of darkness. Death and h.e.l.l--what strange ideas I used to have, he thought. Especially for a ten-year-old. I wonder where they went. Away with short trousers and pimples and everything else I grew out of, of course.

Three boys of about twelve were crowded around a pinball machine. As they moved apart momentarily he saw that they were trying to start it with a coin on a piece of wire. He took a stride towards them and opened his mouth--but suppose they turned on him? If they set about him, pulled him down and kicked him, his shouts would never be heard for the uproar.

There was no sign of an attendant. Stone hurried back to the roundabout, where several little girls were mounting horses. "Those boys are up to no good," he complained to the man in the frame.

"You! Yes, you! I've seen you before. Don't let me see you again," the man shouted. They dispersed, swaggering. ------------------------------------111 "Things didn't use to be like this," Stone said, breathing hard with relief. "I suppose your roundabout is all that's left of the old fairground."

"The old one? No, this didn't come from there."

"I thought the old one must have been taken over."

"No, it's still there, what's left of it," the man said. "I don't know what you'd find there now. Through that exit is the quickest way. You'll come to the side entrance in five minutes, if it's still open."

The moon had risen. It glided along the rooftops as Stone emerged from the back of the funfair and hurried along the terraced street. Its light lingered on the tips of chimneys and the peaks of roofs. Inside the houses, above slivers of earth or stone that pa.s.sed for front gardens, Stone saw faces silvered by television.

At the end of the terrace, beyond a wider road, he saw an identical street paralleled by an alley. Just keep going. The moon cleared the roofs as he crossed the intersection, and left a whitish patch on his vision. He was trying to blink it away as he reached the street, and so he wasn't certain if he glimpsed a group of boys emerging from the street he'd just left and running into the alley.

Anxiety hurried him onward while he wondered if he should turn back. His car was on the promenade; he could reach it in five minutes. They must be the boys he had seen in the pinball arcade, out for revenge. Quite possibly they had knives or broken bottles; no doubt they knew how to use them from the television. His heels clacked in the silence. Dark exits from the alley gaped between the houses. He tried to set his feet down gently as he ran. The boys were making no sound at all, at least none that reached him. If they managed to overbalance him they could smash his bones while he struggled to rise. At his age that could be worse than dangerous. Another exit lurked between the houses, which looked threatening in their weight and impa.s.sivity. He must stay on his feet whatever happened. If the boys got hold of his arms he could only shout for help. The houses fell back as the street curved, their opposite numbers loomed closer. In front of him, beyond a wall of corrugated tin, lay the old fairground.

He halted panting, trying to quell his breath before it blotted out any sounds in the alley. Where he had hoped to find a well-lit road to the promenade, both sides of the street ended as if lopped, and the way was blocked by the wall of tin. In the middle, however, the tin had been prised back like a lid, and a jagged entrance yawned among the sharp shadows and moonlit inscriptions. The fairground was closed and deserted.

As he realised that the last exit was back beyond the curve of the street, ------------------------------------112 Stone stepped through the gap in the tin. He stared down the street, which was empty but for scattered fragments of brick and gla.s.s. It occurred to him that they might not have been the same boys after all. He pulled the tin to behind him and looked around.

The circular booths, the long target galleries, the low roller coaster, the ark and the crazy house, draped shadow over each other and merged with the dimness of the paths between. Even the roundabout was hooded by darkness hanging from its canopy. Such wood as he could see in the moonlight looked ragged, the paint patchy. But between the silent machines and stalls one ride was faintly illuminated: the Ghost Train.

He walked towards it. Its front was emitting a pale green glow which at first sight looked like moonlight, but which was brighter than the white tinge the moon imparted to the adjoining rides. Stone could see one car on the rails, close to the entrance to the ride. As he approached, he glimpsed from the corner of his eye a group of men, stallholders presumably, talking and gesticulating in the shadows between two stalls. So the fairground wasn't entirely deserted. They might be about to close, but perhaps they would allow him one ride, seeing that the Ghost Train was still lit. He hoped they hadn't seen him using the vandals' entrance.

As he reached the ride and realised that the glow came from a coat of luminous paint, liberally applied but now rather dull and threadbare, he heard a loud clang from the tin wall. It might have been someone throwing a brick, or someone reopening the torn door; the stalls obstructed his view. He glanced quickly about for another exit, but found none. He might run into a dead end. It was best to stay where he was. He couldn't trust the stallholders; they might live nearby, they might know the boys or even be their parents. As a child he'd once run to someone who had proved to be his attacker's unhelpful father. He climbed into the Ghost Train car.

Nothing happened. n.o.body was attending the ride. Stone strained his ears. Neither the boys, if they were there, nor the attendant seemed to be approaching. If he called out the boys would hear him. Instead, frustrated and furious, he began to kick the metal inside the nose of the car.

Immediately the car trundled forward over the lip of an incline in the track and plunged through the Ghost Train doors into darkness.

As he swung round an unseen clattering curve, surrounded by noise and the dark, Stone felt as if he had suddenly become the victim of delirium. He remembered his storm-racked childhood bed and the teeming darkness pouring into him. Why on earth had he come on this ride? He'd never liked the ghost trains as a child, and as he grew up he had instinctively avoided ------------------------------------113 them. He'd allowed his panic to trap him. The boys might be waiting when he emerged. Well, in that case he would appeal to whoever was operating the ride. He sat back, gripping the wooden seat beneath him with both hands, and gave himself up to the straining of metal, the abrupt swoops of the car, and the darkness.

Then, as his anxiety about the outcome of the ride diminished, another impression began to trickle back. As the car had swung around the first curve he'd glimpsed an illuminated shape, two illuminated shapes, withdrawn so swiftly that he'd had no time to glance up at them. He had the impression that they had been the faces of a man and a woman, gazing down at him. At once they had vanished into the darkness or been swept away by it. It seemed to him for some reason very important to remember their expressions.

Before he could pursue this, he saw a greyish glow ahead of him. He felt an unreasoning hope that it would be a window, which might give him an idea of the extent of the darkness. But already he could see that its shape was too irregular. A little closer and he could make it out. It was a large stuffed grey rabbit with huge gla.s.s or plastic eyes, squatting upright in an alcove with its front paws extended before it. Not a dead rabbit, of course: a toy. Beneath him the car was clattering and shaking, yet he had the odd notion that this was a deliberate effect, that in fact the car had halted and the rabbit was approaching or growing. Rubbish, he thought. It was a pretty feeble ghost, anyway. Childish. His hands pulled at splinters on the wooden seat beneath him. The rabbit rushed towards him as the track descended a slight slope. One of its eyes was loose, and whitish stuffing hung down its cheek from the hole. The rabbit was at least four feet tall. As the car almost collided with it before whipping away around a curve, the rabbit toppled towards him and the light which illuminated it went out.

Stone gasped and clutched his chest. He'd twisted round to look behind him at the darkness where he judged the rabbit to have been, until a spasm wrenched him frontwards again. Light tickling drifted over his face. He shuddered, then relaxed. Of course they always had threads hanging down for cobwebs, his friends had told him that. But no wonder the fairground was deserted, if this was the best they could do. Giant toys lit up, indeed. Not only cheap but liable to give children nightmares.

The car coursed up a slight incline and down again before shaking itself in a frenzy around several curves. Trying to soften you up before the next shock, Stone thought. Not me, thank you very much. He lay back in his seat and sighed loudly with boredom. The sound hung on his ears like m.u.f.fs. Why did I do that? he wondered. It's not as if the operator can hear me. Then who can? ------------------------------------114 Having spent its energy on the curves, the car was slowing. Stone peered ahead, trying to antic.i.p.ate. Obviously he was meant to relax before the car startled him with a sudden jerk. As he peered, he found his eyes were adjusting to the darkness. At least he could make out a few feet ahead, at the side of the track, a squat and bulky grey shape. He squinted as the car coasted towards it. It was a large armchair.

The car came abreast of it and halted. Stone peered at the chair. In the dim hectic flecked light, which seemed to attract and outline all the restless discs on his eyes, the chair somehow looked larger than he. Perhaps it was further away than he'd thought. Some clothes thrown over the back of the chair looked diminished by it, but they could be a child's clothes. If nothing else, Stone thought, it's instructive to watch my mind working. Now let's get on.

Then he noticed that the almost invisible light was flickering. Either that, which was possible although he couldn't determine the source of the light, or the clothes were s.h.i.+fting; very gradually but nonetheless definitely, as if something hidden by them were lifting them to peer out, perhaps preparatory to emerging. Stone leaned towards the chair. Let's see what it is, let's get it over with. But the light was far too dim, the chair too distant. Probably he would be unable to see it even when it emerged, the way the light had been allowed to run down, unless he left the car and went closer.

He had one hand on the side of the car when he realised that if the car moved off while he was out of it he would be left to grope his way through the darkness. He slumped back, and as he did so he glimpsed a violent movement among the clothes near the seat of the chair. He glanced towards it. Before his eyes could focus, the dim grey light was extinguished.

Stone sat for a moment, all of him concentrating on the silence, the blind darkness. Then he began to kick frantically at the nose of the car. The car shook a little with his attack, but stayed where it was. By the time it decided to move foward, the pressure of his blood seemed to be turning the darkness red.

When the car nosed its way around the next curve, slowing as if sniffing the track ahead, Stone heard a mute thud and creak of wood above the noise of the wheels. It came from in front of him. The sort of thing you hear in a house at night, he thought. Soon be out now.

Without warning a face came rus.h.i.+ng towards him out of the darkness a few feet ahead. It jerked forward as he did. Of course it would, he thought with a grimace, sinking back and watching his face sink briefly into the mirror. Now he could see that he and the car were surrounded by a faint light which extended as far as the wooden frame of the mirror. Must be the ------------------------------------115 end of the ride. They can't get any more obvious than that. Effective in its way, I suppose.

He watched himself in the mirror as the car followed the curve past. His silhouette loomed on the greyish light, which had fallen behind. Suddenly he frowned. His silhouette was moving independent of the movement of the car. It was beginning to swing out of the limits of the mirror. Then he remembered the wardrobe that had stood at the foot of his childhood bed, and realised what was happening. The mirror was set in a door, which was opening.

Stone pressed himself against the opposite side of the car, which had slowed almost to a halt. No, no, he thought, it mustn't. Don't. He heard a grinding of gears behind him; unmeshed metal shrieked. He threw his body forward, against the nose of the car. In the darkness to his left he heard the creak of the door and a soft thud. The car moved a little, then caught the gears and ground forward.

As the light went out behind him, Stone felt a weight fall beside him on the seat.