Sciron Read online

  “It’ll just be kids. Let me take a look.” He pulled himself out of the chair and went to the window. “Must’ve gone. I can’t see anyone.”

  “But I saw the torch! I’ve never seen anyone up there before.”

  “Like I said, it’ll just be kids mucking about. Close the curtains and come and sit down.”

  “Josh saw somebody over there earlier. Said it was a man, not kids.”

  “Anyone over the age of ten is a man to him, Katie. Are you getting those funny feelings of yours again?”

  “If you must ask, yes, I am” said Katie, taking one last look out of the window before returning to the sofa and curling up next to Steve.

  ***

  On the opposite side of the Pennines, Mike Simpson was engaged in his eighth gun battle of the evening. At twenty-four years of age, he was a month or so younger than Katie Melling, but unlike her was unattached and lived at home in the Acomb area of York with his mother. Tall, with stooped shoulders covered in lank blonde hair, his face was scarred by the acne that still pock-marked his face. His mother despaired of him: she was sure that he should be out meeting girls instead of spending every evening in his room playing games. From his schooldays, Mike had always struggled with the opposite sex. The girls that were the object of his unrequited passion were never interested in him, preferring instead the boys with the right clothes, the right hair and the right line in chat. Many of those girls were now pushing prams or taking their children to the same school that he had attended, whilst Mike’s few sexual encounters had been disappointing and short.

  Never having had a clear ambition in life, Mike had delighted his mother when, coming home from yet another course at the College of Further Education, he had announced that he had landed a job as a barrister. Her happiness had been short-lived: far from the high-powered career that she envisaged, it transpired that the position was not with a legal firm, but the city centre branch of a chain of coffee houses. He would not be defending the innocent or prosecuting the guilty, as a barista he would be serving them equally with espresso or latte.

  Having acquired gainful employment, Mike had set about creating his own world. His first purchase had been a computer and a broadband connection to service it. That had led to his virtual incarceration in his bedroom every night as he tried first pornography, which he found unfulfilling and repetitive, than internet chatrooms. What had put the seal on his social life, however, was the advent of internet gaming via the Xbox 360. Now, whenever his shift was finished, he ceased to be plain Mike Simpson, and became instead “stealth_fighter”, a virtual hero in cyberspace, where he was judged not by his sexual prowess, but by the number of headshots that he could achieve against his online enemies.

  The long hours spent sat in a darkened room were beginning to impinge on his daytime activities. In quiet periods during the routine of the coffee house, he found himself daydreaming, re-enacting the battles of the previous night using the customers that he served as enemies, or saving them from imaginary terrorists with a single well-aimed shot. His lack of application to his real duties was becoming more apparent to his co-workers, and he had been warned by the manager more than once about his lassitude.

  Tonight, though, none of that mattered. He had just shot the fifteenth opponent in the ten-minute contest without suffering a virtual death himself. As he was lining up on his next victim, his senses were assaulted by the sudden manifestation of an overpowering smell of dampness, accompanied by a feeling of intense hatred, palpable but seemingly not directed at himself. Freezing momentarily, he was sufficiently distracted not to notice that not only had his intended victim escaped, but had managed to shoot him instead. Fleetingly, Mike sensed a movement behind him. Snapping his head around, eyes wide with apprehension, he was relieved to see nothing except his bed. A moment later, the room had returned to normal; the smell, the feeling having disappeared as quickly as they came. Mike returned to his game but, now distracted, he was easy meat for his opponents and so logged off and gave up at the relatively early hour of eleven thirty.

  ***

  Later that night, Katie awoke. Blearily she struggled to focus on the clock. Its pale green glow told her that it was half past three, while the sound of Joshua’s voice made her comprehend why she had woken up. With Steve sound asleep, and not snoring for once, she swung her legs out of the bed and padded softly to her son’s bedroom. She paused at the door and listened. It sounded like Joshua was talking to somebody; at least as much as a toddler can hold a conversation.

  She gently pushed the door open. Joshua was stood up in his cot facing away from her.

  “Who are you talking to, Joshie?” she asked. The little boy turned to face her, startled at the sound of her voice. The momentary fright made him start to cry, and Katie plucked him from his bed and held him to her.

  “Now then, it’s only me. No need to cry.” Her voice quickly soothed him. “Who were you talking to?” she asked again.

  “Man” replied Joshua.

  An uneasy feeling washed over Katie. “There’s no man here. Daddy’s in bed, asleep.”

  Joshua looked toward the corner of his bedroom opposite the door.

  “Man gone” he said, cuddled up to his mother, and quickly fell asleep. Katie gently placed him in his cot and returned to her bedroom. She toyed with the idea of waking Steve, but, knowing how uncommunicative he could be when woken in the small hours, elected instead to speak to him over breakfast. She lay awake for another hour, trying to rationalise her deep disquiet. Her discomfiture was not helped by her unborn child, who chose that moment to kick and writhe within her extended abdomen. The attempt at making sense of her fears was fruitless, and she knew that her husband was unlikely to understand.

  Tuesday

  As she expected, Steve was dismissive of Katie’s worries. Looking into her hazel eyes, he gently cradled her cheek in his rough, calloused hand.

  “There was no man, love. He was probably still dreaming, or sleepwalking, or something. Now, I’ll be late if I don’t get going.” He pulled on the dirty fleece that served as a work coat and grabbed his keys from the hook beside the door. Pausing in the doorway, he turned to her and smiled. “You’ll be fine. Say hello to the battleaxe for me.”

  Katie returned his smile, but without enthusiasm. She knew that he was right, of course. There was no man, was there? Whilst nobody had ever called him a genius, Steve was the rational one, the practical one, who worked every hour possible to pay the rent on the flat and the other bills that seemed to get bigger almost every month. She smiled again to herself, this time a genuine expression of contentment, and went to dress their little boy.

  Outside, in the spring sunshine, Steve’s progress along the narrow pavement was blocked by a straight-backed, grey-haired man in his mid-sixties who was staring up at the embankment opposite their flat. He seemed quite unaware of Steve’s presence. Jack followed the man’s gaze but saw nothing out of the ordinary.

  “Excuse me, chief” said Jack, using his habitual term for a stranger.

  The man started out of his reverie. “Sorry,” he said, and stepped to one side. Steve smiled his thanks and headed toward his day’s labours.

  Half an hour later, Katie struggled down the stairs with Joshua’s buggy, Joshua himself following behind with the one-step-at-a-time gait of a child carefully descending. As Katie opened the front door of the building, he ran outside, straight into the legs of the man that had unintentionally obstructed his father. The man stumbled backwards, lost his footing on the kerb and fell into the road, twisting and striking his forehead on the tarmac. He lay still for a moment, and Katie feared that he had been knocked unconscious. Joshua stood, his blue eyes like saucers, until his mother caught up with him. He clung to her leg as the man stirred and groggily got to his feet. He looked at Katie, who saw a trickle of blood run down the man’s face and drip off the end of his nose.

  “I’m terribly sorry!” gasped Katie. “Are you all right?”

  “I...th
ink so,” said the man as he hesitantly regained the footpath. “I may need to sit down for a few minutes, though.”

  “Please, come inside” said Katie. It’s a couple of flights of stairs, but at least I can clean up that cut.”

  “Thank you. You are most kind. But aren’t you going somewhere?”

  “Only shopping. It can wait.”

  The three of them slowly made their way back up the stairs, pausing frequently. Entering the flat, Joshua headed for his toys whilst the exhausted Katie and the unsteady man went into the kitchen. As she tended his wound, Katie apologised once more for her son’s impetuosity.

  “No need,” said the man. “I should introduce myself. My name’s Jack. Jack Rimmer. Here.” He handed over a business card.

  Katie completed the introductions. “I’ve not seen you around before, have I?”

  “Probably not,” replied Jack. “But I am from around here originally.” He went on to explain that he had been born nearby, had grown up and gone to school all in that locality. On leaving school, however, he had joined the army and returned only occasionally to visit his mother. Since her funeral, some thirty-two years earlier, he had not been back. He had retired from the army after the first Gulf War, at the age of fifty, and had made his living since writing history books for specialist publishing houses.

  “You came to visit your mother, what about your father?” inquired Katie.

  “That’s why I’m here,” said Jack. “Mother told me that he died before I was born, and I know very little about him. It’s a sort of voyage of discovery, if you like, set off by finding a few documents in an old biscuit tin from my mother’s house. What I do know is that he worked on the railway that used to pass through here.”

  “What railway?” Katie had no idea what the stone wall across the road was.

  “Didn’t you know? That wall opposite is one half of the bridge that carried the railway. Your flat was built where another embankment used to be. You can see the continuation of it opposite the fire station. You know, next to the church. It’s a footpath now. I only have one photo of my father. Would you like to see it?” Katie nodded.

  He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a slightly crumpled black and white photograph of a bride and groom and showed it to Katie. Joshua wandered over and looked at the photograph. Smiling up at Katie, he pointed at the bridegroom.

  “Man!”

  ***

  Jack Rimmer sat in the uncomfortable armchair that filled far too much of the space in his hotel room, deep in thought. As an historian, he was used to puzzles, fitting together the pieces of somebody’s life or a long-forgotten battle. This was different, personal. His objectivity, essential to producing a balanced history book, might be sorely tested.

  Unable to get comfortable in the chair, Jack left the efficient but soulless motel and headed for the pub next door. Installing himself at a corner table with a large glass of house red, he surveyed the sparse Tuesday night clientele. Concluding that he was unlikely to be disturbed, he allowed his thoughts to return to the scarcity of information in his possession. It had been a chance discovery, an old Peak Frean’s biscuit tin tucked away in his attic, covered in dust and the droppings of a long-dead bird that had found itself trapped beneath Jack’s roof. It had evidently formed his father’s filing system: it contained, among the assorted trivia, a collection of payslips and the letter appointing him to his last position as signalman at Penwortham Junction signal box.

  Jack pondered his next move. He had already ordered his father’s birth certificate and it was probably sat on the hall carpet at his house in a suburb of Ashford. For some reason, he had been unable to find any reference to his father’s death certificate, which was unusual to say the least. The purpose of his visit to Preston had been to trawl the local archives, but, apart from some old maps and some history of the West Lancashire railway, his efforts had been frustrated. He had to return home soon, since his modest success as an author did not allow for extended stays in hotels, and he wanted to dig deeper into the mystery of the elder Jack’s demise. A phone call to the National Railway Museum in York had determined that their library was closed for refurbishment, so there was little point in crossing the Pennines for background information. Jack drained his glass and returned to his room to pack.

  ***

  There was a fault at the local telephone exchange, meaning that Mike’s broadband connection was down. Unable to bring himself to leave the sanctuary of his bedroom, he decided instead to reacquaint himself with his music collection. Lying on his bed, the shape of his head distorted by the bulky headphones that he wore to avoid his mother’s wrath, Mike was listening to a live album by Eric Clapton. The lights were off, and the music sufficiently loud that the rest of the world was blocked out. Mike’s eyes were closed; mental images of himself standing on the stage of the Albert Hall, a cherry red Gibson ES335 in hand, played across his mind as once again he replaced reality with fantasy. He barely noticed the growing odour of salt water, the virtual clamminess in the atmosphere or the emerging sense of loathing that permeated his surroundings: he was concentrating on his imaginary audience, another riff from his air guitar bringing them to their feet in a fantasy frenzy of adulation. Nor did he, at first, register the multiple voices that infested the lyrics.

  “In the white room...”

  You must help us

  “...with black curtains...”

  The time is near

  “...by the station.”

  He must come

  “Black-roof country...”

  We will be avenged

  “...no gold pavements...”

  He killed us

  “...tired starlings.”

  BRING HIM TO US!

  The last sentence finally penetrated Mike’s consciousness. His unreal audience had been replaced with a fleeting vision of a group of men, all dripping water and staring at him. He sat bolt upright, sweat bursting from his brow and a sense of panic gripping him. His mother burst into the room, ran to the bed and shook him by his shoulders. Mike suddenly realised that he had been shouting out loud and looked pleadingly into his mother’s eyes. She, in turn, removed his headphones and sat next to him, her arm around him.

  “What’s the matter, love?” she managed to keep the concern in her voice to a minimum.

  “I...I don’t know. Th..th..there was a group of men...they were talking to me.”

  “There’s nobody here. You must have been dreaming. You really shouldn’t spend all this time up here on your own, it’s not good for you.”

  “But Mum, I wasn’t asleep...at least, I don’t think I was...no. I can’t have been. The voices were mixed in with the music.”

  “They would be, if the music was still on when you were asleep. Come on, come downstairs and have a drink. It was just a dream, and you’ll be fine in a moment.” She managed to keep the note of triumph out of her voice: her nagging that he spent too much time alone was finally vindicated.

  Mike acquiesced, and gingerly followed her down the stairs, still reeling at his experience. If only he could remember what was said...

  Wednesday

  Katie was dozing. The leaden sky, and the unseasonably heavy downpour that emanated from it, combined with the trees opposite to cast a deep gloom over the living room. Wednesday was her day off; her Steve was working and little Joshua was having his afternoon nap. After an hour’s ironing, she had curled up on the sofa with her head languishing on the arm and her long hair cascading into an auburn waterfall. The rhythmic pulsing of the rain on the window had an almost hypnotic cadence, causing her mind to meander through that trance-like state where the boundaries between dream and reality blur and intertwine. A dejected whisper, barely audible, seemed to penetrate her consciousness.

  Dorothy....I’m lost, Dorothy...help me....

  Katie was dimly aware of a figure standing over her. She sensed a deep sadness.

  Dorothy...I can’t find my way home...where are you, my love...the
baby...

  At that, Katie’s eyes snapped open. She was alone in the room, but a visceral melancholia remained. In her post-waking confusion, she battled against a rising fear with the conviction that the recent occurrences had manifested themselves as a dream. Dazedly rising to her feet, guided by her maternal instinct, she checked on her still-slumbering boy. Having satisfied herself that all was well, she turned to make for the kitchen and shrieked with fright at the figure of a man stood in front of her.

  “Jesus, Steve! You frightened the life out of me!” Her husband grinned and threw his arms around her.

  “What’s up, love? Aren’t you pleased to see me?”

  “I just didn’t hear you come in, that’s all. You’re early?” She returned his hug, half turning as her baby kicked within her.

  “It’s raining too hard. We can’t get anything done. How about a brew?”