chapter TWENTY
SHE KNEW THAT she was dreaming, even though she was asleep, so when she woke up she was at first puzzled by her surroundings. The room was dim, with just a desk lamp to light it, and instead of trees and moonlight glinting between dried leaves, there were solid walls, a desk – upon which she’d been sleeping, with her head resting on her hands – and a variety of medical apparatus.
“Wha...?” She could barely speak. Her mind was fogged. She didn’t even know what day it was, let along what time. She could see the night sky through the tiny basement window.
“Wanda,” she said, remembering her name. Miss Wandaful, said a soft voice inside her head. She smiled, rubbed her short hair with her hand, then reached around and scratched the back of her neck.
She’d been working late, as usual. These days there was little to go home for, and the police station offered a solace that her tiny one-bedroom flat no longer seemed to supply. Not since Katherine had moved out, anyway.
She closed her eyes. Thought about Katherine’s naked body; her smile; her dark, shining eyes; the way she’d loved to sleep with the covers pulled up over her head.
She missed having Katherine around. The truth was, she missed having anyone around. Before Katherine had arrived on the scene, Wanda had grown accustomed to being alone. She’d stopped being lonely and learned to enjoy her own company. Then Katherine had moved into the flat, hitting her life like a storm, and everything changed. She was still – even now, eight months after the relationship had ended – waiting for things to return to normal.
Then again, if DS Craig Royle decided to step up and take Katherine’s place, she wouldn’t need anything to go back to normal. They could go ahead and change again, and she’d be happy to wake up with him every morning instead.
It had been Royle she’d dreamt about. They’d been standing at the centre of a grove of oak trees, moonlight dappling their naked bodies. His erection had prodded her in the thigh and she’d reached out for it, grasping him. He’d either hissed or taken a sharp intake of breath, and his cock had pulsed gently in her palm, thickening.
Then she’d woken up, head down on her desk, the lamplight making her wince when she opened her eyes.
She stood and stretched, feeling the tiredness thread through her muscles. She carried out a few calf and hamstring stretches, the ones she used to cool down after a long run. Then she reached behind her head, grasping for the centre of her back, one hand after the other. Muscles relaxed, she turned to look for her bag. She didn’t really have a spot where it belonged, so she tended to drop it in a different place every day. This meant that each time she left the lab, she went though the same performance of trying to find the damn thing.
“Where the hell are you...?” She peered under the desk, along the work benches, on the floor by the sink, but the rucksack wasn’t there. She’d jogged into work this morning and forgotten to leave her gear out to air. She remembered bunching up her lycra leggings and T-shirt and shoving them into the bag, with the intention of taking them back out later, when she got the chance.
“Christ, my f*cking memory!” Frustrated, she stalked around the office, trying to locate the bag. Because of the distraction, it took her a little time to realise that there was something different about the room.
She stopped and stared at the gurney. It was empty.
“No way,” she said, turning to inspect the rest of the room. There were too many dark corners. She wished she’d switched on the main lights, but now she was clear across the other side of the room, far away from the switch. Reaching the lights would involve walking across the floor, in full view of whatever was hiding in there with her.
“Don’t be stupid. There’s nothing here.”
Her words were answered by a short, sharp tapping sound, like the tip of a broomstick hitting the tiled floor.
“F*ck.”
The sound came again, and this time she could make out where it was coming from. Behind her.
Slowly, she turned around. The lamp seemed to dim, but she knew it was just her mind creating the effect. There was nothing wrong with the lamp; the bulb was new, she’d changed it herself a couple of weeks ago. Fear was causing the illusion of increased dimness. It wasn’t real.
This time the tapping sound went on for a couple of seconds – tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap – and she was reminded of the sound Long John Silver’s wooden leg had made on the ship’s deck in an audio version of Treasure Island she’d listened to as a kid. She used to love that tape. It was scary and exciting at the same time. But this situation, right now, was simply scary.
“Who’s there?” The answer was another rapid succession of tapping sounds on the floor.
Wanda began to back away. She held out her hands in front of her, warding off whatever might come tap-tapping out of the shadows. The sound followed her, advancing towards her across the room, and soon she began to make out the form of her pursuer.
The scarecrow was hopping along on the tip of its wooden stake, moving in short, quick jerking motions. Its upper body twitched forward with each separate hopping motion, the hat wobbling but not falling from the wooden head. The black and white photo of little Connie Millstone was stuck firmly back in place, her drawn-on eyes staring out from the flattened sheet.
Wanda continued to move away from the scarecrow, raising her hands, opening her fingers, trying to ward off what was becoming increasingly inevitable. Where was her bag? Her phone was in there... she glanced over at the desk, where the landline was located. Too far away; she’d never make it, even if she ran. She might reach the phone, but there wouldn’t be enough time to actually make a call and get someone down here to help.
She looked back at the advancing figure. It was cloaked in shadow, as if the light from the lamp was insufficient to burn away the clinging darkness. It had brought that darkness with it from wherever it had come from.
She started looking for a weapon – anything with which she could defend herself. She grabbed a Bunsen burner, and then threw it to the floor. Her grasping hand caught hold of a rack of test tubes and she threw them at the hopping nightmare, but it just flung out its arm and batted them away. The sound of breaking glass was tiny, inconsequential. She was too deep inside the building for anyone to hear. It was pointless even screaming.
The door was miles away, on the other side of the room, with the light switch on the wall nearby. She’d been moving in the wrong direction. The scarecrow knew exactly what it was doing, herding her into a corner like a trapped rat. When she felt the work bench pressing against the small of her back, she almost fell to the floor in defeat. This was it: there was nowhere left to run. She had come up against the wall at the other side of her life, and now it was all over.
She thought again of Katherine’s face, and she smiled. Then she thought about how she’d never get the chance to tell Craig Royle how she felt about him. But that was probably a good thing. He wanted to get back with his wife. The last thing he needed was another complication, some lonely woman claiming that she was in love with him.
But she was, wasn’t she? She hadn’t been in love with Katherine – that had been a combination of lust and availability. Or was that all love really was, anyway?
She’d never know.
It was too late. It was all too late to matter...
The scarecrow’s wooden support scraped on the tiled floor, making a squeaking noise that broke up the horrible tap-tap-tapping.
Wanda was only aware that she was crying because she felt the moisture on her cheeks. She wiped it away with one hand, puzzled. She’d never been a particularly emotional woman, so it seemed odd that she should weep at the prospect of her own demise.
She reached behind her, trying to find something on the work bench that might help. A sharp blade sliced her fingers, and she closed them around the scalpel. She brought round her arm and brandished the tiny blade, almost driven to laughter because of how pathetic it looked in the face of the hopping figure.
The scarecrow halted a foot in front of her. It was immobile, as if it had never moved at all. The photograph rippled. But there was no breeze, no wind to cause the fluttering motion.
Wanda looked back at the blade, and then at her wrist. No, that would be too slow. And she didn’t have the will power to cut her own throat.
“Come and get me, then, f*cker.” She waved the scalpel slowly in the air, tracing a pattern that she hoped would act as a magic charm. “Come on.” She was whispering now. Nobody could hear anyway, so why waste her breath on loud threats or screams? Better to saveit for the fight to come.
The scarecrow began to silently shake, as if it were rapidly shrugging its shoulders. It took a second for Wanda to realise that the damned thing was laughing at her.
there monks down the stairs like in that filum i saw. they singin. hear them now wen I rite this. like prayering on a sunday school. i want my mummy and daddy. daisy like a flower not hear. she gon somewr els an I don now were. want sing to stop. scared. don wan go down the stairs. mite get me. mite kill me. clickey comin now. i hear him comin. clickety-clickety-click. mummy. mummy. daddy. i scared mummy. but mummy sing aswel. i can hear her sings louder than the rest of the sings. my i scared mummy.
mummy i scared of mummy.
of mummy and daddy.
– From the diary of Jack Pollack, April 1974
PART FOUR
Growth
“Armed sieges, hostage situations... flavour of the f*cking month.”
– Detective Superintendent Sillitoe