The Stone House Page 12

  ‘I’ve seen your nightmares,’ I tell her, shy again. ‘I’ve seen your mum appear, and your dad die.’

  ‘And what about yours,’ she says, now that I have set foot upon the path. ‘Which ones are your nightmares?’

  ‘War and bombs and shouts in the night; falling houses and people crying; running in the cold; a man walking in a corridor; a dinghy in the sea and not being able to reach it . . .’ I trail off.

  Tanya takes my hand. ‘And you’ve been living in the middle of them since you got here?’

  ‘I’ve been living in the middle of them since I left Syria.’

  ‘When was that?’ Tanya asks.

  ‘My father left last year and we followed a while after, when our house was destroyed.’

  ‘You said “we”,’ Tanya says. ‘Do you mean your family?’

  ‘I left with my sister and mum. Then, after my mother died, it was just Yana, and me,’ I reply.

  ‘What happened to Yana?’ Tanya asks, in such a gentle, caring voice that I can’t answer for a moment.

  ‘It’s my fault,’ I say, only just getting it out.

  ‘I’m sure that’s not true,’ Tanya says, in just the way that Yana would.

  ‘No, it is. I gave the last of our money to a couple who said they’d get us across the Channel. It cost more, so I agreed to work for them afterwards. They seemed kind, then. They smuggled us into the back of a lorry: twenty of us packed into a refrigerator unit, like dates squished into a packet. Only an inch of space above our heads, hardly any room to move. There was a girl next to me who smiled but we’d been told not to talk. We thought it was so that we couldn’t be heard when passing through immigration. I think they didn’t want us panicking before we’d got in.’

  ‘Oh God,’ Tanya says. Her hand goes to her mouth. ‘The air.’

  I nod. ‘The first half hour was okay, but then it began to run out. Yana started gulping at the air. The girl next to me helped me hold Yana up near the ceiling of the container but her eyes kept closing. I slapped her face—’ I stop. Tears have broken into my voice. ‘It worked the first time and second, but the journey was too long.’ I can’t say the rest of it out loud. The horrors of the house are nothing to this.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ Tanya says. She is crying, too.

  ‘I couldn’t even bury her. They left her in there, with a little boy who hadn’t made it. A few of us, including me and the girl next to me, Zainer, were taken to the male smuggler’s house. He locked me in a room and told me that I was going to work for him until I’d paid him back. He is the nightmare I get most often. The man who killed my sister, coming down the corridor to attack me.’

  ‘How did you get out?’ Tanya asks.

  ‘I was waiting. I stood against the wall so that he couldn’t see me. He walked in and I threw the side table at him, hard, and ran out. I wanted to stop for Zainer, but I couldn’t. No. I didn’t. I ran out of the house and stopped for a moment, looking around me. I saw the road sign and then something told me to run. I ran and didn’t stop running till I got here and the door opened for me, shut behind me, and that was it.’

  When I stop, I realise how tired I am. The words had been so heavy inside me, now they fill the room like grey balloons. I can see why people write.

  ‘I’ll do everything I can to help,’ Tanya says.

  ‘It helps just having you here,’ I reply.

  She inclines her head, listening. ‘I can’t hear anything downstairs. We should leave.’

  ‘You can try,’ I say.

  She crosses to the door and tries it. ‘This happened before. We could throw ourselves against it?’

  ‘It won’t help,’ I say. ‘If the house wants you inside, you’ll stay inside. You won’t be able to leave unless it decides you can.’

  ‘Who does it allow to leave?’ Tanya asks. ‘You must’ve seen people go in and out.’

  ‘I have, yes,’ I say. ‘I think it keeps people here for company. I think the house is lonely.’

  ‘Pretty sick haunted house,’ Tanya says loudly as if wanting the house to hear her. ‘If it keeps people here long enough, it can make its own ghosts.’ She kicks at the door.

  ‘I think it once had a happy family inside it, and wants companionship again, and laughter.’ Or maybe that’s what I want.

  ‘Ram thought you were a ghost called “Faceless Alice”. Have you seen her? She’s haunted this house for years, apparently. If it wants to return to a happy family, maybe it’s her family that it misses?’

  ‘I have seen a girl wandering around. I thought it was Yana to start with. She never sees or talks to me. She isn’t scary though. I can’t remember her face but I think I would remember if she didn’t have one. He brought the nightmare of her with him, though. She wasn’t aggressive to me, not until Ram came.’

  ‘Really?’ Tanya says. ‘So when Miss Quill thought it was a sentient nightmare then it was true, only the house brought it out of Ram’s own bad dreams. He must’ve read about it then dreamed about it that night. Next day, there she is. All we’ve done since we got here is add our own nightmares to the ones already in the house.’ She reaches out to me and touches me briefly. I can feel the barely there web sheathing her skin like lace. She’ll be safe from anyone who enters the house tonight, just as the street sleepers who come for the tomato soup will be safe when they rustle in their sleeping bags in the hallway. The house doesn’t let them up the stairs, though. Their nightmares wait on the landing and they never go past.

  Tanya gives up on the door and walks to the window. I follow. The lights of London wink on and off during the night, as if waking from nightmares and turning their own lights on for reassurance.

  The window rattles as she tries to force the lock.

  ‘It won’t work,’ I say. ‘I’ve tried all the windows. If I manage to crack the glass, then cobwebs appear and bind it together, covering the hole with something stronger than glass.’ Tanya takes out a drawer and throws it at the window.

  It smashes as it hits the glass, sending pieces of wood flying. A memory creeps up, like a weed through a crack in the pavement, of hiding when our house was being raided. I try not to push it away; otherwise, it’ll live in my dreams and in the house.

  A tiny hole has appeared where the corner of the drawer connected with the glass. ‘That’s a start,’ Tanya says.

  The web, covering the window like net curtains, begins to thicken. It spreads out around the fracture, each strand reaching for the opposite side of the hole.

  ‘It’s already mending it,’ I say.

  ‘Have you ever heard of Stockholm syndrome?’ Tanya asks. ‘’Cos you’re bestowing benevolent motives on something that has kidnapped you. Why aren’t you raging? Why aren’t you screaming at the walls? I can feel it rising in me and I’ve only been here half an hour.’

  ‘That’s right,’ I say quietly. ‘You’ve only been here half an hour. I’ve been here weeks. This may be kidnapping, but I’ve known much worse. Please do not tell me what to feel.’

  Tanya is quiet for whole minutes. I’ve upset her.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she says. ‘I have no right to do that. How long have you been here?’ she asks.

  ‘I don’t know exactly. I try to keep time through a book I’m reading. I read one page every morning when I wake up. I’m on page forty-eight.’

  ‘Forty-eight days? Maybe more? I’m so sorry. We need to get you out.’

  ‘I don’t know where I’ll go,’ I reply.

  ‘Do you know where your dad is?’

  ‘No,’ I say. ‘I don’t know if he made it here. I don’t even know if he’s alive.’

  She’s quiet again. She sits back down on the mattress. ‘So what do we do now?’ Tanya asks. ‘My mum will be worried if the police are involved.’

  ‘No one’s looking for me,’ I remind her. ‘No one’s worried about me.’

  ‘I’m worried about you. We’ll find our way home,’ she says, holding my hand.

  She should have th
at fantasy, just as I have mine. I don’t blame her for not wanting to be here with me. I didn’t want to be trapped in here when I arrived. I’d love to walk on grass and see the sky without a webbed window in the way but I can’t imagine that happening. For now it feels good to hold another human’s hand and it not turn to dust.

  THIRTY-SIX

  MISS QUILL IS THE NEW BLACK

  Miss Quill is in prison, not for the first time, pacing from one wall to the other. The accommodation is comparatively boutique. One of the guards brings her coffee, albeit in a shade of beige that matches the walls. It even comes with a biscuit. Not a very good biscuit: It cannot support a vigorous dunking. There’s also a shiny toilet in the corner and a mattress on the bed. It’s a thin mattress, and there’s no blanket, but it will do. It’s not like she’ll sleep here. She wouldn’t leave herself exposed, that’d be foolish. Besides, there’s no darkness, this time round, to seduce her into slumber. In fact, there’s too much light. They haven’t turned off the strip lights all night. She closes her eyes against the phosphorescent light and the dawn peering in at the high window.

  If she’s not released soon then she’ll have to start reading the writing scratched into the walls. That wouldn’t be edifying, although it might be educational.

  The kids have gone home. They’re not in her charge for the moment. Felicity, her lawyer, told her that they’d all been cautioned, but nothing would go on their records. Various parents had stormed in, demanding to know what had happened. At least she didn’t have to put up with their whining and endless questions. Charlie’s ability to look innocent will have helped, and Ram’s charm. As long as April resisted telling the truth, they’d be OK. They’ll have come up with a plausible story. They’d better have anyway, otherwise she may be taken away from Coal Hill. She noted that they didn’t exactly throw themselves under the school bus to save her.

  She never wanted to get involved in this in the first place. This is what happens when you stay in one place. She never made herself the designated adult. It’s somebody else’s turn, but here she is, walking back and forth like a seaside donkey. Tanya still hasn’t been found. The house had been searched again and there was no sign of her. She didn’t turn up at her house, either. She’s gone from searching for a missing person to becoming one.

  Felicity has been excellent. She should be, for that price, and given the fact that she came so highly recommended by Constantine Oliver. Miss Quill had taken the solicitor’s card, the one given by Oliver himself, from the police officer’s hand and called her. Felicity had had the enormous pleasure, one that showed on her stressed face, of telling Oliver, when he turned up at the station to give a statement, that she couldn’t represent him as she was already representing Miss Quill and that would be a conflict of interest. Very sorry. Goodbye.

  Felicity had seized on Miss Quill’s idea to sue for injury. Charlie was, officially, an employee of Constantine Oliver, even if he was the one who had lied on his CV about everything, including Grade 8 piano, and he had been injured at work. The trespass charge against Miss Quill, however, remained.

  They’d also confiscated her knives: they said that she had no good reason for carrying them, plus the make may well be banned. None of that’s true. Firstly, she had a very good reason, just not one that they’d accept and, secondly, it couldn’t be on the banned list, as the make wasn’t known, not on Earth anyway. She’d had to go to a place in Camden Market where items are sold and deals are done with aliens based on Earth and beyond. If the trader was to be believed (and they usually are), the knives were smuggled across timelines.

  And now the knives were lost to her. They’ll languish in police custody until someone from the market sneaks in and steals them, ready to be sold on again to another alien. Maybe she should have another go at breaking into a prison. Or let them go. It’s not the weapon, after all, it’s the one who wields it.

  Given the state of the police, it’s lucky that there are people like Miss Quill around to save Shoreditch, London, and the world from ultimate doom and destruction. Not that it’s ever appreciated.

  A bolt clunks across the door. ‘You’re released on bail,’ DC Carpenter says, leaning against the doorway. ‘Your solicitor says she’ll be in touch later. And there’s someone waiting for you outside.’

  Miss Quill runs through the people who’d pick her up at half five in the morning, if her paced timekeeping was correct. There aren’t many.

  ‘You are released on the grounds that you’re not to go near Mr Oliver or the house or try to intervene in the demolition. Is that clear?’

  Miss Quill stands and adjusts her suit. It was worth the stay in prison just to pick every last silk strand of spider’s web from her clothes. ‘As clear as your incompetence, DC Carpenter,’ she says.

  Carpenter makes her bunched-up-lip face but doesn’t reply. Uniforms can take their toll on wit.

  Miss Quill’s rucksack is handed back to her along with all her possessions, each now tagged as if in a morgue. It is noticeably lighter without her contraband knives. ‘Where’s this visitor?’ she asks.

  The desk sergeant looks up with eyes that have gone beyond caring. Quill doesn’t blame him.

  ‘I’m here, Miss Quill,’ a man says, out of sight beyond the desk.

  Miss Quill walks round. Sitting there, holding a plastic bag in his lap, is Alan F. Turnpike.

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  Q&A

  ‘What’s in the bag, Alan?’ Miss Quill asks as she dips into the front seat. His car is a brown MINI. There are M&M’s that are larger and more tasteful.

  ‘I brought sandwiches,’ he says. ‘I made them myself. Choice of egg, cheese, or crisp.’

  ‘What flavour crisps?’ she asks suspiciously. It can all go wrong with the wrong sort of crisp.

  ‘Ready Salted?’ he says. He holds the sandwiches defensively to his chest, waiting for her response.

  ‘Then we can continue on our journey,’ she says, taking one from him. She lifts it up to eye level. It has an agreeable amount of butter to counteract the salt. She gives it a nod and a bite. She hadn’t realised how hungry she was and takes another.

  His relieved out-breath steams up the windscreen.

  The duvet softness of the bread contrasts with the crunch of the potato. ‘Agreeably onomatopoeic, the word “crisp”, don’t you think?’ she says. Her phone bleeps as it receives one message after another.

  ‘Absolutely,’ he says, leaning forward to scrub at the windscreen with a rag. They drive off. Not too much traffic on the road.

  ‘My first question should probably have been to ask what you were doing here,’ she says. ‘So would you like to answer that now?’

  ‘Of course,’ he says. ‘April got hold of me through my website. She said you might need a lift and some help.’

  ‘Did she now?’

  ‘When I arrived, she was reassuring all the parents that you’d done nothing wrong, that they had, in fact, gone to you for help. Tanya’s mum wanted you to be charged with kidnapping, but April made her back down. I think you should give them all a break.’ He glances across to see how she’ll take being disagreed with.

  ‘Do you now?’ she says, about to launch into exactly why she does not give one Aulian’s breath for what he thinks she should do. Then she stops. She folds her arms. Alan is giving her a lift after all, and arguing in the early hours is exhausting.

  She’s got a voice message. From someone who owes her a favour at a lab, one of the few places fully aware of aliens. He’s got the results, but he can’t tell her on the phone, he says. Well, of course he can’t say on the phone. It’s a liability to even say that he can’t say anything on the phone: it very much suggests that he has something to hide.

  ‘We need to make a stop,’ Miss Quill says. ‘A laboratory in Brompton.’

  ‘A lab?’ Alan says. He rubs his eyes.

  ‘That’s what I said.’

  ‘Can I ask why?’

  ‘You just did.’

&n
bsp; ‘Please. I’m trying to help,’ he says. Even an Alan F. Turnpike, it seems, can reach exasperation point.

  ‘And I’m showing you the importance of precision. It could be vital in what we’re about to find out.’

  ‘Am I part of the investigation now?’ he asks. He perks up at that.

  ‘I suppose so. But I’ll only tell you what you need to know.’

  ‘Otherwise you’ll have to kill me, I know,’ he says, laughing.

  ‘Oh no, I wouldn’t have to,’ she says. ‘I’d want to. I could, in theory, let you wander off into the world carrying my secrets, knowing that you’ll never tell a soul, not even a soul mate, as, frankly, you’re unlikely to find a soul to mate with, and even if you find the geek of your dreams, he or she or they wouldn’t believe you, thinking it another rumour or urban myth that you’d weaved. I could do that. But I’d have much more fun destroying you.’ She breathes out. ‘Thank you for that, I needed the rant. I’m tempted to tell you now, just so that I have a reason to kill you. It would be excellent for my blood pressure.’

  Alan stares straight ahead at the road, gripping the wheel. He’s not blinking.

  She sighs. ‘Fine. I’ll tell you what you need to know. You’d better be able to cope with this,’ she says, then tells him about what’s happened, as much as she can without compromising the security of her mission.

  Twenty-five minutes later, when they pull into the lab car park, Alan’s knuckles are white on the wheel.

  ‘I knew you wouldn’t be able to cope,’ she says.

  ‘I’m fine,’ he says, swallowing. ‘Really. I’ll wait here.’ She nods, gets out of the MINI, and walks towards the lab. There’s a light on at a top window. When she gets to the door and punches in the code, she looks back. Alan is still frozen at the wheel, his mouth moving as if going over what she’d said to make it more real.

  Miss Quill emerges ten minutes later. ‘So what did he say?’ Alan asks as she gets back in the car.

  ‘He confirmed something I suspected,’ she says.