Long Lankin (42 page)

“We can go up to your house when she gets back.”

“Blinkin’ well hope she won’t be long,” he grumbled. “It’s like a great big oven in this place. How do you stand it with the windows all shut? What’s there to do in here?”

“There’s a parrot,” said Roger.

I got the bag of seeds out from under the sink and took Pete to show him how to take out the feed box.

Auntie Ida said the parrot had been in that same cage for years and years, that if you opened the door and told him he could fly away, he wouldn’t want to, wouldn’t even know how.

“He’s lost loads of feathers,” said Pete, fascinated. “You can see his skin.”

When the parrot said,
“Hello,”
Pete laughed his head off and kept saying, “Hello” till the old bird said it again. I left him and went back into the kitchen, where Roger and I started washing up the dishes from breakfast. Roger was blinking hopeless at it, just slooshing the things around in the water instead of wiping them properly with the dishcloth. I tried to tell him as much as I could about what Auntie Ida had said.

Harry must come. It’s urgent now. How could I send Cora with the message I’m going to leave? He is her father, after all. It’s bad enough her mother being the way she is. He must come. There’s still time today — if not, then tomorrow. He must come quickly.

Everything’s locked up. I checked every window. I’ve got the back-door key here in my pocket. I hope to God Hugh is in. Maureen Mansell must be there, or I can try the Treasures. Somebody will be around. How will I find the telephone number of the Half Moon? Hugh will help me. Why am I so uneasy? I must hurry. It’s so hot. I’ll have to take my scarf off.

They’ve got Finn. I won’t be long.

I must take off my coat. The air is laden. Another storm must be on the way.

Finn starts pawing at me. Maybe Auntie Ida hasn’t fed him, what with everything going on this morning. I open up a can of Chappie and fork it into his dish. He wolfs it down.

He’s still unsettled, gruffling and whining. I can’t give him any more food. Auntie would be cross.

When Roger and I go out into the hall, Finn sits at the bottom of the stairs and looks up, fitful, his eyes wide open, his whole body bristling and alert.

Roger and I leave him and go into the sitting room, where Pete is trying to make the parrot say “Bye-bye.”

Roger sits down on the settee on one side of the spring, and I sit on the other, the loose stuffing itchy on the back of my legs. It’s stifling. We lean back, close our eyes, and blow out hot air.

Pete is starting to get annoying with his “Bye-bye, bye-bye.”

“Leave off, mate,” says Roger. “He’s too flippin’ old. He’s never going to say ‘Bye-bye.’”

Finn comes in and sits restlessly on the floor by our feet. He puts his paw up on my knee.

It just occurs to me to go up and check Mimi when a sudden, massive thud from upstairs rattles the parrot’s cage.

“Blimey! I hope Mimi ain’t fallen out of bed,” I say, quickly standing.

Finn gets up. He growls from deep in his throat, then, drawing back the sides of his mouth, bares his curved teeth in a snarl.

“Shut up, Finn!” I say. “Why’re you doing that? Shut up!”

Down the length of his back, the hair begins to rise. Half crouching, he moves towards the door. Puzzled, I slowly follow him. Roger gets up. Pete stops saying “Bye-bye” and looks over.

“What’s the matter with him?” he says.

A nasty smell fills the hall. I hear light, faltering footsteps on the staircase. Finn growls a long, menacing growl.

A small figure in white brushed cotton pyjamas, dotted with yellow ducks, is descending the stairs. A little white hand with Sid dangling from it moves downwards, loosely touching the thick wooden rail. Mimi herself is as quiet as a whisper, but from farther up the stairs comes the sound of creaking and the noise of slow, rasping breathing.

With one huge bound, Finn leaps along the hall to the bottom of the staircase. He crouches at the bottom, threatening and snapping, his eyes fixed on something higher up the stairs, something beyond Mimi.

“Cora, Cora . . .” Mimi cries in a small, weak voice.

Finn barks wildly, his eyes bulging, saliva spilling out of his mouth.

I rush to the stairs and look up. My jaw drops open. Behind Mimi, Cain Lankin is crawling down like an animal. The tip of his tongue, wet with thick grey spit, is sticking out from between his sharp yellow teeth like a black pointed stone.

Mimi is in a dream.

I push past Finn, leap up four stairs, and fling my arms round her. Long fingernails, hard as iron, snatch at me. I stagger backwards with Mimi. I fall onto the wooden floorboards, gather her up, and dash back to Roger and Pete. They stand there, open-mouthed. Finn leaps forward a few steps, barking and growling, barring Lankin’s way.

Mimi sways as I stand her on the hall floor by the sitting-room door. My mind is racing, back to Haldane Thorston, Auntie Ida, to Mimi’s disappearance on washing day.

“Mimi! Mimi! Listen! Where’s the little house you went in with that lady? How did you get in?” I shout at her, holding her shoulders. “Mimi!”

She’s half closing her eyes.

“Mimi! Where’s the little house? How d’you get in the little house?”

She lifts up her hand and waves towards the panelling. “There,” she whispers. “You push it — there.”

She’s floppy. I hold her up.

“Roger! Pete!” I shout. “Push the wood! Push it!”

They don’t know where to push. They prod the wood from top to bottom where it joins the door frame. Roger clenches his teeth and pushes his shoulder against it.

Finn yelps. A rattling sound comes from his throat, like gargling.

“Not there,” Mimi says, so quietly I have to put my ear to her lips. “This side. Here.”

“This side!” I yell. “This side!”

We dash to the next section of panelling.

Mimi points limply towards a particular square of wood. In desperation I thump it with my fist. Nothing happens. I push my damp hair out of my eyes.

The scuffling continues on the staircase. There’s a loud thud. Finn is gasping for breath.

“Are you sure, Mimi? This one?”

She nods faintly.

I press the wooden square firmly with both hands and feel a movement. From behind the wall, near the floor, comes the sound of stone grating on stone, then a slow scraping noise. The whole panel of five carved squares gives way under my hands and swivels around on itself vertically, bringing threads of cobwebs with it. Behind, there is a dark hole.

“Quick! Quick!” I yell. Cora pushes Mimi in and follows. Pete squeezes in next, and I squash myself into the only bit of space left. It is so tight we struggle to push the panel back into place.

“Breathe in!” Cora mumbles. I bend my arms and knees and push at the edge of the panel, straining with all my might. It begins to move and is inches from shutting when a grey hand, the slimy, stinking flesh stretched taut over the bones, grabs the edge. I feel a sear of pain as a fingernail, sharp as a razor, takes skin off my cheek. Pete strains to reach the door and begins pushing it, little by little, until the grisly fingers are trapped. We push together, and at last, bit by bit, they withdraw. The panel closes, and we are entombed in thick black darkness.

There is no sound from outside, but we know Lankin is still there. We can smell him.

“I can’t breathe,” whispers Pete right against my face so his lips touch me. “What are we going to do? We’re using up the air. We’ll die in a minute.”

Mimi is whimpering. I can’t work out whether the hand pressed into my back is hers or Pete’s or Cora’s. I try to stretch my neck, but my head scrapes against the underside of a stair tread. I’m so completely wedged in, I can only take shallow breaths from the top of my lungs. The metal mechanism on the back of the panel presses against my ear. I am desperate not to release the spring and reopen the door.

“What are we going to do, Cora?” I hiss through my teeth. “How long is Mrs. Eastfield going to be?”

“If she comes back now,” Cora breathes, “I don’t know what’ll happen. I — I can’t hear Finn.”

Pete starts crying. I feel his body shuddering, his cheek wet against mine.

Then the slow scratching begins. Now I understand how the long grooved marks came to be on the front door of Guerdon Hall, on the back door, on the door of the church.

“Will — will he get in?” Pete sobs.

We are packed together so tightly I can feel the hammering of Pete’s heart as well as my own.

“We’re — we’re going to squash to death in here,” he cries faintly.

Then I remember something Auntie Ida told me just this morning.

“Auntie — Auntie Ida,” I stammer. “She said there were two doors, one after the other. This hole was built to hide a priest. If — if they found this hole here but there was nobody in it, they’d think the hiding place was empty and go away, but — but if this hole had a secret door itself that went into another hidden room — a hidden room they didn’t even think about —”

“But we’re so squashed and it’s black as night,” Roger says. “How could we find another door? There’s no room to move —”

The scratching stops. Lankin thumps the panelling. It rattles.

“What if he pushes in the right place?” croaks Pete.

“Don’t — don’t worry, mate,” says Roger. “With us lot here, there’s no room for it to swing round.”

“Mimi knows,” I whisper.

“Knows what?”

“Mimi — Mimi, listen to me. Did the lady show you another door? Was there another door in the little house? Mimi, can you hear me?”

She makes no sound. I try to touch her, terrified she has suffocated.

I find her hair, her face. “Mimi! Answer me! Mimi! Wake up!”

“She kicked the wall,” Mimi says in a small, quavering voice, “at the bottom . . . where the stairs go down . . . she kicked it. . . .”

“Whose foot’s near where the stairs go down?” whispers Roger.

“I don’t know. I’ve gone all numb,” whines Pete.

“I think you must be nearest, Cora,” says Roger. “Can you move your foot?”

“How the flippin’ hell can I move me foot — there ain’t no space.”

Lankin begins to pummel the wall with both hands. We shake with it.

I stretch out my foot and somehow manage to run it a short way along the bottom of the side wall. I press my shoe tight against it, then, wriggling myself down, try to move it farther along, but am wedged in by Pete. I feel for Mimi’s skinny legs. There is a tiny space of wall in between them. I might just reach it if I stretch my foot a little more.