The Kind Folk (22 page)

The audience laughs even harder at the policeman and the judge, though Luke hardly knows what he's saying any more. Even worse, the intruder seems close to anticipating his dialogue; they're speaking in unison now. Luke is so desperate that he releases the thief from jail to appear on
Brittan's Resolutions,
a move that's greeted with applause. He has no idea why everyone finds the routine hilarious; they would be less delighted if they knew that all his words and gestures are being maliciously replicated behind them. He feels like a puppet their enthusiasm is jerking about the stage until at last he finds a payoff. "Ladies and what's the other thing, this has been the Luke Whosit show..."

As the lights come up there are cheers and whistles and even a drumming of feet in the midst of all the handclaps, none of which means as much to him as the sight of a figure dropping to all fours behind the back row. He sees it scuttle into a shadowy corner, and then it's gone like a spider into a crevice, though the concrete is unbroken. Luke retreats into the wings, where Trixie Hammond meets him. "Very edgy," she says. "Good value. We'd have you again."

"Thanks," Luke says, mostly for the envelope she hands him.

He has an uneasy sense that he's yet to learn the purpose of his visit. Feeling enervated by his performance, he tramps out of the Old Well. Vehicles are leaving the car park, a concrete enclosure overseen by floodlights. Although he's anxious to be on his way home, he waits for the exodus to finish. At last he's alone with a few empty cars under a crescent moon pregnant with darkness. He stares about in case this brings any response, but everything is as still as the multiple shadows of the vehicles. Perhaps he's in the wrong place, and he stalks onto the road.

A few hundred yards beyond the Old Well it turns aside from the town centre, which is closed to traffic. An unpopulated pavement the width of the street leads between shops that put Luke in mind of glass cases at an exhibition. The pavement is served by the occasional rudimentary bench, and it's barren apart from a few saplings supported by splints in wire cages. The street feels cloned from shopping areas Luke has encountered throughout Britain, and he could think somebody has painted the cartoonish figure on the nondescript exterior of a Frugobank in an attempt to render it more individual. It's the only example of graffiti to be seen, and as Luke peers in its direction it appears to shift. Perhaps it isn't made of paint at all.

It doesn't stir as he strides along the road. He keeps his gaze on it until he arrives at the junction, where he can't help glancing aside to check there's no traffic. When he looks back at the figure he thinks for an instant that it has vanished. No, it's visible again, as though his attention has called it forth—a shape reminiscent of a spindly insect the height of a man, flattened against the pallid concrete wall. Instead of making it clearer, the white glare of the streetlamps that crane over the trees seems almost to be draining it of substance. As Luke crosses the junction he's afraid the loiterer may disappear before he can challenge it, and he shouts "What do you want? Why did you bring me here?"

There's no response of any kind, and he feels he's on the edge of giving in to laughter, though not mirth. Has his mind finally collapsed, leaving him to rant at a childish drawing on a wall? An unexpectedly chill wind blunders into the street, twitching the frail trees in their cages and rustling bunches of brownish leaves, but it has no apparent effect on the shape that's pressed against if not into the wall. Luke has passed several shops by the time it turns its head to him.

It has little enough of one—even less than it appeared to have while watching him at the Old Well. The object that nods out from the wall and twists towards him has just a single eye now, which seems to be swelling twice the size to compensate. A whitish scrap of lipless mouth bares a few teeth, the beginnings of a grin, but otherwise the concave bony mass would hardly be identifiable as a head if it weren't perched on a flimsy neck. In a moment the hands sprout from the concrete and describe the sign Luke knows all too well. As he digs his fingers into his palms to ensure they won't move, the figure darts out of the wall.

For a breath that he holds until his head begins to swim Luke can't see where it has gone, and then he glimpses movement inside the nearest wire cage. There's so little to the skulker that it's almost hidden by the gaunt tree, and at first he mistook its hands for diseased swellings of the trunk. He has barely identified them when they're snatched back, and a spidery figure bounds away on all fours. The impression vanishes before Luke can grasp it, and at once the next cage rattles thinly, a hundred yards from its neighbour. He's put in mind of an ape playing tricks in a zoo. "Where are you going?" he calls. "You haven't told me why I'm here."

Fingers like stripped twigs shift on the tree in the cage, but that's the only hint of life. Luke tramps fast along the street, which seems to be trying to live up to its name, Lily Avenue. Several displays in shop windows involve vegetation, presumably artificial; there are even water-lilies at the feet of mannequins in a boutique. Luke is well beyond the first tree by the time the cage ahead of him jangles as an ill-defined incomplete shape darts away. "Aren't you going to answer me?" Luke shouts. "You can talk if you want to. Don't pretend you haven't got a voice."

This appears to prompt a response-—a mutter that might be echoing his last words. It's coming from the third caged tree. "I didn't catch that," Luke calls, "say it again," but there's silence until he's nearly at the cage. Then two knuckly swellings disappear from the tree, and he hears a faint scrabbling of claws on the flagstones of the pavement. It's gone before he can locate it. "Don't try to hide," he shouts. "I can see you if anyone can."

It isn't anything to boast about, he thinks. He could wish it weren't true. He runs to the junction with Bulrush Way, a street very much like the one he's following, but can't see a trespasser to either side or ahead on Lily Avenue. Suppose the prowler has sneaked behind him? As Luke turns he glimpses activity to his left; a shape with some of a face has ducked out from behind the nearest tree. It retreats into hiding at once, even though the tree is too slim to conceal it, and Luke feels as if he's being mocked. "Is that your best trick?" he yells. "Try answering my question."

The whisper that replies seems as wordless as the hiss of a reptile. "Speak up for yourself," Luke shouts without provoking any further response. He's no more than a few strides from the tree when a lanky shape breaks cover and is instantly behind the next tree. Luke sprints after it, past shops that have indeed included bulrushes in their displays. Some of the shops must be draughty, because the heavy-headed stems beyond the windows stir as a cold breeze meets him, bearing a faint stagnant odour. The branches of the saplings scrape together, and an object that falls short of resembling any welcome notion of a face peers around the tree ahead of him. Before he can even take a breath it reappears from behind the tree beyond that one. "How long are you going to keep this up?" Luke demands, and anger makes him blurt "Don't you want to be seen?"

The answer appears to be no. He hasn't reached the further tree when an unpleasantly embryonic shape springs out of hiding and vanishes in the direction of the next cross street. There's no sign of it when he reaches the junction, but he hears a whisper to his left, as thin as a wind through wire. "Lucius," it seems to say, which is enough to take him into Marsh Passage.

The shops there are illustrating the name. Reeds sprout among mannequins and pools of water gleam, or at least sheets of plastic shaped to resemble miniature ponds. Some of the dummies in an unlit window appear to have weeds tied around their limbs, but Luke hasn't time to be distracted from the chase. A figure that looks too flimsy to support its unfinished outsize head dodges from behind a tree, though not the closest one. After that it stays unseen all the way to the next junction, where Luke hears another almost mouthless whisper to his left. "Lucius," it hisses.

Or is it "You see us" this time? It leads him into Steppingstone Lane, where the window displays are more distracting than ever. Several mannequins are virtually overgrown with vegetation, and the window-dressers have even gone to the trouble of beading the leaves with moisture. Quite a few of the dummies seem to be up to their ankles in water; could a recent downpour have flooded some of the shops? Certainly the saplings are rooted in mud. A wind brings a smell of stagnant water, and a soggy plastic bag that's pinned against a cage winces like a dying fish while the trees fumble at the wires. There's no sign of the fugitive Luke is pursuing, and when he hears a whisper it's so distant that he wouldn't understand it if he hadn't previously heard it. He dashes towards it, and then he falters. Has he grasped it at last? Perhaps it said "You see true" or "You see truth."

It seems he may have, too late. Perhaps the pursuit was intended to distract him from the kind of place he's in, which has begun to live up to the street names more fully than he likes. Moisture is outlining the flagstone beneath him, and he suspects it's seeping up from the marsh the streets are built upon. Either the swamp wasn't drained properly or something has summoned it back. The pools of water in the shops on both sides of him aren't fake after all—ripples are fading from them as the wind dies—but why do they make him feel watched? He peers at the window on his left, and the contents of the pool swivel to return his gaze. The oval object as black as the depths of a cave is an eye—and then he realises it's worse than that. Although it's bigger than his head, it's just the pupil.

Another one is spying on him from the window opposite. The pool that contains it covers half the floor, and yet the eye that's using it to observe him is larger. He has to take a long unsteady breath as a preamble to looking behind him. Steppingstone Lane is strewn with torpid pools, and whatever has been roused underneath it is employing them to watch with its myriad eyes. For a moment—no, much longer—Luke can't move, not least because he has no idea which way to flee. There's a cross street ahead, but how often has he turned left? One way will lead him deeper into the maze, to whatever lies at its heart. He can only flounder towards the crossroads as the flagstones tilt underfoot, releasing a stale miasma as water wells up around them. If he doesn't know which route to take by the time he reaches the junction he's sure that the place will have captured him—captured his mind. Surely going left will take him back the way he came. A flagstone rears up beneath him with a squelch of mud, tipping him backwards into Steppingstone Lane. He stumbles forward and trips over the edge of the slab, and then he's in the middle of the junction.

He has reached Lily Avenue. To his left are the shops he passed earlier, and their window displays look reassuringly artificial. He lurches towards them and makes himself look back at Steppingstone Lane. It's absolutely clear of water, and every flagstone is in its place. Perhaps he simply experienced a vision, although that's bad enough; why should it have been conjured up? He's retreating along Lily Avenue when he hears sounds in Steppingstone Lane—a sibilant chorus. It's some kind of chant, and although he doesn't recognise a word he can tell it's a celebration. He would rather not understand—it puts him in mind of reptiles or something even less human—but he feels unhappily responsible, and so he sprints back to the junction. He's almost there when the hissing chant falls silent, and by the time he comes in sight of Steppingstone Lane he's alone beneath the moon. He gazes at the caged trees until he's convinced that nothing is about to show itself. He has done all he can—perhaps more than he would have wanted to achieve —and he makes for his car.

THE NEXT SECRET

The Liverpool streets are deserted by the time Luke reaches home. He drives down the ramp and parks next to Sophie's car. His shadows and the shrivelled echoes of his footsteps imitate him as he makes for the lobby. However furtive the activities seem, they needn't remind him of anything. He's safe home now. Surely home is safe.

It's nearly two in the morning. The building is silent except for his hushed footsteps on the stairs. He pads up to the fourth floor and lets himself in. Darkness as quiet as soil fills the corridor when he eases the door shut, but he can just see that the bedroom door is ajar. He tiptoes to the bathroom opposite and is feeling for the light-cord when Sophie mumbles "Is that you, Luke?"

"Who else is it going to be?"

He's glad she doesn't answer. He suspects and indeed hopes that she may not be fully awake. Once he has finished in the bathroom he leaves the light on while he peeks into the bedroom. Sophie's eyes are closed, and she has one arm around his pillow. She's facing the corridor with a faint smile that looks anticipatory if not reminiscent, so that Luke wonders whether she's dreaming he has come home. He switches off the light and slips into bed, at which point Sophie turns over and gropes for his arm to draw it around her capacious waist. "Go sleep now," she murmurs.

She might be urging this on him or their child or addressing herself, quite possibly all three. For Luke it's a task, and long after Sophie and the child inside her have united in stillness he's awake. The drive home gave him hours to imagine how many places like Snugsby there may be in the world—banal everyday locations that mask ancient dormant presences. Perhaps the only way to deal with these survivals is to ignore them; he's afraid that the chase through the streets built over the old marsh could have made its denizen restless. Surely if Luke reins his awareness in he won't be responsible for any more revivals of that sort. Whenever he begins to drift towards sleep he feels in danger of relaxing his vigilance; he has an unhappy sense of needing to remember what will happen then. He's overtaken by slumber before he can identify the problem, and is wakened by Sophie's puzzled voice. "What are you doing, Luke?"

"Just holding you," he says and then realises what he has allowed to happen by falling asleep. His hand on her midriff has taken advantage of his inattention and stretched its fingers inhumanly wide to form the ancient sign. "That's not me," he cries, though his words feel too clumsy to find their way out of his mouth. A less articulate cry does, and this time he's awake.