Tunnels (22 page)
"They're not your
real
family. We are. We're your flesh and blood."
Will stared at Mr. Jerome, whose reddened face exuded nothing but loathing. Then he looked again at Cal, who had now sat back despondently, his head bowed. But Will was unimpressed. It was all some sick joke.
Do they really think I'm so stupid that I'd be taken in by this?
he said to himself.
Buttoning his coat, Mr. Jerome rose hastily to his feet. "This is going nowhere," he said.
And
"I don't have any grandparents. They're all dead!" Will shouted, jumping up from his chair, his eyes now burning with anger and brimming with tears. He tore over to the glass window in the wall and pressed his face against the surface.
"Very clever!" he yelled at it. "Nearly had me going there!" He shielded his eyes from the light of the room in an effort to see beyond the glass, but there was nothing, only an unrelenting darkness. The Second Officer grabbed his arm and pulled him away. Will did not resist — the fight had gone out of him for now.
Rebecca lay on top of her bed, staring at the ceiling. She'd just taken a hot bath and was dressed in her acid green robe, her hair up in a towel turban. She was humming softly along to the classical music station on her bedside radio as she mulled over the events of the last three days.
It had all kicked off when she was woken very late one evening by a frantic knocking and ringing at the front door. She'd had to get up and answer it, since Mrs. Burrows, on the strong sleeping pills she'd recently been prescribed, was dead to the world. A drunken brass band couldn't have roused her if they'd tried.
When Rebecca had opened the front door, she'd almost been knocked off her feet by Chester's father as he burst into the hallway and immediately began to bombard her with questions.
"Is Chester still here? He hasn't come home yet. We tried to phone, but no one answered." His face was ashen, and he was wearing a crumpled beige raincoat with the collar askew, as if he'd put it on in a great hurry. "We thought he must've decided to stay over. He
is
here, isn't he?"
"I'm not…," she started to say as she happened to look into the kitchen and realized that the plate of food she'd left out on the side for Will hadn't been touched.
He said he was helping Will with a project, but… is he here? Where's your brother… can you get him, please?" Mr. Rawls's words tripped over each other as he glanced anxiously down the hall and up the stairs.
Leaving the man fretting to himself, Rebecca ran up to Will's room. She didn't bother to knock; she already knew what she would find. She opened the door and turned on the light. Sure enough, Will wasn't there, and his bed hadn't been slept in. She turned out the light and closed the door behind her, returning downstairs to Mr. Rawls.
"No, no sign of him," she said. "I think Chester
was
here, though, last night; but I don't know where they might've gone. Maybe—"
On hearing this, Mr. Rawls became almost incoherent, gabbling something about checking their usual haunts and getting the police involved as he tore out the front door, leaving it open behind him.
Rebecca remained in the hallway, chewing her lip. She was furious with herself that she hadn't been more vigilant. With all his secretive behavior and the skulking around with his new bosom buddy, Will had been up to something for weeks — there was no question about that.
But what?
She knocked on the living room door and, getting no answer, entered. The room was dark and stuffy, and she could hear regular snoring.
"Mum," she said with gentle insistence.
"
Urphh
?"
"Mum," she said more loudly, shaking Mrs.
Burrows's
shoulder.
"
Wha
?
Nnno
…
smmumph
?"
"Come on, Mum, wake up. It's important."
"Nah," said an obdurate, sleepy voice.
"Wake up. Will's missing!" Rebecca said urgently.
"Leave… me… alone," grumbled Mrs. Burrows through an indolent yawn, swinging an arm to warn Rebecca off.
"Do you know where he's gone? And Chester…"
"Oh, go
awaaaay
!" her mother screeched, turning on her side in the chair and pulling the old afghan right over her head. The shallow snoring resumed as she returned to her state of hibernation. Rebecca sighed with sheer frustration as she stood next to the shapeless form.
She went into the kitchen and sat down. With the detective's number in her hand and the cordless phone lying on the table in front of her, she deliberated for a long time over what to do next. It wasn't until the small, predawn hours that she actually made the call and, getting only the answering service, left a message. She returned upstairs to her bedroom and tried to read a book while she waited for a response.
The police turned up at precisely 7:00 a.m.. After that, events took on a life of their own. The house was filled with uniformed officers searching every room, poking around every closet and chest of drawers. Wearing rubber gloves, they began in Will's room and worked through the rest of the house, ending in the cellar, but apparently found nothing much of interest. She was almost amused when she saw they were retrieving articles of Will's clothing from the laundry basket on the landing and meticulously sealing each item in its own polyethylene bag before carrying it outside. She wondered what his dirty
tighty
whities
could possibly tell them.
At first, Rebecca busied herself by straightening up the mess the searchers had left behind, using the activity as an excuse to move around the house and see if she could glean anything from the various conversations that were taking place. Then, as no one seemed to be taking the slightest bit of notice of her, she dropped the pretense of tidying and just strolled around wherever she wanted, spending most of her time in the hallway outside the living room, where the chief inspector and a female detective were interviewing Mrs. Burrows. From what Rebecca could catch, she seemed to be detached and disturbed by turns and wasn't able to shed any light at all on Will's current whereabouts.
The searchers eventually decamped to the front of the house, where they stood around smoking and laughing among themselves. Shortly afterward, the chief inspector and the female detective emerged from the living room, and Rebecca followed them to the front door. As the chief inspector walked down the path to the row of parked squad cars, she couldn't help but overhear his words.
"That one's a few volts short of a full charge," he said to his colleague.
"Very sad," the female detective said.
"You know…," the chief inspector said, pausing to glance back at the house, "…to lose one family member is unfortunate…" His colleague had nodded.
"…but to lose two is downright iffy," the chief inspector continued. "
Very
suspicious, in my book."
The female detective nodded again, a grim smile on her face.
"We'd better do a sweep of the Common, just to be sure," Rebecca heard him say before he was finally out of earshot.
* * * * *
The next day the police had sent a car for them, and Mrs. Burrows was interviewed for several hours, while Rebecca was asked to wait in another room with a woman from Social Services.
* * * * *
Now, three days later, Rebecca's mind was running over the chain of events again. Closing her eyes, she recalled the deadpan faces down at the police station and the exchanges she'd overheard.
"This won't do," she said, glancing at her watch and seeing the time. She got up from her bed, unwound the towel from her head, and dressed quickly.
* * * * *
Downstairs, Mrs. Burrows was ensconced in her armchair, curled up fully clothed under the afghan that was tucked around her like a drab tartan cocoon. The only light in the room came from a muted public television program, the cool blue light pulsing intermittently and causing the shadows to jump and jerk, lending a sort of animation to the furniture and objects in the room. She was sleeping deeply when a noise in the room brought her awake: a deep murmur, like a strong wind combing through the branches of the trees in the garden outside.
She opened her eyes a fraction. In the far corner of the room, by the half-opened curtains of the French windows, she could make out a large, shadowy form. For a moment she wondered if she was dreaming, as the shadow shifted and changed in the light cast by the television. She strained to make out just what was there. She wondered if it could be an intruder.
What should she do? Pretend to be asleep? Or lie quite still so the intruder wouldn't bother her?
She held her breath, trying to control her rising panic. The seconds felt like hours as the shape remained stationary. She began to think that maybe it was just an innocent shadow after all. A trick of the light and an overactive imagination. She let the air out of her lungs, opening her eyes fully.
All of a sudden there was a snuffling sound and, to her horror, the shadow split into two distinct ghostlike blurs and closed in on her with blinding speed. As her senses reeled in shock and terror, a calm and collected voice in her head told her with absolute conviction,
They are not ghosts.
In a flash, the figures were upon her. She tried to scream, but no sound came out. Rough material brushed against her face as she smelled a peculiar mustiness, something like mildewed clothes. Then a powerful hand struck her, and she curled up in pain, winded and struggling for air, until, like a newborn baby, she caught her breath and let out an unholy shriek.
She was powerless to resist as she was scooped out of her chair and borne aloft into the hallway. Now, howling like a banshee, bucking and straining, she glimpsed another figure looming from the doorway of the cellar, and a huge damp hand was clapped over her mouth, stifling her screams.
Who were they? What were they after?
Then a terrible thought sprung to mind. Her precious TV and video recorders! That was it! That's what they'd come for! The sheer injustice of it all. It was just too much to take, on top of everything else she'd had to put up with. Mrs. Burrows saw red.
Finding energy from nowhere, she summoned the superhuman strength of the desperate. She wrestled one of her legs free and instantly kicked out. This caused a flurry of activity as her assailants tried to seize it, but she kicked out again and again as she twisted around. One of the faces of her attackers appeared within reach; she saw her chance and lunged forward, biting down as hard as she could. She found that she had it by its nose, and she shook her head like a terrier with a rat.
There was a bloodcurdling wail, and its hold on her relaxed for a moment. That was enough for Mrs. Burrows. As the figures lost their grip on her and fell backward against one another, she found the ground with her feet and swung her arms behind her like a downhill skier. With a yell, she hurtled away from them and into the kitchen, leaving them grasping only the blanket that had been wrapped around her, like the discarded tail of a fleeing lizard.
In the blink of an eye, Mrs. Burrows was back. She swooped into the midst of the three hulking forms. Utter chaos ensued.
Rebecca, from her vantage point at the top of the stairs, was perfectly placed to watch as it all unfolded. In the half-light of the hallway below, something metallic flashed back and forth and from side to side, and she was a wild face. Mrs.
Burrows's
face. Rebecca realized that she was wielding a frying pan, swinging it left and right like a cutlass. It was the new one with the extra-wide base and the special non-stick surface.
Time and time again the shadowy forms renewed their attack on her, but Mrs. Burrows stood her ground, repelling them with multiple blows, the pan resounding satisfyingly as it connected with a skull here or an elbow there. In all the confusion, Rebecca could see the streaks of movement as the salvo of blows continued at an incredible rate,
boinging
away to a chorus of grunts and groans.
"DEATH!" screamed Mrs. Burrows. "DIE, DIE!"
One of the shadowy figures reached out in an attempt to grab Mrs.
Burrows's
pan arm as it wheeled around in a figure eight, only to be walloped by a tremendous bone-shattering swipe. He let out a deep howl like a wounded dog and staggered back, the others falling back with him. Then, as one, they turned on their heels, and the three of them scuttled out through the open front door. They moved with startling speed, like cockroaches caught in the light, and were gone.
In the stillness that followed, Rebecca crept down the stairs and flicked on the hall light. Mrs. Burrows, her bedraggled hair hanging like limp horns in dark wisps across her white face, immediately shifted her maniacal gaze to Rebecca.
"Mum," Rebecca said softly.
Mrs. Burrows raised the pan above her head and lurched toward her. The feral look of wild-eyed fury on her face made Rebecca take a step back, thinking she was about to turn on her.
"Mum, Mum, it's me, it's all right, they're gone… they're all gone now!"
A look of self-satisfaction spread across Mrs.
Burrows's
face as she checked herself and nodded slowly, appearing to recognize her daughter.
"It's all right, Mum, really." Rebecca tried to pacify her. She ventured closer to the rapidly panting woman and gently eased the frying pan from her grip. Mrs. Burrows didn't put up any resistance.
Rebecca sighed with relief and, looking around, noticed some dark spatters on the hall carpet. It could have been mud or — she looked closer and frowned — blood.
"If they bleed," Mrs. Burrows intoned, following Rebecca's gaze, "I can kill them." She drew her lips back, revealing teeth as she let out a low growl, then started to laugh horribly, an unnatural, grating cackle.
