Un Lun Dun (3 page)

4

The Watcher in the Night

That night, and the two that followed, Zanna stayed over at Deeba’s house. Just then, she preferred it to her own place across the yard of the estate.

Her father was in a bit of a state. The police kept asking him to tell his story again, and telling him there was no sign of the “chemical spill” he thought might explain the smoke that had made him light-headed. While he had to deal with the questions, Mr. and Mrs. Moon gratefully accepted the Reshams’ suggestion that Zanna stay with them.

The police had also asked the girls what had happened, of course, but Zanna and Deeba couldn’t explain what they didn’t understand.

“She’s had a real shock, Mrs. Resham,” Deeba heard one officer say. “She’s not making a bit of sense.”

“We have to make them believe us,” Zanna insisted.

“What?” said Deeba. “‘Magic smoke came out of the drains.’ Think that’ll help?”

Becks had broken a couple of bones, but was recovering. So, at least, Zanna and Deeba understood. Becks herself wouldn’t speak to them. She wouldn’t see them when they came to the hospital, nor would she answer her phone.

And it wasn’t just her. Kath and Keisha ignored Zanna and Deeba at school, and wouldn’t answer their calls, either.

“They’re blaming me for what happened,” Zanna said to Deeba, in a strange voice.

“They’re scared,” Deeba said. The two girls were sitting up late in Deeba’s room, Zanna in the foldout bed.

“And they’re blaming
me,
” Zanna said. “And…maybe they’re right.”

In the next room the Reshams shouted at the television.

“Idiots!” Deeba’s mother was saying.

“They’re all fools,” her dad said. “Except that Environment woman, Rawley, she’s alright. She’s the only one does any good…”

The Reshams were still having the conversation—the same one they had many times, about which politicians they disliked most, and the much more rare species, which they liked (a shortlist of one)—much later, when they went to bed. Zanna and Deeba were still whispering.

“It must have been an accident,” Deeba said. “Something with the pipes.”

“They said it wasn’t,” Zanna said. “And anyway…you don’t believe that. It’s something else. Something to do with…”
With me,
was what she didn’t say, but what they both knew she meant.

They had the same conversation every day. There were no conclusions they could come to, but there was nothing else they could talk about, either. They talked themselves out, and eventually fell asleep.

Much later, in the small hours of the night, Deeba woke, quite suddenly. She sat up in her bed by the window and pulled aside the curtains a little, to look out across the estate and try to work out what had disturbed her.

She watched for a long time. Occasionally a figure might hurry by, following the tiny red glimmer of a cigarette end. At this time of night, though, the concrete square, the big metal bins, the walkways were mostly empty.

On the other side of the yard she could see Zanna’s flat, its windows dark. The wind turned corkscrews in the courtyard, and Deeba watched bits of rubbish turn. It was raining a little. The moon glinted in puddles. In the far corner was a pile of full black rubbish bags.

There was a tiny scratching sound.

Deeba thought it must be a cat, searching in the rubbish. There was quiet except for the fingertip drumming of rain and the whisper of wastepaper. Then she heard it again, an insistent
skritch-skritch.

“Zanna,” she whispered, shaking her friend awake. “Listen.”

The two girls looked out into the darkness.

In the shadows by the bins, something was moving. A wet black shape, rooting in the plastic. It moved toward the light. It didn’t look like a cat, nor a crow, nor a lost dog. It was long and spindly and flapping, all at once.

It extended a limb out of the shadows. Something glinting and black fluttered. Zanna and Deeba held their breath.

Shaking with effort, the claw-wing-thing hauled itself through shadows, spidery and bedraggled. It approached Zanna’s house. It huddled in the dark by the wall, leapt suddenly up, and hung below the window.

The two girls gasped. The thing was just visible, now, in the faint lamplight.

It was an umbrella.

For a long time it hung like some odd fruit below the windowsill, while the rain increased, until the watching friends began to tell themselves that they had imagined the motion, that there had been an umbrella hooked on the ledge for hours. Then the dark little thing moved again.

It dropped and crawled with its excruciating slowness back to the darkness. It opened its canopy a little way, gripped the concrete with a metal point, and dragged itself along. It was bent, or battered, or bent and battered, or torn, and it crawled like something injured, into the shadows and out of sight.

The courtyard was empty. Deeba and Zanna looked at each other.

“Oh…my…God…” whispered Zanna.

“That was…” squeaked Deeba. “Was that an
umbrella
?”

“How’s that possible…?” Zanna said. “And what was it doing by your window?”

5

Down to the Cellar

The two girls crept out into the estate night.

“Quick,” Zanna whispered. “It was over there.”

“This is mad,” hissed Deeba, but she moved as quickly as her friend, in the same half-bent run. “We don’t even have a flashlight.”

“Yeah but we’ve got to look,” Zanna said. “What is going
on
?” They shivered a little in the clothes they had quickly put on, looking nervously around them into darkness and halos of lamplight. They headed for the bins, and the hollow full of rubbish where they had seen the impossible spy.

“So it was some sort of remote control thing, innit?” Deeba said as Zanna looked around in the smelly dark. “And maybe…I dunno, maybe it had a camera or something…and…” Deeba stopped, as what she was saying began to sound more and more unlikely.

“Come help me,” Zanna said.

“What you doing?”

“Looking for something,” Zanna said.

“What?”

Zanna poked about in the rubbish, holding her nose as she prodded the overspill from the bins with a stick.

“There’s going to be rats and stuff,” Deeba said. “Leave it.”

“Look,” said Zanna. “See that?” She pointed at one streak among many across the cement of the estate.

The smear, just faintly visible, stretched from the rubbish tip, towards the dark ground-floor windows of Zanna’s house.

“That thing. These are its tracks.”

Zanna got on her hands and knees.

“Yeah, see?” she said. “You can see scratch-marks. Where it’s dug in with its…you know…metal points.”

“If you say,” said Deeba. “Let’s
go.
”

“Look. It was watching, or listening or whatever, at mine. Now we can see where it went.”

“We don’t even know what we’re after.” Deeba followed Zanna, who bent carefully over and traced her way through the dark estate. Deeba peered over her friend’s shoulders, trying to make out the tracks Zanna could see.

“You blatantly look like a mad person,” Deeba whispered. “If anyone sees you, what they going to think?”

“Who cares? Anyway, there’s no one. If there was, I’d be out of here.”

“I don’t even see nothing.”

“Marks,” Zanna said.
“Tracks.”

She headed into the backs of the estate, between the brown concrete of those huge buildings. They were heading deep into the dead zones behind all the towers, into a maze of walls, bins, garages, and rubbish. Deeba looked around nervously.

“Come on, Zann,” she said. “We dunno where we are.”

“I’ve got a feeling…” Zanna said. She was distracted.

“This way…” she said, glancing down without slowing. In fact, she looked now as if she were following a memory, or an instinct, rather than a trail. She wound between the enormous buildings, lit here and there by inadequate yellow lights.

“I can’t see it,” Deeba said anxiously. “There’s nothing.”

“Yes, there is,” said Zanna dreamily. She pointed, almost without looking. “There, see?” She sounded surprised. “It came this way.” She accelerated.

“Zanna!” said Deeba in alarm, and trotted to keep up with her. “How can you even
see
that?”

The main road was just out of sight: even at this hour, they could hear traffic. Zanna turned a corner, moving almost as if she were being tugged.

“Wait!” said Deeba, and came up behind her.

In front of them, in the base of one of the monoliths, surrounded by puddles of pretty oily water, below a weakly shining lamp, the girls saw a door. It was ajar. On its threshold, even Deeba could see it was marked with a smear of oil.

“No way,” Deeba said, eyeing Zanna. “You are
not
going there…”

Zanna stepped inside. Behind her, shouting, “Wait! Wait!” Deeba followed.

“Is anyone there?” Zanna said, not very loud. They were in a narrow corridor below ground level. The only windows were stubby ones by the ceiling, cracked and flecked with cobwebs and fly husks. The one or two bulbs let light out resentfully, as if they were misers who hoarded it.

“We are
going,
” Deeba said. “There’s nothing here.”

Pipes and wires ran along the walls, and meters ticked.

“Hello?” Zanna said.

The corridor ended in a huge basement. It must have stretched underneath almost the whole tower block. Along its walls were old tools; there was rope in thick puddles; and sacks; and rusted bicycles; and a dried-out warmed-up fridge. Here and there were faint illuminations, and the light from streetlamps came through the filthy windows. The girls could hear the moan of traffic.

In the middle of the room was a pillar of pipes, where needles jerked up and down on gauges, and pressure was channeled by fat iron taps. In the dead center was an ancient, heavy-looking one the size of a steering wheel. It looked like it would open an airlock in a submarine.

“Let’s go,” whispered Deeba. “This place is scary.”

But, slowly, Zanna shuffled forward. She looked like a sleepwalker.

“Zanna!” Deeba moved back towards the door. “We’re
alone
in a
cellar.
And no one knows we’re here. Come
on
!”

“There’s more oil,” Zanna said. “That thing…that umbrella, was here.”

She touched the big spigot experimentally.

“‘…when the wheel turns,’” she said.

“What?” said Deeba. “Come on. You coming?” She turned her back. Zanna gripped the wheel, and began to turn it.

It moved slowly at first. She had to strain. It squeaked against rust.

As it went, something happened to the light.

Deeba froze. Zanna hesitated, then turned the wheel a few more degrees.

The light began to change. It was flickering. All the sound in the room was ebbing. Deeba turned back.

“What’s happening?” she whispered.

Zanna tugged, and with each motion the light and noise faltered a moment, and the wheel turned a little farther.

“No,” said Deeba. “Stop. Please.”

Zanna turned the valve another few inches, and the sound and light shifted. All the bulbs in the room flared, and so, impossibly, did the sound of the cars outside.

The iron wheel began to spin, slowly at first, then faster and faster. The room grew darker.

“You’re turning off the electricity,” Deeba said, but then she was silent, as she and Zanna looked up and realized that the lamplight shining through the windows from outside was also dimming.

As the light lessened, so did the sound.

Deeba and Zanna stared at each other in wonder.

Zanna spun the handle as if it were oiled. The noise of cars and vans and motorbikes outside grew tinny, like a recording, or as if it came from a television in the next room. The sound of the vehicles faded with the glow of the main road.

Zanna was turning off the traffic. The spigot turned off all the cars, and turned off the lamps.

It was turning off London.