Ventriloquists (50 page)

Little more than ten metres from this act of emancipation, Phyllie crouched on the pathway, attempting a motherly grip. Phyllie’s lower jaw dangled somewhat, the lips were parted. The child had turned her face towards her mother’s neck (Phyllie could feel the girl’s snot on her skin)…

And the cranefly released a second leg. Once again, a bolt and a screw were catapulted out, this time as high as a clay pigeon.

Phyllie expected a gun shot to knock the screw into smithereens – a constellation of carbon – but nothing followed for a few more seconds.

Then the metal screech again, and another leg extracted itself from the ground in which it had been implanted… and Phyllie was not sure that she could bear to see the daddy-long-legs walking free.

Phyllie lifted Claire to chest height… not that the movement was a cinch. On the contrary, it was an agony - the lower spine, the kneecaps (her muscles were not used to this particular exercise).

Meanwhile, the cranefly had released the fourth of its eight legs.

Ping.

Clang.

The options were to sneak back into the building or to run forwards, into the playground. Phyllie chose the latter with little hesitation. The school had adopted, in her mind, a creepy quality, although she mightn’t have been able to articulate exactly why, or why not, she did not intend to return to her past. Not unless there was no alternative.

Absolutely none.

Enduring the girl’s sudden squeals in her ear, Phyllie carried them both towards the playing fields beyond the playground. She stepped close to the cranefly as it worried free its fifth leg. She paid it no attention. The only goal was to run beyond the school’s boundaries. Or rather… the only goal was to stop Claire’s tears, and this might be achieved – it might not – by stepping over the school’s boundaries.

No one
was taking
her
daughter.

4.

Vig followed paths into areas that reminded him of the woods on the grounds of his home – the woods in which he’d found Don Bridges dangling. The trees looked identical… But they would, wouldn’t they? Trees are trees. In Europe at least… No? Yes? No? Maybe this was the point, he considered; these trees were of his own creation. By tramping along these beaten tracks he was doing nothing more than walking into his own memories. Not only the memories of when he’d slipped down the slope on the school trip; there was also the discovery of Don’s suicide to process, with this stroll through the trees acting as therapy. Not the talking cure, the walking cure.

This meant that he had to find Don again, in order to confront what had already gone stale in his soul – and would one day begin to rot. However… if Vig could find Don (and assuming that all logical bets, all wagers of logic, were squarely off), then what was to stop him locating the old guy
before
he killed himself? Before he’d even set the birds free…

Or why stop there?

What if Vig could find Don while
Eastlight
was still alive? If he could stop Don Bridges starving Eastlight to death, then Don might not kill himself either. Everything would be different. Vig would not have driven to Benny’s, for one thing.

Benny.

How could Vig have forgotten that wanker in all of this? And whereabouts in this forest did the wanker reside? He had to be
somewhere
… Didn’t he? Benny had said that each traveller made for himself or herself something new, something original… something different from other people’s retreats. But surely it could not be only Vig and Phyllie who knew of Benny’s existence in the real world, and therefore they must also have created a version of the wanker herein in this world.

To Vig this reasoning made about as much sense as anything else did, so why not? Why not seek him out?

‘These are the woods on my grounds,’ Vig said aloud. ‘We are not in Germany, we are in Buckinghamshire.’ He tipped his head back and shouted: ‘
Does everyone hear me?
’

The forest creaked with wildlife and with a crackle that sounded like fire, albeit a baby blaze.

‘No!’ Vig shouted. ‘You will
not
burn down my woods! Do you understand me? You will
not!
I
own these trees and if they’re to be burnt, it’s me who’ll strike the fucking match!’

Silence. No response.

‘Don’t make me angry!’ Vig bellowed into the trees. ‘Either I employ you or you’re on private property, and I will prosecute.’

Silence. No response.

How did I find Don? I scrambled away from the beaten track... I followed the sounds of the foxes…

Not this time, Vig decided. I own what I see – and I’ll own Benny too before I’m done.

‘Come here
now
, Don!’ Vig shouted. ‘As your employer,
I order
you to appear now.’

Suddenly Vig noted birds on the branches of the trees – birds that had no place in an English woodland setting.

Don’s birds?

And summoned by Vig’s order, Don himself appeared on the path in front of Vig, looking sheepish and afraid. Chin dug into the top of his chest, flat-capped and wearing his poacher’s waterproof coat and his mud-streaked wellington boots, Don entered with neither fanfare nor avian applause from the creatures that he’d looked after so diligently.

He wore his noose like a necklace. The rope from which he’d hung dragged behind him – a tail of shame.

‘Good day to you, sir,’ said Don.

‘You owe me an explanation.’

And Don looked up, something steely in his eyes. He took his time rolling a cigarette, using a pouch of tobacco that he plucked from his coat pocket.

‘No, sir. I believe I was clear as day, sir. If I might be so bold ...
You
owe
me
an explanation.’

5.

Claire wrapped her arms around her mother’s neck and shoulders. The faster Phyllie walked (and she was definitely lengthening her stride), the tighter the little girl clasped. It got to the point, about a quarter of the voyage across the cricket field, when Phyllie worried about passing out due to a lack of oxygen.

‘Honey…’

She had not settled on a term of endearment for Claire.

‘Honey, let Mummy’s neck go a bit…’

She stopped striding, her breathing lumpy and harsh in her throat. Claire loosened her hold and they turned to see what was behind them.

The climbing frame was following, but not at any great pace. Its every step sending shocks through the earth, it lumbered awkwardly, no doubt keeping mother and daughter in its sights (if it
had
sight); but beyond the macabre nature of its pursuit, there seemed little danger. If it really was after the humans, it was taking its sweet time about it.

Phyllie held the child out away from her body and said, ‘Sweety? Sweety, listen.’ The child thrashed. ‘Claire, listen, please, to Mummy.’ She waited until she had the girl’s attention. ‘What happens at the Overlap? It’s very important you tell Mummy.’

Claire had swapped looking terrified for looking confused, and Phyllie was not sure which she preferred. While she waited for her daughter to respond (the ground shook - another heavy step), she tried to remember what Benny had told her and Vig. Something about everyone living in a place of their own creation. They constructed their own islands, their own worlds… but they talked in their sleep, some of them, in the place where they were held captive. They influenced one another; they formed groups, they melded…

They overlapped.

Could that be it? Claire’s silence had suggested something close to unthinkable, but perhaps her vocabulary was simply not the concept’s equal. And if so, whose fault was that? It was she, Phyllie, who had given the child such characteristics as she owned; it was hardly fair to blame her for freezing now. She needed help, not harsh judgement.

‘Is it where all the people meet?’ Phyllie asked. ‘All the people from all the different places?’

‘Not all.’

‘But some.’

Claire nodded. ‘Mummy, I’m scared,’ she said – but her voice had changed: it had deepened. It was Phyllie’s own voice. She was talking to herself and probably would be from this moment on.

It came as no surprise when Claire began to lose colour and fade, there in her arms. However, she needed the girl for a few more minutes. All the fantasies that she’d used over the years of someone rescuing her from danger, they had all been a crock. The only person who would get her out of this jam was herself.

‘Is that where Vig is?’ Phyllie asked Claire, ‘at the Overlap?’

But the child declined to answer. Her colours seeped into the
air and rose like will o’ the wisps, a multitude of them; the lines that defined the girl’s face blurred and smudged, lost distinction.

‘Where is it? Where’s the Overlap?’ Phyllie demanded, furious at the girl’s silence. She shook Claire hard.
‘Tell me where.
’

‘
It’s near the sea,’ the girl answered in Phyllie’s voice… and now, as well as the colours fading, the skin was ageing, tightening…

‘Which way?’ She rattled the wraith once again.
‘Which way, you little bitch?’

Claire threw her right arm out in the direction in which they’d been heading: towards the boundary of the cricket pitch. Where the ditch waited, Phyllie knew from memory- the ditch where some of the girls had hidden during after-school games, in their P.E. kits, skiving sports and smoking cigarettes stolen from their parents. A gang to which Phyllie had briefly belonged. The Bitch Ditch.

And then Claire vanished. She was gone. Her work was complete.

Breathing deeply and trying not to over-examine what the girl’s early demise might imply, philosophically speaking, Phyllie faced the lumbering climbing frame as it moved towards her.

‘And
you
,’ she said loud and clear to the monstrosity; ‘
you
can fuck right off as well!’

At which it stopped walking. Shamed and humbled, it gave the impression of a naughty dog, bested by an owner.

Phyllie showed it her back and strode on, as fast as she could.

6.

Vig regarded Don with astonishment.

‘
What
did you just say to me?’

‘I think you heard me, sir.’

‘I meant an explanation about Charlie Eastlight, about your suicide.’

Don nodded. ‘I was aware of that, sir. I apologise if my letter was not the full ticket. But sir, you have to understand, I’m already off your payroll… I’m a bit on the dead side, you see, sir.’

He had a point. Not that Vig was delirious to concede.

‘Where’s Benny?’

‘I wouldn’t know, sir. It’s a lot of trees.’

‘Don’t patronise me, Don.’ Vig lifted his voice. ‘I repeat,’ he shouted, ‘this is
my
construction… on
my
owned land… not Benny’s… and I want to see the following people.’

On branches above him, Don’s owls, kites and falcons fussed and flapped. A fox had appeared at the door to the chicken-house.

‘Charlie Eastlight! Where
are
you?’

‘I’m here… Viggy-Loo, Viggy-Lay!’

The voice came from behind Vig, who swivelled expecting to see Eastlight plump and suave in an expensive suit. There was no suit. There was virtually no skin either: evidently the fox that had gnawed at Eastlight’s skin when Vig had found the man had not finished its meal in this afterlife. Eastlight’s body was all-but a skeletal frame. The fox (or a collection of foxes) had eaten most of the skin from Eastlight’s bones. Most of the internal organs too. What remained was not worthy of the word
body
.

‘Don’t tell me,’ said Eastlight. ‘I’ve spilt some soup down my tie again. You look like I’m not welcome in your dinner club.’

‘You’re not. You owe me for my hospitality…’ Vig indicated to the oldest man present. ‘So does Don.’

Eastlight chuckled. ‘Your
hospitality?
’

Vig appeared stoic. ‘How much commission did you make on the house you sold me?’

‘A good chunk of change – and thank you very much. So?’

‘
So I didn’t give you permission to sleep on my land, Charlie.’

‘Viggy-Loo…’

‘I didn’t, Charlie. How many nights did you stay as Don’s guest? I’m not running a
hotel
.’

Eastlight’s laugh sounded less certain. ‘It wasn’t exactly my intention, Viggy-Loo,’ he began.

‘Nevertheless. You
did
stay. So you owe me. You owe me
for rent
.’

‘…You’ve got to be kidding.’ Eastlight’s smile was fading. ‘…You’re serious.’

‘You owe
me
for rent and you owe the people you hurt.’

‘…What’s the price?’ Eastlight asked.

‘You and Don.’

‘Yes?’ Eastlight and Don asked in unison.

‘A team. You’re working as a team. We’re going to close down Benny’s operation, do you hear me? You both left before discharging your debts.’

7.

In control, calm and sane, Vig exited the woods, expecting to see the large house that he knew he would sell when he was given the opportunity (he’d take a loss for a quick sale: he didn’t need the money) – the house and maybe Dorota. After all, why shouldn’t his partner be in this fantasy, even if she was about to be an ex-partner? (Things were going to change when he got home.) But neither the house nor Dorota was present.

Phyllie was.

She stood on the other side of a chainlink fence that stretched in either direction for as far as the eye could see.