‘Aren’t you listening to me at all? Sarah, the police officer who came to see me earlier on. She’s the sole survivor of the Blackhall Manor massacre.’
‘The girl who was shot in the wardrobe lived?’
‘Uh-huh,’ Elsie nodded, taking another sandwich off the pile. ‘She was in a coma for months. Then she was transferred to a private hospital and people forgot about her after that.’
‘Huh,’ Christian said, with a smile. ‘Did she change her surname?’ He looked at Elsie thoughtfully.
‘Yeah, she goes by her mother’s maiden name. Keeps her under the radar, I guess. She came back to Lower Slayton a while ago.’ A smile rose to her face. Two proper conversations in one day. ‘Anyhoo, I was thinking, if she can overcome all that and become a detective, then the least I can do is lose some weight.’
His expression thoughtful, Christian gave a slow nod in response. ‘Sure, Mom, if it’s what you want. But you may as well finish what’s in the fridge first.’ He glanced down at his watch. Elsie could see he was counting the seconds to leave.
‘Go on then, go and play your game.’
As he rose from his stool, Elsie could see the subject of dieting didn’t interest her son. Christian had heard it a million times before. The room fell gloomy and silent as he closed the door behind him. At least she had her books. Taking another bite of her sandwich, Elsie chewed methodically as she picked her next read. Above her, Christian’s bedroom door slammed shut. She rubbed her chest as a slab of bread seemed to get stuck on the way down. ‘Ow! What the—’ She sucked in a wet breath as pain radiated outwards. White foam gathered in the corners of her mouth, her limbs jerking in sudden bouts.
‘Christian!’ she rasped in a spit-choked voice. Her teeth clenched as pain took her with force, watering her eyes and casting a sheen of sweat on her brow. In, out, she heaved for breath, her chest rising with exertion. The band around it was tightening. Her eyes rose to the picture of Jesus hanging on the wall. ‘Sweet Lord,’ she whispered through clenched teeth as she gripped the sides of the bed. ‘Spare me … Godddd!’ A spasm of pain distorted her words. Tears streaked from her eyes as she stared at the door. Nobody was coming. She was going to die alone.
15
‘How are you feeling, little man?’ Elliott’s mother stroked his hair. It was daylight when he’d sat down in front of the television and he hadn’t noticed it become dark. All the action was going on inside his head. It was dark all the time there.
His eyes swivelled towards the clock on the wall, gone six o’clock. ‘Aren’t you going to work?’ His mum visited his dad in hospital when he was at school, and in the evenings she worked flexible hours as a cleaner in the Slayton Lakeside Hotel.
‘Not today – no babysitters,’ Maggie replied. ‘Libby and Jahmelia aren’t well, so I’ve called in sick. They can manage without me for one night.’
Elliott relaxed a little knowing his mum would be at home. Maybe tonight, he would be OK. He felt a little better after speaking to the policewoman too. But it couldn’t take away the horrible feeling which started in his tummy and went all the way up to his chest. Last night, everything had spilled over. He’d been deep in his nightmare and hurt the person he loved most in the world. He had seen the scratches and bitemarks on Maggie’s arm and they made him scared.
Almost before he could talk, Elliott felt the bad things around him, like the sickness in his tummy before he went to the dentist, or that time Mummy brought him to the doctor to get his injections. But the bad thoughts that came to him now played out like a movie that he could smell and feel too. Sometimes it showed him things that had happened, and sometimes he saw things that were going to come true. Every day it was getting harder to keep the bad thoughts out. He was seven and a quarter years old, but he didn’t know what to do. Maggie settled on the sofa beside him, crossing her legs and bobbing her foot.
‘Any tortoise facts for me today?’
Elliott searched his memory banks for something interesting. ‘Tortoises have been around for over three hundred million years.’
‘Wow. That’s a long time.’ Maggie’s eyes widened in amazement, but Elliott wondered if she was pretending it was cool.
‘Are you OK, Mummy?’ He searched her face for an answer. ‘Did I hurt you bad?’
Maggie’s smile was as warm as the sun. She liked it when he called her Mummy, which was why he said it today. ‘No, baby, you didn’t. I’m fine. What happened last night?’
‘I remember feeling scared,’ he said in a small voice. ‘You brought me back to bed.’ Elliott wished that was all it was. He was so jealous of normal kids with normal lives and normal nightmares. Why did he have to be this way? He used to use up all his birthday and Christmas wishes asking for the dreams to be taken away, but he had given that up now.
His mother looked at him sorrowfully, her blonde lashes fluttering as she drew him close. ‘How about I make us sausages, peas and mash? I’ll do the gravy nice and thick.’
Elliott nodded enthusiastically, not because he was hungry, but because if Maggie hugged him for much longer he was scared he would cry. He rubbed a thumb over the medal. It had never been this bad in the day before. The Midnight Man was all around him, and in a few hours Elliott would have to go back to bed. Every night he tried to stay awake, but it never worked.
Maggie was in the kitchen, boiling the kettle and rattling saucepans when a sudden flash from last night’s dreams invaded his mind. Frozen with fear, Elliott clutched his father’s medal as the violence replayed on a horror carousel. The stinky smell of damp clothing, thick and heavy as it was pulled on. Voices in the dark. Flapping. Panting. Running through the trees. Elliott gripped the medal tightly, his breath coming fast as the darkness came alive. Cold. It was so cold: the breeze was watering his eyes and reddening his skin.
A deep, scary voice. An icy blade pressed against warm skin. The purple-blue vein in her neck. A low growl. Thick knuckles against an ivory handle. The angel’s fear because she knew this was the end. Blonde hair splashed with red. A gargling, bubbling cry.The angel is dead. But the Midnight Man still comes.
His mother shook him awake, he didn’t know how many minutes later. He swiped away the dribble from the corner of his mouth and picked up his daddy’s medal from the floor. He had passed out. Maggie thought he was sleeping. It was better that way. His legs felt like jelly as he followed her to the kitchen. It was a small but warm space, with Maggie’s paintings on the wall and some stuff she had bought from a charity shop after they moved in decorating the space. Some dying posies sat on the windowsill next to the big white sink. Stuck to the fridge were some of the drawings he’d made in school – the regular pictures, not the scary ones his teacher had made such a fuss about. After that, he’d learned to draw tortoises instead of what was in his head. He looked at the photo of his daddy, taken in happy times when he was well. They were at the zoo seeing the giant tortoises and Elliott was sitting on his father’s shoulders. He’d felt like a giant that day too. But then they came home to Slayton, a place where the air was heavy somehow, and he always had a feeling of being watched. A lump rose in his throat and he swallowed it back down.
The smell of Bisto curled around him when he sat down to eat. Maggie’s eyes were bright with worry as she asked for the hundredth time if he was OK. Nodding, he kept quiet. Quiet couldn’t get him in trouble. Quiet was safe. In school, he tried extra hard to act like a regular kid, especially during the days he felt scared. But Miss Grogan watched him all the time. That’s why she had called the children’s so-shall-care. The women who came to their house didn’t seem very caring to him. All they did was make Maggie worry, asking if anyone had hurt him. It wasn’t Mummy’s fault. It wasn’t anyone’s. After a few weeks the women from the so-shall-care stopped coming around. They said he had an ‘overactive imagination’ and was ‘processing’ what happened to his dad. But Elliott didn’t want to be different. He wanted to be like everyone else.
He chewed his food mechanically as bits of the dream that wasn’t a dream hung around. He couldn’t find the right name for it. Nightmare, night stories … none of them fit. It was something from the other place. He imagined the other place being behind tracing paper, like the pages he’d got to trace and draw with in school: a thin sheet which kept that world from this. Most people couldn’t see through it, but Elliott saw too much. He rested his hand over his eyelid as it began to twitch. It felt like an insect trapped beneath his skin. This was his punishment for seeing the world from behind someone else’s eyes. Something’seyes. Blackhall Manor. The name gave him goosebumps all over. It was coming for him. It was sending the Midnight Man. His eyes flicked to his father’s medal on the table next to his plate. He wasn’t brave like his daddy. If he was brave he wouldn’t have wet the bed.
‘You OK, hun?’ his mother said, resting her knife and fork. Elliott opened his mouth to speak. He wanted to tell her. For her to take him in her arms and hug the scary stuff away. But hugs could not stop them, and his mummy was sad enough. ‘I’m fine.’ Elliott gave her a watery smile before sticking his fork in his sausage and taking a bite.
16
