Abomination (8 page)

Would
you
want to stand on the edge of a cliff with twenty-eight kids who hate you?

32. Scott

Friday we fixed up to meet outside Asda, same as last week. ‘Remember I might not come,’ she warned. I felt sure she’d be there, but at twenty to ten Saturday morning I recognized her mother stumping across the car park under the dead rat she wears instead of a hat.

It really peed me off, because it was drizzling and I’d been there half an hour. I’d planned on taking Martha to the library to check out the
Nickelodeon
studio. I could still go of course, but it wouldn’t be the same.

I had a sudden daft idea, which was to follow Mrs Dewhurst round the supermarket. Don’t ask me why. Maybe I thought I could learn something about Martha’s home life by watching what the old bat chucked in her trolley, or perhaps I was just bored. Anyway I tailed her and grabbed a basket from the stack.

I read once that the music they play in these places sort of hypnotizes customers so they pick things up without meaning to. They’re supposed to wander up and down the aisles in a trance and arrive at the checkout with a trolleyful of stuff they don’t remember choosing. I don’t know if it’s true but if it is, it certainly didn’t work on Martha’s mum. She shot through the place like a dose of salts, missing out the interesting aisles and grabbing maybe one item each from the boring ones. I could hardly keep up with her and I wasn’t buying. When she screeched to a halt at the checkout, her stuff only just covered the bottom of the trolley. Flour, sugar, lard, bag of spuds, washing powder, Pampers, oatmeal and soap. That was it. I’d dropped a bar of choc in my basket so I could queue behind her. Her coat was about four million years old and ponged of mothballs. To pay, she clawed coins out of a beat-up purse and counted them one by one into the girl’s hand. She had very thin legs, with sticky-out veins like worms hibernating in her stockings. When I got outside she’d gone.

I didn’t go to the library. We’ve got a modem and surfing’s cheap at weekends, so I went home and wound up some woman in Florida. Told her I was a twenty-two-year-old brain surgeon with a Roller and a mansion in the country and she said
how fascinating
. Her name was Scarlett and her brain was OK, but she thought maybe I could help her in another way, because she was lonely. When I said I was really twelve she went off line without a goodbye. I sat gazing at the screen, wishing Martha was on the Internet.

Fat chance.

33. Martha

Sunday morning, Pastor Fenwick preached to the text
That every man should bear rule in his own house
. It’s in the Book of Esther, and I don’t believe it was coincidence made him choose it right after my little rebellion. I suspect Father’d had a word in his ear. Anyway I had to sit for three quarters of an hour between my parents while the Pastor slagged off kids who disobey their fathers. There were other kids in church, but it felt like every word was aimed directly at me. When we got home, Father carried his tool-box up to my room. I could hear him banging and scraping about up there as I helped Mother prepare the meal. I was scared. I thought he might be prising up floorboards looking for my books, my
Girl Talk
mags and – especially – Mary’s postcards. I couldn’t even imagine what he’d do to me if he found I’d been hoarding those for the last five years.

When he came down he put his tools away, rinsed his hands, blessed the food and started eating. I was pretty sure he hadn’t found anything, but anyway I went up there as soon as I could. The floor was OK and at first I couldn’t figure out what it was he’d done. Then I noticed the chest of drawers had been fixed to the wall with two L-shaped brackets. I checked and found he’d done the same to my wardrobe, my bedside unit and the bed itself. He keeps the key to my door lock, so there was now no way I could prevent his coming into my room. I didn’t mention it, either then or later, and neither did he, but it made me more determined than ever to leave this miserable dump the minute I turned sixteen. That this was four years in the future depressed the hell out of me, but perhaps as time went on things would get easier.

Like they did for Esther.

34. Martha

An awful thing happened on Monday night. Mother had been gone about ten minutes and I was washing the dishes to the sound of Radio One when there was a knock at the door. I dried my hands on the tea-towel, switched off the radio and when I opened up Scott was on the step.

‘Surprise!’ There was a sheepish look behind his smile. I didn’t smile back. I was shocked for one thing, and for another he didn’t deserve a smile.

‘I told you not to come here,’ I hissed. ‘How’d you know
I
’d answer and not Father?’

‘I watched him drive off, Martha. Saw your mum leave too. I’m not daft.’

‘You are, Scott. You are daft, or you wouldn’t be here.’ I glanced up and down the road. ‘You better go before somebody sees you.’

‘Nobody’d see me if I was inside, would they?’

I shook my head. ‘I can’t . . . I’m not allowed to ask anyone in.’ I started to close the door. It was the last thing I wanted, to shut it in his face, but I was scared. It only needed someone from church to come by and that’d be that.

He stuck his foot out. The door bounced off his Nike. I didn’t dare let him go on standing there. I stepped aside. ‘Come on then, quick.’ He came in. I closed the door, leaned my back against it and looked at him. ‘OK, you’re in. Now what?’

He shrugged. ‘I dunno. I don’t have to stay long. I just wanted to see you . . . you know, where you live.’

‘Yes, well.’ I gestured at the dim hallway. ‘This is it. I told you it was horrible.’

‘It’s not horrible.’ He looked at me. ‘Do I get to see any more, or are we going to stay out here till it’s time for me to go?’

‘We can . . .’ I nodded towards the kitchen. ‘I was washing up. You can wipe if you want.’

He glanced around the kitchen and nodded. ‘Nice. Sort of . . . old fashioned, you know – like a kitchen in a movie?’

‘Sure.’ I handed him the tea-towel. ‘
The Addams Family
.’ He didn’t contradict me, just looked embarrassed. I shoved my hands in the suds, wishing he hadn’t come.

35. Scott

I wiped the last item and hung the tea-towel on the rail. Martha was drying her hands. I could tell she was mad at me and I was embarrassed. The house – the bit I’d seen so far – was really grotty. Not dirty. I don’t mean that. I’m talking about dark paintwork, drab wallpaper and out-of-date fittings. There were no houseplants or flowers and yet there was an impression of clutter, of things chosen without care, crammed in corners and littering every surface. I knew that if I lived here I’d be seriously depressed
without
the bullying and the weird parents. No wonder she hadn’t wanted me to come.

‘D’you want to see my room?’ Her tone was leaden with resentment. I felt like saying
no, it’s all right, I’ll leave now
, but I didn’t want her to think I couldn’t wait to get out so I smiled and nodded.

It was up two flights of stairs, the second flight dark, narrow and creaky. It was the sort of place where women get bludgeoned to death with brass candlesticks in old black and white movies and you don’t see the actual murder, just shadows on the wall. It smelled of damp.

‘This is it.’ I’m not kidding, the door squealed as she pushed it open. I saw a threadbare carpet and a grimy little window in the slope of the roof. The heavy furniture was fastened to the wall.

‘Cosy,’ I said. Well, what
can
you say?

‘Yeah, right.’ She indicated a wooden chair. ‘Sit down if you like.’ She sat on the bed and stared at the carpet.

There was an awkward silence, which I broke by saying, ‘You don’t have posters or anything, then?’

She shook her head. ‘Not allowed, unless you count that.’ I looked where she nodded. It was a framed text done in needlework.
Thou, Lord, seest me
.

‘Did you sew it yourself?’ I asked, for something to say.

‘No, my gran did, when she was a little girl.’

‘Oh.’

I didn’t know how to keep the conversation going. Martha was ashamed of her home. I’d have felt the same if it were mine. I couldn’t comfort her.

After a minute she brightened a bit and said, ‘I know – I’ll show you my secret stuff.’

I frowned. ‘Secret stuff?’

‘Ah-ha.’ She got up and crossed to a corner of the room, where she knelt down and turned back the thin carpet. There was a loose floorboard. She lifted it, set it aside and started pulling stuff out of the hole. Four books. Some magazines. A rolled-up poster with a rubber band round it. A wad of postcards. She held up the postcards. ‘From Mary. She’s been everywhere. D’you want to look?’

I didn’t. Not right then. I’d just remembered something from Saturday. Something odd. I shook my head. ‘Not just now. Martha?’

‘What?’ She twisted round to look at me, still on her knees.

‘Who were the Pampers for?’

She turned away and began putting things back in the hole. ‘Pampers? I don’t know what you mean.’

‘Your mum bought Pampers at Asda.’

‘Disposable nappies?’ She was really busy, crouching over her hidey-hole. ‘She can’t have. And how would you know anyway?’

‘I tailed her, stood right behind her at the checkout.’

She turned, the floorboard in her hands. ‘Why, Scott? Are you spying on my family or something?’

I shrugged. ‘Not spying, no. I was curious, that’s all. And bored.’

‘Weird thing to do, follow somebody round Asda. I hope she didn’t notice you.’

‘Why should she, Martha? Your mum doesn’t know me from Adam.’

‘It’s just that if she thought . . . if she suspected I was seeing somebody at Asda, that’d be the end of my shopping expeditions.’

‘Relax. As far as your mum’s concerned I was just another customer.’ I looked at her. ‘You haven’t answered my question.’

She shook her head, slotting the board in place. ‘I don’t know, Scott. She must’ve been getting them for somebody – a neighbour, perhaps.’ She stood up, smoothing her skirt. ‘I think you’d better go now. I’m scared in case Father finishes early.’

‘OK.’ I stood up and followed her out of the poky room and down the stairs. In the hallway she put a hand on my sleeve. ‘Are we still friends, now that you’ve seen my place?’

‘’Course we are, you plank. I told you – I don’t care about the house. See you at school, eh?’

She opened the door, glanced up and down the road. ‘Yes. Take care, Scott. I’ll see you tomorrow.’ She watched from the step as I set off down the hill. I turned once to wave and she waved back, but when I turned a second time the door was closed.

36. Martha

Talk about a narrow squeak. He’d not been out of the house fifteen seconds when Abomination set up a howl. The cellar door’s right there in the hallway. What the heck could I have said if he’d heard?

I had to see to the creature straight away or I think I’d have collapsed. It wasn’t till I’d finished that the narrowness of my escape hit me and my legs went rubbery. I could hardly get up the cellar steps. I staggered into the front room, flopped in an armchair and sat shivering in spite of the evening sunlight streaming through the window.

’Course we are, you plank
. Well, yes, but you don’t know what we’ve got in our cellar, do you Scott? I showed you
my
secret stuff, but not ours. Not the family secret.

When I was little I used to have nightmares about the monster in the cellar. I thought it was Mary. Don’t laugh, Scott. Please don’t laugh, because it isn’t funny. There’d been noises in the night, see. Lights. Muffled footsteps. In the morning there was no Mary but we had this thing in the cellar, this Abomination nobody must know about. I thought Mary had changed in the night, that she’d somehow
become
this creature. Well, I was only six. And that’s when the nightmares started. I’d wake screaming, but my room was at the top of the house so nobody heard. Nobody came.

Try to imagine, Scott. I thought people changed. That I might fall asleep a little girl and wake up as something they’d have to keep in the cellar. It had happened to my sister so why not me?

I realized eventually, of course. When the postcards started coming. That’s why I had to save the postcards. They drove away the nightmare. Kept it away. Mary was somewhere else but she was still Mary. She’d been in this town and that, so she couldn’t be in the cellar. They saved me from going mad, those cards.

Trouble is, I’ve started to wonder lately whether the truth isn’t every bit as ghastly as the nightmare.

37. Scott

I was in bed by nine but I couldn’t sleep. Thoughts chased one another round and round the inside of my skull like bikers on a wall of death. Pictures, too. Bits of Martha’s house. Her face when she saw me on the step. The awful room she’d be in right now, thinking about me or trying to transmit a message to her sister with her mind.
Martha calling Mary. Come in, Mary. Are you receiving me? Over
.

She’s crazy about her sister, that’s for sure. Those dumb postcards.
She’s been everywhere. D’you want to look?
I should’ve said yes. Probably hurt her feelings, saying not just now. I’ll make a point of asking to see them next time, if there is a next time. ’Course there’ll be a next time. Just ’cause she went in and shut the door before you’d finished waving doesn’t mean . . .

That’s how it was going. Round and round. No wonder I couldn’t sleep. It was ten past eleven when I had the idea. Brilliant idea. Something I could try for Martha that she couldn’t try herself.

The Internet. What if I managed to contact Mary on the Internet? A long shot, I admit, but better than telepathy. I got out of bed, switched on the computer and selected AOL. There’s a site called TRAVEL that has a message-board. Martha says her sister travels, so maybe she checks out the message-board. Maybe. I typed in this message: