Deadly Games (2 page)

“Runaways.” He seemed to be holding back, regretting confiding in a pair of strangers.

“Where from?” she asked gently, hoping Sid would trust them.

“Her.”

“Who's her?” David willed himself to be patient.

“They're runaways,” Sid muttered again, still looking guarded.

“Where are they going?” Jenny's voice was soft.

“I wish I knew. I don't see enough,” Sid whispered. “But you might.”

“Why?” David prompted.

“You kids, you got better sight. Don't tell me you haven't.”

“We don't know.” David tried to explain. “We don't know how strong it is.”

“Always strong in kids.” Sid seemed convinced. “You've got to get back there. See more … more than I can.” He was getting even more anxious now. “She'll always be after them, beyond her own grave.”

“What's that meant to mean?” David persisted. “And who is
she?”

Sid began to cough and the nurse hurried back.

“I'm afraid you'll have to go now …. Mr Lennox is looking tired.”

“You wait – ” Sid began, but the coughing was racking his whole body and the twins knew they had to leave.

“Do you know anything about Sid?” Jenny asked the nurse, who had caught up with them at the lift.

“He told us his name was Lennox but that was all. He doesn't have any relatives or even friends that we know of.” She sighed. “The trouble is that, once he gets better, all he'll do is go back on the streets again. The social worker can try to find him a place in a hostel, but it's unlikely he'll take it.

“Do you think he's mad?” asked David bluntly, wanting to draw her out.

“No,” said the nurse unexpectedly. “I think he's suffering from a great sense of loss. I don't know what it is, of course.”

As the twins walked home, late-October rain streaked down, turning the run-down streets of Hockley into a glistening kaleidoscope of neon lighting. The shop windows shone like tawdry palaces full of cheap goods and gaudy lettering, but the Roxy was a dark hulk, and the tube station opposite had also been closed. Buses roared past, sending up spray, and the passers-by walked like a defeated army, heads down against the driving rain.

“We might as well get it over with,” said David.

“Get what over with?” But Jenny knew all too well what he was going to say – what had been going through both their minds since they had left the hospital.

“We've got to go back into the Roxy. Check out the screen,” he said flatly.

“I know,” replied Jenny glumly. The thought of going back in there on their own was horrific. “But we'll have to go home and get a torch first.” Then she came to a sudden halt outside an ironmongers. “Is someone trying to tell us something?” she said reluctantly.

A huge poster obliterated the entire display. It read: CLOSING-DOWN SALE, ALL ELECTRICAL GOODS HALF PRICE.

“They'll have torches,” said David.

“How I wish they hadn't,” Jenny replied fervently.

“Come on!” David was already opening the door.

Jenny shivered, glancing back at the derelict cinema. The Roxy looked like a crouching beast, ready to spring.

Armed with a large torch, the twins hovered at the entrance to the old cinema. Waiting until no one was watching, they darted out of the rain, through the broken hoarding at the entrance and into the sharp smell of the rancid interior.

David and Jenny walked hesitantly through the foyer. Flickering images from nowhere were bad enough, and they didn't know who might be sleeping in the dark auditorium.

“I'm not going to shine the torch around for a while. We might disturb someone – and they could be angry.”

“We've got to see what we're doing,” Jenny reminded him. “No one's going to like being trodden on.”

David slowly shone the torch around the inside of the cinema, its beam stabbing the darkness, and as he did so, his fears were confirmed. Bodies lay covered by blankets or under cardboard. Grizzled faces gazed at the twins warily, like pallid creatures dwelling at the bottom of some great ocean – creatures who had never seen the sun. There were some younger faces too, and the shock of seeing those vulnerable street-wise eyes disturbed Jenny and David to such an extent that they almost ran away in panic.

Above them the tattered screen was blank.

“Let's go,” said David.

“Clear off,” cried a hoarse voice. “And stop your spying.”

“What do you think you're looking at? A zoo?” snarled another.

“We're friends of Sid – of Sid Lennox,” said Jenny into the fug of unwashed bodies and cigarette butts. “He told us to come here.”

“That old nutter!” someone grunted.

“What for?” demanded another voice, sharp with hostility.

David's hand shook, and the torch beam played over the derelict interior. In the half-light the murals on the wall, the ornate decoration of the ceiling and the long sweep of the stage made the old cinema look more like a medieval cathedral, sheltering its poor, giving sanctuary to outcasts.

“He left some stuff here,” said Jenny, remembering that the policeman, although kind, had refused to allow Sid's overloaded supermarket trolley to be lifted into the ambulance.

“You the kids who took him away?” asked a woman's voice.

David swung the torch in her direction to see gentle and compassionate eyes under a dirty beret. She seemed to be almost entirely wrapped in newspapers.

“All right – you don't have to blind me.”

“Sorry.”

“Yes, we helped to get Sid to the hospital,” said Jenny defensively. “He was ill.”

“Mentally ill,” said someone, and there were loud guffaws in the dark.

“I'm not so sure about that,” said the woman. “Said he saw things and had the sight and he was on a mission. Well, what's wrong with that? Maybe he was.”

“He won't stay in that hospital,” said someone. “Soon be back here.”

“His trolley's not been touched,” said the woman. “
We
don't rob each other.”

Sure enough, the trolley was in exactly the same position as they had left it, and the twins slowly picked their way across to where it stood.

As they did so the screen started to flicker.

David and Jenny stared up at the two children running down the tunnel. The images were clearer now, and they could see they were about nine and ten and the girl seemed to be the elder. She wore a dress that came down below the knees, short socks and sandals. The boy wore a short-sleeved shirt, long shorts and also had socks and sandals. What time are they from? wondered David. He had seen children dressed like this in the film of
Swallows and Amazons
, but surely that was before the war? These children seemed more modern than that, but still very far from the present.

The images flickered as the two children hid in a recess in the tunnel while a tube train roared by, and then continued to run on beside the lines. “I've got to find 'em.” Sid's words rang in Jenny's ears. “She'll always be after them, beyond her own grave.” Who was
she?
Sid hadn't replied when David had asked him. Obviously the children were running away from “her”, so who could she be? Mother? Stepmother? Aunt? Teacher? And what had the two children done? The questions battered
at the twins' minds as the images faded and the screen became blank.

David and Jenny turned uncertainly to the huddled occupants of the Roxy, wondering if any of them would have a clue about Sid's “mission”. Jenny plunged in first, knowing she would have to choose her words carefully.

“Does anyone know anything else about Mr Lennox's background? Are there any relatives?”

There was a long silence, broken by a bark of laughter. “He's been a dosser all his natural.”

“That's not true,” snapped the woman. “Not true at all. He told me he used to drive a tube train.”

A chill swept over the twins amid the raucous laughter that followed and they hurried out of the auditorium, forgetting all about Sid's trolley.

That night Jenny tossed and turned, unable to sleep, her mind consumed with the mystery. The woman hunting the children down the tunnel, possibly “from beyond her own grave”; the boy and girl perpetually running; Sid as a tube-train driver. It all made a certain amount of sense but there was always a missing element. Had the woman chased the children into the path of Sid's train? If so, why? Or was Sid a fantasy merchant, as most of the homeless people in the Roxy had implied, and had never driven a train in his life?
Who was the woman? Who were the children? Who was Sid?

The only factor Jenny didn't question was the flickering images on the Roxy's screen. The twins' previous involvement with ghosts had made them aware that they possessed an alarming degree of extra-sensory perception. Then she realised something else – something that was very obvious. Surely, if she and David regularly returned to the Roxy, they would gradually see more and more of the story until all was finally revealed. Jenny wasn't sure that she wanted everything revealed, wasn't sure that she wanted to hear the end of the story or even enter the Roxy again. The reality of the rotting old cinema and its homeless occupants was as horribly disturbing as the ghosts of the dead children.

But Jenny knew that they had no choice. Feeling sick at the thought, she knew she and David would have to return to the Roxy to discover the fate of the children and understand why they themselves had been contacted. For some reason they had seen the images and now they would never be able to shrug off the responsibility; it was an inescapable part of having the sight.

The next morning was Saturday, and after a hurried breakfast Jenny and David decided to go to the hospital and see if they could talk to Sid again.

“Will we always share the same dreams, the same thoughts?” asked David.

“I hope so,” said Jenny firmly.

“And have the sight?” He sounded anxious.

Jenny almost admitted that she wished they could lose it, but instead she said slowly, “I think we're stuck with it now.”

“So we'll be ghost hunters for the rest of our lives then?”

“I don't think we will be when we're grown-up,” she replied.

“Why not?”

“I don't know. It's just a hunch.”

Sid had rallied. He was still attached to the drip, but he looked much better and seemed genuinely pleased to see them.

“You went down the Roxy?” he asked eagerly.

“Yes,” said Jenny and explained what they had seen.

Sid nodded impatiently. “That's where I got to. But it's where I've been a long time. Those pictures – they stick.”

“Stick?”

“Don't move on.” Sid was getting impatient. “Know what I mean?”

“Do you think the pictures will unstick themselves for us?” asked Jenny.

“You're young,” Sid replied. “You've got more of a chance. I've got to find out what happened to those kids. It's difficult for me – I haven't got the sight strong enough. But I reckon you have.”

“You think the sight is stronger in young people?” Jenny persisted. She had never met anyone before who understood their gift and wanted to find out as much as she could.

“Yeah,” was the rather vague reply.

“What do you know about the sight?” demanded David.

“What do you mean – what do I know?” Immediately Sid was defensive. “You saying I don't know what I'm on about?”

“No,” Jenny intervened tactfully. “We were just wondering how long you've had it.”

“Ever since …” Sid paused.

“Ever since?” she probed.

“Ever since I saw them kids.”

“You mean on the screen of the Roxy?”

“In real life.”

There was a long silence.

“Were you a tube-train driver?” Jenny asked gently.

“How do you know?” he snapped.

“A woman in the Roxy told us,” said David.

“Nell? Nosy old –”

“She was being helpful,” said Jenny. “She cares about you.”

“Her?”

“Yes, her. Did you knock the children down?” At last David was out with it and Jenny was grateful for her twin's directness.

Instead of firing up, however, Sid simply shook his head. “I never touched them.”

“Then what happened?” said Jenny persuasively.

“It's true I used to be a driver. One evening we was told these two kids were in the tunnel. May and Leslie. Poor mites – nine and ten years old they were. Fair broke my heart. They were running away from a kids' home, like. I met the superintendent, a Mrs Garland. Right misery she was – and she was always sucking peppermints. Must have been worried about bad breath. No wonder they was on the run.”

“Were they found?” asked David.

“That's the funny thing – they was
never
found. They disappeared into thin air. The current was switched off and the tunnel searched, but there
weren't no sign of them kids – not anywhere. They had to start the trains again, but the old girl, Mrs Garland, was in a right state. Said she knew they were hiding there somewhere. I saw her rushing through the tunnel, searching for them. They had to stop the trains again. But it was no good – she'd vanished. No trace of her at all. There's an old repair works two stations down – it was closed even in my day – and later that was searched too. But there was no sign of any of them. Weird. Then it started happening.” Sid went silent, his face paler now and his hands shaking slightly.

“Don't get yourself upset,” said David quietly, “or we'll have to go.”

“What started happening?” Jenny pressed him.

“I started seeing 'em – when I was driving, like. I saw 'em running ahead of me. That's all I saw. Dozens of times. Just ahead of me but never on the line. And I could see through 'em. Like they weren't really there. In the end I couldn't take it any longer so I left the job and went back home. I couldn't get another.”