Mr Mumbles (9 page)

Decision made. I turned on my heels and ran. Close behind, the unseen creature spat out an angry snarl and plunged after me, closing the gap with every step.

The trees snagged and snared me as I fled, clawing at me, trying to slow me down. I threw up my arms to protect my face, but soon the palms of my hands were raw and bleeding from the forest’s assault.

A sound – somewhere between a bark and a squeal – snapped at my heels and I hurried on, forcing my aching legs to give me more speed. My muscles burned from the effort.

But it wasn’t enough.

With a roar, the pursuing animal leapt on to my back, knocking me forwards. Sharp claws scraped across my flesh. I managed to cry out in pain and shock before I hit the ground in a clumsy forward roll.

Our combined momentum carried both me and the creature on, flipping us over and trapping it beneath me. It shrieked and lashed out wildly, and I caught sight of a deformed, clawed hoof as it swiped at my face. Hot, angry breath hit the back of my neck, and I imagined unseen jaws getting ready to snap shut.

Quickly, I fired a sharp elbow at the beast. It howled, and thrashed harder still. Again and again I drove my elbows down into its twisting body, until with a damp
crack
something inside it gave way.

At once, the animal became less interested in attacking, and more worried about getting out from under me. It kicked furiously with its back legs, pushing against the ground, trying to squeeze out from where I had it pinned. I wasn’t about to argue.

Leaping to my feet, I sprinted off through the forest, not
chancing a look back at the shrieking, wounded beast I had left behind.

Further and further I blundered into the woods, all sense of direction now long gone. Still I ran, stumbling through the dark, too afraid to stop in case another of the creatures found me.

Something in the undergrowth hit me at around knee height, and I leapt backwards; fists raised; ready for anything.

Almost
anything.

A moss-covered rectangle jutted up from the grass. It stood there, barely three feet high; still and silent, showing no sign of moving.

Cautiously, I pulled aside some of the grass that was concealing the object. The moss came off in dirty clumps when I scraped at it, revealing a sheet of metal underneath.

The metal looked as if it had once been white, but now was stained in streaks of greens and browns. I tore off another handful of the moss and revealed a large, black letter W.

More of the moss came away in my hand, uncovering
other letters. Some were faded and peeling, but before long I was able to make out the entire sign. I stared down at it, shocked but not exactly surprised.

Wilkinson Road.
I knew it. I just wasn’t sure why it was now buried under an acre of forest.

I pushed on towards where I hoped my own street would be, although the high trees on all sides meant I was working almost entirely on guesswork. Somewhere to my left, the screaming had started again, so I curved to the right, keeping as much distance from the sound as I could.

And then suddenly I was falling; rolling, tumbling out of the trees, down a steep embankment which had come at me out of nowhere. Desperately, I reached out, grabbing for something –
anything
– that would slow my descent, but any handhold I found slipped swiftly through my fingers.

A split second before I hit it, I caught a glimpse of a dark pool of water. I barely had time to draw in a deep breath, before I plunged below the still, stagnant surface. My heart thudded and my mind raced.
Not water. Please, not water!

I hate water. I hate it so much that just being close to it
makes me want to throw up. Here, now, surrounded by it –
sinking
in it – a panic gripped me.

My heart raced. My lungs burned holes in my chest. I kicked my legs, flailed my arms. Desperately. Frantically.

But it was no use. The faint light rippling on the surface above me faded as I sunk down into the waiting depths.

I was floundering so much I barely noticed my feet touch the bottom. The ground was muddy and soft, but I was able to dig my toes into it until they found something solid.

The water tried to force me back as I kicked upwards. I couldn’t swim, but the kick-off had given me a good start. I clawed with my hands and thrashed with my legs until my head exploded up above the surface.

The night air tasted smoky and bitter as I swallowed it down, but I didn’t mind. I kicked my legs and managed to clumsily keep myself afloat long enough to take in my surroundings.

The water was filling what looked like a man-made hole in the ground. The pit was rectangular, about the length and width of a bus. It could have been a small swimming pool,
but who’d build a swimming pool here?

I struggled over to the edge and hauled myself up on to the hard, uneven ground. I crawled on for several metres, trying to get as far from the water as I could. Finally, my exhausted arms gave out and I rolled on to my back.

For a few long moments I lay there, breathing heavily, gazing up at the unfamiliar night sky. My soaking body shook with the cold. The sharp ache from the scratches on my shoulders mixed with the dull throbs of my fall, to form an all-encompassing wave of pain. I knew, though, that I didn’t have time to sit around feeling sorry for myself. As quickly as I could manage, I drew myself up into a sitting position.

A girl of around five years old stood before me, peering out from behind a curtain of long black hair. Her skin was pale, but caked with grime and muck. Her eyes appeared to be almost too large for her face – two impossibly dark pools, boring a hole straight through me. Around each one was a dark smudge of eye shadow. Across her lips was an uneven streak of red lipstick. Childish attempts at looking like an adult.

In her hands she clutched a bundle of rags. No, not just
rags – a doll made of rags. Scrawny arms and legs dangled down limply from its stuffed torso. Its head hung low, but as the girl stepped closer, I could have sworn the thing turned to look at me. A brief flash of a cracked porcelain face was all I saw, but it was enough to give me the willies.

‘Have you seen Billy?’ the girl asked. Her voice was high and soft, but completely unafraid, which caught me off guard.

‘Billy?’ I replied, unsure of what else to say. The only Billy I knew was Billy Gibb, a boy in my year in school who I didn’t really get on with. She couldn’t mean him, surely? ‘I don’t…I don’t think so.’

‘Billy used to play with us,’ she continued, her gaze still fixed on me, ‘but then he sent us away. He doesn’t like us any more.’

‘I’m sure that’s not true,’ I said, edging backwards on my hands. She was just a little girl – probably lost in this hell-hole, like me – but every time she spoke it felt as if my skin was trying to crawl off my bones.

‘Billy made me sad,’ sang the girl, swinging the doll back
and forth by its arms. Every time it swung towards me, the head lifted enough for its eyes to meet mine. ‘When I get sad, Raggy Maggie gets
very
cross.’

The girl’s arms stopped, and the doll’s pendulum movement slowed almost at once. Frowning, she lifted its mouth to her ear and listened, her stare never once shifting from me.

‘But he says he doesn’t know where Billy is.’ I watched, hypnotised, as she moved the doll’s head up and down at her ear. ‘Oh, no, I’m sure he wouldn’t tell nasty lies to us, would you?’

‘N-no,’ I stammered. I wanted to move, but something about the girl’s stare had turned my arms and legs to lead.

‘Raggy Maggie has something she wants to tell you,’ the girl whispered. ‘She says it’s something very important.’ She reached out her arm, holding the doll so its face was just centimetres from mine.

Up close, it was even creepier than I’d first thought. Like the girl, the doll’s face was pale white, but stained here and there by black and grey smudges of filth.

Thin wisps of straw blonde were all that remained of its hair – dirty and matted and messy. A dark crack ran from the top of her ceramic head down through her left eye. Her one good eye seemed to follow me as I pulled away.

A voice which wasn’t her own suddenly came out of the girl’s mouth – screechy and harsh, like fingernails being dragged down a blackboard. As the girl nodded the doll’s head up and down, the doll’s voice spoke three simple words:

‘He’s behind you.’

I
turned, spinning up on to my knees, half expecting Mr Mumbles to come leering at me from the shadows. Instead, a middle-aged man with dark hair and smiling brown eyes extended a hand towards me, palm upwards, as if to help me up.

I looked at him suspiciously. He was human, at least. That was something. And his smile appeared genuine.

Cautiously, I placed my hand in his. His grip was as strong as his skin was rough, and he lifted me to my feet with no effort at all.

Even standing, I fell a good few centimetres short of the man’s shoulders. He towered above me, big and broad beneath his red-checked lumberjack shirt, like a rugby player.
Despite the man’s size, for the first time in hours I didn’t feel threatened or afraid.

‘Hey, kiddo,’ he smiled, looking me up and down. ‘Maybe I’m wrong, but it looks to me like you’re a long way from home.’

‘I…don’t know,’ I replied, hesitantly. ‘I’m not sure.’

‘Trust me,’ he said. ‘You are.’

I nodded, not really wanting to argue.

‘Good job I found you when I did,’ the man continued. ‘There’s some nasty things out there.’

I suddenly remembered the girl. When I turned round, she was nowhere to be seen.

‘There was a girl,’ I told him, ‘a little girl. With a doll.’

‘Ah, that would be Caddie,’ the man said, nodding solemnly. ‘One of them nasty things I was just talking about. Best avoided.’

I glanced back at the spot where Caddie had stood, and felt an icy shiver travel the length of my spine. ‘I will.’

‘She’s not the worst, but it’s probably just easier and safer all round if you keep out of her way.’

I nodded. He didn’t have to tell me twice. I’d be happy never seeing the girl again. ‘Where…what is this place?’ I
asked, taking in my new surroundings for the first time.

The pool of water was a few feet behind the man. Beyond that was the hill I’d rolled down. The forest stood at the top of it, ominous and silent.

Around me seemed to be nothing but waste ground. Dark, oily puddles pitted the soil like blackheads. Mounds of scrap wood and metal lay abandoned all around, some scorched and burned, others presumably just waiting to be.

‘The Darkest Corners,’ said the man.

‘The what?’

‘The Darkest Corners,’ he repeated. ‘Charming, isn’t it?’

‘I’ve never heard of it,’ I replied, shaking my head.

‘Not many have,’ he shrugged. He hooked his thumbs through the belt loops of his jeans and leaned back on his heels. ‘In fact, apart from those living here, I’d say you’re probably the first.’

‘But…’ My mind raced with a thousand questions, none of which wanted to wait their turn. ‘I don’t get it. At first I thought it was my village, but then, I mean now…I don’t know.’

‘Yeah, it can be confusing like that,’ he agreed. ‘I remember my first visit. Not nice. Brought on a panic attack that lasted
oabout a fortn—’ A strangled hiss from nearby broke his sentence in two. He held up a hand for silence, and listened to the whistling of the wind. Though the sound didn’t come again, his face remained grave with concern. ‘It’s not safe out here for you,’ he warned. ‘You’d best come with me.’

He led me across the waste ground, speaking only twice to warn me of possible danger ahead. Both times nothing materialised, and soon we were sneaking along the side of a low, stone building with barricaded windows and boarded-up doors.

At the third or fourth window, the man stopped. He told me to keep my eyes open for danger, then he knocked out a complex series of beats on the wooden planks.

To begin with, I didn’t think anything was happening. We stood there, close together, neither one of us saying a word. Eventually, I could hear the sound of footsteps within the building, drawing closer. After a few seconds, a dozen or more bolts were slid noisily back, and the entire window blockade swung inwards.

‘Go,’ the man nodded, stepping aside to let me through. I
pulled myself in through the gap, and began to slide head first towards the floor on the other side.

Just before I hit the ground, a hand caught me by the arm. It dragged me away from the window, hauling me upright as it did. I found myself looking at a hooded figure, just slightly taller than myself. The person underneath had their head and face hidden beneath a long, flowing robe, and I couldn’t even tell if they were male or female.

‘See to the window,’ the man who had helped me said, sliding down through the barricade behind me. The robed figure nodded, and immediately set about fixing the boards back into place. ‘The things out there don’t usually attack here,’ he said, turning to me, ‘but with you inside, I can’t be sure. You’d be a prize catch.’

I followed behind him as he began to march off along a wide corridor, which was lit at irregular intervals by tall, floor-standing gas lamps. Beneath my feet, the dusty carpet felt threadbare and thin, and made a sound like
fup-fup-fup
as we walked along it.

‘What are those things, anyway?’ I asked. I felt better when I was
talking. Talking left less time to think. ‘They didn’t even look human.’

‘That’s because they
aren’t
human,’ he replied, matter-of-factly. ‘Never have been. Most of them are nothing more than shadows. Ghosts of the past. All of them are lost. Neglected.
Forgotten.’
He spat out that last word, as if it had left a foul taste in his mouth.

‘I see,’ I nodded, despite the fact I didn’t have the faintest idea what he was on about.

‘You don’t have the faintest idea what I’m on about, do you?’

I stopped for a moment, shocked, then doubled my pace in order to catch up with him again. ‘How did you do that?’ I demanded.