The Kind Folk, page 19
It’s another quotation from John Strong. “Whereas once upon a time the Gift was the means by which the Folk of the Moon infiltrated the upstart race, in this barren era it has the function of a charm. That which is least known may be most potent, and the Gift gains power from its ignorance of its own nature, which allows its essence to preserve its secret dream. Its occult strength lies in the depths of its mind where even its own vision, having grown mortal, cannot penetrate. Thus it is capable of reawakening such magic as is hidden in the world, and perhaps the Folk may revive themselves by battening upon the dormant forces it has roused…”
He’s surprised not to find this more disturbing. He feels as though he has already dealt with it in the streets that were built over the marsh. Perhaps by acknowledging it he can extinguish its power. As his hand relaxes on the control he hears Sophie murmur in the bedroom. He shuts the computer down and keeps his footsteps quiet in case she’s still asleep. A thought appears to have wakened her, and she looks unexpectedly apologetic. “Luke, did you mean what you told Freda?”
“I told her a few things. I should think I meant them all.”
“You said you weren’t going to inherit Terence’s obsession.”
Luke doesn’t think he quite said that; perhaps Sophie dreamed he did. Nevertheless he says “I shouldn’t think you’d want me to any more than she would.”
He can see the answer in her eyes, but there’s a question too. She parts her lips for a breath and then says “Do you believe what it says in the Page book?”
“No more than you do.”
“Then I don’t at all.”
“I won’t either,” Luke vows and takes her hands, which makes his grasp feel sure of itself. “I won’t even think of it. Let’s never mention it again.”
30
ON THE BALCONY
“JUST WATER IN A BOTTLE, thanks. I’ll be driving home after the show.”
“So long as you aren’t sober in the wrong way, hey? Your act is what I’m saying.”
“I’ll be whatever they want me to be. That’s how it works.”
“Champion. Here’s your tipple, so are you fixed up?”
“Do you mind if I ask you an odd question?”
“The odder the better. I’m more than a shade odd myself.”
Luke thinks it’s more that the man would like to be. He’s Alasdair Hull, the manager of the Elysium. He’s wearing a pale green three-piece suit with a leather trilby, beneath which his plump amiable face might look too youthful to have left school if it didn’t bear wrinkles several decades old. As Hull resumes his puffy chair behind his office desk, having shut the miniature refrigerator that stands on top of a safe, Luke says “What made you get in touch with me?”
“No other way to book you that I could see. You independent types don’t go in for agents any more. You’re all the folk you need to be all by yourself.”
“Yes, but why did you when you did?”
“Your reputation’s spreading, that’s all. I’ll bet you there are folk here tonight who’ve never been to the Elysium.”
“So what had you heard that prompted you?”
“You won’t let me off with saying I got the idea out of my own little head.”
“I will if it’s true.”
“Well, it’s not.” Hull tweaks the brim of his hat as if he’s greeting somebody and says “We have one of our local critics to thank. She does it for the paper and the radio.”
“She came to see you about me, you mean.”
“As good as. Rang up and I don’t know when I’ve ever heard her sound so enthusiastic.”
If Luke were to say he’s not surprised it would be mistaken for bragging, and so he says “Would you happen to remember what she said?”
“I do.” Hull tips his hat back with a finger, though not far enough to expose his receding hairline. “Don’t take this wrong,” he says, “but she said we ought to book you while we can afford you.”
They’re reduced to imitating themselves, Luke thinks. “Will the lady be here tonight?”
“Sadly she won’t. I haven’t had a chance to tell her you’d be on since she rang, and she’s still away on a course. She’ll be sorry to have missed you.”
Luke knows there’s no reason to assume anything of the kind. It has occurred to him to cancel any bookings like this one, but he doesn’t want to let anybody down, and what has he to fear? Just because the theatre is close to Crakemoor, which is mentioned in Terence’s journal, he isn’t about to be tempted to visit the site. As Hull ushers him backstage the manager says “Don’t worry because we’re empty upstairs. We’re renovating but we haven’t had to turn anyone away.”
An unlit balcony looms over the stalls, which are indeed almost full. It’s supported by caryatids Luke assumes are Victorian, however ancient they’re feigning to be. Its front edge bears a brass rail divided by a pair of irrelevant decorations, two ridged knobs framed by of the elevated aisle. As the audience greets Luke with applause he could think the vibrations have made or are about to make the incongruous objects stir.
He earns more applause and a chorus of sighs by announcing that he’s soon to be a father, though he only means to lead into a routine. Here’s a father who appears not to know which way up to hold the newborn. Here’s another who’s afraid he may drop it or squash it or upset it or cause it to spray him. Here’s a fellow who’s determined not to shed a single joyful tear and grimaces so much that the audience claps as well as laughing. This would encourage Luke more if the items on the balcony weren’t responding as well, letting go of the rail so as to stretch their fingers wide and perform a parody of applause. In a moment they grip the rail again, and the body rises into view between them.
Too much of it seems to be elsewhere. It puts Luke in mind of a foetus that has withered in some inhuman womb. He could easily imagine that the bloated head, which is still working on some of its features, has floated up like a grinning balloon and drawn the pallid fleshless torso after it. It isn’t unexpected, he tells himself, and it won’t distract him. Here’s one of those aunts who are convinced you have to address children in a special way, as if you’re really talking to everyone else within quite a distance. Here’s a relative who uses babies as an excuse to revert to speaking in no recognisable language. Here’s one who doesn’t care for children but feels bound not to show it, except that every wince and nervously valiant smile and earnest bid for friendship does …
The occupant of the balcony is displeased by all the laughter. Perhaps it feels that Luke should be paying it more attention. While the tiny eyes are unreadable—they’re so deeply sunken that they appear to have shrivelled into the head—the corners of the lipless mouth have sagged on either side of the toadstool lump of a chin. Luke is inspired to portray someone determined to ignore a child, which produces several minutes of fun, and so does an impression of a father desperate to pretend he isn’t wheeling a baby in a buggy, that unmanly task. The antics of the intruder in the balcony prompt Luke to demonstrate the lengths to which people will go in their attempts to disregard others while trying not to seem to do so. A whitish tongue, unless it’s a discoloured worm, has writhed out of the mouth to dangle down the chin as the figure wags its head at him and lifts its hands on either side of the undeveloped face to give the ancient sign twice. Luke is reminded of a child who’s eager to provoke a chase, except that the antics strike him as senile. They aren’t going to put him off, although eventually he falls back on trusted material: the infectious tics, the verbal ones, the bank robber who ends up on the Brittan show. He feels as if he has been driven to imitate himself, even if the audience can’t know. The waves of mirth appear to goad the intruder to desperation, and it prances back and forth on the balcony, grimacing so hideously that the contortions look capable of wrenching such features as it has into a different shape, not necessarily that of a face. Luke hears boards clatter beneath its tread, and some of the people seated under the balcony glance up. Suppose somebody on the staff goes to look? No doubt they wouldn’t see the culprit, and Luke applies himself to doing likewise. At last his show is over, and he glimpses a shape crouching out of view as light floods the auditorium.
He suspects he’s meant to know that his tormentor is hiding and to look out for it elsewhere. It isn’t visible as the audience makes for the bar or the street, and Luke can’t see it when he leaves the Elysium once Alasdair Hull has finished enthusing about him. Even if the presence helped intensify his nervous energy onstage, he can live without that kind of stimulus. The payment machine at the entrance to the multi-storey opposite the theatre sticks out the tongue of his parking ticket, and a shivering lift carries him up to the fifth level, past floors indistinguishable from one another except for the occasional parked car. Nothing moves on the expanses of concrete blanched by fluorescent lights, and he could imagine that the July heat has grown so stagnant it has sapped the night of life. But as he steers the Lexus out of its space he sees a figure waiting for him.
It’s crouching on top of the wall at the far end of the fifth level, gripping the concrete edge with its toes, which are as long as his fingers. He has to drive towards it there’s no other way out of the car park—and as he does so it lifts its hands to frame its face. The hands are describing the sign and perhaps also drawing attention to the absence of a mouth in the round whitish lump. In the middle of the floor Luke swings the car down a ramp and glimpses the figure dropping like a spider off the wall. As the car turns onto the fourth floor he sees that his follower has perched on the wall there to await him.
It plays the trick all the way down to the last floor but one. He wouldn’t be surprised to find it loitering like a hitchhiker at the exit barrier, but the ground level is deserted. As he drives through Leeds towards the motorway he thinks he sees a figure scuttling past the far ends of terraced streets. When he arrives at the lonely junction the motorway overlooks, at first the only sign of life appears to be the operation of the traffic lights that guard the empty roads. He’s driving up to the motorway when a scrawny malformed shape vaults onto the ramp and scurries ahead of him.
It’s out of sight by the time he speeds onto the motorway, but he knows where he’s likely to encounter it again. The lights of the city fall behind, and soon the lamps above the motorway come to an end. As the road climbs towards the moors and the unfinished moon it grows almost as deserted as the sky between the stars appears to be. On both sides bleak slopes that seem too gloomy for the moon to begin to illuminate stretch to the horizon. A lorry lowers its headlamp beams as it races around a bend ahead, and Luke dips his. A mile further uphill he repeats the routine on behalf of a solitary oncoming car, and then he’s alone on the road. His headlights find nothing to fasten on until a signboard comes into view—the sign for the Crakemoor road. The board sails by, and the raised beams light up a figure standing at the junction with the side road.
It’s grotesquely reminiscent of a policeman directing traffic. Its right arm is extended towards Crakemoor, not pointing but forming the sign of the Folk. “I’m going home,” Luke says loud enough to be heard on the moors, “and nowhere else.” Before he has finished speaking he tramps hard on the accelerator.
He’s nearly at the junction when the shape lurches in front of the car, flinging its arms wide and thrusting its mouthless head forward so violently that the eyes almost sink out of sight. He doesn’t brake; he floors the accelerator, and the car runs the scrawny figure down, having struck it in the region where its genitals should be, a withered tangle more like bone than any species of flesh. Luke doesn’t feel an impact, but the car shudders as though it has been seized by a wind across the moors. As he races past the Crakemoor road he sees a dim glimmering shape stagger to its feet in the mirror and stretch out its claws to the car. The arms are lengthening; they’re yards long now—they’re even longer. Then they appear to merge with the night, and eventually Luke lets the car lose speed on the ascent to the highest moor. “Don’t bother trying to entice me any more,” he says and doesn’t care if anything can hear. “I’ve left you behind. I’m not your kind of folk.”
31
A TOUCH IN THE DARK
“WHILE YOU CAN AFFORD ME. Of course I’m not offended, but was that your idea?”
“Now you mention it,” Amy Greenaway begins and then gives Luke a blink of her glittery eyelids. “Well, that’s an old song.”
“Not as old as some,” Luke says and reads the onscreen name as his mobile continues to sing about last month. “Excuse me while I take this. It’s my partner and she’s pregnant.”
“I’ll be fetching your water,” the manager says and leaves Luke in the dressing-room.
Luke swivels his chair towards the mirror, which frames his face with lights and allows him to spy on the corridor. The visible section stays deserted as Sophie says “Can you talk?”
“I hope I’ll always be able to do that. I won’t be much use otherwise.”
“You know what I mean,” she says with a nominal laugh. “You aren’t putting on a show.”
“I’m not onstage for a few minutes, if that’s what you mean.” Having said just the first part of this aloud, Luke adds “How’s everything at home?”
“I think somebody’s anxious to see the world. I’ve been asking him to wait till next week.”
“It isn’t likely to be that soon, is it? I thought we had months.”
“Won’t you be happy if he’s here sooner?”
“You know I will whenever it turns out to be. Why next week?”
“That’s when they’ve booked me into the studio, and by the way, we were all wrong.”
Luke finds he hasn’t run out of apprehensiveness. “About what?”
“They’ve convinced me we should call the album Drew Two.”
“If that’s what sells.” In case this seems insufficiently enthusiastic Luke says “It’s more you, isn’t it?”
“That’s all my news.” As Luke wonders if anything made her anxious to hear his voice she says “The Arnolds have been to the house.”
He feels uneasy and can’t quite grasp why. “How did it go?”
“Freda’s taken a fancy to something. She wants to be sure you don’t mind.”
“I don’t see how I could,” Luke says, only to realise what he shouldn’t have forgotten. Suppose Freda has told Sophie that she found the deformed skull? It reconstituted itself somehow after he destroyed it, and may it have reappeared again? Sophie will know something is very wrong, and not just at the house. “What thing?” he makes himself ask.
“The piece of ironwork with the moon in it. Maurice says he can make it into part of a gate for her.”
“They’re absolutely welcome to it. Was that all?”
“It’s all they liked.”
“No,” Luke says as a shadow darts along the corridor. “Was that all whoever you spoke to said?”
“Just about.” As the owner of the shadow, which was thin because Amy Greenaway is tall and slim, enters the dressing-room Sophie says “She thought they could take anything that’s salvageable to one of the charity shops.”
“They could,” Luke says as he’s handed a bottle of water. “Thanks, Amy.”
“I didn’t know you weren’t alone,” Sophie protests. “I’ll let you go. Just don’t drive all that way if you’re too tired. I’d rather you stayed overnight if you need to.”
“I’m not tired,” Luke says and vows not to let it catch up with him.
“Why don’t you decide when you’ve done your gig. If you aren’t coming home just let me know and then I can bolt the door.”
“I’ve decided now. At the latest I’ll be home by two.”
That would mean driving slowly, which he doesn’t plan to do. “You’re on in an couple of minutes,” Amy Greenaway murmurs.
“I heard that, Luke. You do whatever’s safest afterwards, and now go and be a star.”
As Luke pockets the mobile the manager says “Ready for your audience?”
“Bring them on,” Luke says and has to ensure she takes his vehemence for a joke.
He’s thinking of intruders, and he doesn’t have to wait long for one. As the lights go down in the auditorium that reminds him of a lecture theatre, the dimness appears to lend substance to a figure beyond the aisle that climbs between the rows of seats. It could be the spectator he encountered at the Elysium; there’s little to distinguish it, and even less that bothers to seem human. As Luke portrays a variety of characters bent on ignoring children or beggars or some aspect of themselves, the figure grows frantic to attract his attention. It lurches at the aisle as though it’s threatening to distract his audience, and all the laughter seems to madden it; perhaps it thinks it’s the butt of the jokes. When Luke finds more improvisations to perform, it prances behind the back row, plucking at people’s heads. Some people wave their hands as if they’re fending off an insect, but that’s all the reaction it provokes, and so it starts capering behind them while its elongated fingers drag so fiercely at its face that they might be trying to render it even less complete. Ignoring its antics energises Luke, and he feels as if he could go on all night. It isn’t until the audience sounds exhausted by laughing that he ends the show.
When the light swells up it seems to shrivel the intruder, which collapses on all fours as if there’s no longer enough of a body to support the head, and the scrawny remnant dodges behind the highest seats. Luke is sure he hasn’t seen the last of it, but it doesn’t appear to be eavesdropping while Amy Greenaway enthuses over his performance, and there’s no sign of it on the way out. Once the car park empties he could imagine that he’s on his own.
