The Grin of the Dark

THIRTEEN - IT'S ONLINE

Once the van has halted in the basement, Mark runs to the rear doors and shows me his face through the left-hand window. He hauls his lips back in a grin while he wobbles his head up and down in silent mirth. After quite a few seconds I say 'You can let me out now.'

He ought to be at school, but the staff are being trained to use a new computer system. He carries on mimicking Tubby until his mother calls 'Go on, Mark. Let the hermit out of his cell.'

He twists the key and throws the doors wide before sprinting to the lift. I've been hugging my computer all the way from Egham. I cradle it and follow him between two hulking pillars as he darts into the lift to rest his modest weight on the door hold. I lower my burden into a corner, and then I hurry to help Natalie lift out a suitcase obese with clothes. As its wheels hit the concrete she glances past me and cries 'Mark.'

I'm kneeling on the edge of the metal floor. I straighten up so hastily that I bang my head on the roof. The ache in my scalp seems to pierce my brain, almost extinguishing the sight of the lift. It's shut, and there's no sign of Mark. My skull throbs in time with my footsteps as I run to pummel the metal doors. 'Mark, where are you?' the pain makes me shout, though he can't have gone far.

'Come down, Mark,' Natalie calls beside me. 'Come down now.'

We can hear his muffled giggles. I'm wondering if I should run upstairs, however painful that may be, when a faint metallic rattle indicates that the lift is moving. I can't judge whether it's descending or the reverse until the doors inch open. Mark is at the controls, and the computer looks undisturbed. 'What did you think you were doing?' Natalie demands.

His grin wobbles, but not much. 'Someone wanted the lift. I was going to take them and come back.'

'So where are they?'

'Don't know.'

'Oh, Mark, you can do better than that.'

'I don't. I heard him but when I went up he wasn't there.'

'All right, if he wasn't he wasn't. I expect he used the stairs,' Natalie says. 'Why were you laughing?'

'Somebody's face.'

'So someone was there.'

'No, just his face.' When his mother gazes at him Mark protests 'You'll see.'

'I hope you aren't going to behave like this now Simon's with us,' she says and steps into the lift. 'I think we'd better go up and down together.'

They wait for me to trundle several cases in, and I'm about to suggest that I lock the van so that I can accompany them when Mark sends the lift upwards. I hear the lift come to rest on the first floor, and hold my breath until it escapes in a gasp at a rumble of indoor thunder. It's the wheeling of a suitcase. Soon Natalie shouts 'You can call the lift, Simon. We'll take the stairs.'

What did I expect to hear down the shaft? I jab the button and fetch boxes, one of which I use to prop the lift open. By the time Natalie and Mark reappear I've unloaded the van, and my head has stopped throbbing. While she locks the van I stow the flattened desk we bought on the way to Egham, and then I feel compelled to ask 'What am I going to see, then?'

'Nothing,' Natalie says, and I don't think all her sharpness is directed at Mark. 'We've been through it once.'

'Was there ever really anything, Mark?'

'I said,' he insists and punches the metal wall so hard the lift shivers on its cable. 'It was like a face on the floor.'

'A picture, you mean.'

'Fatter than a picture.'

'What was it doing?'

'How could anything like that do anything?' Natalie objects and starts the lift. 'And control yourself, Mark. I won't have you damaging property, and it's dangerous as well.'

I doubt that even his fiercest punch could harm the lift. When he turns to me I wonder if he wants me to defend him, but he's answering my question. 'Laughing.'

I don't know what he's trying to communicate. I won't pursue it while his mother can hear. I face the doors, and as they part, so do my lips at the sight of a pale object that's slithering across the floorboards into Natalie's locked apartment. The next moment the door opposite shuts as silently. No doubt I glimpsed light spilling into the corridor. Of course, whoever's in the other apartment must have dropped some item that they've just retrieved – a bag with a face on it, from Mark's description. 'Come on, Mark,' I say and prop the lift open with a suitcase. 'Let's get me out of the box.'

I stagger into the apartment with everything that's heaviest while Natalie ensures that Mark doesn't tackle too much. My suitcases move into her bedroom. Once the rest of my belongings have found at least a temporary place Natalie says 'I'd better return the van.'

'Do you mind if I stay and set up?'

'Can I help you make your desk?' Mark says at once.

'I expect Simon won't want to be distracted. You keep me company and we'll walk back by the river.'

Mark tramps along the hall as if he's been encumbered with the heaviest burden of the day, and Natalie flashes me a private smile as she follows him. Once they've gone I indulge in feeling completely at home. Or rather, I try to, but I won't be able to until I know my computer has survived the journey. First I ought to build the desk.

The photocopied information sheet appears to be designed to demonstrate how many languages besides English there are in the world. The diagrams seem less than wholly related to the contents of the carton. By the time I've solved the puzzle of slotting the sides of the desk into the top and preventing them from immediately sliding out again with wedges of plastic, my hands are almost too sweaty to grasp the slippery wood. It isn't much of a desk, but the one in Egham came with the accommodation. I stand it next to the corner bookcases and unpack the computer onto it. I hook up the system and switch on.

Lost, lost, lost... I feel as if my skull has grown so hollow that it's echoing. The repetitions fill it while the initial test appears. The word is only in my head. I bring a chair from the kitchen as the screen fills with icons. When I log on to Frugonet I see that an email has arrived since I left Egham.

Mister Lester!

Might you be able to email me some idea of how you're faring, say a couple of chapters? That would help me write the catalogue copy so I can implant the name of Simon Lester in the public consciousness. Meanwhile, take a look at your bank balance and don't forget to send me your expenses.

Here's to rediscovery and telling the world!

Rufus Wall

Editor, LUP On Film

I pull down my list of favourites and click on the link for my bank, which hasn't been too favourite for a while. I have to type my password on the site, and another password, and the last one. They seem to be hindering the sluggish construction I have to watch. Eventually the details of my bank accounts are revealed, line by dawdling line. The current account has taken delivery from LUP today of ten thousand pounds.

I let out a breath I wasn't aware of holding. Somewhere out of range of my reason I mustn't have been entirely convinced of my change of fortune or that it would last. I'm no longer leery of checking how much I owe on my Frugo Visa. Only fifteen hundred? I can say goodbye to that at once. I make the online payment and leave just a hundred in the current account, transferring the rest into the deposit to earn interest. I still have to provide Rufus with material, but I'm sure I have enough leads, and meanwhile I can write about Tubby's Terrible Triplets. First I can't resist discovering whether Smilemime has been silenced on the movie database.

So everything Mr Questionabble says is right because he says so, is it? Hands up everyone that's going to believe someboddy that won't even put his real name. He's so sure of himself he has to run crying to the man who made the film he got wrong, and he still has even if he talked to him. Either he diddn't or he's so convinced he's right he can't even hear what someone who knows about films is telling him. I'll tell him again anyway. It's TUBBIES TINY TUBBIES. TUBBIES TINY TUBBIES. There's your lines, Mr Questionabble. Write them out a hundred times and maybe you'll learn something if you aren't an utter clown.

I might leave him ranting into the void if I weren't sure that he sent Charley Tracy on a false trail and perhaps lured him away from the van at the church as well.

If a clown is someone who plays stupid tricks on people there's only one of those here. I'm a film journalist who's researching Tubby. Stand by for revelations when I've finished.

My fingertip hovers over the mouse, and then I send the message. I'd rather spend my time telling Natalie and Mark my good news. I can hear Mark laughing outside the apartment. I hurry to meet them, but there's nobody in the corridor when I poke my head out. Did I hear another door shut as I opened mine? I listen until my strained ears seem to conjure up a sound, but it's only the lapping of ripples on my computer.