Thieving Fear

TWENTY-THREE

As Ellen saw blackness racing towards her she had time to hope that it would blot her out. Extinguishing the lights would do, but it only closed around the train, displaying her on either side. Even if she stared resolutely ahead she was still aware of the loathsome bloated pallid shapes that flanked her like guards conducting her to some inevitable fate. She saw Charlotte grab the mobile and switch off the silenced call before shutting her eyes tight, while Hugh made it plain that he had no idea where to look. It had been kind of them to pretend they could bear the sight of Ellen, and she couldn't blame them for giving up. Charlotte ought to be proud of Ellen's developing vocabulary, of the number of words she had found for herself: bulky, bulging, puffy, inflated, pasty, revolting, disgusting, foul, fetid, noisome, emetic, vomitive . . . She was going down the list that filled her head when Hugh spoke, barely audible above the hollow uproar of the train. 'Is it him?'

Charlotte raised her head as if to search but kept her eyes shut, presumably for fear of glimpsing Ellen. 'Is who what?'

'Pendemon,' Hugh mumbled and turned his gaze away from the window beside her, only to find the view across the aisle as unwelcome. 'Has he done something?'

Ellen's fingers writhed, not just because she could scarcely bear how they felt whenever they rubbed flabbily together. She was remembering the buried object that she'd taken for a bunch of twisted roots until it had seemed to grope for her hand. 'Can we leave him alone for now?'

'You think he has,' Hugh said with a kind of dismayed eagerness.

'I didn't say that and I'm not thinking it either. What are you trying to prove, Hugh?'

'Maybe just that I'm worth listening to.'

'You know you are. When has anybody ever said you weren't?'

'Let's talk, then,' Charlotte muttered. 'We need to.'

The train clattered at length through the dark before Hugh said 'Do you remember what we talked about last time we were there?'

By leaving Thurstaston unnamed he rendered the memory of the twisted object that had stirred under the earth more ominous, and Charlotte didn't help by saying 'Remind us.'

'We were saying what we dreamed the night we slept there.'

Ellen hadn't mentioned her dream, and didn't want to recall it now, even if it was no worse than her present state. 'I don't see anything unusual about that,' Charlotte said, shutting her eyes tighter. 'Everyone dreams.'

'Yes, but how many dreams do you remember all these years later? Was it just that one?'

'It still is.'

'Then mustn't that mean it wasn't an ordinary dream?'

'It was pretty ordinary,' Charlotte said, and Ellen wondered if this was meant to fend off the memory. 'I wouldn't make any great claims for it.'

'What was it, though?'

'Just some kind of cellar. I was going to be pulled down into it if I hadn't woken up.'

'Anything else you remember? Where –'

'I'd rather not discuss it here.' Charlotte's eyelids trembled as though she were equally nervous of keeping them closed or opening them. 'Or maybe anywhere,' she admitted, mostly to herself.

'Sorry, I should've realised.' Hugh's gaze dodged about so wildly that it might have been searching for an intruder before fastening on Ellen. 'What about you?'

Did his scrutiny explain why she felt spied upon, her every word analysed in case it went too far? She couldn't resist glancing around, but nobody appeared to be lurking behind any of the seats; the darkness had brought nothing dreadful into the carriage except her reflections. She understood Hugh's question all too well, which was why she retreated from giving the answer. 'I should have,' she tried telling him instead.

'No, I mean did you dream something? What did you dream?'

'I'm going to be like Charlotte,' Ellen said, wishing that she were. For an instant she'd glimpsed an underground room that surrounded her with her hideous self. 'I want to save it,' she said, only to find this didn't reassure her at all.

'I thought we wanted to talk.'

'Nobody's preventing you,' Charlotte said, how encouragingly Ellen couldn't judge.

'You already know what I dreamed.'

Charlotte's mouth opened and closed as if she were struggling to breathe, unless she was reluctant to speak. With her eyes closed she might almost have been trying to talk in her sleep. Eventually she said 'Tell us again.'

'I couldn't find my way, and now I can't.' More resentfully than Ellen had ever heard him sound he added 'I said once.'

'You don't need a nightmare to explain that,' Charlotte protested. 'Life's enough of one too much of the time.'

'Not this much.'

Charlotte lowered her head and folded her arms hard. If she hadn't spoken Ellen might have had to ask 'What do you mean?'

'Not this much of a nightmare.' Hugh faltered, and Ellen tried not to think he was letting the darkness or something in it creep closer. 'All right, I didn't tell you everything,' he mumbled. 'I can't find my way anywhere at all.'

'Oh, Hugh.' With a visible effort Charlotte opened her eyes to peer at him. 'There's no need to go looking for a nightmare to explain it, surely,' she said. 'Didn't it start with all your stress at work?'

'Maybe that was part of it.'

Ellen felt dismayingly unable to help, as incompetent as the tribunal's verdict had made her feel. 'You need to see a doctor,' she urged.

'I couldn't find my way there either.'

His attempt at a laugh was too perfunctory to invite an echo, but Ellen imagined she'd heard one, muffled by the buried thunder of the train. 'We –' she began and then was afraid to promise. 'Someone will take you,' she said.

'You're forgetting about Rory.'

'I mean after we've visited. Or no, I'm being stupid. You could see a doctor at the hospital.'

'No, I'm saying you're forgetting what he dreamed.'

Charlotte closed her eyes as though to exclude the remark. 'What has that to do with anything?'

'It was about not being able to see, wasn't it? And now he can't. Don't you think an artist's nightmare has to be losing all his senses?'

Charlotte turned her face to him without opening her eyes. 'I'm sorry, Hugh, but I think Ellen was spot on.'

Ellen didn't understand this any more than Hugh appeared to. 'What are you saying I did?'

'You said he was trying to prove something. This isn't the time or the place, Hugh. We never said you had no imagination, so don't work so hard at convincing us you have. It's getting out of hand and not in the best of taste.'

'You're just upset about Rory, aren't you?' Ellen told him in the hope that would stop his gaze from jerking back and forth. 'You want to find something to blame besides yourself. Don't blame yourself and then you won't need to do this.'

Had she embarrassed him into silence? She was looking away from him, which showed her the door at the end of the aisle twitching as if someone hidden in the dark between the carriages were about to put in an appearance, when he said 'What's wrong with her?'

Ellen didn't know if she was being referred to or addressed. A sidelong glance at Charlotte offered her no clue, nor did Hugh's agitated gaze, even when he raised his hands on either side of it like blinkers. Charlotte took it on herself to answer, almost inaudibly. 'I'm claustrophobic.'

Hugh kept his hands up to direct his gaze at her, although the pose was beginning to put Ellen in mind of someone under threat. 'Since when?' he said.

'Hugh,' Ellen objected. 'Now you're going too far in the other direction.'

His fingers bent clawlike towards his eyes. 'How am I?'

'We aren't saying don't use your imagination at all.' She nodded at Charlotte, which made her face feel even more repulsively unstable, and leaned towards him to whisper 'Since we've been in here, of course.'

She sensed that he was struggling not to recoil from her, and so she straightened up before she'd finished speaking. His gaze left her at once, darting along the aisle. 'I didn't get that,' he complained and shut his eyes.

Ellen didn't need to be reminded yet again how unbearable he and Charlotte must find the sight of her. Perhaps he also disliked the restive jerking of the door as much as she did. She couldn't touch him to persuade him to look at her, she could only speak up. 'Since we came in the tunnel.'

'How long have we been in it?'

'I'm not looking,' Charlotte breathed. 'I can't say.'

'How long have we been talking? It feels like, I don't know –'

Charlotte cried out. It wasn't much of a cry; it was the kind of enfeebled wordless protest she might have uttered in her sleep while fighting to break out of a nightmare. Nevertheless it appeared to bring a response. The door at the end of the carriage slid swiftly yet noiselessly wide, and a thin blackened shape that might have been scaly or in some sense ragged sprang into the carriage.

It dodged behind the nearest seat, dropping low as it vanished, and Ellen threw her hands out to clutch at her companions. Barely in time not to subject them to her touch, she realised what she'd seen. The door hadn't opened. Only sunlight had prised the darkness wide, incidentally throwing the shadow of some object that had passed before Ellen could locate it. Although the sounds of the train had grown more spacious, they and the light seemed to fall short of Charlotte's awareness; she might still have been shut in a dream. At least Hugh's eyes were open, even if he looked less than reassured by the choice of views. 'We're out,' Ellen said, hoping this might release Charlotte from her panic – and then she wondered whether, in some sense she preferred not to grasp, they were nothing of the kind.