Un Lun Dun

4. The Watcher in the Night

That night, and the two that followed, Zanna stayed over at Deeba’s house. Just then, she preferred it to her own place across the yard of the estate.

Her father was in a bit of a state. The police kept asking him to tell his story again, and telling him there was no sign of the “chemical spill” he thought might explain the smoke that had made him light-headed. While he had to deal with the questions, Mr. and Mrs. Moon gratefully accepted the Reshams’ suggestion that Zanna stay with them.

The police had also asked the girls what had happened, of course, but Zanna and Deeba couldn’t explain what they didn’t understand.

“She’s had a real shock, Mrs. Resham,” Deeba heard one officer say. “She’s not making a bit of sense.”

“We have to make them believe us,” Zanna insisted.

“What?” said Deeba. “ ‘Magic smoke came out of the drains.’ Think that’ll help?”

Becks had broken a couple of bones, but was recovering. So, at least, Zanna and Deeba understood. Becks herself wouldn’t speak to them. She wouldn’t see them when they came to the hospital, nor would she answer her phone.

And it wasn’t just her. Kath and Keisha ignored Zanna and Deeba at school, and wouldn’t answer their calls, either.

“They’re blaming me for what happened,” Zanna said to Deeba, in a strange voice.

“They’re scared,” Deeba said. The two girls were sitting up late in Deeba’s room, Zanna in the foldout bed.

“And they’re blaming me,” Zanna said. “And…maybe they’re right.”

In the next room the Reshams shouted at the television.

“Idiots!” Deeba’s mother was saying.

“They’re all fools,” her dad said. “Except that Environment woman, Rawley, she’s alright. She’s the only one does any good…”

The Reshams were still having the conversation— the same one they had many times, about which politicians they disliked most, and the much more rare species, which they liked (a shortlist of one)— much later, when they went to bed. Zanna and Deeba were still whispering.

“It must have been an accident,” Deeba said. “Something with the pipes.”

“They said it wasn’t,” Zanna said. “And anyway…you don’t believe that. It’s something else. Something to do with…” With me, was what she didn’t say, but what they both knew she meant.

They had the same conversation every day. There were no conclusions they could come to, but there was nothing else they could talk about, either. They talked themselves out, and eventually fell asleep.

Much later, in the small hours of the night, Deeba woke, quite suddenly. She sat up in her bed by the window and pulled aside the curtains a little, to look out across the estate and try to work out what had disturbed her.

She watched for a long time. Occasionally a figure might hurry by, following the tiny red glimmer of a cigarette end. At this time of night, though, the concrete square, the big metal bins[1], the walkways were mostly empty.

On the other side of the yard she could see Zanna’s flat, its windows dark. The wind turned corkscrews in the courtyard, and Deeba watched bits of rubbish turn. It was raining a little. The moon glinted in puddles. In the far corner was a pile of full black rubbish bags.

There was a tiny scratching sound.

Deeba thought it must be a cat, searching in the rubbish. There was quiet except for the fingertip drumming of rain and the whisper of wastepaper. Then she heard it again, an insistent skritch-skritch.

“Zanna,” she whispered, shaking her friend awake. “Listen.”

The two girls looked out into the darkness.

In the shadows by the bins, something was moving. A wet black shape, rooting in the plastic. It moved toward the light. It didn’t look like a cat, nor a crow, nor a lost dog. It was long and spindly and flapping, all at once.

It extended a limb out of the shadows. Something glinting and black fluttered. Zanna and Deeba held their breath.

Shaking with effort, the claw-wing-thing hauled itself through shadows, spidery and bedraggled. It approached Zanna’s house. It huddled in the dark by the wall, leapt suddenly up, and hung below the window.

The two girls gasped. The thing was just visible, now, in the faint lamplight.

It was an umbrella.

For a long time it hung like some odd fruit below the windowsill, while the rain increased, until the watching friends began to tell themselves that they had imagined the motion, that there had been an umbrella hooked on the ledge for hours. Then the dark little thing moved again.

It dropped and crawled with its excruciating slowness back to the darkness. It opened its canopy a little way, gripped the concrete with a metal point, and dragged itself along. It was bent, or battered, or bent and battered, or torn, and it crawled like something injured, into the shadows and out of sight.

The courtyard was empty. Deeba and Zanna looked at each other.

“Oh…my…God…” whispered Zanna.

“That was…” squeaked Deeba. “Was that an umbrella?”

“How’s that possible…?” Zanna said. “And what was it doing by your window?”