Un Lun Dun

4. The Watcher in the Night

That night, and the two that followed, Za

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 Za

The police had also asked the girls what had happened, of course, but Za

“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,” Za

“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, Za

And it wasn’t just her. Kath and Keisha ignored Za

“They’re blaming me for what happened,” Za

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

“And they’re blaming me,” Za

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. Za

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

“They said it wasn’t,” Za

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 Za

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.

“Za

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. Za

Shaking with effort, the claw-wing-thing hauled itself through shadows, spidery and bedraggled. It approached Za

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 Za

“Oh…my…God…” whispered Za

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

“How’s that possible…?” Za

5. Down to the Cellar

The two girls crept out into the estate night.

“Quick,” Za

“This is mad,” hissed Deeba, but she moved as quickly as her friend, in the same half-bent run. “We don’t even have a flashlight.”

“Yeah but we’ve got to look,” Za

“So it was some sort of remote control thing, i

“Come help me,” Za

“What you doing?”

“Looking for something,” Za

“What?”

Za

“There’s going to be rats and stuff,” Deeba said. “Leave it.”

“Look,” said Za

The smear, just faintly visible, stretched from the rubbish tip, towards the dark ground-floor windows of Za

“That thing. These are its tracks.”

Za

“Yeah, see?” she said. “You can see scratch-marks. Where it’s dug in with its…you know…metal points.”

“If you say,” said Deeba. “Let’s go.”

“Look. It was watching, or listening or whatever, at mine. Now we can see where it went.”

“We don’t even know what we’re after.” Deeba followed Za

“You blatantly look like a mad person,” Deeba whispered. “If anyone sees you, what they going to think?”

“Who cares? Anyway, there’s no one. If there was, I’d be out of here.”

“I don’t even see nothing.”

“Marks,” Za

She headed into the backs of the estate, between the brown concrete of those huge buildings. They were heading deep into the dead zones behind all the towers, into a maze of walls, bins, garages, and rubbish. Deeba looked around nervously.

[1]

Bin / Dustbin: Trash can / garbage can.