Familiar and Haunting

  Touching the bottom like that had stirred up the mud, so that I began going up through a thick cloud of it. I let myself go up—they say fat floats, you know—but I was shooting myself upward, too. I was in a hurry.

  The funny thing was, I only began to be afraid when I was going back. I suddenly thought: perhaps I’ve swum underwater much too far; perhaps I’ll come up at the far end of the Ponds among all the fishermen and foul their lines and perhaps get a fishhook caught in the flesh of my cheek. And all the time I was going up quite quickly, and the water was changing from brown-black to green-brown and then to bright lemonade. I could almost see the sun shining through the water, I was so near the surface. It wasn’t until then that I felt really frightened; I thought I was moving much too slowly and I’d never reach the air again in time.

  Never the air again …

  Then suddenly I was at the surface; I’d exploded back from the water into the air. For a while I couldn’t think of anything, and I couldn’t do anything except let out the old breath I’d been holding and take a couple of fresh, quick ones and tread water—and hang on to that brick.

  Pond water was trickling down inside my nose and into my mouth, which I hate. But there was air all around and above, for me to breathe, to live.

  And then I noticed they were shouting from the bank. They were cheering and shouting, “Sausage! Sausage!” and the instructor was hallooing with his hands round his mouth and bellowing to me: “What on earth have you got there, Sausage?”

  So then I turned myself properly around; I’d come up almost facing the fishermen at the other end of the Ponds, but otherwise only a few feet from where I’d gone down, so that was all right. I turned around and swam to the bank, and they hauled me out and gave me my glasses to have a good look at what I’d brought up from the bottom.

  Because it wasn’t a brick. It was just about the size and shape of one, but it was a tin—an old, old tin box with no paint left on it and all brown-black slime from the bottom of the Ponds. It was as heavy as a brick because it was full of mud. Don’t get excited, as we did; there was nothing there but mud. We strained all the mud through our fingers, but there wasn’t anything else there—not even a bit of old sandwich or the remains of bait. I thought there might have been, because the tin could have belonged to one of the old chaps that have always fished at the other end of the Ponds. They often bring their dinners with them in bags or tins, and they have tins for bait, too. It could have been dropped into the water at their end of the Ponds and got moved to our end with the movement of the water. Otherwise I don’t know how that tin box can have got there. Anyway, it must have been there for years and years, by the look of it. When you think, it might have stayed there for years and years longer, perhaps stayed sunk underwater forever.

  I’ve cleaned the tin up, and I keep it on the mantelpiece at home with my coin collection in it. I had to duck-dive later for another brick, and I got it all right, without being frightened at all, but it didn’t seem to matter as much as coming up with the tin. I shall keep the tin as long as I live, and I might easily live to be a hundred.

  Part II

  The Haunting Stories

  The Shadow Cage

  The little green stoppered bottle had been waiting in the earth a long time for someone to find it. Ned Challis found it. High on his tractor as he plowed the field, he’d been keeping a lookout, as usual, for whatever might turn up. Several times there had been worked flints; once, one of an enormous size.

  Now sunlight glimmering on glass caught his eye. He stopped the tractor, climbed down, picked the bottle from the earth. He could tell at once that it wasn’t all that old. Not as old as the flints that he’d taken to the museum in Castleford. Not as old as a coin he had once found, with the head of a Roman emperor on it. Not very old, but old.

  Perhaps just useless old …

  He held the bottle in the palm of his hand and thought of throwing it away. The lip of it was chipped badly, and the stopper of cork or wood had sunk into the neck. With his fingernail he tried to move it. The stopper had hardened into stone and stuck there. Probably no one would ever get it out now without breaking the bottle. But, then, why should anyone want to unstopper the bottle? It was empty, or as good as empty. The bottom of the inside of the bottle was dirtied with something blackish and scaly that also clung a little to the sides.

  He wanted to throw the bottle away, but he didn’t. He held it in one hand while the fingers of the other cleaned the remaining earth from the outside. When he had cleaned it, he didn’t fancy the bottle any more than before, but he dropped it into his pocket. Then he climbed the tractor and started off again.

  At that time the sun was high in the sky, and the tractor was working on Whistlers’ Hill, which is part of Belper’s Farm, fifty yards below Burnt House. As the tractor moved on again, the gulls followed again, rising and falling in their flights, wheeling over the disturbed earth, looking for live things, for food, for good things.

  That evening, at tea, Ned Challis brought the bottle out and set it on the table by the loaf of bread. His wife looked at it suspiciously. “Another of your dirty old things for that museum?”

  Ned said, “It’s not museum stuff. Lisa can have it to take to school. I don’t want it.”

  Mrs. Challis pursed her lips, moved the loaf further away from the bottle, and went to refill the teapot.

  Lisa took the bottle in her hand. “Where’d you get it, Dad?”

  “Whistlers’ Hill. Just below Burnt House.” He frowned suddenly as he spoke, as if he had remembered something.

  “What’s it got inside?”

  “Nothing. And if you try getting the stopper out, that’ll break.”

  So Lisa didn’t try. Next morning she took it to school, but she didn’t show it to anyone. Only her cousin Kevin saw it, and that was before school and by accident. He always called for Lisa on his way to school—there was no other company on that country road—and he saw her pick up the bottle from the table, where her mother had left it the night before, and put it into her jacket pocket.

  “What was that?” asked Kevin.

  “You saw. A little old bottle.”

  “Let’s see it again—properly.” Kevin was younger than Lisa, and she sometimes indulged him, so she took the bottle out and let him hold it.

  At once he tried the stopper.

  “Don’t,” said Lisa. “You’ll only break it.”

  “What’s inside?”

  “Nothing. Dad found it on Whistlers’.”

  “It’s not very nice, is it?”

  “What do you mean, ‘Not very nice’?”

  “I don’t know. But let me keep it for a bit. Please, Lisa.”

  On principle Lisa now decided not to give in. “Certainly not. Give it back.”

  He did, reluctantly. “Let me have it just for today, at school. Please.”

  “No.”

  “I’ll give you something if you’ll let me have it. I’ll not let anyone else touch it; I’ll not let them see it. I’ll keep it safe. Just for today.”

  “You’d only break it. No. What could you give me, anyway?”

  “My week’s pocket money.”

  “No. I’ve said no, and I mean no, young Kev.”

  “I’d give you that little china dog you like.”

  “The one with the china kennel?”

  “Yes.”

  “The china dog with the china kennel—you’d give me both.”

  “Yes.”

  “Only for half the day, then,” said Lisa. “I’ll let you have it after school dinner; look out for me in the playground. Give it back at the end of school. Without fail. And you be careful with it.”

  So the bottle traveled to school in Lisa’s jacket pocket, where it bided its time all morning. After school dinner Lisa met Kevin in the playground, and they withdrew together to a corner which was well away from the crowded jungle gym and the Infants’ sandpit and the rest. Lisa handed the bottle over. “At the end of schoo
l, mind, without fail. And if we miss each other then”—for Lisa, being in a higher class, came out of school slightly later than Kevin—“then you must drop it in at ours as you pass. Promise.”

  “Promise.”

  They parted. Kevin put the bottle into his pocket. He didn’t know why he’d wanted the bottle, but he had. Lots of things were like that. You needed them for a bit, and then you didn’t need them any longer.

  He had needed this little bottle very much.

  He left Lisa and went over to the jungle gym, where his friends already were. He had set his foot on a rung when he thought suddenly how easy it would be for the glass bottle in his trouser pocket to be smashed against the metal framework. He stepped down again and went over to the fence that separated the playground from the farmland beyond. Tall tussocks of grass grew along it, coming through from the open fields and fringing the very edge of the asphalt. He looked round. Lisa had already gone in, and no one else was watching. He put his hand into his pocket and took it out again with the bottle concealed in the fist. He stooped as if to examine an insect on a tussock and slipped his hand into the middle of it and left the bottle there, well hidden.

  He straightened up and glanced around. Since no one was looking in his direction, his action had been unobserved; the bottle would be safe. He ran back to the jungle gym and began to climb, jostling and shouting and laughing, as he and his friends always did. He forgot the bottle.

  He forgot the bottle completely.

  It was very odd, considering what a fuss he had made about the bottle, that he should have forgotten it, but he did. When the bell rang for the end of playtime, he ran straight in. He did not think of the bottle then or later. At the end of afternoon school, he did not remember it, and he happened not to see Lisa, who would surely have reminded him.

  Only when he was nearly home and passing the Challises’ house, he remembered. He had faithfully promised—and had really meant to keep his promise. But he’d broken it and left the bottle behind. If he turned and went back to school now, he would meet Lisa, and she would have to be told. … By the time he got back to the school play- ground, all his friends would have gone home; the caretaker would be there, and perhaps a late teacher or two, and they’d all want to know what he was up to. And when he’d got the bottle and dropped it in at the Challises’, Lisa would scold him all over again. And when he got home at last, he would be very late for his tea, and his mother would be angry.

  As he stood by the Challises’ gate, thinking, it seemed best, since he had messed things up, anyway, to go straight home and leave the bottle to the next day. So he went home.

  He worried about the bottle for the rest of the day, without having the time or the quiet to think about it very clearly. He knew that Lisa would assume he had just forgotten to leave it at her house on the way home. He half expected her to turn up after tea, to claim it, but she didn’t. She would have been angry enough about his having forgotten to leave it, but what about her anger tomorrow on the way to school, when she found that he had forgotten it altogether—abandoned it in the open playground? He thought of hurrying straight past her house in the morning, but he would never manage it. She would be on the lookout.

  He saw that he had made the wrong decision earlier. He ought, at all costs, to have gone back to the playground to get the bottle.

  He went to bed, still worrying. He fell asleep, and his worry went on, making his dreaming unpleasant in a nagging way. He must be quick, his dreams seemed to nag. Be quick. …

  Suddenly he was wide-awake. It was very late. The sound of the television being switched off must have woken him. Quietness. He listened to the rest of his family going to bed. They went to bed and to sleep. Silence. They were all asleep now, except for him. He couldn’t sleep.

  Then, as abruptly as if someone had lifted the top of his head like a lid and popped the idea in, he saw that this time—almost the middle of the night—was the perfect time for him to fetch the bottle. He knew by heart the roads between home and school; he would not be afraid. He would have plenty of time. When he reached the school, the gate to the playground would be shut, but it was not high; in the past, by daylight, he and his friends had often climbed it. He would go into the playground, find the correct tussock of grass, get the bottle, bring it back, and have it ready to give to Lisa on the way to school in the morning. She would be angry but only moderately angry. She would never know the whole truth.

  He got up and dressed quickly and quietly. He began to look for a flashlight but gave up when he realized that would mean opening and shutting drawers and cupboards. Anyway, there was a moon tonight, and he knew his way, and he knew the school playground. He couldn’t go wrong.

  He let himself out of the house, leaving the door on the latch for his return. He looked at his watch: between a quarter and half past eleven—not as late as he had thought. All the same, he set off almost at a run but had to settle down into a steady trot. His trotting footsteps on the road sounded clearly in the night quiet. But who was there to hear?

  He neared the Challises’ house. He drew level with it.

  Ned Challis heard. Usually nothing woke him before the alarm clock in the morning, but tonight footsteps woke him. Who, at this hour—he lifted the back of his wrist toward his face, so that the time glimmered at him—who, at nearly twenty-five to twelve, could be hurrying along that road on foot? When the footsteps had almost gone—when it was already perhaps too late—he sprang out of bed and over to the window.

  His wife woke. “What’s up, then, Ned?”

  “Just somebody. I wondered who.”

  “Oh, come back to bed!”

  Ned Challis went back to bed but almost at once got out again.

  “Ned! What is it now?”

  “I just thought I’d have a look at Lisa.”

  At once Mrs. Challis was wide-awake. “What’s wrong with Lisa?”

  “Nothing.” He went to listen at Lisa’s door—listen to the regular, healthy breathing of her sleep. He came back. “Nothing. Lisa’s all right.”

  “For heaven’s sake! Why shouldn’t she be?”

  “Well, who was it walking out there? Hurrying.”

  “Oh, go to sleep!”

  “Yes.” He lay down again, drew the bedclothes round him, lay still. But his eyes remained open.

  Out in the night, Kevin left the road on which the Challises lived and came into the more important one that would take him into the village. He heard the rumble of a truck coming up behind him. For safety he drew right into a gateway and waited. The truck came past at a steady pace, headlights on. For a few seconds he saw the driver and his mate sitting up in the cab, intent on the road ahead. He had not wanted to be noticed by them, but when they had gone, he felt lonely.

  He went on into the village, its houses lightless, its streets deserted. By the entrance to the school driveway, he stopped to make sure he was unobserved. Nobody. Nothing—not even a cat. There was no sound of any vehicle now, but in the distance he heard a dog barking, and then another answered it. A little owl cried and cried for company or for sport. Then that, too, stopped.

  He turned into the driveway to the school, and there was the gate to the playground. He looked over it, into the playground. Moonlight showed him everything: the expanse of asphalt, the sandpit, the big jungle gym, and—at the far end—the fence with the tussocks of grass growing blackly along it. It was all familiar, and yet strange because of the emptiness and the whitening of moonlight and the shadows cast like solid things. The jungle gym reared high into the air, and on the ground stretched the black crisscross of its shadows like the bars of a cage.

  But he had not come all this way to be halted by moonshine and insubstantial shadows. In a businesslike way he climbed the gate and crossed the playground to the fence. He wondered whether he would find the right tussock easily, but he did. His fingers closed on the bottle; it was waiting for him.

  At that moment, in the Challises’ house, as they lay side by side
in bed, Mrs. Challis said to her husband, “You’re still awake, aren’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “What is it?”

  “Nothing.”

  Mrs. Challis sighed.

  “All right, then,” said Ned Challis. “It’s this. That bottle I gave Lisa—that little old bottle that I gave Lisa yesterday—”

  “What about it?”

  “I found it by Burnt House.”

  Mrs. Challis drew in her breath sharply. Then she said, “That may mean nothing.” Then: “How near was it?”

  “Near enough.” After a pause: “I ought never to have given it to Lisa. I never thought. But Lisa’s all right, anyway.”

  “But, Ned, don’t you know what Lisa did with that bottle?”

  “What?”

  “Lent it to Kevin to have at school. And according to her, he didn’t return it when he should have done, on the way home. Didn’t you hear her going on and on about it?”

  “Kevin …” For the third time that night Ned Challis was getting out of bed, this time putting on his trousers, fumbling for his shoes. “Somebody went up the road in a hurry. You know—I looked out. I couldn’t see properly, but it was somebody small. It could have been a child. It could have been Lisa, but it wasn’t. It could well have been Kevin. …”

  “Shouldn’t you go to their house first, Ned, find out whether Kevin is there or not? Make sure. You’re not sure.”

  “I’m not sure. But if I wait to make sure, I may be too late.”

  Mrs. Challis did not say, “Too late for what?” She did not argue.

  Ned Challis dressed and went down. As he let himself out of the house to get his bicycle from the shed, the church clock began to strike the hour, the sound reaching him distantly across the intervening fields. He checked with his watch: midnight.

  In the village, in the school playground, the striking of midnight sounded clangorously close. Kevin stood with the bottle held in the palm of his hand, waiting for the clock to stop striking—waiting as if for something to follow.