Jay, Lizzie and the Tale of the Stairs

  Chapter 28

  Back to the House in the Alley.

  “Well,” asked Albert after I’d opened my eyes and felt well enough to talk, “what do we do about Rosie?”

  I was thrown with how he knew who Rosie was. Then I guessed he must have heard me talk or something. Who knows what’s possible with the Raynors.

  “I don’t know,” I replied, breathing heavily. I didn’t. Rosie could be anywhere. Anywhere in the world. But something nagged at me, my new ‘special powers’ probably, and I looked across the table at Lizzie.

  “That house we saw that time. You know, the one in the alley.”

  Lizzie nodded.

  “What’s underneath?”

  “Underneath?”

  I looked to Albert now.

  “Yes, underneath. Is there anything around that area? Anything underground?”

  Albert didn’t know which house I was going on about so Lizzie told him. Albert ‘mmm’d’ in thought and suggested, while he thought some more, that we should finish and get the sitting room ‘ship-shape’ again.

  It was while he was taking down the blanket at the window that he suddenly remembered something. “There is a shelter nearby,” he said slowly, laying the blanket on the back of the sofa.

  “A shelter?”

  “Yes. An air raid shelter. You know, to shelter from the bombs.”

  I knew.

  “I suppose it’s not used now. Not since the V2’s stopped coming over.” He looked thoughtfully at me. “Do you think she might be in there?”

  I took a deep breath. “I don’t know”.

  I did know that I had to do something. I didn’t like the idea of going back to that house, and actually going in it was out of the question. But the image of this frightened little girl called Rosie trapped in a cupboard with a bucket haunted me and as the minutes went by and I thought about going home a feeling of guilt fussed about me like wasps round a bin. I took Lizzie to one side. She knew already what I was going to say. I described just what I had seen when I had been transported into Rosie’s prison. Lizzie looked worried and anxious.

  “We’ve got to do something. I can’t just let her stay in their forever. Besides, there’s someone – something - evil on the other side of that cupboard door. If there’s a chance she’s in that house, and a chance we can get her out, then we’ve got to go and look.”

  Lizzie looked at me then. A strange look. A kind of look that I wasn’t used to off of girls. It was a lingering sort of half-smile.

  And it made my stomach burn and tumble.

  I wasn’t used to that either.

  “I’ll get your coat and hat,” she said, then added, “And make up?”

  I shook my head. I couldn’t be bothered with all that now.

  Lizzie smiled again. “It didn’t suit you anyway”.

  Albert and Maureen protested but we ignored them and slipped out the back door. I felt bad about that. Pauline just sat sipping a cup of tea at the kitchen table. Unconcerned. And I saw Lizzie’s parents standing at the back door looking after us as we disappeared into the night. The long black coat flapped about me as we hurried along and the cap that I’d used as a disguise on our first trip kept slipping off and onto the cracked pavements and I had to keep stopping to pick it up.

  It was dark and quiet but things hadn’t changed much from last time. The ground underneath my feet was as uneven as before and I still didn’t recognise any of the buildings. A black cat, inky dark like a full-stop, did cross our path at one point. It just stopped and glared. Not a good omen. Its eyes shining like, well, cats’ eyes. Then in a single leap it disappeared over a crumbling garden wall. I was still unsure whether it was good or bad luck to have a black cat cross your path.

  I decided it was good luck.

  It didn’t take long to reach the entrance to the back alley and already I was feeling the effects of the house. I had started to feel sick again and once I quietly gagged. I stopped and knelt down beside another back wall and stared ahead. The street light that I remembered had somehow triggered the whole experience last time was now dark and silent. But it was still sinister. I looked beyond the light and further down the back lane.

  That’s when I saw him.

  A tall, shadow of a man with hands tucked into the pockets of a long black coat, wearing a hat, a hat that was slightly tipped to one side. A dark man, watching us both with a patient curiosity that meant he wasn’t here by accident.

  He meant to watch us. Had known we were going to be there.

  As I watched him he quietly watched us.

  I looked to Lizzie and whispered to her to kneel down beside me. When she did I told her who or what was watching and nodded in the direction of the mysterious man. But he’d gone. He had dissolved into the night in much the same way the cat had done.

  Now I was unsure. “He was there!” I mumbled to Lizzie. “A man in a coat and a hat! I know he was.” I couldn’t see Lizzie’s reaction in the darkness.

  “The police?” she asked.

  “I don’t know what policemen look like in your time.”

  “Tall hats and a dark blue uniform?”

  “Oh!” I answered, realising that not much had changed for the police. “No then. It wasn’t a policeman.”

  I couldn’t be sure but I dreaded discovery by the police as much as anything else. How would I explain my ghostly greyness and my time-travelling special powers to a policeman from 1946? Worse. If I was carted off to a police station how would I ever get home? I really didn’t want to think about it.

  Then Lizzie tugged at my long coat sleeve.

  “C’mon! Let’s get this done.”

  We stood up and moved further along the alley, over earth and stumbling stones until we were close to the house and I could see its old roof and its grey and cracked forehead. To me it had a forehead because this is how I remembered the house.

  As a gnarled, cruel, ancient face.

  Like a face you didn’t want to see.

  And, like a face you didn’t want to see, I avoided its eyes. Those half-closed yet all-seeing eyes.

  I felt terrible and was gagging and coughing, was almost sick. I ducked behind the garden wall. I just didn’t want to look and, to be honest, I’m not sure I wanted to go near it. In fact there was probably no way I could without throwing up.

  I couldn’t let Lizzie go on her own.

  Could I?

  What would she think of me? Suddenly I was worried that Lizzie would see me for what I really was. Not someone 'special' with ‘special powers’ from the 21st century, but a geek and a coward who was unpopular and had no friends.

  I needn’t have worried.

  “Are you feeling well enough to go in there?” Lizzie whispered, touching the sleeve of my overcoat.

  I must have looked ill. Despite my grey face. I just about managed to shake my head before another wave of sickness and trapped terror came over me. That and a flash of the back of the cupboard door, coats, a bucket and a dim lamp bulb. The image quickly passed but the feeling stayed.

  “You look terrible,” said Lizzie (although I never bothered to ask how she figured that out). “You stay and keep a look out. I’ll have a peek through the downstairs window. To see what I can see.”

  I grabbed Lizzie’s small arm.

  “No!” I garbled. “It’s too dangerous.”

  “I’m not going in silly,” she replied and brushed away my arm. “No fear of that, and make no mistake.” She turned and looked around the corner of the garden wall, towards the house. “You just keep sentry and, if you see anything, shout like bloody hell”.

  That was funny. I even managed a bit of a smile.

  Lizzie was about to move off when the street light that had been silently watching developments suddenly came on and flooded the area in a yellow light like old skin. We both grabbed at each other and watched together as the light spluttered and began to flash weakly on and off. On and off. Splutter splat. On and off.

  We cr
ouched, frightened and alarmed for a few more seconds before Lizzie made off. She motioned for me to back away from the light so nobody could see us.

  “Besides,” she added as she disappeared towards the house, “you look like you’ve seen a ghost!”

  I meant to follow her but I couldn’t, just couldn’t. So I did as I was told and moved to safety back along the alley, out of sight of the peering eyes of the house and the pool of revealing lamplight.

  So I was left alone. I don’t mind telling you I was scared. Scared to death. I kept listening for Lizzie coming back but I heard nothing for a while, just the sounds of 1946. These sounds were completely different to the sounds heard on a night in the 21st century. I was hypnotised by the splutter splat, on and off of the back-alley light and couldn’t help but stare at the spot where the man in the long coat had been. I stared as if expecting him back at any moment. He didn’t come back and I kept thinking about what I would do if he did.

  For the first time since I began this adventure to 1946 I started to wish I was home and warm and in bed. I started to wish that I’d never met Lizzie and her family and that I didn’t have any ‘special powers.’ I wished that I’d never found out about Ernie and Rosie and heard the voices in the night. Several times I thought I saw the man in the coat and the hat in shadows some way off and I found myself squinting into the distance with those strange worm-like shapes that move in front of your eyes playing endless tricks on me.

  A car passed, clunking noisily off into the distance, and I thought I saw the cat’s eyes again. Then I realised I needed a wee.

  “C’mon, Lizzie.” Impatiently, urgently to myself.

  “C’mon!”

  Then I heard her. Stumbling over earth and stones towards me.

  “Quickly, Jay!” she whispered loudly, almost shouted, as she reached me. “Run! RUN!”

  I ran.

  I didn’t look back.

  I ran thumping over loose brick and earth, using old walls as a guide, as support when I fell or for cover and for cornering. I leapt ditches and crooked drains, pieces of wood and what, in the dark, looked like a dead rats.

  I ran.

  Not looking back.

  I clumped through stumps of stunted grass, kicked old cans from under my feet, avoided lights, strangers, cars and cats.

  I ran.

  I followed the little girl up ahead. In the distance. I followed her flapping coat and clapping shoes.

  I never once took my eyes off her.

  Breathing hard and trying to control my panic, I realised with a flood of relief that we were nearly home. Lizzie had already slowed down and I finally caught up with her. Side-by-side and not talking we jogged up the lane that led to the Raynors’ back door. It was only when we reached it, when Lizzie had put her small thumb on the latch that worked the rusty lever, that I risked a glance back the dark way we had run.

  I wish I hadn’t.

  For, stood at the far end of the back lane and framed by garden walls and slippery alley brick, was the shadowy man in the hat and the long coat.