Jimmy the Hand (31 page)

He was also
frightened by the feeling that someone was watching him. He’d
wakened the morning before with a feeling that someone was leaning
over him. But when he opened his eyes there was no one there. But the
feeling didn’t go away until he reached out. Since then he’d
felt as though someone was standing behind him, staring, or holding
something over his head. Sometimes it felt as if more than one person
was watching him.

‘Mandy,’
he whispered.

She looked up at
him and he went over to perch on the side of her bed.

‘What?’
she whispered back.

‘Do you
ever feel like . . . like someone you can’t see is watching
you?’

Reaching out,
Mandy grabbed him by the neck and drew him close. ‘Shut up!’
she said through her teeth. ‘Talking about it, or thinking
about it, just makes it worse.’ She smacked him, then said out
loud, ‘Now get off my bed.’

Mandy spent the
rest of the day glaring at him and refusing to talk, and he couldn’t
really blame her. She’d been right, things had gotten worse.

All that day
he’d felt as if people were standing close to him, leaning over
him and staring. He tried to ignore it, but it was so unpleasant that
he’d hardly been able to eat supper. Then later that night he’d
been wakened by the sense that someone had touched him. He opened his
eyes to see the black silhouette of a man standing before him. And
then the man was gone, just like that. Rip lay still, absolutely
still, feeling as though the man was still standing there and that he
meant no good, and that he had no face but what Rip had seen, a
blackness like a shadow made solid.

Rip was so
scared he could hear his own heartbeat and he wanted to cry but he
didn’t dare, so his throat ached and it was hard to breathe and
his mouth was as dry as cotton and he had to use the pot but
couldn’t. He wanted to wake one of the others so that he
wouldn’t be alone in the dark, but he was afraid to speak out
loud. Rip was so wide awake it never occurred to him that he might go
back to sleep. But somehow he did. And when he woke, it was with the
feeling that someone unseen was leaning over him. He lay there
thinking, I’ve got to get out of here.

Twice a day a
fat man with a mean face and a bad smell came to bring them food and
take away the slops bucket, replacing it with an empty one. Other
than that the door was locked and there were bars on the windows and
they were up high anyway. So Rip would have to get out when the door
opened.

‘I’m
going to get out of here,’ he told the others.

The girls just
looked at him; Mandy in scorn, Neesa with eyes wide. Rip didn’t
think she knew what he was talking about.

‘Oh,
they’ll come and get you really soon now,’ Kay teased.
‘And they’ll chop off your head, whoosh!’ He
pretended to be waving a sword.

‘They’ll
probably come for you first,’ Rip snapped. ‘You’ve
been here longer than me!’

Kay gasped,
taken by surprise by Rip’s vehemence and the truth of what he
had said. Then he got mad and made to run at Rip.

‘Stop it,
Kay!’ Mandy snapped.

By the way the
other boy stopped in his tracks Rip knew he’d been right about
Mandy teaching Kay a thing or two about behaving himself. Kay still
glared, but he did it from a safe distance.

‘How do
you think you can get out?’ Mandy said.

‘I don’t
know,’ Rip said. ‘Maybe we throw a sheet over his head
and while he’s trying to get it off we run out of the door.’

Kay made a
farting sound and laughed. ‘That’s so stupid! He’s
twice as big as you. All you’d be able to do is throw a sheet
over his bum and his brains may be there, but his eyes and hands are
what you have to worry about.’ He laughed and pointed at Rip.
‘Stupid!’

‘Shut up,
Kay!’ Mandy snapped. ‘It’s what we’ve all got
to worry about. We’ve been lucky so far, but that’s not
going to last.’ She glowered at him, then lowered her voice.
‘Besides . . . it’s getting worse.’

Kay’s eyes
widened and he cast a quick look around. Clearly he was startled that
she would even hint at the presences that haunted them.

‘Yeah. So
stop pretending that you’re not just as scared as the rest of
us and help us think up how we’re going to do this,’ Rip
yelled.

Kay looked
resentful and mulish, but then he suddenly brightened. ‘Hey! I
know, we can trip him! Then we can throw a sheet over him.’

Mandy looked
thoughtful. ‘And we could maybe tie it around him so he
couldn’t get loose.’

‘We could
take his keys,’ Rip said, ‘and lock him in.’

‘We could
whack him on the head!’ Neesa cried gleefully. ‘Bonk!
Bonk, on the head!’

The others
laughed. ‘Good idea!’ Rip said and patted the little girl
on the back. ‘That’s just what we’ll do.’

When their burly
caretaker came with their breakfast Rip and Kay were on opposite
sides of the room playing catch with an apple. The man turned to put
the tray of food on the table that was usually by the door only to
find it had been moved to the centre of the room and shrouded in a
sheet that trailed out onto the floor.

‘What’s
that doin’ there?’ he growled.

Neesa raised the
sheet on one side and said haughtily, ‘It’s my house and
this is where it’s s’posed to be.’ She dropped the
sheet.

‘You two,’
the man said to the boys, ‘move that back over here.’

‘No!’
Neesa shouted. It was amazing that so much angry sound could come
from such a petite source.

‘Please,’
Mandy said, looking pained, ‘can we wait until she’s
finished playing with it? If we move it, she’ll yell the house
down.’

‘No! No!’
Neesa screamed, startling even her friends with the increase in
volume.

‘All
right!’ the guard shouted. He shut the door by kicking it with
his foot, but couldn’t lock it because of the heavy tray. He
glared at the children and the two boys slumped down and sat on the
floor, Mandy continued to lie upon her bed with her eyes wide and
Neesa was crooning to her doll under the table. Satisfied that no one
would move, the guard marched toward the table.

Which was when
Rip and Kay yanked the satin rope that had tied back the bed-curtains
from its hiding place under the rug to about ankle height and the big
man went down, the tray and the food on it going flying with a
colossal crash.

The guard tried
to break his fall with his hands, but the explosion of breath from
him when he hit the floor and a quick, deep groan of pain as
something—wrist, or arm—broke, was followed a moment
later by the loud crack of his chin hitting the stones.

The man’s
eyes rolled up into his head and he lost consciousness. The two boys
traded places, winding the rope around the guard’s legs. Mandy
leapt off the bed and pulled the sheet off the table and dropped it
over the guard’s head; then she and Neesa gathered the points
on either side of him and Mandy tied them in a knot, encasing him in
a bag.

‘Let’s
go!’ Rip said.

The children
gathered up the spilled bread, cheese and fruit in pillowcases and
ran from the room. To Rip, it was like leaving warm water for frigid
air and his teeth gave an involuntary chatter. He looked at the
others uneasily and they looked back, pale and obviously frightened.
Mandy glanced back into the room behind them.

‘No!’
Rip said and slammed the door, turning the key he was happy to find
still in the lock. ‘We can’t go back. Let’s get out
of here.’

Their heads
swung left and right and they found they were in the middle of a
corridor which looked identical at either end; stone walls, high
small windows on one side, tiled floors, huge blackened beams high
overhead.

‘This
way,’ Neesa said, pointing to the right.

‘Why?’
asked Mandy.

Neesa said,
‘Because that’s the right way.’

Mandy glanced at
Rip and ignored Kay, then shrugged, heading off to the right. It
might be the wrong choice, but at least it was a choice. Judging from
the view from their narrow window they must be at the top of the
house. ‘Look for stairs,’ Neesa whispered.

Mandy gave Neesa
a look, but didn’t say anything.

Rip felt
awkward, because he had been the one to force the idea of escape on
the others, but someone had to do it. He didn’t know why the
older children were content to let whatever horrible things happened
to the children who had gone before continue, but he wasn’t
going to endure it. He didn’t know if he could act like a
leader, no matter how many times he had played one in his
imagination, but someone had to do things. If he hadn’t locked
the door they all might have bolted back inside. It wasn’t safe
in there, but out here felt really dangerous. It seemed to be getting
colder for one thing and he felt as though a lot of people were
crowding the hallway, or were about to.

Stairs,
Rip thought desperately.
Where are the stairs?

Neesa was
crying, quietly in a tired and really frightened way. Tears poured
down her face and she was struggling not to make much noise, but
still gave out a high-pitched moaning that didn’t seem to
involve breathing since it was continuous. She clutched Rip’s
hand like a hot vice, tugging him along, one way, then another. No
one else had an idea where they were going, so they just let her
lead.

Rip thought she
was too scared to complain. He knew he was. He held her hand as much
to reassure himself as to keep her close. Otherwise all he’d
have to think about was the invisible something that always seemed
just about to pounce on them. Or the biting cold that let him see his
own breath even though it wasn’t even close to autumn yet.

They’d
been creeping about this huge house for what seemed like hours and
they were all exhausted. They’d found stairs, but when they’d
gone down two flights they’d had to turn around to avoid
someone coming up the stairs. Whoever that was had them running up
three flights before they took off down the corridor to the next
turning. They’d ducked into a room while footsteps paraded up
and down outside the door and something seemed to hover just above
their heads. At least it had been rest of a sort or by this time they
wouldn’t be able to move. After the footsteps had stopped
they’d sneaked out and managed to get down two flights but
until now they’d still been trapped on the same floor they’d
started on.

And all the
rooms were empty and full of dust and unseen watching eyes.

Rip released
Neesa’s hand and tiptoed to the staircase.

Crouching down,
he looked over the edge and watched, straining his ears to hear any
motion on any of the floors below. Satisfied at last, he waved the
others on and they crept down the stairs. Before they could get to
the next staircase they heard footsteps and went racing down the
corridor in front of them, hearts pounding.

The sense of an
invisible pursuer sharpened as a feeling of anger reaching out to
smash them began to build. The children ran faster and found it hard
going, the air here seemed thinner somehow and the cold bit deeper
causing them to stumble and to sob.

We’ve
got to hide,
Rip thought.

Down the
corridor before them a door seemed to beckon. He grabbed the handle
and pulled, only to find it locked. Yanking out the guard’s key
he tried to fit it into the lock, but his hands were shaking too
much. It was like a live thing struggling to get away and he let out
a frustrated sob. Mandy grabbed his shoulder and he gasped in
surprise.

‘Let’s
go!’ she said in a shrill whisper. She tugged on his shirt.

But Rip grabbed
onto the door handle, not meaning to be dragged away, and by a
miracle it turned. It had only been stuck! Now he grabbed Mandy’s
skirt and opening the door dragged her in after him; the two other
children followed. He and Mandy together shut the door and leaned
their weight against it. Something on the outside hit it hard,
rocking the door in its frame and causing a trickle of plaster dust
to hiss to the floor.

Rip had a sense
of something foul striking the door and then recoiling in hurt or
fear. But it hadn’t gone far; he could feel that too. Still,
for the moment he felt safe. Safer even than in their prison up
above. He turned to look at the room they were in. Kay and Neesa
stared at him, pale and frightened. Beside him Mandy gave a sigh and
slid to the floor, huddling in on herself, her eyes staring at
nothing.

Rip looked
around. They were in a bedroom. It was furnished with stark
simplicity, and yet the furnishings themselves were finely made, like
more of old Emmet’s stories, or the ones Ma had told him about
palaces in the sky. The furniture was all carved delicately out of
dark wood, and polished, and there was cloth on the seats, fine weave
with a pattern in it. There were no mirrors or pictures on the walls,
or the large cloth hangings like in the other room, but Rip knew this
room was used by gentlefolk. Then he noticed Neesa was staring and he
turned to see where her eyes looked; opposite where he stood was a
doorway.

Neesa pointed
and said, in soft tones, ‘She’s in there.’

As though drawn,
he went toward it, but when he got there he hesitated. Something bad
was behind this door. Not something wicked in itself, like what
waited for them out in the corridor. It was as if something bad was
happening in the room behind the door.

But Rip had to
see and fear didn’t hold him long. He opened the door. The room
was dim, as though some of the shades of night still lingered there
and candles brightened it only slightly. There was a bed in the
middle of the room and on the bed was a beautiful young woman.
Asleep? No, she wasn’t breathing. The woman was dead. He took
an involuntary step backward, then stopped.

Rip looked
closer at her, fascinated and appalled. He took in a long, slow
breath of horror, having realized somehow that though she should be
dead, she wasn’t. Then he slammed the door and leaned against
it, feeling sick. When he looked up he saw that the others had also
seen what he had.
Did you feel it?
he wondered, but didn’t
dare say anything out loud. It was like the presences: for some
reason he didn’t think it would be wise to acknowledge what
he’d felt.