The Fearful (14 page)

Tim stayed quiet. Lots of questions already, but he managed to stay quiet for the time being.

‘I also come back because of your family,' Jack Spicer continued. ‘I like to keep myself to myself – I hope sometimes you don't even realize I'm around – but I've seen your father marry your mother, and you and your sister grow up. I held you as a baby, you know.' He cocked his eyebrow, took a drink. ‘I like to think that you've adopted me a little. A lonely old man you've let into the fold, even if it's just in a small way.' He smiled at this.

‘They're my two big reasons, Tim. They're the two things that drag me back three, maybe four times a year.' He returned to looking out of the window. ‘Wanting to see the Mourn again is my not so big reason any more. But I can't deny that I like being around others who believe me. You could say I've had my fair share of leg-pulling and smart-aleck remarks where I come from. At least the people here believe me. I don't feel quite so mad or foolish around them.'

Tim remembered how Jack had been greeted by the Fearful earlier that morning. He asked: ‘What did it look like?'

Jack Spicer took his time to answer. ‘Nothing like Nessie,' he said. He heard Tim's frustrated sigh and shook his head. ‘No, this is important. It's not a joke, lad. Everybody will tell you the Loch Ness Monster is a dinosaur – a freak of nature, but still an animal, if you like. Maybe it is. Who am I to argue? Or maybe we don't want to think about it being anything else. Maybe we
can't
think about it being anything else because modern times won't let us.'

Tim wasn't quite following this, but stayed quiet. For him Bert's smoky bar had virtually disappeared. He leaned forward, studying Jack Spicer's watery grey eyes, hearing nothing but his voice.

The words had an over-polished quality to them because he'd said them so many times before. ‘It was a fair bit out, maybe about thirty or thirty-five foot from the shore; looked like it was going to swim up the river here, swim right under this pub. I saw its back, then its head – ugly, black thing. Maybe about twice as long as I am tall; unless it had a tail I couldn't see, then longer still. I thought it was an alligator, or crocodile, something like that. I went to shout for my Mary to come see. But I stopped myself because straight away I knew it wasn't anything like that. Not even if I had heard on the television that one had escaped from a zoo that very morning would I have believed they were the same thing. Because about the most I can tell you is that what I saw wasn't natural. The Mourn is not a creature Mother
Nature ever made. I've heard your father call it “the dragon in the lake”, and that's about the best description I've got too. Because dragons aren't real, either.'

Tim waited for more, but Jack Spicer was only drinking now. The Dows Bridges seemed to fall into place around him again. ‘It's not real?'

‘It's not an animal. It's unearthly: not of this earth.'

Tim stared at the old man. It wasn't enough. ‘Can you tell me any more?'

‘What more do you want? I'd be lying if I said I'd seen it twice.'

‘But could you tell me something . . . something else?'

Mr Spicer frowned at him. His voice sharpened the tiniest amount. ‘I'm sure I haven't got the foggiest what you mean.'

Desperation made him bold. ‘Could you tell me something more than just a
story
?'

‘Are you calling me a liar, young man?'

Maybe Tim should have apologized but he was desperate to hear something he'd not heard before, desperate to have a hard, unarguable fact smack him between the eyes. Only that would have been good enough, proof enough. So instead of apologizing he found himself saying, ‘I don't
think
you're lying . . .'

‘What?' The old man's eyes immediately hardened.

At last Tim realized his mistake. Too late he began to apologize and say how grateful he was.

‘I've had a few people call me a few things over the years, but I never believed I'd hear Bill Milmullen's son call me a
liar
.'

‘No, Mr Spicer, I didn't mean it like that. Honestly I didn't.'

‘I think I'm going to have to have a few words with your father about this. I've been a good friend to your family and I don't expect to be called a liar by you, young man.' He went on and on.

Tim managed to escape after his fifth or sixth apology, back through the family room and out into the car park in the wind. He stood for a few moments in the fresh air – a welcome relief after the smoky bar. He looked towards Mourn Home and Lake Mou, a little dazed by what had just happened. He realized that in the last hour he'd managed to drive a wedge between him and his sister as well as cause offence to his parents' most dependable customer. He wondered briefly how a day that had begun badly enough anyway could have got so much worse?

A small car crested the bridges and zoomed by, heading away from the town. It didn't turn off towards Mourn Home and the lake but kept going. He watched it as it followed the rise of the road towards the lip of the valley. For Tim that road was like an arrow pointing anywhere he wanted to go; places he was scared he might never get to see. Too late he stuck his thumb out for a lift, because the small car had already disappeared into the distance.

MOURN HOME WAS
sleeping – except for Tim. He was sitting cross-legged on the floor of the study surrounded by his family's most precious possessions. The lamp on his father's desk spotlit him in the middle of the antique papers and bound manuscripts he'd taken from the glass cabinet. It was seventeen minutes past twelve – seventeen minutes into a new day, into another day closer to his sixteenth birthday, closer to his Carving. He didn't like the speed with which the days were passing. Less than a week now.

He'd been here since early evening. That crabby old bastard Jack Spicer had been as good as his word and told everyone who would listen what an ill-mannered and disrespectful brat Tim was. Fortunately the only person listening had been Anne because Bill had been at a meeting of townspeople opposed to Vic Stones's hotel all evening. Anne had given him the expected dressing down in front of Mr Spicer – the dressing down the cantankerous old git expected him to receive, that is. But when Mr Spicer had left them alone she'd told Tim that if he wanted to avoid upsetting his father any more, he should just do as he'd been asked.

He'd taken her advice. At first it felt like he'd been
banished to the study just to keep him out of everybody's hair, but he didn't mind too much – he'd always been someone who was happy enough to have time alone to think. He'd started reading only reluctantly to begin with, then had decided that he might as well try and find some of that elusive
proof
. So far, however, he'd been disappointed.

Old William's diary had pretty much defeated him, with its broken, jittery handwriting and archaic language. So he'd taken Richard's copy of the text. Richard had been Mourner from 1835 to 1866, and Tim reasoned that since he'd read and enjoyed
Frankenstein,
which was written round about the same time, he should be okay with it. And it was easier to follow, but twice the length of the original and deadly dull. Still, he waded through most of it, only to feel cheated when it didn't help his cause in the least.

Donald – who'd taken over as Mourner in 1900 when his older brother, Henry, died of TB without having any sons of his own – hadn't made a copy of the diary. Apparently he'd aspired to being the next Conan Doyle and had instead turned his account into an adventure yarn. Bill had tried to warn Tim off reading it, repeating again how important Old William's original words were. He said the reason successive Mourners had often made copies of the original diary was to gain greater knowledge and understanding of those words. But Donald had been the last Mourner to claim he'd actually seen the Mourn.

According to his version of events the creature had risen from the dark depths of the lake ‘with such violence and ferociousness' that it caused a terrifying earthquake which
‘set every house and home in Moutonby trembling'. He wrote that he saw the beast ‘rise from the maelstrom of black water with a roar like thunder'. Luckily Donald was safely on dry land at that precise moment, but he called for an immediate Feed which no Fearful declined to attend.

The history books did mention a ‘minor earth tremor' in the area and the rebuilding of the Dows Bridges in 1908. Donald's sighting was only revealed in his diary and was as hotly disputed as Old William's. Even Bill admitted to being sceptical, but refused to believe any Mourner would need to lie, simply stating that Donald's diary was indeed sensational. Tim's view, however, was that it all read like a particularly bad
Hound of the Baskervilles
even with the earthquake.

Bill's notes on the original diary were of course the easiest to follow. But somehow they didn't help. The long-ago events they described, the supernatural occurrences and manifestations of the Mourn, sounded odd in his flat, modern tone of voice. Somehow Old William's archaic diatribe seemed to be the way it
should
be told.

But Tim's eyes were weary; he had pins and needles from sitting on the floor for so long. And he needed to clear his head. He was just too tired to think. But first he couldn't resist checking one more time; he had to read it again just in case.

He found the page in Old William's diary. He ran his finger under the lines.

It was one simple, short paragraph. But it was everything to his father and to him, although for each in a different way.

He gathered the manuscripts, putting them back in the glass cabinet carefully, exactly as he'd found them, and locking it all up with the key his father had left for him. He switched off the desk lamp, pitching the room into darkness. The study window looked onto his mother's flowerbeds and down to the lake. Habit made him turn his head and glance out that way as he headed for the door – he was as bad as Jack Spicer, he reckoned. He could see the shadowy lump of the Mourn Stone and the water behind it. What he wasn't expecting was to see a pale face appear on the other side of the glass.

He leaped back with the shock of it. Then wasn't sure what froze him to the spot: surprise or fear? Had he been seen? Did whoever it was know he was here? He could hear his heart and it sounded way too loud.

But as the face peered in, the shock slowly released its grip and he decided not, because he was several steps away from the window and the room was in total darkness. Then he recognized the face. Gully.

The student had his nose pressed up against the glass, squinting inside. Tim was more than just a little tempted to leap forward and thump on the window as hard as he could, and see who jumped
then.
Gully moved back of his
own accord, however, and ran his hands around the frame. He pushed and prodded it, as if testing how secure it was.

Tim didn't have a clue what he was doing out there, but reckoned that wherever there was Gully there'd also be Scott. Cautiously he moved closer to the window. Gully was pacing backwards, craning his neck to see the upper floors. And there was Scott, off to one side, hunched up in his thin denim jacket and swigging from a can of lager. Tim guessed they'd been drinking late at WetFun's bar again, but had lost or forgotten their key and locked themselves out.

Good. Let them freeze.

Small revenge for what they'd done to Jenny perhaps, but not bad for starters. The problem was that it wouldn't take them long to get cold enough to ring the bell and wake the whole house. So maybe he should let them in. He moved closer still to the window and noticed a third person with them. He saw the burning tip of a cigarette first, then the tall, wiry silhouette standing behind Scott, over near the garage.

‘Shit.'

Roddy Morgan.

It took only a moment to decide he wasn't going to wake anyone. Roddy was only here to provoke trouble, to cause as much grief as possible. But maybe by confronting him Tim could prove something.

Not exactly sure what that something was, he crept from the study to the kitchen. He didn't turn any lights on. From the kitchen window all three of them were in full view. Gully and Scott had joined Roddy by the garage. Silently
Tim pulled on his coat and trainers. He hovered with his hand on the back door's handle for a few seconds. He could recognize Scott's voice, but wasn't quite able to make out what he was saying.

Unsure whether he was more angry or more anxious he stepped out into the chilly night air. The gravel of the driveway crunched beneath his shoes and Roddy was the first to spot him.

‘Hey! It's Monster Boy!' He sniffed the air. ‘Is it just me, or can anyone else smell shepherd's pie?'

Tim ignored him, refusing to rise to the bait, because Scott was holding Gully's legs, steadying him as he climbed into the garage through its open window. But as soon as he realized Tim was there he let his friend go. And Gully tipped over the sill, plunging forward; there was the rattle and chink as his pockets emptied themselves of loose change, then his legs instantly disappeared as though the garage had sucked him inside. He gave a muffled grunt as he hit the floor.

‘What's going on?' Tim's voice was a harsh whisper, conscious of the sleeping house. ‘What do you think you're doing?'

Scott was drunk. ‘Lost our key.' He wasn't particularly steady on his feet and it looked like his head was too heavy for his neck.

Tim checked the window. ‘You didn't smash anything, did you?'