Figures of Fear Read online

  By now they had reached the grassy dunes and started to climb up them. Not far away there were three small cottages, two painted white and one painted pink, with lights in the windows, and fishing nets hung up all around them for repair.

  ‘Didn’t you try going after her yourself?’ asked Martin.

  ‘Yes. But it was no use. I don’t have enough imagination. All I could see was sheets and blankets. I fish for rational ideas – for astronomy and physics and human logic. I couldn’t imagine Underbed so I couldn’t visit it.’

  ‘Underbed?’

  The fisherman gave him a small, grim smile. ‘That’s what Leonora called it.’

  They reached the cottage and laid down all of their baskets and tackle. The kitchen door opened and a woman came out, wiping her hands on a flowery apron. Her blonde hair was braided on top of her head and she was quite beautiful in an odd, expressionless way, as if she were a competent oil-painting rather than a real woman.

  ‘You’re back, then?’ she said. ‘And this is the tunneller?’

  The fisherman laid his hand on Martin’s shoulder. ‘That’s right. He came, just like he was supposed to. He can start to look for her tonight.’

  Martin was about to protest, but the woman came up and took hold of both of his hands. ‘I know you’ll do everything you can,’ she told him. ‘And God bless you for coming here and trying.’

  They had supper that evening around the kitchen table – a rich fish pie with a crispy potato crust, and glasses of cold cider. The fisherman and his wife said very little, but scarcely took their eyes away from Martin once. It was almost as if they were frightened that he was going to vanish into thin air.

  On the mantelpiece, a plain wooden clock loudly ticked out the time, and on the wall next to it hung a watercolour of a house that for some reason Martin recognized. There was a woman standing in the garden, with her back to him. He felt that if she were able to turn around he would know at once who she was.

  There were other artefacts in the room that he recognized: a big green earthenware jug and a pastille-burner in the shape of a little cottage. There was a china cat, too, which stared at him with a knowing smile. He had never been here before, so he couldn’t imagine why all these things looked so familiar. Perhaps he was tired, and suffering from déjà vu.

  After supper they sat around the range for a while and the fisherman explained how he went out trawling every day for idea-fish. In the deeper waters, around the sound, there were much bigger fish, entire theoretical concepts, swimming in shoals.

  ‘This is the land of ideas,’ he said, in a matter-of-fact way. ‘Even the swallows and thrushes in the sky are little whimsical thoughts. You can catch a swallow and think of something you once forgot; or have a small, sweet notion that you never would have had before. You – you come from the land of action, where things are done, not just discussed.’

  ‘And Underbed? What kind of a land is that?’

  ‘I don’t know. The land of fear, I suppose. The land of darkness, where everything always threatens to go wrong.’

  ‘And that’s where you want me to go looking for your daughter?’

  The fisherman’s wife got up from her chair, lifted a photograph from the mantelpiece and passed it across to Martin without a word. It showed a young blonde girl standing on the seashore in a thin summer dress. She was pale-eyed and captivatingly pretty. Her bare toes were buried in the sand. In the distance, a flock of birds was scattering, and Martin thought of ‘small, sweet notions that you never would have had before’.

  Martin studied the photograph for a moment and then gave it back. ‘Very well, then,’ he said. ‘I’ll have a try.’ After all, it was his duty to rescue people. He hadn’t been able to find the boy trapped in Legg’s Elbow: perhaps he could redeem himself by finding Leonora.

  Just after eleven o’clock they showed him across to her room. It was small and plain, except for a pine dressing table crowded with dolls and soft toys. The plain pine bed stood right in the middle of the longer wall, with an engraving of a park hanging over it. Martin frowned at the engraving more closely. He was sure that the park was familiar. Perhaps he had visited it when he was a child. But here, in the land of ideas?

  The fisherman’s wife closed the red gingham curtains and folded down the blankets on the bed.

  ‘Do you still have the sheets from the time she disappeared?’ Martin asked her.

  She nodded, and opened a small pine linen chest at the foot of the bed. She lifted out a folded white sheet and spread it out on top of the bed. One end was ripped and snagged, as if it had been caught in machinery, or clawed by something at least as big as a tiger.

  ‘She wouldn’t have done this herself,’ said the fisherman. ‘She couldn’t have done.’

  ‘Still,’ said Martin. ‘If she didn’t do it, what did?’

  By midnight Martin was in bed, wearing a long white borrowed nightshirt, and the cottage was immersed in darkness. The breeze persistently rattled the sash window like somebody trying to get in, and beyond the dunes Martin could hear the sea. He always thought that there was nothing more lonely than the sea at night.

  He didn’t know whether he believed in Underbed or not. He didn’t even know whether he believed in the land of ideas or not. He felt as if he were caught in a dream – yet how could he be? The bed felt real and the pillows felt real and he could just make out his potholing clothes hanging over the back of the chair.

  He lay on his back for almost fifteen minutes without moving. Then he decided that he’d better take a look down at the end of the bed. After all, if Underbed didn’t exist, the worst that could happen to him was that he would end up half-stifled and hot. He lifted the blankets, twisted himself around, and plunged down beneath them.

  Immediately, he found himself crawling in a low, peaty crevice that was thickly tangled with tree roots. His nostrils were filled with the rank odour of wet leaves and mould. He must have wriggled into a gap beneath the floor of a wood or forest. It was impenetrably dark, and the roots snared his hair and scratched his face. He was sure that he could feel black beetles crawling across his hands and down the back of his collar. He wasn’t wearing nightclothes any longer. Instead, he was ruggedly dressed in a thick chequered shirt and heavy-duty jeans.

  After forty or fifty metres, he had to crawl right beneath the bole of a huge tree. Part of it was badly rotted, and as he inched his way through the clinging taproots, he was unnervingly aware that the tree probably weighed several tons and, if he disturbed it, it could collapse into this subterranean crevice and crush him completely. He had to dig through heaps of peat and soil, and at one point his fingers clawed into something both crackly and slimy. It was the decomposed body of a badger that must have become trapped underground. He stopped for a moment, suffocated and sickened, but then he heard the huge tree creaking and showers of damp peat fell into his hair, and he knew that if he didn’t get out of there quickly he was going to be buried alive.

  He squirmed out from under the tree, pulling aside a thick curtain of hairy roots, and discovered that he was out in the open air. It was still night-time, and very cold, and his breath smoked in the way that he and his friends had pretended to smoke on winter mornings when they waited for the bus for school – which was, when? Yesterday? Or months ago? Or even years ago?

  He stood in the forest and there was no moon, yet the forest was faintly lit by an eerie phosphorescence. He imagined that aliens might have landed behind the trees. A vast spaceship filled with narrow, complicated chambers where a space-mechanic might get lost for months, squeezing his pelvis through angular bulkheads and impossibly constricted service tunnels.

  The forest was silent. No insects chirruped. No wind disturbed the trees. The only sound was that of Martin’s footsteps, as he made his way cautiously through the brambles, not sure in which direction he should be heading. Yet he felt that he was going the right way. He felt drawn – magnetized, almost, like a quivering compass needle. He was plunging de
eper and deeper into the land of Underbed: a land of airlessness and claustrophobia, a land in which most people couldn’t even breathe. But to him, it was a land of closeness and complete security.

  Up above him, the branches of the trees were so thickly entwined together that it was impossible to see the sky. It could have been daytime up above, but here in the forest it was always night.

  He stumbled onwards for over half an hour. Every now and then he stopped and listened, but the forest remained silent. As he walked on he became aware of something pale, flickering behind the trees, right in the very corner of his eye. He stopped again, and turned around, but it disappeared, whatever it was.

  ‘Is anybody there?’ he called out, his voice muffled by the encroaching trees. There was no answer, but now Martin was certain that he could hear dry leaves being shuffled, and twigs being softly snapped. He was certain that he could hear somebody breathing.

  He walked further, and he was conscious of the pale shape following him like a paper lantern on a stick, bobbing from tree to tree, just out of sight. But although it remained invisible, it became noisier and noisier, its breath coming in short, harsh gasps, its feet rustling faster and faster across the forest floor.

  Suddenly, something clutched at his shirtsleeve – a hand, or a claw – and ripped the fabric. He twisted around and almost lost his balance. Standing close to him in the phosphorescent gloom was a girl of sixteen or seventeen, very slender and white-faced. Her hair was wild and straw-like, and backcombed into a huge bird’s nest, decorated with thorns and holly and moss and shiny maroon berries. Her irises were charcoal-grey – night eyes, with wide black pupils. Eyes that could see in the dark. Her face was starved-looking but mesmerically pretty. It was her white, white skin that had made Martin believe he was being followed by a paper lantern.

  Her costume was extraordinary and erotic. She wore a short blouse made of hundreds of bunched-up ruffles of grubby, tattered lace. Every ruffle seemed to be decorated with a bead or a medal or a rabbit’s foot, or a bird fashioned out of cooking-foil. But her blouse reached only as far as her navel, and it was all she wore. Her feet were filthy and her thighs were streaked with mud.

  ‘What are you searching for?’ she asked him, in a thin, lisping voice.

  Martin was so confused and embarrassed by her half-nakedness that he turned away. ‘I’m looking for someone, that’s all.’

  ‘Nobody looks for anybody here. This is Underbed.’

  ‘Well, I’m looking for someone. A girl called Leonora.’

  ‘A girl who came out from under the woods?’

  ‘I suppose so, yes.’

  ‘We saw her passing by. She was searching for whatever it is that makes her frightened. But she won’t find it here.’

  ‘I thought this was the land of fear.’

  ‘Oh, it is. But there’s a difference between fear, isn’t there, and what actually makes you frightened?’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘It’s easy. Fear of the dark is only a fear. It isn’t anything real. But what about things that really do hide in the dark? What about the coat on the back of your chair that isn’t a coat at all? What about your dead friend standing in the corner, next to your wardrobe, waiting for you to wake?’

  ‘So what is Leonora looking for?’

  ‘It depends what’s been frightening her, doesn’t it? But the way she went, she was heading for Under-Underbed; and that’s where the darkest things live.’

  ‘Can you show me the way?’

  The girl emphatically shook her head so that her beads rattled and her ribbons shook. ‘You don’t know what the darkest things are, do you?’ She covered her face with her hands, her fingers slightly parted so that only her eyes looked out. ‘The darkest things are the very darkest things; and once you go to visit them in Under-Underbed, they’ll know which way you came, they’ll be able to smell you, and they’ll follow you back there.’

  Martin said, ‘I still have to find Leonora. I promised.’

  The girl stared at him for a long, long time, saying nothing, as if she were sure that she would never see him again and wanted to remember what he looked like. Then she turned away and beckoned him to follow.

  They walked through the forest for at least another twenty minutes. The branches grew sharper and denser, and Martin’s cheeks and ears were badly scratched. All the same, with his arms raised to protect his eyes, he followed the girl’s thin, pale back as she guided him deeper and deeper into the trees. As she walked, she sang a high-pitched song.

  The day’s in disguise

  It’s wearing a face I don’t recognize

  It has rings on its fingers and silken roads in its eyes …

  Eventually they reached a small clearing. On one side the ground had humped up, and was thickly covered with sodden green moss. Without hesitation the girl crouched down and lifted up one side of the moss, like a blanket, revealing a dark, root-wriggling interior.

  ‘Down there?’ asked Martin, in alarm.

  The girl nodded. ‘But remember what I said. Once you find them, they’ll follow you back. That’s what happens when you go looking for the darkest things.’

  ‘All the same, I promised.’

  ‘Yes. But just think who you promised, and why. And just think who Leonora might be, and who I am, and what it is you’re doing here.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he admitted; and he didn’t. But while the girl held the moss-blanket as high as she could manage, he climbed on to his side and worked his way underneath it, feet-first, as if he were climbing into bed. The roots embraced him; they took him into their arms like thin-fingered women, and soon he was buried in the mossy hump up to his neck. The girl knelt beside him and her face was calm and regretful. For some reason her nakedness didn’t embarrass him any more. It was almost as if he knew her too well. But without saying anything more, she lowered the blanket of moss over his face and his world went completely dark.

  He took a deep, damp-tasting breath, and then he began to insinuate his way under the ground. At first, he was crawling quite level, but he soon reached a place where the soil dropped sharply away into absolute blackness. He thought he could feel a faint draft blowing, and the dull sound of hammering and knocking. This must be it: the end of Underbed, where Under-Underbed began. This was where the darkest things lived. Not just the fear, but the reality.

  For the first time since he had set out on his rescue mission he was tempted to turn back. If he crawled back out of the moss-blanket now, and went back through the forest, then the darkest things would never know that he had been here. But he knew that he had to continue. Once you plunged into bed, and Underbed, and Under-Underbed, you had committed yourself.

  He swung his legs over the edge of the precipice, clinging with both hands on to the roots that sprouted out of the soil like hairs on a giant’s head. Little by little, he lowered himself down the face of the precipice, his shoes sliding in the peat and bringing down noisy cascades of earth and pebbles. The most frightening part about his descent was that he couldn’t see anything at all. He couldn’t even see how far down he had to climb. For all he knew, the precipice went down and down for ever.

  Every time he clutched at a root, he couldn’t help himself from dragging off its fibrous outer covering, and his hands soon became impossibly slippery with sap.

  Below him, however, the hammering had grown much louder, and he could hear echoes too, and double-echoes.

  He grasped at a large taproot, and immediately his hand slipped. He tried to snatch a handful of smaller roots, but they all tore away, with a sound like rotten curtains tearing. He clawed at the soil itself, but there was nothing that he could do to stop himself from falling. He thought, for an instant: I’m going to die.

  He fell heavily through a damp, lath-and-plaster ceiling. With an ungainly wallop he landed on a sodden mattress, and tumbled off it on to a wet-carpeted floor. He lay on his side for a moment, winded, but then he managed to twist himself around an
d climb up on to his knees. He was in a bedroom – a bedroom which he recognized, although the wallpaper was mildewed and peeling, and the closet door was tilting off its hinges to reveal a row of empty wire hangers.

  He stood up, and went across to the window. At first he thought it was night-time, but then he realized that the window was completely filled in with peat. The bedroom was buried deep below the ground.

  He began to feel the first tight little flutters of panic. What if he couldn’t climb his way out of here? What if he had to spend the rest of his life buried deep beneath the surface, under layers and layers of soil and moss and suffocating blankets? He tried to think what he ought to do next, but the hammering was now so loud that it made the floor tremble and the hangers in the closet jingle together.

  He had to take control of himself. He was an expert, after all: a fully trained potholer, with thirty years’ experience. His first priority was to find Leonora, and see how difficult it was going to be to get her back up the precipice. Perhaps there was another way out of Under-Underbed that didn’t involve twenty or thirty metres of dangerous climbing …

  He opened the bedroom door and found himself confronted by a long corridor with a shiny linoleum floor. The walls were lined with doors and painted, with a tan dado, like a school or a hospital. A single naked light hung at the very far end of the corridor, and under this light stood a girl in a long white nightgown. Her blonde hair was flying in an unfelt wind, and her face was so white that it could have been sculpted out of chalk.

  The hem of her nightgown was ripped into tatters and spattered with blood. Her calves and her feet were savagely clawed, with the skin hanging down in ribbons, and blood running all over the floor.

  ‘Leonora?’ said Martin, too softly for the girl to be able to hear. Then, ‘Leonora!’

  She took one shuffling step towards him, and another, but then she stopped and leaned against the side of the corridor. It was the same Leonora whose photograph he had seen in the fisherman’s cottage, but three or four years older, maybe more.