Doors swung open inside Simon’s memory, and a wind gusted through the empty halls of his mind. It was coming; something was on its way now. So he waited. Bracing himself against this alien earth, watching a giant woman as she repeated a silent warning, and wishing that the Angel would move, just an inch, he waited for whatever was coming.
He heard the word as if it had been spoken, but not by the woman. By someone else, twenty years ago… a girl, a young girl called Hailey.
Underthing.
This was the thing that had taken him, taken them all, the foul creature that had stolen their youth, tainted their future, and torn apart the foundations of their friendship. This was what had called him back to the estate, and finally, after all these years, he recognised the monster they had followed into the Needle, the beast with no name, just a description:
Simon knew that this was a dream, but if he allowed it to happen, and the events whose aftermath he could see took place, nothing would ever be the same again.
The doors in his mind stayed open, and his worst fears came lumbering through, wearing so many masks that he could not help but realise they were still hiding, still concealing themselves. One mask at a time, piece by piece, Simon began to discover what had been hiding in his darkness.
TWENTY YEARS AGO, WHEN THE DAMAGE WAS DONE
THEY ARE WAITING on the platform, huddled beneath an old tarpaulin they discovered folded under some bushes not far from the old Beacon Hill railway platform. The sheet smells of piss and alcohol; when they found it, Marty said it must have been used as a tramp’s bedding. They all laughed at that, but still they hauled the sheet back to their base camp to use as a cover.
The night is clear. Thin clouds are just about visible, high up in the seamless black of the sky. The moon is somewhere between half and full, and it shines down like a spotlight upon the area where the boys have made their den.
Night birds sing in the dense undergrowth, or hop between tree branches. When they close their eyes and keep quiet, not making a sound apart from their breathing, the boys can almost fool themselves that they are not on the outskirts of a grey conurbation, but somewhere out in the countryside. For a moment, anyway, before the sounds of distant engines and alarms intrude upon their reverie and spoil the lie. Then reality comes flooding back, and something inside them dies.
“Can you hear something?” Brendan’s voice is low, timid. He does not move.
“Like what?” Even Marty sounds cautious. “I didn’t hear a thing.”
“Shush…” Simon pulls the tarpaulin down and peers over its edge, scanning the ground below the tree.
Something rustles in the bushes to the right of their position, making them shake. Then, softly, a low clicking sound begins to build, rising gradually from near silence to a soft, low, ratcheting noise.
“What is it?” Brendan tenses beneath the sheet; they all feel it, the fear that has crept up on them, taking them by surprise. Like the arms of a drunken parent, it clumsily envelopes them, making them feel unsafe.
“I dunno. Sounds like a rattlesnake.” Simon moves slowly across the platform, towards the edge of the plywood base. He lies down on his belly and gently pulls himself towards the platform’s roughened lip, staring down at the ground. Low branches shudder; the sound builds, dies down, and then builds again.
“Captain Clickety,” says Brendan, his voice now not much above a whisper.
“What’s that?” Marty shifts, making the platform creak.
“I dunno. It’s just a name… something from an old nursery rhyme or summat. I remember it from infant school. I think it’s something we used to sing in class. That’s who I saw earlier: Captain Clickety.”
The movement down below ceases but the sound continues, as if once begun it might never stop.
Then, softly and in a childish sing-song voice, Brendan begins to chant:
Simon glances over at his friends. “Shut up,” he says. “Just shut up. That’s creepy.” He feels his eyes blinking rapidly, and doesn’t seem able to stop them.
Brendan smiles, but there is no humour in the expression. As young as he is, Simon realises that the smile is one of desperation. What he doesn’t know is what to do about it, how to put things right and make the world feel safe again. Perhaps when he is older he can be that kind of hero, but now all he can do is endure the confusion.
“There’s somebody down there.” Simon hears his voice before he even knows what he is going to say. “Right under us. Hiding in the trees. I don’t think he knows we’re up here.”
The platform creaks again.
“Don’t move,” says Simon. “He’s there.” He doesn’t understand how he knows the presence is male, but that’s how it feels: like there’s a man down there, peering up at them from the shadows.
There is nobody there, beneath the platform on which they are huddled, but for some reason he feels the need to push his friends, to coerce them into action in the only way he knows how. On the surface, he believes that he is trying to allay their fears by confirming them — by giving the boys something they can turn their attention towards, they might stop being so afraid of the things that don’t matter. But under this, where the part of himself he can never understand holds sway, he realises that he is simply pushing for pushing’s sake. He has always done this, ever since he was an infant: at nursery, at school, at home. It was the only way for him to get noticed, to command attention. Otherwise, he would have blended into the background, becoming unimportant.
So he pushes, just like he has always pushed.
The lies trip from his tongue.
“He’s moving away now… he’s in the trees and he’s moving. It’s some guy in a funny costume. I think it’s the same guy Brendan saw earlier: the one in the bird mask with the walking stick, the weirdo. That one. The creepy one. Captain Clickety.”
He watches the unmoving bushes, the unambiguous trunks and boughs of the trees, the dancing shadows as they skim across the ground — and that’s all they are, trees and bushes and shadows. It feels good to push, but he knows that it shouldn’t. He knows it should feel bad.
He knows that he should be terrified. But he isn’t; he’s excited.
“Let’s follow him,” he says, clamping down on the smile before turning again to face his friends. “Let’s spy on him. He might be a robber. We could find his treasure. Like Tom Sawyer, in the caves. Remember?”
Marty says nothing, he just stares out into the darkness, his face thin and pale and unreadable. Brendan shakes his head, but Simon knows that he can change his mind. All it will take is the right kind of pushing, the application of pressure from a certain angle. That’s all it ever takes, with anyone, and Simon has the gift of finding those angles, picking them out and exploiting them for his own purposes.
“Come on,” says Simon, goading the others. Then, smiling, he says the magical words that are guaranteed to get a response, asks the question that can be answered in only one way by a couple of ten-year-old boys:
