The Grin of the Dark

TWENTY - IT STIRS

'Haven't we been this way before?'

'He'll be asking us next if we're there yet, Bob.'

'No, I'm saying I think we have. I'm sure we've passed this roundabout once.'

'Do you think I wouldn't remember?'

'He doesn't mean that, Bob. Don't confuse your father. Everything looks the same, that's all. Is it along there? I might know if they hadn't taken all the names away.'

'Nobody's done anything with any names. Don't talk daft, Sandra.'

'I know they haven't really. I was only joking. It's at the end of a road, I'm sure.'

My father is driving us north through if not out of Preston. I'm convinced that an elaborate detour accompanied by muted cursing has returned us to the same five-way intersection planted with a Christmas tree that spreads its lowest branches almost to the edge of the grassy ring. Their shadows twitch like spiders' legs groping over the snow. Now we're across the intersection, and my mother inhales shrilly at the hint of a skid as we follow the route she suggested. It's the second exit, somewhere between a quarter to and ten to if the roundabout were a clock.

The suburb has been simplified by the weather. While there was no trace of snow in the town centre, here it fattens the trees and erases the names of the wide streets. Light encircles the roots of the streetlamps and spills out of some of the broad white-headed detached houses across their colourless lawns; otherwise the route is dark. The night seems to coop up the stale heat of the Mini, which feels even more airless than the kitchen did. I'm thinking of proposing that we end the search before the icy roads or the distractions of my parents' arguments can grow more dangerous when my mother cries 'It's that way, isn't it? That one.'

She's waving her forefinger to steer the car left where the road forks. Haven't we already driven past the house on the corner, or was there another garden crowded with pallid dwarfish shapes that must be ornamental gnomes encased in snow? On the other hand, I don't think the houses in the street gave way to shops. Both rows of shops are boarded up, and snow is heaped against most of the doors. All the upstairs flats are dark, except for one that flickers with ashen light surely too colourless for a fire. None of this is encouraging, but my mother says 'Isn't that it? There's nowhere else to go.'

Indeed, the street comes to a dead end beyond two broken streetlamps. The barely visible glow of the moon behind the padded sky outlines the hulk of an unlit building. Very little identifies it as a theatre apart from a line of rusty protrusions where the awning must have been, twelve feet or so up the grey stone façade, and the pairs of faces carved lower down, their theatrical grimaces blurred by age or the dimness. Boards sprayed with large dripping initials are nailed across a door in the left-hand corner. 'That's it, then,' says my father. 'Don't you want a closer look, Simon?'

'May as well as long as I'm here.'

My father has hardly scraped the tyres along the kerb in front of the theatre when my mother darts out of the car. I hurriedly follow in case she slips on the icy carapace of the pavement, but neither the ice nor her limp prevents her from reaching the door. Beyond the broken lamps the deserted white street resembles a set, and only the cold that displays our dim breaths seems to make it real. My mother squints through a gap between two scrawled boards. 'Bring the flashlight, Bob,' she calls.

He shakes his head and grabs the item from under the dashboard. As he slams the car door he thrusts the flashlight at me. 'Hurry up, Simon,' my mother urges, stamping to fend off the cold or with impatience.

As I pick my way to her I realise that quite a few people must have used the pavement recently for the ice to be so uneven. Presumably there's a short cut past the theatre to the streets behind it. I pass my mother the flashlight, and she fumbles to switch it on with a hand that's swollen by a stuffed glove. She pokes the beam at the gap and peers through the disc of glaring light on the boards. 'Is someone in there?' she says and even more enthusiastically 'Hello?'

'Quiet down, Sandra. What do you want people to think?'

'Which people? Show me any. There's either someone in there or it's – '

She interrupts herself by knocking on the boarded door. When her glove muffles her thumps she turns the flashlight around. 'Sandra,' my father protests, which doesn't deter her from pounding on the boards with the end of the barrel sheathed in rubber. Amid the reverberations I hear a smothered metallic clank. She hasn't broken the flashlight, since the light continues to flail in the air. The next moment the door falters inwards. 'Good God, woman,' my father grumbles, 'what have you done now?'

As she trains the flashlight beam on the opening I see that the boards have been sawn through on either side of the entrance. While the door is shut they look intact. My mother knees the door through her quilted winter overcoat and leans into the gap. 'There he is,' she murmurs.

The beam has drawn the remains of a face out of the dark. It's a poster on the wall across the lobby, where the obscurely patterned wallpaper has sprouted whitish fur. The poster isn't just illegible with age; the features of its subject are distorted beyond recognition – they look puffed up with a pale fungus. 'Let's see what else we can find,' my mother says. 'Open the door for your old mum.'

'Do you think we should? If you or dad fall and hurt yourselves – '

'We've been out of your life long enough. We want to help with our book,' she says and bumps her shoulder hard against the door.

Rather than let her bruise herself I give it a shove, and it swings wide with a grinding of rubble that I feel more than hear. As my mother limps eagerly into the foyer, the flashlight beam illuminates the box office. The giant cobweb that billows in its depths is the shadow of cracks in the pay-box window. I'm hastening after her when my father demands 'How far are you two proposing to go?'

As she and the light turn to him I notice that the inside of the door locks with a metal bar, which couldn't have been fastened securely. 'As far as Simon needs to,' she declares and spins around once more. The glistening pelt of the walls appears to stir as if the theatre has drawn a wakeful breath. High in the darkness overhead the dusty tendrils of a chandelier grope like an undersea creature for us, or at least their shadows do. The mass of filaments pretends it hasn't moved as the flashlight beam settles on the cracked window. 'Is that something for you?' my mother wonders aloud.

A white lump is poking over the counter beyond the glass. Is it a misshapen plastic bag or a wad of paper? Neither strikes me as promising, but perhaps my mother can discern the marks printed on it. She reaches under the window and strains to hook the object with her gloved fingertips. It appears to wobble jelly-like before slithering off the counter. I don't care for the resemblance to a sagging face that has ducked out of sight, but this apparently doesn't trouble my mother. 'Well, that wasn't much help,' she says. 'Let's see in here.'

As she heads for the doors to the auditorium my father tramps into the lobby. His tread shivers the carpeted floorboards more than I like. 'Are you done yet?' he demands.

It's only the unsteadiness of the flashlight beam that lends the double doors a furtive movement, of course. 'Oh, Bob, where's your sense of adventure?' my mother says. 'You never used to be like this.'

'I must have grown up. Someone round here has to.'

'Then it's a good job we haven't, isn't it, Simon?' she giggles and pushes the left-hand door with the flashlight.

The beam shrinks as if the dark has closed a fist around it. The door totters backwards with a creak of its metal arm, and the light sprawls into the auditorium. It illuminates the nearer sections of about a dozen rows of seats divided by the aisle. When my mother limps through the doorway the light finds more of them and outlines boxes full of darkness above the stalls, but falls well short of the stage. I'm about to wonder if the batteries are up to any further exploration when my mother says without much breath 'What are those?'

Several pale shapes are huddled in seats close to the walls. Surely they're stirring only because the magnified light is wavering. My mother limps along the aisle and swings the trembling light from side to side. 'Keep up with her,' my father growls at my back.

Why just me? I hope his problem is slowness, not reluctance. My mother halts beside the nearest row in which a plump white shape gives the impression of waiting for a show or more of an audience. 'Somebody's been making snowmen,' she cries.

Doesn't that need its own explanation? I rest my hand on the sodden backs of the upholstered seats and sidle along the row. 'What are you playing at now?' my father complains.

He could be addressing me or my mother, who is making for the shape that's slumped against the wall three rows ahead. The swaying patch of light contracts and brightens, though not as much as I would like. It's enough to confirm that the objects lolling in the seats are composed of snow. The one I'm closest to may have the beginnings or the remnants of a face. I turn to my mother, and then I choke down the noise my open mouth wants to make.

Either my eyes are adjusting to the dimness or the edge of the light has strained as far as the front of the auditorium. I can just distinguish a line of figures on the stage, half a dozen of them linked together somehow. They're draped in costumes as white as their large heads, and are standing utterly still, waiting to be noticed. I'm desperate to prevent my mother from doing so. 'I think we should – '

The light flickers like my nervousness made visible. 'Hang on a tick, Simon,' my mother interrupts and thumps the back of a seat with the flashlight. While the impact sounds soggy, it has an effect. The light goes out, burying the auditorium in darkness.

I'm stumbling sideways towards the aisle – I have to reach her before anything worse can happen – when my father shouts 'Don't play games with that. Put it back on.'

'I'm trying.' A series of muffled thumps demonstrates how. 'You were meant to be changing the batteries,' my mother reminds him. 'They're dead as I don't know. They're dead.'

'You've just done that, you stupid woman.'

'It'll be all right,' I attempt to convince everyone, not least myself. 'Stay where you are. Keep talking if you like so I can find you, mum.'

Perhaps the prospect of drawing attention in the blackness fails to appeal to her. She falls silent as I shuffle blindly along the row, grasping a spongy handful at each step. I haven't reached the aisle when she discovers her voice. 'Is that you, Simon?'

I've bruised my shin against a folding seat that has dropped horizontal since I passed it, and so my response is less amiable than it might be. 'I'm coming,' I mutter.

'Which of you is it?' she insists, and I realise that she may not be referring to my progress before she adds 'Don't keep trying to make me laugh. It's not fair when it's so dark.'

'You heard your mother, Simon.'

'It isn't me,' I say, but under my breath. What does her behaviour imply about her state of mind? Am I seeing a pack of whitish shapes ahead, or are they the remains of an after-image? I can't judge how close they are, which disorients me so badly that I have to remind myself where the aisle is; I feel as though I'm groping through a maze rather than along a straight line. I will my mother to speak so that I can locate her, and then I wish she hadn't when she says 'Is that your face?'

'That's it. The end,' my father shouts. 'Keep still, Sandra. I'll get you myself.'

'I don't like that. It feels like it's going to – Oh, my hand's gone in.'

My body jerks as if it's expressing the panic that has begun to surface in her voice. I hitch myself desperately to the end of the row. As I lose my hold on the last seat and lurch into the darkness, I collide with someone far too plump. I'm embraced by softened swollen arms without affection before my captor speaks. 'That's where you are, is it? Want to knock me down?'

'I just want to help her. Let go,' I tell him, and hear my mother gasp. Perhaps she's startled by the sudden flood of light. It would be more welcome if the stage hadn't lit up as if we're about to be treated to a private performance.

The clouds have parted, and moonlight is slanting through several holes in the roof. Surely they explain the snow that's piled on the seats. My mother is within arm's length of one of the heaps, the lump on top of which displays a rictus where her gloved hand must have plunged in. She moves towards the aisle as I disengage myself from my father's quilted grip. Before I can reach her, she turns towards the stage and sees the object of most of the light. 'What are they?' she says and quite as uncertainly 'They're funny, aren't they?'

At least it's clear that the line of figures is formed out of snow under the largest gap in the roof. The trouble is that their shapes aren't random enough. Who would have gone to the trouble of modelling them in here? Perhaps it's the effect of shadows as well as of the pallid light, but some of them could indeed be draped in robes, while others might be sporting icy headgear. I like the third shape even less, since it lacks a head. I could do without fancying that a head is about to rise into view and plant itself on the white neck. At this distance I can't see what the others have for faces, and I'm not anxious to. 'It's just snow,' I tell everyone – the three of us, that is, because the boxes are deserted, however much the moonbeams suggest the presence of etiolated watchers in the gloom. 'We'd better get out while there's light.'

'Yes, come out of it,' my father orders.

Perhaps my mother doesn't care for his tone. She limps sideways to the aisle less rapidly than I would prefer. At every other step her body tilts as if she's delivering a bow to the spectacle onstage. I take her arm as she leaves the row at last. 'Get a move on,' my father says and stumps towards the exit. I help my mother after him and try to ignore the sound behind us – a whispering too faint to be identifiable. Then it grows louder, though surely not closer, and there's a soft flat thud.

I have to look, because my mother has twisted around to see. The sixth figure has sloughed its face, a pale lump that is lying inches away from the edge of the stage. I've barely distinguished this when the front of the next head slides off. As it plops onto the stage the clouds shut off the moon.

There's further movement on the stage. It sounds as if the entire line of figures is collapsing – shifting in some way, at any rate. My mother halts as though the darkness has frozen her, and when I take a firmer hold on her arm I realise she's trying the flashlight. 'Don't bother with that,' I say too much like my father, except not as steadily. 'We can still see.'

We barely can. As I steer her towards the exit a section of the lobby is just visible beyond my father's bulky silhouette. 'Move yourself if you want us to,' my mother tells him.

He doesn't budge. Has he chosen this moment to demonstrate that he's too old to be ordered about, or can he hear the noises I'm hearing? I do my utmost not to take them as any kind of a response to my mother's words. It sounds as if the shapes against the walls are collapsing as well, slowly and at length, unless they're stirring in some other fashion. I'm preparing to urge my father aside when he finishes peering at my mother, who is giving the flashlight a last try. In a few paces hindered by her limp I'm able to make out the exit to the street beyond the lobby. I know she can't safely walk any faster, but I feel as if we're shackled by the dark.

My father blocks the way into the lobby in order to check that we're following, and my mother repeats her command. As we follow his grudging retreat I keep my eyes on the exit. I won't be distracted by the fancy that a pale lump is pressed against the window of the box office. I'm ushering my mother across the frozen mass of misshapen footprints to the car when she says 'That was an adventure, wasn't it?'

My father glares at this and me as he crouches into the Mini. 'I'm glad you liked it,' I feel bound to respond.

She climbs in beside my father and twists her head around as I open the rear door. 'Better shut it up, do you think? We don't want children getting into mischief.'

I can't see any children. I can see the car looking out of place on the abandoned street and isolated by the nearest working streetlamps several hundred yards away. I hurry across the treacherous pavement to seize the edge of the board and tug hard. The door resists for a grinding instant and then yields, which dislodges some kind of loose fabric that brushes my fingertips. It doesn't really feel like a farewell kiss from a moist puffy mouth. The door slams with a clank of the bar, and I manage not to fall in my absurd haste to reach my parents. My father has already started the car, and swings it away from the kerb almost before I'm seated. 'What would you like to do now, Simon?' my mother says.

She seems so unaffected by the recent panic that I wonder if her memory has lapsed. 'I suppose I should be thinking of heading back to London.'

'No sooner thought than done,' my father declares.

As the car puts on speed, the forsaken theatre surges after us, or at least its reflection in the mirror flares up with renewed moonlight. The building seems to brighten in proportion with the distance before it vanishes like an image expunged from a screen. We've simply turned where the road forks, but my mother says 'Where are you taking us, Bob?'

'Where I was asked.'

Is he proposing to drive to London? 'I didn't mean you should take me literally,' I say, attempting to laugh.

The narrow street is pulsing with the buds of trees in front rooms. When I was little my father used to drive us on a tour of the Christmas suburbs, but if I feel like a child again it's from helplessness. My mother gazes at me in the mirror and says 'He's like this now.' At least, I think that's what she mouths, and I'm about to voice another protest when my father claps his hands like a magician or the solitary enthusiastic member of an audience. 'There, I was right,' he tells anyone who doubted it, and grabs the wheel again. 'Here we are.'

An unlit building brings the street to an end. Trees flicker on either side of the car as if they're close to giving up their existence, and I'm afraid we've returned to the Harlequin. Are we approaching it from the back? No, we've arrived at a junction, the far side of which is occupied by a railway station. 'The line to London comes through here,' says my father.

'Aren't we driving Simon to the proper station?'

'He's in a rush and I want to get you home.'

His stare in the mirror is warning me not to interfere. At least I can say 'I'm glad I dropped in.'

'We are,' my mother assures me. 'Hurry up Christmas with everyone we're thinking of.'

I mumble amiably rather than commit Natalie and Mark. My father delivers a handshake so terse it's little more than the memory of one, but my mother clutches the back of my neck and pulls my head between the front seats to receive a fierce kiss. I'm turning away from the car when my father shoves his door open and rears up like a Jack-in- the-box to crane over the roof. 'If you're thinking of coming again,' he says so quietly that I barely hear him, 'next time don't get your mother in a state.'

The brake lights give a Christmas wink as the Mini vanishes around a bend, and I venture into the station. It's unstaffed. The ticket office in the token hall is so thoroughly shut that I have to peer at it to establish that it isn't just a patch on the dim wall. I can't see the name of the station anywhere on the lightless platform. Wires shiver alongside the glimmering railway lines in a wind that lends unnecessary animation to a solitary poster in the booking hall. The text has been scratched out, and the vandal has also erased more than the face of the figure prancing in the foreground. The damage has lent the performer a disproportionately swollen white head above the baggy costume, and someone has inked a black grin as wide as the otherwise featureless expanse. The ragged outline works as though the eyeless substitute for a face is struggling to emerge from the poster. All this gives me yet more reason to want to speak to Natalie. I dig out my phone and bring up her home number.

However late in the day it feels to me, it may not be Mark's bedtime yet. The bell rings twice and falls silent, but nobody speaks. It's partly the desertion all around me, not to mention the restless poster, that makes me blurt 'Mark?'

'He's on his computer. Why, do you want him?'

'You were so fast I thought it must be him. I'll have you instead any time, Natty.'

Her wordless sound reminds me of Bebe even before she adds 'You might want to be a bit careful with saying things like that.'

'Even to you?' When she doesn't respond I say 'Sorry, have I done something I should know about?'

'Nothing we need to discuss over the phone,' she says, and I tell myself that it's only the wind that chills my neck.