XII
Paige stopped and felt a chill
run down her spine as she heard the old man’s voice behind her. It wasn’t so much what he said as how he
said it. He sounded so old, so frail! It was almost as bad as the way he had
sounded at the hospital when he was still losing blood. For just a second it made her wish he was
still blustering about how much nonsense everything was. She was almost afraid to turn around, but
she did.
“Henry, what is it?”
He was standing in the middle
of the lane, staring at a patch of the factory wall, his mouth working
wordlessly. Somewhere behind her Josh
must have turned around, because the circle of torchlight flashed back across
them both.
“What’s the hold up?” he called
back to them.
“It’s Henry,” Paige replied,
“he’s… I don’t know.” She took a few
steps towards the old man. “Henry, is
everything alright?”
His eyes flickered towards her
then. They seemed to be all whites in
the torchlight, full of terror.
“The… the wall… there!” he
stammered, pointing to the spot he had been staring at before.
“What’s there, Henry? What’s frightened you?”
She suddenly realised that she
was speaking to him like he was a child, or older than he was. She felt a flush of embarrassment, but she
turned to look at the patch of wall he was talking about. Without the torch shining on it, she
couldn’t make out what he wanted her to see.
“I can’t… I can’t make it out.”
“It’s there on the wall, damn
it all!” That was more like him; angry,
a grumpy old man, but the fear was still hidden in there. She could hear it at the frayed edges of his
voice.
“I’m sorry Henry I don’t see
what you mean.”
“It was in the light. Get that boy to shine his bloody torch over
there instead of into my eyes and you’ll see it it. You’ll see it!”
Paige looked over her
shoulder. Josh and Charlie were
standing side by side a little ways further down the alley. She couldn’t see their faces. The light from the torch was too
bright. The fog behind them seemed to
form a dark, impenetrable wall.
“Josh, can you bring that torch
over here? Henry wants to show me
something.”
The circle of light swung down,
marking a path along the tarmac road as Josh approached. Stray tendrils of fog caught the light at
unexpected moments and Paige found herself thinking about ghosts. She shivered.
“Where do you want me to shine
this, Henry?” Josh asked as he came to a hlat beside Paige.
“There, on the wall.” He pointed once again.
“Okay,” Josh replied and
immediately turned the torch to illuminate the place where Henry had
indicated. There was nothing there but
a fragment of graffiti.
“Is that what you wanted me to
see?” Paige asked, trying to sound soothing.
Henry shook his head. “No, that wasn’t it, it was…” he scanned
along the wall for a moment, then, “try there instead.”
Josh obliged and the circle of
light skipped across the crumbling red brick wall until it came to rest over a
patch where there was no graffiti at all.
“No, not there either. It was there somewhere. You hit it twice before just by accident.”
Without saying anything Josh
began to sweep the light up and down the wall, moving slowly from left to
right, covering the whole section that Henry had indicated. There was plenty of inane graffiti, some
lichen and a great many discoloured bricks, but nothing that Paige could see
that justified Henry’s terror.
“There’s nothing there,” Josh
said at last.
“But I saw it,” Henry replied
petulantly and suddenly Paige wondered if talking to him like a child wasn’t
more appropriate than she’d thought, “for the love of God, I saw it!”
“What did you see?”
“It was… it was…” he seemed to
stop himself, took a deep breath, then exhaled slowly. When he was done he seemed a lot less frail
and a lot more like the crotchety old man Paige was used to. “It was nothing,” he said, full of
confidence, “forgive me. I’m seeing
things again.”
And with that Henry marched
past them all, on down the lane. Paige
gave Josh a brief glance, then the teenager turned and followed. Paige lingered a little longer, staring at
the wall which had, if only for a little while, got Henry so terrified. What did he see, she wondered, but
could find no answer on her own, so at last she turned and followed the others.
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