For Those Who Dream Monsters (24 page)

That night it took
Emily a long time to get to sleep. The latter part of the day had passed
uneventfully, apart from unpacking their suitcases and bags. The men from the
removal company were not due until the following morning, and Emily’s mother
had brought enough food to do the three of them for dinner and for breakfast
the following day. Emily had nervously explored the house, and put away the few
items of clothing that she had brought with her in the large old wardrobe of
the room that her mother had chosen for her. The room was sombre enough during
the day, but at night darkness lay thick in its nooks and crannies, and the
tree outside sent restless shadows scuttling over Emily’s window and scratched
at the glass panes when the breeze stirred it. When the last light had faded
from the sky, the darkness outside was profound – nothing like the polluted
orange glow of city night. Emily pulled her blanket up to her chin and listened
fearfully to the silence, broken only by Bagpuss snoring at the foot of her bed
– but even the comforting sound of the sleeping cat did little to still Emily’s
racing heart.

When she finally fell
asleep, Emily dreamt of the frightening expanse of land leading down to the
river behind the house and the verdant darkness of the woods beyond. She was
trying to keep sight of Bagpuss among the long grass and meadow flowers. It was
magic hour, and the field around Emily glowed in the eerie, beautiful, alien
light. The smell of the flowers and wild herbs was at its strongest, the sultry
remains of the hot day enhancing the various scents, making them intoxicating,
stifling.

“Bagpuss! Wait!” As
Emily hurried in the direction where she had just seen the tip of Bagpuss’s
tail disappear, she became aware that she was not alone out here with her cat.
She slowed down, looking around nervously, and shrieked as a flash of dry
lightning lit up the field and she spotted eyes in the grass, all around,
watching her. Emily started to panic, glancing this way and that, and the
hundreds of cornflowers stared back at her, their piercing cornflower eyes
unnaturally blue in the strange light, staring at Emily suspiciously,
accusingly, as if they knew something about her that she didn’t know herself.

Emily trembled, then,
seeing her cat leaping over a clump of dandelions some way ahead, she moved to
head off after him, but stopped again as an ear-rending screech silenced the
insects in the grass nearby. Emily looked around fearfully. The screech came
again, and that was when she saw the poppy. The flower stared at Emily, then
swayed from side to side on its stem until it seemed to haemorrhage into a
cockerel with deep red plumage and a scarlet crest. As Emily watched,
horrified, the thing continued to shake itself violently until its crest
dripped blood, rending open its fear-poisoned beak and screaming at Emily until
she turned and raced towards the river and the dark tree line beyond. As she
ran, Emily noticed the single ears of wild barley growing here and there in the
field. She tried to skirt around one, but skimmed it with her foot and stopped
as the plant glistened with a golden hue. Emily stared as the plant bristled
its husks angrily and, emitting a hollow rattling sound, ground itself into a
golden hedgehog and ran from her, pricking the slender wild herbs that stood in
its way.

Emily clapped her hands
to her temples and headed for the river, a terrible fear for Bagpuss rising
within her. As soon as it had come, magic hour was over, and the last of the
light bled from the sky. As Emily reached the bank of the river she heard a
loud splash and she cried out.

“Bagpuss! Bagpuss!” But
there was no answer, no familiar meow, only a faint splash in the river some
distance away. Emily stared into the inky depths of the river and finally she
saw Bagpuss – a little way off, his paws flailing helplessly as he tried to
stay afloat. As Emily jumped into the cold river, an undercurrent suddenly
caught Bagpuss and pulled him under the dark water. Emily screamed and threw
herself in the direction of her beloved pet. For a moment Bagpuss’s head bobbed
up above the water and Emily half-swam half-ran towards him, but the current
got a hold of him and carried him away downstream. Tears streaming down her
face, Emily swam after her cat.

Darkness had set in
fast and Emily could hardly distinguish the black water from the blackness all
around her. She could just make out Bagpuss ahead of her, tossed about by the
current. With a huge effort she finally reached him and pulled him out of the
water, clutching him to her, and managed to get him to the shore. Wet through,
he was no longer big and fluffy, but small and vulnerable. She tried to warm
his little body against her neck and shoulder, but he was stone cold and limp.

“Wake up, Bagpuss, wake
up!” she begged, but it was too late. Emily cried and cried, and hugged
Bagpuss’s dead body until she woke up to find her pet very much alive, his nose
pressed up against her face, eyeing her with a look of concern.

“Oh, Bagpuss,” cried
Emily and squeezed the surprised cat until he yelped and removed himself to the
armchair in the corner of the room.

The next morning Bagpuss woke Emily bright and early, demanding to be let out.
Emily refused to open the front door and clapped her hands over her ears,
ignoring the cat’s urgent meowing. It wasn’t until Emily’s mother found a pool
of cat pee by the front door that Emily was reprimanded and, after much debate
and tear shedding, Bagpuss was allowed to explore the boundlessness of the land
behind the house once more.

The men from the
removal company arrived with the rest of the clothes, the furniture, kitchen
utensils, Emily’s prized collection of stones and pebbles – which Emily laid
out according to size on the large windowsill in her bedroom – and the thing
that Emily had been waiting for most: Bagpuss’s cat litter. Emily hoped that
Bagpuss would start relieving himself in the litter again, and wouldn’t need to
leave the house. But her hopes were dashed, as the cat spurned the litter
entirely and spent all of the time that he was awake either outdoors or sitting
by the front door, begging to be let out.

As time wore on, Emily
found herself increasingly alone. Bagpuss no longer sat on her lap or played
with the cloth mouse that she sometimes dragged around in front of him on a
piece of string. He still slept in Emily’s room, but he was coming home
increasingly late and demanding to be let out increasingly early. During the
day, Emily would try to follow Bagpuss, spending as much time outdoors – among
the heady-scented flowers and crawling insects – as her mother would allow,
trying to make sure that nothing happened to her cat. But when Emily’s mother
insisted on her doing chores or accompanying her to the village grocery store
or doing some homework in preparation for the beginning of term in her new
school once summer was over, Emily spent every moment worrying about Bagpuss.
When her mother made her go to bed before Bagpuss had come home, Emily would
lie awake, her mind conjuring up blood-curdling images of her beloved pet
drowning, being torn apart by foxes, being decapitated by local juvenile
delinquents fancying themselves as Satanists, being bitten by a rabid bat or
getting stuck in a rabbit hole and starving to death. In those dark, lonely
hours Emily imagined every horror possible – except…

The car was a brand new bottle-green Land Rover driven by a
twenty-four-year-old banker. It was difficult to put the SUV through its paces
in London – too many speed cameras – but the winding country lanes in this part
of the world were just bliss. You could easily do the curves at 90 miles an
hour, and the straight stretches of road … well … there was no limit – only the
size of your balls.

The mouse was small and grey, and running for its life. Bagpuss could tell that
it was tiring and he fancied his chances. All the time he had spent roaming the
wilderness behind the house and chasing any critter that was smaller than him
had paid off.
A firm layer of muscle
had replaced his
portliness, and his senses were no longer dulled by hours of snoozing in front
of the telly. So far he had caught nothing, but today all that was going to
change. He’d nail the damned mouse, but he wouldn’t eat it himself; he would
carry it up to Emily’s room and place it on her bed to show her how much he
loved her.

The mouse sprinted past
the house, Bagpuss hot on its tail. Blind with fear, the mouse burst out onto
the main road that led to the village, and the cat leapt after it. The impact
with the metal grille threw Bagpuss into the air and he landed in the road, the
Land Rover’s shining silver alloy wheels directing the entire weight of the
vehicle onto his small furry body. The SUV didn’t even slow down. The mouse
disappeared into the undergrowth on the far side of the road and, as dusk fell,
a fox snatched up what was left of Bagpuss and carried it back to its hungry
family.

Emily waited for Bagpuss to come home. She polished her stones and pebbles over
and over, hardly aware of what she was doing. At midnight her mother caught her
trying to sneak out of the house to look for her pet and sent her, wailing, up
to bed. Emily spent most of the night peering out of her window into the
darkness beyond, and eventually cried herself to sleep as the dawn chorus
started up outside her window.

The days that followed
were akin to a never-ending version of one of Emily’s anxiety dreams. She spent
every free moment of daytime wandering around the wasteland at the back of the
house, calling Bagpuss’s name. At night, the silence was unbearable, the tree
outside her window scratched the glass like nails on a chalkboard and the
shadows in her room crowded around her menacingly. Ever since her father had
left, Bagpuss had slept in Emily’s room, his snoring making her giggle, but
never keeping her awake for long.
And as with the time after her father
had first departed
, Emily was in a permanent state of suspension – waiting
rather than living – the anxious feeling in her stomach making her nauseous
with dread.

As Emily’s anxiety
grew, she developed a fear of being alone – especially at night. One night,
when a strong breeze animated the tree in a particularly alarming way, she turned
up in her mother’s room and asked if she could sleep with her.

“No,” Emily’s mother
replied, her voice groggy with Valium-induced sleep. “You’re far too old for
that.”

Emily returned to her
own room and cried the night away. At about midday the sound of the phone
ringing woke her up. She went downstairs and peered into the kitchen, where she
could see her mother speaking on the telephone, her face disconcertingly lively
– not at all like the tired, resigned face that Emily had grown accustomed to. Emily
asked her mother who had called. “No one,” her mother replied, looking
embarrassed and quickly changing the subject. That day Emily didn’t go out to
look for Bagpuss, but followed her mother around the house, even offering to
accompany her to the grocery store.

For the next few days,
Emily went everywhere with her mother, and now sat watching tensely as her
mother relaxed reading a Mills and Boon novel after finishing the housework.
Eventually Emily’s mother could stand her intent gaze no longer.

“Shouldn’t you be out
looking for Bagpuss?” she asked.

“He’s not coming back,”
replied Emily morosely. “They never do.”

“What’s that supposed
to mean?”

“Nothing.” Emily
dropped her gaze to the floor.

“Well, why don’t you
call those nice girls we met at the grocery store the other day – I’m sure
they’d love to play with you.”

“I’d rather stay here
with you.”

“Well, you’re going to
need to find something to occupy yourself with by the weekend. I’m going out on
Saturday.”

“What?” Emily looked
like she’d been slapped in the face.

“I’m going out on
Saturday … don’t look so shocked. I have a right to a life, you know.”

“Where are you going?”

“To a dance.”

“Who with?”

“Les.”

“Who’s Les?” Emily was
looking increasingly frightened.

“Les… The man who drove
us here.”

“The cab driver?”

“He drives a cab to
earn a living, but he’s really a writer.”

Emily was trying hard
to get a handle on what was happening. After a long pause, she asked, “Can I
come?”

“No, Emily. You can’t
come.”

“Fine,” said Emily, and
ran out of the room so that her mother wouldn’t see the tears welling up in her
eyes. Her mother was going to leave her. With the cab driver. First her father,
then Bagpuss, and now her mother. Emily would die here – in this big dark house
– get sick and die all alone, and by the time they found her body it would be
mauled by rats and covered in spiders, and flies would have laid their eggs in
her and she would be crawling with maggots. She had to stop her mother leaving.

Emily put her coat on
and headed out of the house.

“Where are you going?”
Her mother came out of the sitting room.

“I’m going to play with
the kids we met at the grocery store.”

“Oh.” The sudden U-turn
surprised Emily’s mother. Then again, Emily was almost a teenager now, and her
strange, unpredictable behaviour was probably just a symptom of her age.