Moby Jack & Other Tall Tales (41 page)

‘It’s probably only a thrush or something,’ he muttered.

To prove to himself that it was nothing out of the ordinary, he walked to the hedge and peered into the black foliage. With his heart pounding he reached out and gently parted the leaves. At that moment the moon found a gap in the clouds and illuminated a white object nestling in the fork in the hedgerow. The pale, ovoid shape seemed to invite Tim’s touch as he reached out and, hesitating only for a moment, put his fingertips to the thing, which was an egg.

Tim’s hand jerked back to his sides. The egg was warm. His common sense, as well as his instinct, told him this was very strange. It was October, the autumn leaves were falling and any eggs forgotten by birds in the spring should be stone cold by now. He could think of no birds that laid their eggs in October, just before the onset of winter, which would kill any newborn chicks. The egg of a wild bird, whatever it was, should not be warm. It should be dead, cold and rotten.

Was this someone’s idea of a Halloween joke? Perhaps it was a pullet’s egg, or that of some other tame or domestic fowl. Maybe someone was hiding in the thicket, watching to see what Tim would do. Perhaps there would be a sudden gust of laughter in a moment and one of his school friends would come crashing through the trees shouting, ‘Got you, Sully! Got you this time! Wait till I tell the others about this then!’

There was no laughter, however. The wind played chasing games with the darkness in the trees and a few more leaves fell. Overhead, a cloud passed in front of the moon, causing a brief blackness to envelop the scene, then the light returned.

The egg was still there, inviting touch. Tim impulsively reached out and grasped it in his hand. Without really knowing why, he ran towards the house, clasping it to him. It seemed to pulse in his fingers as he dashed through the open gateway and hammered on the door with the iron knocker. The sound echoed through the hallway, then he heard his mother’s quick footsteps. The door opened.

Tim’s mother, a tall woman with a narrow face, gasped and stepped back, her hand to her breast.

‘Oh, Tim!’ she wheezed. ‘I’d forgotten you were dressed like that!’

‘Sorry, Mum,’ he said, slipping past her. ‘Didn’t mean to frighten you. I’ll go and change into my pyjamas.’

Tim walked quickly to his bedroom, but stopped on the way to put the egg in a
shoebox which
he kept at the back of the airing cupboard, under a bundle of old newspapers. It was his
hidey hole
for treasures. Then he had a quick wash in the bathroom and took off the skeleton suit, replacing it with his pyjamas. He went to the living room to find his mother.

She was sitting by the gas fire, poring over some papers to do with her work. Tim’s parents were divorced and his father lived in Lancaster with a new wife while his mother, Deborah, worked in a local estate agent’s office. Though Tim occasionally saw his father during the holidays, the meetings were becoming fewer. Mr Sully seemed more interested in Susan, his new wife, and appeared to want a complete break from his former wife and son.

Tim was an only child so he got a bit lonely at times. His mother was often too absorbed in her work to have much time for him. Sometimes he wished she didn’t work quite so hard.

‘Sorry about that, Mum,’ Tim said again, as she looked up from her work.

‘It’s all right,’ she replied in her abstracted way. ‘I just wasn’t expecting it.
You off to bed now?
Did you have a good time?’

‘Yes. Dave was dressed in a sheet and Karen wore a witch’s outfit.’

‘That’s lovely, dear,’ she said vaguely.

Tim stared at his mother’s wispy-haired head as she bent over her work and he sighed. She was a good mother in many ways but she lived in some hazy
world which
was hard to access.

‘Night, Mum,’ he said, kissing her cheek.

‘Night, Tim.’

Afterwards, lying in bed, Tim considered the egg. He had never robbed birds’ nests before tonight and wondered why he had done so now. The egg had seemed strangely attractive and he had felt a sudden urge to possess it. It had been a feeling impossible to ignore. Then there was its strange warmth, as if it were still alive. That was not possible of course. Either someone was playing a trick or some animal or bird had warmed the egg by accident. He would throw it away in the morning. He fell asleep, staring into the darkness of the room around him.

The following day, however, he had forgotten about the egg, which nestled in the shoebox in the warmth of the airing cupboard. Unknown to him, inside the shell there were signs of faint activity—activity
which
increased as time went on.

Occasionally, Tim heard a rustling noise on the landing, but thought little of it. He thought nothing too, of the strange dreams he had from time to time.
Dreams in which he was flying, or hunting in the dark.
He certainly never thought of the egg. Indeed, he had forgotten its very existence.

Time passed swiftly and it was soon Christmas. Tim was very excited. His cousins would be coming for Christmas Day and he was looking forward to receiving his presents.

On Christmas morning Tim visited the shoebox again. Among the treasures inside it was a small present for his mother—a pair of sewing scissors. He had bought them in the summer, knowing the pair she already owned was getting rusty.

The scissors were there all right, but someone had been to his box. The lid had been removed and was lying upside down next to it. Tim was just considering remonstrating with his mother for going through ‘his things’ when he noticed the broken pieces of eggshell. He suddenly realised what had happened. Incredibly, the egg had hatched and the chick had pushed the lid off the shoebox to escape.

Tim stared into the depths of the cupboard, which housed the hot water tank and sheets, towels and
pillow slips
. He could see nothing
—no
signs of a bird of any kind. His mother would not be pleased to find droppings or feathers on her clean
linen, that
was certain. Finally he decided that the bird must have got out of the cupboard earlier, when his mother had opened the door. No doubt it was free, somewhere in the house. He would have to keep his eyes open for the creature.

When Tim’s cousins and various relatives arrived the creature was soon forgotten in the excitement of exchanging presents. Tim got the pair of roller blades he’d wanted for ages, from his mother. They were the latest in roller skates and he and his cousins, who also had blades, went off to the local skateboard park to try them out.

Late in the evening the last guest left the house and Tim and his mother were alone again, clearing away and washing up together before going to bed.

‘Have you enjoyed today?’ asked his mother anxiously. ‘I’m sorry the turkey was overdone. I don’t think your uncle Jim liked it very much.’

‘Never mind, Mum. Turkey’s turkey—and the roast spuds were good.’

Her eyes lit up a little at these words.

‘Were they, dear?’

‘Brill, Mum—take my word for it. And the roller blades are ace! Thanks a million.’

She went to bed fairly happy after these words. Tim was always amazed at the power he had to make his mother cheerful or sad, and sometimes it frightened him. He did not want the responsibility for her happiness.

He put out the lights and went to his room at the back of the bungalow, where he stowed the roller blades in a cupboard before climbing wearily into his pyjamas. He tried to read a comic but his eyes kept closing, so he switched off the light and lay down to sleep.

It must have been about twenty minutes later that Tim woke to a strange sound. For a few moments he just stared into the darkness of the room, wondering what had roused him from his first sleep. Then he heard it again—a kind of rustling, scratching
noise which
seemed to be coming from the corner of the room. He peered into the dense shadow but his eyes could make out nothing except blackness. For a while nothing happened and Tim was dropping off to sleep again when there were further sounds.

He felt a trickle of fear go down his spine. What was it? Had a mouse got into his room? Maybe
it had been attracted by Christmas cake crumbs or something
. He and his cousins had been eating in the bedroom that day.

He wanted to get out of bed and look but a stronger feeling of fright would not let him. He was afraid of what he might find. Late at night there were things that worried him more than they might have done during the day. Things were different in the dark, in the silence of the small hours.

Suddenly, Tim reached for a book on his bedside table. He threw it into the corner and buried his head under the bedclothes. After a few moments he listened hard for the sounds to return and when they didn’t decided it must have been a mouse after all—now frightened back into its hole. He would search the room tomorrow and block the creature’s lair, wherever it was. The fear-sweat that had covered him earlier now began to leave and he was able to go back to sleep.

Later, however, he had the sensation of being disturbed by a faint rustling in the bedsprings, but it was not loud enough to wake him thoroughly and in the morning Tim wondered if he’d fallen asleep and dreamed it after hearing the scratching in the corner. It was always difficult to sort the real from the unreal after night fears.

An inspection of the bedroom after breakfast revealed no holes in the
skirting-board
. Remembering the broken
egg-shell
, Tim searched for fur and feathers too, but found nothing and convinced himself he’d been dreaming as a result of too much Christmas dinner.

‘Had a bad dream last night,’ he told his mother.

‘Did you, dear?’ she replied vaguely. ‘How upsetting for you.’

‘Oh, it was no big deal,’ Tim added. ‘It wouldn’t even seem scary if I told you now.’

‘Fine,’ she replied. ‘Now I must get these papers finished before I go back to work tomorrow. Can you amuse yourself?’

‘Sure,’ said Tim, leaving his hard-working mother to her problems.

Boxing Day was spent walking the downs and using the roller blades. It was one of those sharp, crisp winter days, where a low sunset throws out bright rays to make the frost glisten on the meadows and pick out crystallised spiders’ webs in the hedgerows.

That evening, on returning to the house, Tim found his mother still engrossed in her papers. She murmured something about ‘lunch’ and Tim told her lunchtime had long since gone and it was time for dinner.

‘Oh dear,’ she said, pushing her glasses up her nose and brushing away strands of hair from her eyes. ‘Never mind, we’ll have some turkey sandwiches in a moment. Will that be all right?’

‘Fine, Mum.’

Tim went to his room to put away his roller blades. It was gloomy in there, as the main bulb had blown and only his small bedside table lamp cast a pale light over the corner. He opened his wardrobe door and put the blades in the shoe rack inside. As he did so he glanced up at the hanging coats.

Something white stared out from amongst their dark folds.

Tim jumped backwards quickly, startled into uttering a sound much like the yelp of an injured puppy. Fear gripped him. It washed through his whole body like a wave of freezing water. His breath came out in short, sharp pants.

He was immobilised, rigid with terror, as he stared at the creature before him, perched on the coat rail.

It was a bird with the face of an old woman.

The creature ’s feathers were white. The complexion, with its tiny, shrewish features, was a pasty grey. Prehensile claws flexed on the coat rail. The creature spat at him viciously.

‘Yetchhh!’ it screeched.

Tim could do nothing but stare into the mean eyes of this nightmarish fiend. He wanted to scream for help, yell for his mother, but the eyes would not let him. They held him fast where he stood, their control over him complete. He could not even move his hands or feet.