Something bad

He didn't want her to die. He didn't want the girl to die. Not to die. He loved her. And he wanted her to love him. That was all. But she didn't. He could tell she didn't. Didn't love him. He didn't know why. He loved her. He didn't mean for her to die. He didn't know, that was all. Why she didn't. Why she couldn't. Why she.

It was cold standing out every night by the river, but he didn't mind. He'd feel the dew start to settle, the mist begin to form among the reeds. But he had that bright rectangle of light, her kitchen window, to absorb him, to draw all his attention, his hope and intuition, and to keep him warm, or at least keep him from noticing, or minding, the chill. So he watched. To see her. See her moving. Among the cupboards. The coffee jar. The cooker. Busying herself, sometimes for the longest time, at the cooker, those rapid movements to get things from the shelves, tip things, pour things, cut things. With the kitchen knives. The one she chopped down with, the one she sawed with in quick short movements, the one she drew back and forth in a longer, slower rhythm, the one she used as if she was carving something in wood.

He never saw the knives, or almost never, but he knew each one by its movement, which drawer they came from; though the drawer itself was below his line of sight, he knew just how much she had to turn, how far she had to bend. He liked it best when she reached up for something off the high shelves, because then. He liked the shape she made.

Or when she stood at the sink washing dishes and he saw the way the bubbles clung to the skin of her arms. Then she faced him, he could see her buttons and the delicate chain at her neck, and sometimes she'd look straight at him but not knowing he was there looking back and it made him feel quite funny. Maybe he liked it. Maybe he didn't. Maybe it was the best time of all, or the worst, it was that funny feeling you couldn't tell.

And there was a time she cut herself, just a little cut with the small sharp chopping-downwards knife, but he saw her blood, and her sucking the bleeding finger, and running it under the tap, and then her blood again, and she was facing right towards him and he felt the excitement of her pain, even though it wasn't really very much pain. He didn't want her to have any more pain than that.

And he didn't want the man there. Most times he could forget the man. He was just a dimly understood presence beyond the door, like the distant flicker sometimes of a television. But sometimes he stood waiting for her to come and the man came instead to take something from the fridge or make coffee. But the man didn't matter and he never stayed long. Some nights he never came at all. Just one time he came behind her at the sink, put his hand round her and his mouth on her hair, and then. And then. And then the water was cold and the river-mud felt unpleasant and the reeds nasty and.

And after that he didn't go back for several weeks. He went to the pub instead and drank on his own in a corner until a night he got in a fight, got a swollen lip and a cut eyebrow, and after that he stayed in his room nights until eventually he had to see her again.

She'd got her hair cut in the meantime and at first it just didn't seem right, but he made himself keep watching and soon it was normal, like how he felt it must be to have old friends and see them again after a time. And that was the first time he started to wonder what her name was. But pretty soon he knew, he understood, that it would spoil something if she had a name. If she was Jane, or Sandra, or Tracey she would be just another Jane, Sandra or Tracey. But she wasn't. She was She. And actually he liked her hair shorter, he could imagine the scissors snipping around her neck and the secret place just behind her ears, and the bristly feeling of the new-cut ends close against her skin, though they probably weren't that new-cut now already, and he had liked the way it had fallen across her shoulders before, and the way it swung when she turned, and those moments he could suddenly see her face when she tucked her hair behind her ear, a moment of revealing like. Like. Like when.

And it was after then that he saw the little girl. For the first time.

Funny that he had managed not to know about her. Till then. Till the evening she dashed away from her dishes, hardly pausing to wipe her hands, and then a light went on behind a pink curtain upstairs, and he wondered. And thought. And then there was the girl, surprising him, looking out. And that's when it all changed.

Taking the girl should have been planned. He should have thought about how he was going to do it, and when. Where he would take her. How he would keep her hidden. What they would do together to pass the time, and how much time it would be. How he would feed her. Him too. It ought to have all been carefully thought out, like a commando raid or a bank robbery. He could have done it. He could have.

But if he stopped to ask how, he would have asked himself why as well, and then he wouldn't have done it.

No. It wasn't like that. Taking the girl wasn't something he planned. It wasn't something he did. It was something that happened to him.

For one thing it happened in daylight. He'd never done anything bad in daylight before. In fact he'd never really done anything bad before. Not really bad. Except that once with that baby bird he found by the river, and that didn't count, he'd still been at school then, and anyway he didn't enjoy it, it was just something he had to do, something you were supposed to do when you were 13. That was different anyway. Anyway.

Watching wasn't bad. It didn't hurt anyone. Just standing outside watching her didn't hurt. It was like watching television, the people in the television don't know you're there, and wouldn't care if they did. Knowing she was real was good, though, really there, not like on television, and knowing she didn't know he was there. Watching. It was something private. Something between them, but it was just his, not hers. With the girl it was different.

She came with him quite happily at first, that was how it happened. By the river, on the bus. Only on the bus she started to get anxious, wanted to know where they were going, and then he got anxious too and wanted to know too. But he didn't know.

The bus was going in to town. There were people, but there would be more people in town. He might lose her, or worse she might start making a fuss and give him away. And it was when he thought that he began to think he was doing something bad. And his anxiety started to feel more like panic.

They would get off at the next stop, on the bridge near the docks. Not many people there, and it might seem like an adventure. To her. And to him. A hand round her wrist was all it took to get her off the bus with him. Outside the stuffy confines of the bus he began to feel better at once. In control. Or something like. Able to breathe. Able to think.

The old warehouse seemed like a good idea at first. It was quiet and totally private. It was only a short walk from the shops in town but there was no risk of anyone intruding and he was pretty sure he could come and go without being seen. Pretty sure. It was like he'd had the idea all along, and that was why they'd had to get off at the bridge. In control.

He had to force a way in through an old door that had been nailed up years ago, and that was when the girl started to struggle. Holding on to her with one hand, he tried to lever the door open with a length of wood he picked up in the other, but he found it difficult and as he applied himself more to the door she wriggled free of his grasp. For a moment they both stood and stared at each other, a moment of revelation and doubt, then she began to run.

If she got to the corner of the building there was a real chance she would be seen by someone walking by the old dock or on the bridge. If she screamed even now someone might hear. For the first time he felt fear. He took two or three strides, realised he might not catch her before she got to the corner, and as if instinctively threw the piece of wood he had been holding. It caught her on the back of the legs, sending her sprawling to the ground, which was old broken concrete littered with bits of brick, and glass, and rusty metal, and with weeds growing through. She cut her hand and her knee as she fell. He reached her just as she began to cry out, and in panic he clapped a hand over her mouth. He picked her up and held her tightly to him while she squirmed and kicked and bit his hand. If someone came round the corner now. If someone heard her. If she got away. She bit into the fleshy base of his thumb, drawing blood, and in the second her mouth was free he felt, rather than heard, her draw breath to scream. He butted her with his forehead, a little too hard, the back of her head cracked against the dirty brick wall of the warehouse and she went limp in his arms.

Oh God. Oh no. He'd hurt her. He never meant to hurt her. He'd never hurt anybody. It was just. It was just. She was going to scream, that's all.

It was all right. She was breathing. She wasn't dead or anything. He put his hand gently to the back of her head, but there wasn't any blood. It was all right. He could breathe again. He hadn't touched her hair before. It was so soft. He'd never touched anyone's hair. Not a girl's. Nobody's except his own, and then. Hers was so soft and warm and lovely.

He carried her gently to the door. He still had to break a way in, without dropping her or hurting her. He cradled her still limp form high on his chest, lifted his leg and gave the door the hardest kick he dared with the sole of his boot. At the fourth or fifth kick he felt something crack, and with the next one some of the wood of the door broke away enough for him to bend low, still carrying the girl, and wriggle his way in.

It was dark inside, a dim world of spiders and weeds. Rats probably. It smelt dusty. Vaguely industrial. Oily somehow, like a garden fence in summer. It smelt of brick dust and old wood. It smelt old, forgotten. Beneath all that it smelt like Weetabix.

As his eyes grew accustomed he saw he was in a huge room, lit by the hole he had just broken in through and by a few other odd chinks or cracks in the walls. Thin beams picked out dusty air like a distant view of searchlights in a war film. The pitted floor was covered in pale dust like flour. The wooden roof was held up by upright beams and props like in a mine. There were some ropes hanging down. A few empty sacks lay around, and there were some that looked full of something propped against one or two of the upright posts. Overhead an opening into an upper floor showed up as a square of a slightly different shade of gloom. A stairway that was almost a ladder, like a ship's companionway, led up to it.

He hoisted the girl onto his shoulder, her head and arms hanging down behind him, her legs sticking out a little awkwardly in front, and began to climb. Once he was sure the steps were sound, it was easy. They went up into another room, or open space, exactly like the first, only the floor was wooden and if anything more thickly carpeted with dust. The Weetabix smell was a little stronger.

The floor above was the same, and the one above that. Up here, though, there were a few windows, small, grimed and cobwebbed over, but still letting in a bit of light. The atmosphere was thick, warm and heady. He decided to go right to the top.

Six floors up it was. The ceiling was lower than in the other rooms and not bare boards but cracked, dirty plaster which sagged badly in several places. There were windows in three of the walls, slightly larger than on the floors below, and two of them were broken which made the air pleasanter to breathe. Several pigeons had got in. There were signs of old nests, and feathers and droppings all over the floor. The white dust was not so thick here, though. Even up here the roots of a few plants had penetrated and hung down inside the walls. Willowherb was growing in through one of the broken windows,

The girl came to, a little groggily, and began to cry. He tried to comfort her by showing her the view from the window, which looked out splendidly over all the rooftops and towerblocks of the town. She wasn't comforted but her wails gradually became short, shallow, rapid sobs. He held her in his arms and gently rocked her, humming a soothing sound low in his throat, his hand caressing her hair. Close by the window you could just hear the sound of traffic far below.

She was hungry, she was thirsty, she was scared, most of all she wanted her mummy. He couldn't help everything, but he could get food and drink. He would need some himself too. But how could be leave her securely? There was nowhere he could shut her in, nothing to tie her with. Maybe the ropes he had seen hanging on the floors below?

He had to go backwards down the steps, leaving her whimpering above. No rope he could see on this floor. He would try the level below. Two floors down there was some old rope hanging, part of an old hoist system, but was stiff, as thick as his wrist. He had nothing to cut it with, and anyway it would be impossible to tie.

She hadn't tried to follow him down the steps. Perhaps if he went she would stay there, too scared to go anywhere. She'd been unconscious when he carried her up. She wouldn't know where she was, how she'd got there, or how to get out. The steps might be too big for her, too steep, the drop from top to bottom too great, for her to dare. If she did try to follow him down she would soon find herself in dark, creepy places. He found those big empty dusty rooms a little scary, so a child surely would. Probably if he left her to buy food and drink she'd stay where she was till he got back. Probably.

And if she was gone when he returned? Well then she'd be gone. It would be over. Nothing more for him to worry about. Perhaps that would be best.

Maybe if he went away for a long time? She could just leave. If wouldn't be his fault if she didn't. If he just went away and didn't come back. He wouldn't have to worry about her any more.

Floor by floor he left her, and the responsibility for her, behind. Stepping out at last through the broken door he felt the bright shock of the daylight and the relieving breath of fresh air.

He heated a can of beans on the gas ring in his room and ate them on toast. He wanted badly to go out as usual and watch from his usual place at the river's edge, but he knew that tonight that was not a good idea. He wanted everything to be calm and normal. To watch her cutting vegetables, pouring coffee, washing pots. He knew tonight she wouldn't be doing that. He wanted to watch her anyway, but he didn't dare go.

Instead he went to the pub, but he knew as he walked in the door that the atmosphere was not like normal, and he didn't want to stay. So instead of a drink he bought cigarettes and took them home to smoke. For some reason he felt like smoking, though usually he didn't. He had no lighter, but there were the matches he used to light the gas. The beans tin would do for an ashtray. He turned on the television. There, filling his room in a sudden blaze of brilliance, was her face. It wasn't a very recent picture, a grainy family snap of her splashing in a paddling pool, the face blown up too large on the bright screen, but he knew at once it was her. And then there was the mother, looking thinner and wilder than usual, her eyes puffy red and panicky, flicking from side to side as if she was trying to look past the camera while she spoke about her missing daughter. And there, on a caption, they gave her a name. Damn. Damn. She was spoiled for him now. It would never be the same.

The girl must be still in the warehouse or there wouldn't be a news story. Or it would be a happy one, and she'd be there, the mother hugging her with happy tears instead of sad ones. He wanted to smash the television set, but instead he pressed the off switch on the remote control with deliberate calmness and it was as if the walls of his room rushed in suddenly and suffocated him, all light and existence snuffed out in the dying of the light from the screen.

He lay awake sweating, aware of his heart, of pounding in his ears, of a metal taste in his mouth, a sick feeling that went right down to his legs. He thought he'd wet himself. Then he thought he might be having a heart attack.

He got up while it was still dark and smoked a cigarette. The drug made his head spin but it was better than he had felt just before. He had to go back to the warehouse, but he wouldn't take the bus. That would mean waiting two or three hours for the first one, and for some reason he felt nervous now about people seeing him, especially on that bus route. The walk along the river would do him good, and it would be light by the time he got there. If he kept to the footpath on the other side of the river he wouldn't have to go past her house, and he wouldn't be fatally tempted to stop and look.

When he got to the outskirts of town there was a newsagent's shop just opening. At first he strode past, knowing what would be on the front of the local paper and not wanting to see. Then he paused and went back, steeling himself to cast just a normal disinterested glance. He even dared himself to pick up a copy and there they both were, a nursery photo of the girl this time, the woman almost unbearably hugging the man. Not, it was not unbearable. She had a name now. She was no longer who she had been for him. And she and the man both looked so bleak and grim he felt sorry for them. Too much emotion, too much time, for the casual passer-by he had meant to appear. He would have to buy the paper now, and he did, along with bread, milk, beans and chocolate. Just a normal man's normal early-morning shopping. And then, seeing a teddy bear in the window as he left the shop, he went back in to buy it, and while he was there he thought of breakfast and not knowing what she liked he got a selection pack of different cereals. And then he had to go back a third time to buy a plastic bowl and spoon, and this time he thought the man at the counter gave him a strange look, a bit too long and a bit too thoughtful. He would have liked to make a joke to laugh off his strange purchases, but he couldn't think what to say and he had to force himself to walk casually and calmly out of the shop with his bags instead of dropping them and running.

He expected to find her exactly where he had left her, and it gave him a jolt to find she wasn't there. A moment of alarm was followed by a moment of elation. It was over. And then a surge of fresh alarm, turning quickly to fear. Where was she? What if she. What had happened? What was going to happen? Was she. Had she.

He flung down his shopping bags, spun round quickly, making cobwebs and bits of pigeons' nests scatter as he looked into all corners of the room. She wasn't there. If her feet had made prints in the thick dust, his own had obliterated them. But the windows were no more broken than they had been, so if she had gone it could only have been down the steps. He went down them himself, peering all round in the gloom of the floor below to see if she was there. On the next steps down he half slipped, making the mistake of trying to go down forwards in his hurry. On the next flight he was more careful, taking the steps backwards, one at a time. As he reached the floor he almost trod on her.

She was lying, curled up into a ball, by the foot of the steps. She was covered in dust and dirt. Her lovely hair was very mussed up and filthy. She wasn't moving. Perhaps she had fallen, slipping sideways off the steps in fear or panic, or just because her legs weren't long enough to reach them safely. It was only because she had fallen to one side that he hadn't tripped against her on his way up. It was only because of the darkness and his hurry that he hadn't seen her.

How long had she been lying there? Had she tried to follow him almost at once? Or had nightfall terrified her into trying to find a way out? Maybe daybreak this morning had given her the courage to try. Maybe she hadn't fallen at all, but had just given up her escape bid because of the dark and fallen asleep here. Please let it be that. Please.

He knelt beside her, lifted her head gently. Her cheek on his hand was cold. She didn't stir. He couldn't tell if she was breathing. He felt his own breath coming too fast and too shallow. It was suddenly getting darker. He didn't want her to die. Not to die. He'd never meant for her to die.

He knelt still for a long time, cradling her head on his lap as he grew very slowly calmer. Some of her hair hung down over his knees, and he stroked it over and over, ever so lightly brushing away the cobwebs and the cereal-smelling dust. There was a lot of that dust stuck to her face, especially around her nose and mouth. He thought, even in the half-light, that he could just see it moving slightly. She was breathing! She was breathing! He realised for the first time that he knew her name now, and for the first time he called her by it, speaking to her in a low, kind, coaxing voice. He was coaxing her to live. To live. He thought she opened her eyes and looked up at him. He thought he saw just the faintest hint of a smile when he called her by her name. He thought so.

And then eventually he became aware of how much his legs ached from kneeling in the same position and he had to move, laying her aside very gently, tenderly ensuring that her face this time was up out of the dust and dirt. And now he was almost certain that she was breathing, because he thought there was a slight sob as he lay her head back on the floor.

He thought his head was going to explode. He didn't know what to do next. He must clear his head. He must get himself calm so he could think. He reached into his jacket pocket for the cigarettes and matches.

It was a difficult decision for the editor of the evening paper. The missing little girl was still the story on everyone's lips. But the warehouse fire was new. And they had some great pictures. The chief fire officer said it would be like a bomb going off with all that dry malt dust. And then of course all those old timbers, tinder-dry at heart and covered with creosote. It might have been designed to make a good blaze. They would probably never know what started it, but one spark might be all it took to set the thing going like a furnace. Thank heavens no one was hurt. Well, almost certainly not. It was highly unlikely anyone was inside - though if they had been, no one would ever know, would they?