The Enemy Within

Chapter 5

They sat on the bed in the master bedroom, Will holding Alice in his arms. She wept violently.

"Hush, Alice. Hush." He stroked her hair and kissed her on the forehead. She did not resist. It was clear to him that she genuinely believed she had seen something out of the ordinary, but – as he hadn"t seen anything unusual himself – he was coming to the conclusion that she was unwell.

"What"s happening to us?" she asked plaintively.

"You have to stop this, Alice. You"re projecting your own anxieties on to Toby. It"s not fair to him." He wiped the tears from her face with a tissue.

"I did see him!" she protested. "I did! I saw another boy!"

another boy"When a child"s face relaxes in sleep it changes." He spoke quietly, making his voice as calm and reasonable as possible. "You can sometimes see impressions of parents, grandparents, other blood relations."

"This was nothing to do with that!" she shrilled. "It was another boy!"

another boyShe wept again. He held her.

He felt the situation was going nowhere, as usual. But one thing was clear: he was not going to allow her to have fits of hysterics in front of Toby. The boy would blame himself, as children so often do. He had to be the positive one for his son"s sake.

"We must get some sleep. We"ve still got boxes to unpack, Toby"s toys to find."

She came back to reality as if from far away. "Yes. I know."

He continued, calm and firm. "Toby needs to feel secure. He needs his things – and he needs us."

usShe made an effort to focus on what he was saying. "You"re right." A sob shook her body. She forced a smile. "I"ll be fine."

He summoned as much conviction as he could. "Tomorrow"s a bright new day. Let"s be ready for it."

He stood up and turned to the door.

"Where are you going?" There was alarm and fear in her voice.

"To the boxroom." He shrugged. "I thought that was agreed?"

"Not tonight. I"d like you to stay with me tonight." She looked forlorn and vulnerable.

He gazed at her, at the tear-stained face and staring eyes. Was this his fault? Surely not. Just a few hours ago she was making eyes at Simon, getting her revenge. Then suddenly she turns into this! The thought occurred to him, as it had several times during their ten years of marriage, that she might always have been unstable. He recalled their many past scenes, the unpredictable mood swings. "Okay." He wrenched his features into a smile. "Of course I"ll stay. Whatever you want."

this* * *

Half an hour later, Will was sound asleep. Alice moved restlessly, woke and slipped quietly from the room.

She stole into Toby"s bedroom and looked down at the figure in the bed. It was undeniably Toby. He was fast asleep.

Her feeling of reassurance lasted no more than a moment. She realised part of her wanted to see the strange boy in the bed in order to confirm her sanity. Either the fair-haired boy was in the bed, meaning she was not deluded – or Toby was there, suggesting…oh, God!

Which was the more unthinkable, that Toby had been swapped with a changeling, or that she had lost touch with her reason? Shaken, she made her way silently from the room.

Back in the master bedroom Will was still asleep. She came in and went straight to the window. She parted the curtains and quietly pushed open the casement.

Patches of ragged cumulus raced across the face of the moon and the nightwind ruffled the bushes and trees in the garden. She gazed out, as if trying to draw answers from the cool night air.

But the problem remained unfathomable. After a while she shut the casement and stared at her image in the double glazing. She felt herself sliding slowly towards the edge of an abyss. Unless she knew what was happening to her how could she find a remedy?

A reflection near her elbow startled her: the face of the fair-haired boy, his features set in an expression of malevolent intent.

She gasped with shock and turned quickly to survey the room. Toby stood in the doorway. He appeared troubled. She struggled to compose herself.

"Toby – what"s the matter?"

"I just wanted to see if you were still here," he said in a small anxious voice.

"Of course we"re still here. Where else would we be?"

"Someone told me I"d have to go away and live somewhere else. Without you and dad. They said I"d have to be evac – " he struggled with the word – "evacuated."

Alice was dismayed. "Who could have possibly told you that?"

"Don"t know. Can"t remember."

She crossed the room and gave him a hug. "It was just a dream. Don"t worry. No one"s going anywhere. We"re all together here in our new house. And that"s the way it"s going to stay."

Toby seemed only slightly reassured. "You won"t send me away?"

"Why on earth would we do that?" she was incredulous. "We"re a family. We all belong together." She was surprised to hear herself saying these words, as if there were two of her, the sane and caring parent and the deranged wife.

Will woke and sat up. "What"s going on?"

"He was having a bad dream." Did she believe that? Or was Toby picking up her disturbed vibes?

"The dream"s gone now, Toby." Will smiled at his son reassuringly. "You"re completely safe. You can go back to sleep again."

Toby nodded, trying to be brave because he wanted to please his father.

"Tomorrow we"ll go exploring again as soon as we"ve finished our unpacking. Okay?"

Toby"s face puckered with doubt. "Will we go to the pond?"

"If you like."

Toby suddenly became anxious. "I don"t want to."

"Okay." Will smiled reassuringly. "No ponds. We"ll go somewhere else. Now give us both a kiss and I"ll take you back to bed."

Toby kissed them and left the room with Will. Alice sat on the bed, troubled, lost in her thoughts.

* * *

In spite of putting on a brave face Toby couldn"t go back to sleep. Something strange was happening to him. He was saying things and doing things he didn"t mean to. They just happened and he couldn"t stop them. It was like that with the tripe and onions. He hadn"t meant to say it but it just jumped out. He had no idea what tripe was, but he"d still said it.

And something had happened when he was asleep. He had dreamed he had sat up and had spoken to his mother. He couldn"t remember what he had said, but it must have made her scream, because he had heard it.

He had dreamed again after that. In the dream he could hear someone crying. The person sounded very sad and he could feel the sadness inside himself. A voice kept saying don"t send me away…I don"t want to be evacuated. And somehow it seemed the voice was part of himself. Although he didn"t understand what the word evacuated meant, he knew it was something terrible and he didn"t want it to happen.

don"t send me away…I don"t want to be evacuatedevacuatedHis parents had been very sad and had shouted at each other for ages, ever since the end of the summer. They had shouted and shouted. Something had been wrong and he had wondered if it was his fault. And then in his dream he had heard someone crying and he had woken up and found his pillow was wet. So it must have been him.

He didn"t believe his parents anymore. Whatever was wrong was all his fault and he was going to be evacuated.

* * *

Birdsong drifted in through the open bathroom window while Alice dressed Will"s injured hand the next morning. The wound appeared inflamed and swollen.

"It"s nasty. Why didn"t you tell me before?"

"It"s only a thorn." He pulled a dismissive face. "How was I to know it would get like this?"

She removed the thorn with tweezers. Puss oozed out.

"Some thorn!" she exclaimed, as she held it up in the tweezers. "If it doesn"t start to heal in twenty-four hours you"ll have to go to A and E." She finished the dressing. "I"m not happy about it. I"ll look at it again tomorrow morning."

An hour later they were in the lounge, surrounded by half-empty cardboard boxes. Will, his hand bandaged, arranged books in the bookshelves. Toby fiddled listlessly with a jigsaw on a fold-out table.

Alice unwrapped Simon"s painting of the goshawk and hung it on a large picture hook above the fireplace. She stood back to admire it.

"Looks fine here, doesn"t it? I knew it would."

Will glanced at the painting. "Suppose it"s quite good," he conceded grudgingly. "But lots of guys can paint like that. Simon"s famous because he has the right connections." He realised to his furious surprise that he was jealous. Well, why shouldn"t he be? The guy was handsome, rich and famous all at the same time! "He"s probably loaned it until he has a buyer. No doubt he thought we could never afford his price and didn"t want to embarrass us by naming a figure."

His comments angered her. She found herself rushing to Simon"s defence. "Other wildlife artists don"t capture the spirit of the bird like Simon has."

They seemed about to fight, but they both became aware in time and backed off.

"Let"s agree to differ, shall we?" He changed the subject. "How are you doing with that jigsaw, Toby?"

Toby stared despondently at the remaining pieces. "Stuck."

"Want me to help?" Will asked. "You"ve only a few pieces left."

Toby"s demeanour changed abruptly. "Don"t want help! It"s simple."

Will was taken aback. "Thought you were stuck?"

With apparent ease Toby suddenly fitted the remaining half-dozen pieces together. "Kidding, wasn"t I? Piece of cake!"

Will and Alice stared in surprise at the finished jigsaw, then at Toby, then at each other. It seemed the jigsaw had been completed by an act of legerdemain.

"Well done, son!" Will beamed.

Toby shrugged. "Easy. Boring stuff, jigsaws."

Will and Alice exchanged another bemused look.

"Where"s our polite boy gone?" Alice asked.

For a moment Toby appeared not to register the question. Then he seemed to recollect himself. "I just meant it was fun." He smiled at them, a picture of innocence.

"Right," Will decided, "if we"re going exploring, we"d best go now. We promise to get back for tea this time!"

"Your watch is okay again then?"

"Seems it is," he shrugged. "I"ve been thinking about it, but I can"t really explain it, except to say it stopped in one of those odd places where time as we know it doesn"t exist. There"s no mobile signal either. It"s like a dead zone. I"ve read about them. It"s a bit scary."

With that he and Toby put on their coats and were gone.

* * *

Alice busied herself preparing vegetables in the sink under the kitchen window. It was a beautiful bright autumn day, with the last of the year"s leaves clinging to the garden trees in bursts of fiery colour.

She could hardly believe that the strange events of the previous day had actually occurred. The quiet house and the sunlit garden seemed the essence of normality. But then, she asked herself, why should it be anything else? Strangeness was just a feeling that could be dispelled by a bit of common sense.

But Will"s talk of a dead zone, a place where normality didn"t exist, unsettled her. She needed to fit Toby"s disappearance into the everyday world. Children were much quicker on their feet than most adults realised. Toby had simply scrambled through the hedge into the next field where Will couldn"t see him. There was no such thing as a spontaneous disappearance!

But her son"s bizarre transformations were something else. Try as she might she couldn"t explain them. He could have picked up coarse language from TV. Or at school. Or in the street. Will had heard some of it for himself, so she hadn"t imagined it. However, Toby"s altered appearance left her horrified and disturbed. She couldn"t possibly have invented that!

Or could she? What kind of sick mind could play such a monstrous trick?

She was very stressed, she knew. The last three months had been almost unendurable. She had no idea how she had got through them. Her self-confidence had been shattered. She still wasn"t sure if she could believe a thing Will said. Their business partnership had suffered. If it hadn"t been for the long-running Miller contract they"d have gone under.

There was no wonder she felt ill. No wonder at all. She was ill but not mad.

But something was happening. Something no amount of rational sense could explain. Was it her or was it Toby? It couldn"t be Toby, he was just an innocent child.

So it must be her.

A sudden change in the quality of light in her peripheral vision made her look up, expecting to see that the sky was clouding over. Instead, she caught the most fleeting of movements, the impression of a figure moving away from the window.

She still had the kitchen knife in her hand. Without a moment"s hesitation she rushed from the room.