A Narrow Door by Joanne Harris

Author:Joanne Harris [Harris, Joanne]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Psychological Thriller, Suspense
ISBN: 9781409170839
Google: _uYhEAAAQBAJ
Publisher: Orion
Published: 2021-08-03T23:00:00+00:00

10

King Henry’s Grammar School for Boys, July 9th, 1989

Of course, that’s not what he really said. But memory is a dangerous thing, promising much, but delivering nothing more than fragments and dreams. The name he whispered meant nothing to me, and so in my mind Mr Smarthwaite became Mr Smallface, which in turn became the monster that was to haunt my dreams for so long, and still periodically winks at me from the occasional plughole or drain.

And Conrad was relentless. He stoked my fear incessantly. His anger at losing that chess match had turned into something vengeful. Everything that frightened me was ascribed to Mr Smallface. Shadows; the dark; the wind in the trees; but most of all, the sucking sounds of water pipes and gurgling drains. Whenever a toilet flushed, or a pipe rattled, or a plughole sucked noisy water into a drain, I knew that Mr Smallface was there: always aware, always hungry.

I started to wet the bed again, after almost a year of being dry. I had nightmares, in which Mr Smallface pursued me through a series of ever-decreasing pipes. I piled books onto the toilet seat in case he came up through the drains. I had been a combative child: but now, the threat of the monster ensured my co-operation.

Do as you’re told, Becks, or Mr Smallface will know.

Brush your teeth like a good girl. Mr Smallface is watching you.

I know. If it sounds cruel, it was. But at that age, such casual cruelties are part of our everyday business. And children are like house cats: they lead astonishing double lives. Inside the home, they are docile; sometimes even affectionate. Outside, they are alien things, predatory and merciless.

He’s so good with his sister, my parents would say adoringly. You wouldn’t have thought a teenage boy would cope so well with a four-year-old.

And Conrad, smirking, would look at me and cover the bottom half of his face with his hands; a code sign that only I understood.

If you tell anyone, he’ll know. I won’t be able to save you. He’ll come up out of the drains and drag you underground by your hair.

And then, one day, Conrad and his friends had taken me to the railway bank, where the land had slumped and shrugged and dropped and fallen into the cutting. From the top, you could still see the half-closed mouth of the tunnel; and above it, along the ridge, the vent they called the Pepper Pot. I remember them climbing the brick-built sides, and looking down into the dark, where the earth seemed to be draining away like water down a plughole. And I remembered Conrad’s voice, saying:

That’s where he lives. In the sink hole. That’s where he takes the children.

And for eighteen years that memory, and what came next, had stayed in hiding in my mind. For eighteen years the door to the past had stayed shut, keeping the truth inside. And then, on my birthday, eighteen years to the day after Conrad dis­appeared, that narrow door had opened up like a sink hole in the ground: releasing the past like a swarm of bees.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.