The Penny Dreadfuls
By
Isidor Smith
For Melody Rose
Copyright 2012
Published by Endra Press
'There Are tigers'
"Don't go home via the underpass," she said, looking at her grandson.
"Why not, Nan?" Michael asked.
"There are tigers beneath that underpass," the old woman said, her false teeth loosening around her withered gums.
"Tigers?" Michael said, his stomach tightening at the sight of his grandmother rearranging her teeth with a grey coloured tongue. "There ain't no tigers beneath the underpass."
"Calling your poor old Nan a liar, are you?" she said, fixing him with a beady stare.
Shuffling from foot to foot, Michael snatched up his rucksack and threw it over his shoulder. "Nah, I'm not calling you a liar - it's just that I can't believe there are..."
"Children have gone missing," the old woman cut in, her bones creaking as she sat further back in her armchair. "Boys and girls the same age as you - gone, disappeared, never to be seen again."
With a nervous smile tugging at the corners of his mouth, Michael said, "Nan, I'm not six anymore - I'm fourteen. You can't scare me with your ghost stories."
"It isn't a ghost story, Mikey," she said, pointing at him with a finger that was crooked and bent out of shape. "There are tigers beneath that underpass. They hide in the shadows - no one ever sees them until it's too late."
"Ah c'mon, Nan!" Michael groaned as he headed for the door. "I aint afraid of no gang of hoodies. That group of low-lives that hang around beneath the underpass don't scare me."
"They're tigers!" the old woman croaked, her voice sounding rasping and old.
Glancing back over his shoulder, Michael looked at his grandmother and said, "That gang of hoodies can call themselves the Black Panthers for all I care. I ain't scared of 'em." Without saying another word, Michael yanked open the front door and left his grandmother's house. There was a clicking sound and Michael wasn't sure whether it was the sound of the latch locking as he shut the door behind him, or the sound of his grandmother pushing her false teeth back into place with her tongue.
Pulling the collar of his blazer about his neck, Michael lowered his head against the rain that spattered his face like needlepoints. The streets were dark and deserted as he made his way across town to his home. The rain hissed as it bounced off the pavement and tarmac. The sound reminded him of Clarence the family cat, spitting and hissing at the dog that lived next door. Listening to that sound and the thought of the family pet made his mind wander to thoughts of bigger cats - tigers, in fact.
There are tigers beneath that underpass!
Michael could hear his Nan's voice in his head.
"Poor, old Nan," he whispered to himself, as he cut through the darkness and across the park towards home. "Losing her marbles, I guess." And his whisper was snatched away from his lips by the wind that circled him.
Screeeeech! Screeeeech! Screeeeech!
Michael stopped. The sound had been sudden. Had it been a wail? The sound of an animal close by? A tiger, perhaps? Michael peered over the collar of his blazer. The sound came again. A screeching sound, like an animal in pain.
There are tigers! The voice whispered in his ear, and it was his grandmother's.
"There ain't no tigers!" Michael said aloud.
The sound came again - like fingernails being dragged across ice.
"Why did Nan have to try and scare me like that?" Michael groaned, his heart racing behind his chest like a trip-hammer. Then through the driving rain, Michael saw what it was that was making the noise.
The swings swung back and forth in the wind as if being pushed by the ghosts of children who had come back from their graves to have one last night of fun in the park.
"I knew there were no tigers," Michael laughed at himself. Pulling his blazer tight, he set off again towards home and the underpass.
However hard he fought the urge, Michael couldn't help but quicken his step. It was as if he no longer had control over his legs. At first his stride got longer, swallowing up the pavement in front of him like a ravenous animal. Then his pace got faster, a slow trot at first - then a quick jog - until his legs were pin-wheeling beneath him like propellers. Then he was racing through the evening streets, away from the swings in the park, but most of all from his grandmother's rasping voice and her warning of tigers.
Michael reached the path that led home. He lent forward and sucked mouthfuls of air into his burning lungs. He buried his fingers deep into the flesh beneath his ribcage and tried to ease the stitch that smouldered inside him like a hot poker. Michael knew that just on the other side of the hill that stood before him like an ogre was his house, warm, dry and safe.
Michael eyed the hill before him, black, wet, and slippery. He could climb it, but he felt exhausted, damp, and cold. Rain ran down the hill in tiny rivulets and he could picture himself slipping, tumbling over and over in the mud and breaking an arm, or worse, a leg. He thought of the cup-tie he was playing in that weekend and didn't want to risk an injury before match day.
There was another option. Michael didn't have to risk climbing over the hill - he could go underneath it - he could take the underpass. Michael looked at the entrance to the underpass and it was dark and wide like the jaws of a giant beast - a tiger's jaws.
There are tigers beneath the underpass! His grandmother's voice croaked in his ear again.
Forcing the sound of her voice away, Michael walked towards the entrance. He stood within its concrete jaws and the smell of urine, vomit, and stale cannabis smoke wafted under his nose and made him feel sick. Placing one foot in front of the other, he stepped inside. Only minutes ago, his feet had been unable to stop moving - whispering above the rain-soaked pavement. But now they felt like lumps of lead disappearing into quicksand. Michael forced himself onwards.
There are tigers... his Nan's voice started up again.
"Go away, will ya!" Michael hissed at the voice inside his head.
"There ain't no tigers here!"
The underpass was lit with a strip of fluorescent lights, but most had been smashed by vandals, leaving pools of murky light every few yards. The tiled walls had been decorated with graffiti. Slogans and symbols had been painted. Michael could see a red line of paint that had been sprayed from a can in an arc across the wall of the underpass. He looked at it, and in the dim light of the underpass he thought that the paint could have been blood, sprayed from the throat of someone attacked by a ti...
Then there were shadows in the corner of his eye, and Michael turned away from the paint...
Blood? and peered into the gloom.
"Who's there?" Michael called out, his voice echoing off the underpass walls like drum beats.