Chapter 2 – somewhere i have never traveled
(Just less than a year ago)
As she had every night since she had been installed in the toy cupboard, Rachel peered through the holes in the louvered doors. Each night she tried to understand the backwards English of Sean's mother as she tucked him in and bid him good night. Each night it was incomprehensible to her. The lights went out, but in most British houses – absurdly considering the climate and the long summer's days and in Sean's universe as well as hers – there were no shutters. It was July and nine in the evening, there would be plenty of light to see, once her eyes got used to the gloom. The wind from the closing door rushed through the louvered holes in the doors and she had to grip tight on her doll's chair so a not to be knocked over. This was her time by herself. Her time to explore…
Before her was a piece of string, something that Sean had secured onto every shelf, so Rachel could move as freely as possible between levels in the cupboard. Despite having to breathe the 'thick air', her mobility was more than compensated for by an increase in the ratio between muscle strength and body weight. The first time she climbed this way, she'd tried keeping her toga on, but it soon began slipping off. For a while she struggled to keep it on but then gave up, letting the strange garment drop. Clinging naked, not knowing quite what to do, she wondered when Sean was going to get the doll's clothes he'd promised.
Despite their growing intimacy, Sean still could not accept her naked, and gave her all the privacy she needed. But, at this time there was no Sean. This was her time alone and it did not matter. In fact, as she resumed climbing, it was faintly pleasurable. It wasn't just the coarse rope fibres against her body, simultaneous to the exertion of climbing, but the sense of her size in relation to the objects around her. When she considered where she was, a tiny human being hanging on the inside of a boy's toy cupboard, naked and so vulnerable, it made her tingle. She was dwarfed by his collection of toys. In fact she could have been one of his smaller toys. It was odd, very odd, but she was kind of enjoying herself. As she reached her first goal and pulled herself up onto the next shelf the tingly sensation intensified in each set of muscles as they were called upon to make the final effort. She was nearly quite overcome and she had to roll over onto her back, breathless, the tingles forming waves crashing back and forth upon the shoreline of her senses. There was no loss of sensual intensity as these gradually settled into a more gentle ebb and flow. She thought she might loose consciousness. As they subsided, she thought, 'this might not be so bad after all.'
This pleasure had gradually lessened over the last fortnight, but it was still there and increasingly added to by a strange intellectual excitement as she found new nooks and new crannies to explore. Tonight, her increasing fitness was going to afford her, her first assault on what she thought must be the last shelf.
She loosened the 'toga' and unwrapped herself to the now familiar quiver of excitement as she became naked. Strange, so strange! She should have felt less human at this size, the size of a toy or a petting animal as in the sense of the true derivation of the word, 'pet'; but no, she had never felt so intensely human: so small, and yet so perfect and complete amid an ocean of sensuality and danger.
She looked at her 'bed', a third filled box of 'man-sized' tissues. She smiled remembering her and Sean painting it together. It was he who insisted that it should be decorated so as she wouldn't think of it as something so mundane and humiliating. Such thoughtfulness had afforded her the morale on which she was now building and actually beginning to enjoy certain aspects her condition. The fun they had had splashing paint around and arguing about the direction of the design was taking was an added bonus. How was it such a small boy could be so considerate? She knew from experience that there were good things to be found in the vast majority of children, something that had always given her great pleasure, but that it had to be brought out and that required at least the assurance derived from a clearly defined power balance in her favour. Here it was reversed in he most absurd proportions. When he disagreed with her he could have easily snatched the giant brush from her, or even simply picked her up and dumped her in a pot of paint. There was no philosophy of care for her to impose, only one for his instinct to allow.
She folded the giant handkerchief, twice the size of a king sized sheet, and placed it on the edge of her bed. This was the second pillar of her now stable morale, keeping her living space as tidy as possible. This needed Sean's aid on the larger scale and reminded her that everything wasn't exactly plain sailing. Teaching this 8 year old to be tidy was no easy matter. Neither was folding the damn handkerchief and she noted that she must soon take the boy in hand if he continued to fail to provide her with 'proper' doll's clothing.
So up she went, leaving her 'department' as she called it to explore the rest of the store. "Second floor, 'Armageddon'," she mimicked the voice of an elevator girl as she climbed onto the shelf. It was here Sean kept his toy soldiers of various sizes. She could make out one his action figurines, sitting there, legs akimbo. She clambered over a box of smaller plastic soldiers and stood between his legs. Again the strange quiver about being this size: she was only just taller than him sitting down. She leant over and gave him a kiss. "Thanks, but no thanks, Joe, I tried your clothes on once before, but it just didn't work out."
She now climbed up onto the 'third' floor. It wasn't really the third floor of her imaginary department store, since there were shelves below hers that she hadn't explored yet. She knew she should in case she needed to get out of the cupboard in hurry, but tonight was still fun night and she enjoyed the sense of climbing upwards. More of the apparatus of war around, two incomplete and rather rusty roller skates, games, "nothing of much interest here, but perhaps we could have a game of scrabble some time", boys books and magazines, "not much to read" and plastic objects she could not define.
"Okay, time for the undiscovered country!" She braced herself for the third climb. It was like gong back in time. The toys here were for a much younger child. Larger plastic building bricks, even some wooden blocks with the alphabet and matching pictures on, wooden railway track and a charming wooden engine. There was also a stranger building material. Coloured, transparent plastic squares with interlocking slots. Sean had left a structure half built from these. She crawled inside and became transfixed by the changing patterns of colour. Transfixed until something even more wonderful came into view.
"Nounours," she cried. There squashed among assorted stuffed toys was the very image of her own teddy bear - one of a small group of soft toys she'd allowed herself to keep into adulthood. "Nounours, I knew you would come to save me!" she hopped over the debris and embraced 'him'. How wonderful, Nounours was now bigger than her! She was a long way from getting her arms around him and he was quite a bit more than twice her height, but he was still her very own fabulous and marvellous teddy bear. After telling him all the terrible things that had had happened to her, she punched him for not coming to rescue her sooner, then begged his forgiveness. Crying tears of joy and sadness she snuggled down into the saggy stuffing. She was about to fall into the best sleep she'd had in a long while.
Sean woke up. As usual light was streaming through his bedroom window from before five in the morning, he found it impossible to continue resting. It was before his parents and siblings got up so it provided valuable Rachel time. When he opened the cupboard door and found the bed unslept in, he didn't panic. This was the fifth time in a row now that she hadn't been lying there, all angelic like and ready to make the best possible start to his day.
"Rachel, where are you hiding now?"
"What?" came a sleepy voice from above. "What time is it?"
"If you just slept where you were supposed to sleep, you could look yourself on the watch I gave you"
"Sorry, must have fallen asleep while I was exploring, it's very tiring being only 5 inches tall you know. I thought that children were supposed to have good imaginations."
There was no answer. Sean was looking at the folded handkerchief. "You're not in the nude again?"
"It came off. Maybe if you'd got the clothes you've been promising for I don't know how long, I wouldn't have to climb about this place naked and you could find me just the way you want and…"
"If it just came off, how come it's all folded up and neat on your bed" Sean interrupted. Both were getting decidedly tetchy.
"If you would let me finish it came off the first time, so I don't bother any more"
"Well you should bother. It's not right you going around with no clothes on," he now climbed on the first shelf and stretched up to the old toy shelf and began unfastening the string.
"Hey, hey, Sean, lovey" she lay flat to keep herself covered and stretched to stop his hands. It was hopeless, he was too strong. She then began to stroke his fingers, "hey Sean, if you leave me trapped up here I won't be able to tell you about the marvellous discovery I've made"
"Marvellous discovery, there's nothing marvellous in my toy cupboard except you" He stopped. He was intrigued. "So what then?"
"The teddy bear you've got up here is exactly the same as one of mine"
"What teddy bear, you liar, I've never had a teddy bear."
"Sean, Sean! Don't leave me up here!" Sean had finished unfastening the string. "There is a teddy bear up here. Look lovey, just check, you know I'm not a liar." Rachel looked over the edge. Far below was Sean sitting with his back to the open cupboard sulking.
She had no choice. "I'm sorry, lover Ted," she whispered to the teddy bear, "I'm sure you'll forgive me." It took all her strength to move the soft toy. But slowly she got it to the edge. One final push and it was over. "Please forgive me!" she shouted after the soft toy. It seemed to take for ever for Nounours to fall. Finally it hit Sean on the head and bounced onto his lap.
He immediately turned round and up. "How did you get a Teddy Bear up there?"
"Do I look like superwoman? I told you I'd found it up here. Now get me down"
Sean clambered up the shelves and grabbed her. It was so quick that she hadn't time to resist and there was that wonderful feeling of being swept off your feet by something so powerful yet benign. She was suddenly back in her own 'department'. She finished gathering round the handkerchief and stared up at Sean. He still had that sulky look.
He must have read her bemused expression. "And don't call me 'lovey'. It's what my mother calls me."
"I'm sorry, l.., uh, Sean, it's just I like you. You know I like you, don't you?"
"I'm sorry, too. You're not a liar." He looked at her lovingly again. "I like you, too." Closing both hands around her he then carried her to ground level, placed her on the floor and sat beside her. He put the soft toy back on his lap
"So you'll let me call you 'lovey', then"
"I don't like you that much," grinned Sean and Rachel punched his cross-legged thigh.
She then clambered up his hip. Sean knew from the sudden look of engrossed determination not to help her this time. She reached his lap and plunged into the artificial fur of the soft toy looking for something. She found it: a label sown into one of the teddy bear's seams. Sean took the label from her and gently lifted the bear way. She sat back round onto his thigh.
"It says 'S-E-V-A-E-R-G-R-A-H L-E-H-C-A-R' but backwards"
"Spell out the second word."
"It says Rachel backwards"
"Only for me it isn't backwards"
The label had been sown in by her mother when she was nine on the eve of her first camp. She would have refused to go without it. She thought of her mother. She thought of her father and brother. Sean interrupted her thoughts.
"It is your teddy bear. What's it doing in my cupboard?"
"If we knew that I think we would be a long way towards getting me home."
Sean's bottom lip began to quiver. He turned away.
"Oh Sean, you don't want me stay like this for ever, do you? You do want me to get home to my family and everything," It was curious, she reflected, that in the fortnight they had known each other, she hadn't spoken once of her life back home. She had wanted to protect the child from this moment since he had brought the atlas and they realised there was no easy way home for her. Or was it herself she wanted to protect?
"Oh you soppy date, you're a brave lad, you don't need to cry." She climbed his tee shirt to the top of his chest. She could just reach his cheek from her purchase and manage to stroke it. Sean felt the effort his friend was making and gently pulled her down to the hollow between his chest and shoulder where she often liked to snuggle. Now stroking her, it was the same as if he were being comforted by her.
"You've never said anything about your family before." Rachel, cheek against his chest, stared into space. She at last felt able to talk about it.
Rachel lay in the darkness. She watched the light from passing cars swing and angle across the ceiling and walls of her bedroom expanding and contracting in concert with Doppler effect of rising then falling on the engine noise. It soothed her. The windows were open allowing a light summer breeze to lift the curtains slightly and for the first time in two hours she was fully aware of the world around her. She hated having rows with her mother. Until a few months ago they'd seemed to have the perfect mother-daughter…relationship? No, it was more a friendship. Mum had been her best friend, advice and support on any number of issues passing freely between them. She just couldn't get to the bottom this rift: was it jealousy at her closeness to an other, or genuine sound advice? The worst thing was that she just didn't know. She was utterly confused.
She wasn't stupid. She knew what or rather who was at the bottom of the sudden change. Andrezj. Wonderful, impractical, blonde flowing locks, exotic Andrejz. He wasn't overwhelmingly endowed with physical masculine charm, but there was something strong and insistent about his manner. The delicate vulnerable way he held himself, the half smile, the deep modulated tone of his voice with its hint of a Slavonic accent, the intense green eyes searching for something…Something? What?
She had been instantly attracted, but he had made the first moves.
"Your name is Rachel, isn't it?" The voice came from behind as she strolled down the tree-lined avenue leading out of the college grounds. Spring flowers beginning to push through after an unusually mild February. Golden early evening winter sunshine. A delicate scent of leaf mould. All were playing on her senses. She had wanted to keep on walking: she was already spoken for, there were important exams in just four months…Yes, there were good reasons to resist any proposition, and in any case how did she know he was going to come on to her anyway? Even if he did, he could be easily brushed off, what was the problem?
"Rachel Hargreaves, you're in my chemistry class."
She stopped and turned. She quickly realised her mistake, she should have just kept going. She pressed her books against her chest as if this if doing so would still the thudding of her heart. She took a deep breath, but all she could manage was what seemed a squeaky, "Yes."
"You're bright. You answer Reynolds' questions well. He hasn't caught you out all term."
"I wouldn't say that's proof of anything. I do all my assignments to the best of my ability, that's all."
"You're being modest. You're one of his top students and you know it." He reached out a hand and brushed aside some hair that had fallen across her face.
How dare he! But, instead of 'get away you creep!' she lowered her gaze and "Thank you," came out. Worse still she could feel herself blushing. She was actually encouraging him!
"Could I get you a coffee? You have another bus in half hour, and two more after that."
The creep knew her bus times even down the ones that took her all the way home. Normally Neil would drive her home, but he was busy training with the soccer team. It's time to think of an excuse and get away. "Okay, I would like that." Again, the thin squeaky voice. It was as if it wasn't her speaking at all.
Two hours later, and now in the cold winter darkness she stood alone at the bus stop. It would be at least 25 minutes before the next one, the last but one and one that didn't go all the way up the hill to her estate. What a doormat! He could have at least stayed with her while she waited for the bus, but Andrejz had had to run off to evening class. But, how they'd talked, it was if time no longer existed. Her heart almost broke when after finishing their third coffee he had interrupted her, made his apologies, paid for the coffees and left. She sat staring into space a while, trying to understand what had so suddenly and completely changed in her life.
Realising how late she was, she pulled herself together and went outside to the bus stop across the street. Once in the cold air she seemed to wake up. Mum and Dad would be worried. She quickly dialled the number, but hung up before it was answered. She couldn't quite face the prospect of replying to her mother or father with a lie, and something told her she would have to lie, so she texted her excuse instead.
"Rachel, what are you still doing here at this time," the voice was familiar but it still made her jump such was the depth of her reverie a she waited for the bus. "It's Neil, you silly, what on Earth were thinking about. It's not like you to be in a daze."
Rachel was both relieved and discomforted by the presence of her boyfriend. "I, ..I needed to swat off some books that were only available for reference in the library. You know that the library in Bradfield's no good." Rachel couldn't remember the last time she had lied, let alone twice in one evening to the people closest to her in her life. And, why did she have to lie? She hadn't done anything wrong, why was she having to lie about bloody Andrejz? Who was he anyway?
Rachel held Nounours, her teddy bear tight against her. She remembered Neil's concern for her and his kindness in driving her all the way home and covering her excuses in front of her parents. But, she also remembered the stale taste of his kiss and the feeling of wanting to squirm from his embrace when they said good bye. Were all relationships going to end like this? Awkward feelings of guilt, the emptiness left by someone that used to interest you, someone you cared about but couldn't feel anything for anymore? She should have felt joy at meeting someone she had felt such a deep connection with, but all she felt was disquiet and foreboding. She had always been such a happy girl, but something was now making her feel sad. Very sad…
"Neil sounds like a really nice bloke"
"Thank you, Sean. I could tell you were a tactful child"
"Well he sounds brilliant. He's good at football and he's English, not like that weird Polish bloke"
"What have you got against Polish people? Have you met any? How would you like it if I called you a thick paddy?"
"I'm English, not Irish"
"That's not the point, Andrejz is English, too; but you shouldn't judge people by which country they come from, or worse still country their parents or grandparents came from." Sean looked puzzled. "How many of your grandparents are or were English? How many of the players in the England football team are really English by your reckoning?" She was now standing precariously on a purchase she had made in a fold in his tee shirt and quite taken up with ire. 'Oh my gawd,' Sean thought 'she's going to work herself up into frenzy again and fall.'
"Okay, okay, you win. Anyway it's about time we had breakfast"
Sean was getting quite good at breakfast. Lunch and Dinner were a different matter, but breakfast did Rachel okay. She enjoyed her peeled grape or mashed her piece of banana with yoghurt soaked muesli washed down with a thimble full of fruit juice then tea.
After he'd cleared everything away, he found Rachel messing about with something in the bottom of his cupboard.
"I can't leave you for five minutes can I?" Sean said in a mock parental tone and grabbed her with both hands pulling her away from the book she was trying free from a pile in the cupboard. "You're coming with me young lady," he continued deepening his eight year treble as low as he could. He placed her gently on the bed and curled round her. Rachel was speechless with rage. "I just want you to continue your story."
The truth was that Rachel needed to talk about what had had happened. "Okay, but on one condition." Sean knew what is was going to be, "you don't do that again," they said in unison. Rachel couldn't help finding it funny, but she knew she had to maintain some sort of status with the boy and didn't show it. "Seriously, if you go around doing that sort of thing again, we'll be having a serious fall out."
Sean knew there was no physical reason why he should obey, but he knew respecting her pleased her and it felt right. "Okay, I'm sorry, I won't do it again, I promise."
"Okay then, I'll continue…"
"Damn you, Rachel," her mother never swore at her. It cut her like a knife. "It's just too months from your 'A' levels, you've got an excellent offer from university, what the hell do you think you're doing?" It cut like a knife but all Rachel could feel was rage, dead, burning mind-numbing rage. "It's that Polish boy, isn't? Ever since you met him and threw over that lovely Neil, you've been on a slippery slope!"
It was Saturday morning, Rachel had a stinking hangover and now her mother was making xenophobic remarks about her boyfriend. It was too much, she turned round and walked out of the kitchen. "Don't you turn your back on me, young lady!" It was too late, Rachel, unshowered and in the dress from the night before was out of the front door and on her way…, well she wasn't quite sure where yet. Yes, she was in love with Andrejz, but was Andrejz in love with her? She really didn't know. How had she got herself into this mess? Then she had a flashback from the night before.
She knew something must have been put in her drink at the club, but she had enjoyed herself so much that she didn't care. Andrejz's friend Pete, the manager of the club, had frequently offered white tablets with various designs on which she had always assumed was E. They could mess their heads up, but not her. After her third Tom Collins and well on into the night, instead of the relaxed inhibition afforded by alcohol she felt her senses strangely heightened. She felt the music penetrate deep into body, vibrating against every nerve, bone and muscle creating a kind of resounding sympathetic music inside her. A music which made her dance in way she had never danced before. She felt she was 'becoming' the dance itself, melting way into nothing but movement and emotion.
Melting away? Around her suddenly was a forest of legs. She felt her herself slipping down. Down. A giant shoe nearly trod on her. She had to get back to the table. She ran, then she was flying through the air and being placed on the table. Andrejz and some people she hadn't met before were sitting around creasing themselves with laughter. She was shorter than the beer glasses around her. A giant hand started arranging them into a sort of pen. She was enclosed. She had become a miniature circus trick, a freak on show dancing for the pleasure of an animalistic crowd. But instead of fear she felt elation and the music deep from within: all she could do was dance, dance and dance. She had become the dance. She was the dance.
What an hallucination! She hadn't realised that drugs could do that to you. And then what? What had happened, next? Her memory had completely gone. What had had happened, next? Her mother was right, Neil was right, there was something dangerous about Anj, something of the night.
"I told you that you should have stayed with Neil. Was that how you got shrunk?"
"Have you actually been listening to me or what? Was I five inches tall when I was talking to my mother? Was I five inches tall when I went out the door and had the flashback? Was I wearing a dress when you found me?"
"Alright, alright, I've got it, but what did you mean about the dress"
"Could drugs shrink a dress?" then Rachel's face went deadly serious. She got up. Not easy with the crater Sean's weight made in the mattress. He bent his head watching her. She wobbled and Sean steadied her as she made her way to his solar plexus. She pressed herself against him. "Sean, lovey, promise me something, will you?"
Since it was her he decided to let the 'lovey' go this time, "What?"
"Promise me you'll never take drugs"
"But everyone does by the time they're your age. I've heard all about it at school"
"You've heard and seen nothing. I've seen what drugs can do to people." She looked up into his eyes concerned and imploring. Sean wanted to plough his own furrow here, but he couldn't resist her.
"I promise."
Rachel sat back down onto the side of the 'crater' and stuck her feet onto Sean's belly. Trying to remembering everything was taking a lot out of her: it cut like a knife, but remember she must.
Despite numerous attempts on his part, Andrejz failed to recapture Rachel's heart. Something had happened to her that night. Something she couldn't put her finger on. Something, she didn't know where or what, had been taken away from her. Not easy to avoid someone you share lessons with, walk the same corridors with to the same beat of the same timetable, but avoid him she did. Not easy to not answer the door or the 'phone even when you had parents and a brother to shield you, but the 'phone number was changed and eventually the police called to remove him from your driveway at two in the morning. Not easy to see someone you thought you had loved being dragged into a police car and taken away, but watch him she did. No, Andrejz did not manage to recapture her heart, but her heart did not remain unbroken.
Uncaptured, that was until the last day of the exams. Rachel was taking one of the last papers in the her 'A' level series, an extra paper in the subject she had taken mainly for fun, History. It just so happened that someone else was also taking the special paper in physics on that afternoon, something Rachel would have done had she not taken on an extra subject. That someone was of course Anj.
When the exam was finished, they found themselves alone in the entrance hall of the college. She wanted to run, but with no other students around, she remained transfixed.
"Please, don't be afraid," that voice, at least as penetrating as the music had been that night.
"I'm not afraid of you, I just don't want to talk to you, that's all," she was lying, well, half lying. She was afraid of him, but more afraid of herself, her weakness in his presence. She turned to leave. But a hand reached out to stop her. How could such a gentle touch stop her? But, stop her it did.
"We don't need to talk, just stay with me a while, I've missed you so much"
'The bastard,' Rachel thought, 'how does he know what to say?' If he had given a proper reason she would have kept on walking. It was that that kept her transfixed. He just seemed to know things.
They walked together and sat down on the wall by the old 'In' gates of the college, strangely the place she had met Neil for their first date. They must have just sat for half an hour without talking.
"I didn't put anything in your drink that night"
"I never said you did, it's what happened after that worries me"
"Nothing happened, I swear. We went back to Pete's, you were pretty high, but you eventually passed out on the sofa, and that is all. We took you home and you were fine. You said good night and went in. That is all."
All of it seemed to make sense. Perhaps the sense of something missing was caused by the drugs, and yes it could have been anyone administering the drug. This sort of thing happened all the time. Why was she accusing the man she loved? A man she was a little afraid of, it was true; but she was only eighteen, Anj was someone strange and exotic, someone interesting. She should face up to her fears. "Okay," she turned round to look him the eye, she felt herself to be the old Rachel again, strong and unflappable "now, tell me what you've doing the last two months."
Once the ice had been broken again, they continued where they'd left off. It was as if they had never been apart. Rachel 'phoned her parents to say that she had been picked up by some friends to celebrate the end of her exams (more lying) and by nightfall, they were once again in Pete's club.
When she returned home, alone in a taxi Pete had got for her at 4 am, her mother was waiting for her.
So now here she was lying on her bed, simultaneously elated and sad, torn between the two people that meant most to her in the world. She closed her eyes, it was the music. There was no sound, but it was if the music was playing from inside her again, playing her as if she was a musical instrument herself. She opened her eyes something was wrong. Sure there was the ceiling above her with the car lights playing across it, but something was wrong. It seemed what? Yes, more distant. She turned on her side to get up, but instead of her legs swinging down to the floor, she continued to role onto to her front. She looked at the weave of her duvet cover. She could see every thread in alarming detail. She got up. Standing was difficult. She turned round and there was Nounours. He was taller than her while sitting down. 'It must be drugs again. I shouldn't have trusted him,' but that didn't make sense. She'd had a few drinks, but she she'd been compos mentis all night. Nothing had happened to her. The only thing to do, 'though was to find Anj.
She walked and crawled to the bottom end of her bed as best she could. At the end she realised there wasn't a hope of opening the door. It was closed and the door know seemed to tower above her even from the perspective of the bed. She heard something. Gravel against the glass closed window. A hissing sound. "Rachel." It was Andrejz. She bounced, ran and crawled back along the bed. There were foot holes up the wooden head rest and she was able to climb up onto the window ledge. 'Andrezj, how did he know to be here?' She looked over the edge, it seemed miles down, but there was Andrejz, not looking at all like a giant below. "Andrejz get me down from here!" At that moment a gust of wind blew the curtain in. She watched it as if it were in slow motion as it came round and knocked her over. She managed to hold onto as it swung out of the window, but it was too swift a movement for her to hang on. Her grip failed and she found herself falling, falling; falling towards a bush. It was a thorn bush. She heard her dress rip as she fell through the layers of branches, but it broke her fall.
She had landed winded and scratched, but basically unhurt in the mud underneath the bush. Then there was the most enormous racket: the bending and breaking of branches above her. The foliage parted and there was an enormous smiling face. It was Andrejz's but not Andrejz's. It looked, somehow older. Then, a giant hand came through, probing and searching. Rachel was in too much in shock to resist. The hand closed around her, the warm sweaty flesh smothering her body. Yes, it was Andrejz's face. She'd never seen an expression on it like this. It was deeply furrowed and wrinkled, rough looking…it was, evil!
"Don't struggle, my dear little Rachel, you know who I am." She didn't even realise that she'd been squirming around in his grip.
Then there was the barking of a dog. It was Carling, the family German Shepherd. She could see it running up growing alarming large as it came closer. Dad must have not tied him up properly. It jumped from what still seemed a long way off and knocked over Andrejz. She felt his grip loosen as they fell to the floor and she was thrown several normal-sized feet forward, the thick, freshly mown grassed breaking her fall. Lord how it stunk as she got up and began clambering through. She looked round, the enormous dog seemed occupied with Anj. She knew she just had to run. She reached the path. The grooves in the concrete made going difficult but it was possible. There was hole in the fence at the bottom of the garden. If only she could reach it. Then the dog noticed her. 'Run, run!'. The willow tree. Good no grass, no cover, but easier going. There was the hole, but, but…light was pouring through it. She turned round the dog was looming larger. She had no choice, she went through it.
"That sounds like the bottom of our garden," Sean was wide-eyed with living the excitement of Rachel's story.
"Well that's how I got here, I went from our garden at night to yours in daytime . Let me see out of the window." Sean picked her up and took her to the open window. He placed her on the edge, still keeping his hand loosely around her.
"You're not going to fall this time." Rachel turned back and smiled and then looked out ahead. She wasn't at all comforted by what she saw. There was a strangely familiar feel to the garden stretching out into the distance below. There were minor differences, a shed at the bottom instead of nearer the house, a hedge missing from across the middle and vegetables being grown at the end toward the willow tree. But, this was unmistakably the same garden she had left that night...but, of course, with one important difference...