He was so terrified to find the cord immovably knotted that it took him seconds to locate the loose ends of the bow. A tug at them released it. He was forcing his fingertips under the edge of the hood when he heard light dry footsteps scuttle towards him, and an article that he tried to think of as a hand groped at his face. He staggered backwards, blindly fending off whatever was there. His fingers encountered ribs barer than they ought to be, and poked between them to meet the twitching contents of the bony cage. The whole of him convulsed as he snatched off the hood and flung it away.
The room was either too dark or not quite dark enough. It was at least the size of the one he’d left, and contained half a dozen sagging armchairs that glistened with moisture, and more than twice as many figures. Some were sprawled like loose bundles of sticks topped with grimacing masks on the chairs, but nonetheless doing their feeble best to clap their tattered hands. Even those that were swaying around him appeared to have left portions of themselves elsewhere. All of them were attached to strings or threads that glimmered in the murk and led his reluctant gaze to the darkest corner of the room. A restless mass crouched in it—a body with too many limbs, or a huddle of bodies that had grown inextricably entangled by the process of withering. Some of its movement, though not all, was of shapes that swarmed many-legged out of the midst of it, constructing parts of it or bearing away fragments or extending more threads to the other figures in the room. It took an effort that shriveled his mind before he was able to distinguish anything else: a thin gap between curtains, a barred window beyond—to his left, the outline of a door to the hall. As the figure nearest to him bowed so close he saw the very little it had in the way of eyes peering through the hair it had stretched coquettishly over its face, Shone bolted for the hall.
The door veered aside as his dizziness swept it away. His slippers snagged a patch of carpet and almost threw him on his face. The doorknob refused to turn in his sweaty grasp, even when he gripped it with both hands. Then it yielded, and as the floor at his back resounded with a mass of uneven yet purposeful shuffling, the door juddered open. He hauled himself around it and fled awkwardly, slippers flapping, out of the dark part of the hall.
Every room was shut. Other than the scratching of nails or of the ends of fingers at the door behind him, there was silence. He dashed along the hall, striving to keep the slippers on, not knowing why, knowing only that he had to reach the front door. He seized the latch and flung the door wide and slammed it as he floundered out of the house.
The rain had ceased except for a dripping of foliage. The gravel glittered like the bottom of a stream. The coach he’d heard arriving—an old private coach spattered with mud—" parked across the rear of his car, so close it practically touched the bumper. He could never maneuver out of that trap. He almost knocked on the window of the television lounge, but instead limped over the gravel and into the street, towards the quiet hotels. He had no idea where he was going except away from the house. He’d hobbled just a few paces, his slippers growing more sodden and his feet sorer at each step, when headlamps sped out of the town.
They belonged to a police car. It halted beside him, its hazard lights twitching, and a uniformed policeman was out of the passenger seat before Shone could speak. The man’s slightly chubby concerned face was a wholesome pink beneath a street lamp. “Can you help me?” Shone pleaded. “I—”
“Don’t get yourself in a state, old man. We saw where you came from.”
“They boxed me in. My car, I mean, look. If you can just tell them to let me out—”
The driver moved to Shone’s other side. He might have been trying to outdo his colleague’s caring look. “Calm down now. We’ll see to everything for you. What have you done to your head?”
“Banged it. Hit it with, you wouldn’t believe me, it doesn’t matter. I’ll be fine. If I can just fetch my stuff—”
“What have you lost? Won’t it be in the house?”
“That’s right, at the top. My shoes are.”
“Feet hurting, are they? No wonder with you wandering around like that on a night like this. Here, get his other arm.” The driver had taken Shone’s right elbow in a firm grip, and now he and his partner easily lifted Shone and bore him towards the house. “What’s your name, sir?” the driver enquired.
“Not Thomson, whatever anyone says. Not Tommy Thomson or Tom either. Or rather, it’s Tom all right, but Tom Shone. That doesn’t sound like Thomson, does it? Shone as in shine. I used to know someone who said I still shone for her, you still shine for me, she’d say. Been to see her today as a matter of fact.” He was aware of talking too much as the policemen kept nodding at him and the house with its two lit windows—the television lounge’s and his—reared over him. “Anyway, the point is the name’s Shone,” he said. “Ess aitch, not haitch as some youngsters won’t be told it isn’t, oh en ee. Shone.”
“We’ve got you.” The driver reached for the empty bellpush, then pounded on the front door. It swung inwards almost at once, revealing the manager. “Is this gentleman a guest of yours, Mr. Snell?” the driver’s colleague said.
“Mr. Thomson. We thought we’d lost you,” Snell declared, and pushed the door wide. All the people from the television lounge were lining the hall like spectators at a parade. “Tommy Thomson,” they chanted.
“That’s not me,” Shone protested, pedaling helplessly in the air until his slippers flew into the hall. “I told you—”
“You did, sir,” the driver murmured, and his partner said even lower, “Where do you want us to take you?”
“To the top, just to—”
“We know,” the driver said conspiratorially. The next moment Shone was sailing to the stairs and up them, with the briefest pause as the policemen retrieved a slipper each. The chant from the hall faded, giving way to a silence that seemed most breathlessly expectant in the darkest sections of the house. He had the police with him, Shone reassured himself. “I can walk now,” he said, only to be borne faster to the termination of the stairs. “Where the door’s open?” the driver suggested. “Where the light is?”
“That’s me. Not me really, anything but, I mean—”
They swung him through the doorway by his elbows and deposited him on the carpet. “It couldn’t be anybody else’s room,” the driver said, dropping the slippers in front of Shone. “See, you’re already here.”
Shone looked where the policemen were gazing with such sympathy it felt like a weight that was pressing him into the room. A photograph of himself and Ruth, arms around each other’s shoulders with a distant mountain behind, had been removed from his drenched suit and propped on the shelf in place of the telephone. “I just brought that,” he protested, “you can see how wet it was,” and limped across the room to don his shoes. He hadn’t reached them when he saw himself in the mirror.
He stood swaying a little, unable to retreat from the sight. He heard the policemen murmur together and withdraw, and their descent of the stairs, and eventually the dual slam of car doors and the departure of the vehicle. His reflection still hadn’t allowed him to move. It was no use his telling himself that some of the tangle of wrinkles might be cobwebs, not when his hair was no longer graying but white. “All right, I see it,” he yelled—he had no idea at whom. “I’m old. I’m old.”