The Garden of Remembrance

by Allan Watson

  Teri took the sponge and very gently washed Denise down. She moaned and stirred in her sleep but did not waken. I stood at the foot of the bed until Teri asked me to help turn Denise over. Teri let out a little cry and dropped the sponge as we gazed at the livid red blotches raised out from Denise’s skin. They were like irregular welts and covered most of her back, continuing like splashes of melanoma down the backs of her legs. There was no other option but to call a doctor.

  An hour later, Doctor McLeish, a brittle old stick of a man arrived with his black leather bag and climbed the stairs to examine Denise. Teri and I stood fretting in the background as he went to work with his stethoscope and thermometer. A few minutes later he ushered us back down the stairs and delivered his prognosis. He had a slightly theatrical manner about him and I suspected he was a big fan of Dr Findlay’s Casebook.

  ‘To be honest with you Mr and Mrs McVey, I’m not really sure what is wrong with your daughter. She’s got a temperature but I don’t think it has anything to do with the marks on her body. I think we can definitely rule out meningitis and scarlet fever. It’s very probably some sort of allergic reaction. Something she’s eaten perhaps? These things attack suddenly and vanish again just as speedily. I think it’s best to let her sleep tonight and we’ll see how she is in the morning. If the blotches are still there I’ll arrange for your daughter to be admitted to hospital for tests.’

  At the mention of hospital I saw Teri’s face go slack with numb shock. After all she had been through this afternoon with Alice, the thought of Denise being taken to hospital with a mysterious illness must have seemed like a physical blow. She tried to say something but ended up bursting into floods of tears.

  Doctor McLeish patted her on the shoulder and said, ‘Now, now, Mrs McVey. Everything will be fine, there’s no need for waterworks. I’m sure your husband will make you a nice cup of tea. Works wonders every time.’

  I found myself growing angry at the man’s patronising tone. Teri needed a sedative not a bloody cup of tea. I began to explain what we had already been through that day but he appeared not to be listening as he pulled a prescription pad from his coat and scribbled furiously on it, his handwriting a looped cipher the Romans would not have recognised as their own.

  ‘Bairns, eh?’ he muttered, thrusting the piece of paper into my hand. ‘Nothing but worry. Mind and phone me in the morning if the lesions haven’t faded. I’ll see myself out then. Goodnight’

  And with that McLeish was gone. Teri slumped on to the couch, great big sobs spilling from her. I sat beside my wife and put my arm around her shoulder. I was sure that McLeish had been correct in saying that nothing was seriously wrong with Denise, but the man’s manner left a lot to be desired. I stroked Teri’s hair and reassured her that all would be well by morning and we would pack up and go home. Bit by bit she came around and held on to me like a drowning woman about to go under for the third time. When she was calm enough, I insisted we retire to bed. Alice would sleep with Teri, and I would spend the night with Denise.

  Later, sleepless in the darkness of the bedroom, I attempted to sift through what I knew about my adversary, the old man. I realised I still didn’t have much to go on apart from the blood smeared cane and the Garden of Remembrance, but they would suffice. All the inner debates concerning stress and mental breakdowns had stopped. I was consumed by the certainty that everything was tied in with my own buried memories. The dreams, the missing bed rail, the cane, the abduction of Alice, Denise’s drawing. Everything was linked together in some way. Something had happened in the past. Something I had suppressed. Something important.

  The old man was the key. He had been at Craigtoun park while we floundered on the boating pond. I had dreamed of him standing over the girls as they slept. He had stolen Alice and then left her in a place that was very important to me in a symbolic sense. It occurred to me as I lay there in the darkness that perhaps the old man wasn’t my enemy. There was always the possibility he was nothing more than a manifestation of my own subconscious. A guide. All he might have been doing was trying to attract my attention. This idea caught fire within me and I grasped on to it gratefully. Whether or not he was a ghost was irrelevant. The implications of that fact being true were far too complex and paradoxical to bear thinking about. At that moment all I wanted to do was examine the clues, lay them side by side and hope that a pattern would emerge.

  My headache which had only threatened up until then, suddenly blazed into full life and made my skull pulse in time with Denise’s harsh breathing. I decided to leave solving the puzzle until the morning, which in itself posed another problem. I had made promises to Teri concerning our departure. Despite already feeling guilty over my treatment of Denise, I almost hoped her illness would last another few days until I had finished with this place. For years I had peered into the bathroom mirror little realising that my reflection was that of a stranger with secrets hoarded in his heart. The need to unearth these secrets consumed me. If it came to it I would drive Teri and the girls home in the morning and then find an excuse to return here alone. Comforted by that thought I closed my eyes and slept.

  I dreamed of my mother. She was dancing with someone on the beach where the Rock and Spindle jutted from the shale. Her dancing partner was tall and wore a black suit, shiny in places with long use. I knew instinctively that he was the old man I desperately needed to find. They were dancing to Scottish country dance music blaring from a battered looking portable record player perched on a nearby rock. My sister Brenda had owned such a record player. It was covered in red PVC with brass catches to lock the lid closed. The shellac disc on the turntable was warped and scratched and the pick-up arm weighted down by old copper pennies.

  The dancers’ feet crunched loudly on the loose shale as they swept around the tall volcanic stack of tortured stone. Mum was smiling as she was whirled off her feet by the old man, her face flushed bright red as if she were a bashful young girl at her first dance. I tried to see the old man’s face but each time he turned, his features blurred, his skin melting like wax. A large seagull flew down onto a rock beside the record player. It held a mussel in its beak which it tried to break open by bashing it against the rock. Tap, tap, tap.

  The music began to grow faster and louder and mum held out her hand for me to join in with them. I wanted to, but I was afraid. I was terrified the music would suck me in and never let me go again. Suddenly mum’s face was pressed up close to mine. She opened her mouth and I smelled shit and raw sewage. I tried to back away but strong arms held me from behind.

  ‘Dance with me you little turd,’ she whispered. ‘Dance with me or I’ll make you watch him……………’

  ‘Daddy!’

  I opened my eyes in the darkness - and the music, muffled now, continue to rake furrows across my still half sleeping thoughts. I could still smell the disgusting odour of my mother’s breath assail my nostrils. Only the bright pain of my headache told me I was no longer dreaming.

  ‘Daddy!’

  I shook my head, using the pulsing pain to drive away the last clinging remnants of the dream. In the gloom of the bedroom I could barely make out Denise sitting up in bed. The smell in the room was worse than it had ever been. It seemed to drift in time with the music from downstairs. I struggled to sit up, knowing I had to get Denise from the room. Her next words however stopped me in my tracks.

  ‘He’s here, Daddy. He’s sitting on the end of my bed. Make him go away before he touches me again.’

  I was suddenly afraid. More afraid than I had ever been in my life. I had been so eager to hunt the old man down and wrest his secrets from him, I hadn’t thought of how I might feel if he came looking for me. I was wrong thinking of him as a benign metaphor. He was evil. I could not see him but I felt his presence like a cold sucking wound. In the darkness someone whistled softly and my guts churned as if they were filled with rancid, greasy butter. I wanted to grab Denise and sprint from that stinking room, but I couldn’t move a muscle. The fear
was an irrational thing, but it was powerful. Sweat ran down my face and my chest tightened until I could barely draw a breath.

  ‘Daddy make him go away. I’m scared.’

  Denise’s voice was like the high keening of a winter wind. I knew if I placed my hand upon her chest I would feel her heart fluttering like a small bird in the jaws of a slavering fox. The violence of my headache increased until I thought my whole skull might blow apart. I tried calling out Teri’s name. If she came through and turned on the light it might drive the old man away. But my throat could shape nothing more than a brief gasp before closing down again.

  Denise’s voice became a wail of unspeakable despair.

  ‘He’s standing up now Daddy! He’s coming towards you!’

  I could only lie quivering with terror on the bed as I waited to feel those strong hands curl around my throat. I was going to die without ever learning who I really was. The drums and fiddles from below reached a mad, crescendo and then suddenly stopped dead. I waited to die.

  Denise spoke again. The hysteria had gone from her voice and her words had a dream-like quality to them.

  ‘He’s leaving. He walking over to the wall. He’s pointing at something. Oh!’ Denise suddenly sounded more surprised than frightened. ‘He just walked through the wall, Daddy. He walked through the wall!’

  There was a few seconds silence and then a loud crash came from the bedroom next door, followed by the sound of both Teri and Alice screaming. My paralysis broke and I was up and running, hitting light switches as I yanked the door open. I burst into Teri’s room to find her on the floor, the duvet wrapped around her head like a quilted burial shroud. Alice was on the floor on the other side of the bed. Her hands beat at the air around her as if she was being attacked by a swarm of angry wasps. I grabbed Alice and hoisted her up into my arms, trying to quiet her down.

  Teri freed her head from the duvet and looked at me in utter disbelief. Her face quickly lost its shocked expression as anger rushed upon her like a flash flood, first darkening her eyes and then pulling her lips back in a snarl of rage.

  ‘Matt! What in the name of God do you think you’re doing? Is this meant to be a joke you stupid bastard?’

  Teri slowly began walking around the bed, her hands curled into claws. I knew she meant to hurt me with those hooked fingers. I wanted to tell her that it was not I who had hauled her and Alice from their bed. It was the old man who was to blame. I began to speak but she wasn’t listening. She had the determined gaze of a mad woman as she ever so slowly and stealthily came towards me. As long as I held Alice in my arms I would be defenceless. I was about to let her fall onto the bed when Teri suddenly stopped dead and stared at something behind me. The terrible anger drained from her eyes and was replaced by the same fear I had seen on her face that afternoon when we feared the worst about Alice.

  Teri’s lips trembled, and from them like a piece of poisoned fruit, slipped a solitary, drawn out word.

  ‘Denniissse.’

  I turned to where Denise was standing in the doorway and saw what the darkness had hidden while the old man terrorised me in the bedroom next door.

  Her face was a mass of the same red, raised welts that had covered her back and legs. That wasn’t the worst however. They must have also spread over her chest and stomach and those ones were bleeding, flowering crimson against the cotton of her night-shirt. It looked for all the world as if something had been biting her.

  Then with a tired little sigh, Denise slumped unconscious to the floor.

  A loose limbed rag doll with seeping red roses on her dress.

  CHAPTER 11

  Two months after Gran Crone's death I found a pigeon someone had shot with an air rifle. The poor creature could only run and flutter with its one good wing when I decided to take it home with me. Once I had caught the bird all the fight went from it. I could tell from the baleful way it stared at me it was exhausted and frightened. I felt so sorry for the bird that I cried a little as I walked home with it nestled inside my jumper. Gran Crone had once told me that human souls are sometimes reborn in the bodies of animals and birds and it made me wonder if I was actually carrying Gran Crone herself.

  I hid the pigeon in a cardboard box filled with shredded newspaper at the back of the toy cupboard in my bed room. I didn't like the thought of shutting the bird up in the dark, but if mum found out I was harbouring an injured bird, she would have had a fit. Her nerves were still bad so soon after Gran Crone dying. The slightest thing and she would fly into a tearful rage, dispersing stinging slaps in all directions. That's why the pigeon would be my secret. As James shared my bedroom I had no choice but to tell him about it. Brenda was definitely excluded from 'Operation Pigeon' as she would have wasted no time running to my mum and blabbing her big mouth off.

  I fed the pigeon on bread and digestive biscuits and filled a little plastic tub with water. It seemed happy enough living in the cupboard. James named it Percy and we used to annoy Brenda when we talked obliquely about our new friend in front of her. Each day the pigeon seemed a little stronger and its black eyes brighter. I pictured myself taking it back to the field where I had first found it and setting it free. I imagined it would stare up at me with those soulful dark eyes one last time in silent thanks for my help, before spreading its wings and flying back to the wild. It never quite worked out that way however.

  On the fifth morning after rescuing the pigeon, I opened the cupboard door and found the bird lying still and cold. It had probably died of blood poisoning from the lead pellet still lodged in its flesh. James was heartbroken and inconsolable. At breakfast I had to tell my mum that James had been dreaming about Gran Crone and was feeling sad. That made her cry too and made me feel bad about telling the lie. Later that morning we smuggled the bird out the house and buried it in the fields near the railway where I had found it. I built a little cairn out of loose stones to mark the grave, and James said a prayer for its wandering soul. After a decent period of mourning we forgot all about it.

  Three months later I remembered the pigeon and began wondering how far gone in decomposition it would be. I wondered if the maggots were still feasting or if the scavengers of the soil had already stripped it clean. The thought occupied my mind all day long at school and I was twice reprimanded for not paying attention. When the bell rang at four o'clock I made straight for the fields and used a piece of wood to hack at the dirt beneath the pile of stones. The pigeon was a sorry sight. A stiff, reeking framework of matted, filthy feathers and not much else. It was as if the sub-soil scavengers had simply sucked it dry.

  I ripped a page from one of my school jotters and wrapped it round the bird's head which was nothing more than a feathered mass of desiccated tissue and bone. One quick twist detached the head from the body. Hiding the skull in my school bag, I re-interred the remains and replaced the stones. I didn't plan on telling James anything about what I had done as he would have been upset at my act of graveyard desecration. I got a row for being late home from school, but I didn't care. I had plans for the skull of my former feathered friend.

  When I got the chance I filled an empty jar with bleach and dropped the pigeon's sorry looking head into it. Then I hid the jar in the back of the cupboard where the pigeon had spent its last days on earth. I left it for a week and was delighted to find a beautiful, white skull floating on top of the now scummy jar of bleach. After emptying the bleach and unwanted residue into the toilet, I dried off the skull with some toilet paper and placed it back in the cupboard.

  At that time I was friends with three boys who lived nearby. Alex Buchanan, Neil Sawyer, and Billy Carter. Alex was in the same class as me while Billy and Neil went to a nearby Catholic school. Our adventure playground was the disused railway tracks which lay beyond the fields where the pigeon was buried. Sometimes our company was graced by June McCaully, a tomboy from a rough and tumble housing estate on the other side of the railway embankments. It wasn't that we exactly wanted her company, but when she tagged along wi
th us no-one had the nerve to say anything different. Even at ten she had the sharp tongue of a witch and it was rumoured she had beaten up a boy two years older than herself. She was a skinny little thing and had masses of black unkempt hair. Although I never admitted it to the others, I thought she was pretty. In hindsight I now think that we were all in love with June McCaully.

  Not that June ever gave us any reason to think that she liked us in return. She sneered at our soldier games and constantly dreamed up dangerous dares to test our nerve. To give June her due there was nothing she wouldn't do herself. I remember watching dry mouthed as she inched her way along a narrow cast iron pipe that spanned one of the railway cuttings. The twelve inch diameter pipe was fixed to the bridge wall with rusting iron brackets and moved freely. At the centre point of the 'Death Walk' as she called it, there was a drop of almost forty feet on to hard earth and broken stones at the mouth of the disused tunnel below. At some point that summer, Alex, Neil, and Billy all managed to do the Death Walk. I never even tried. My fear of heights was too great. Instead I endured June's taunts with as much good grace as I could muster.

  The last time I heard of June was seven years later when I read an article in the newspaper about two teenage joy riders crashing into a motorway flyover at 120 miles per hour. Dental records proved that June was the passenger. As I read the piece I could almost hear her egging the boy on to drive faster and faster. I wondered if at some point he had faltered and if she called him a big sissy just before he rammed the accelerator to the floor and took them both into the eternal darkness.

  We had started messing about with Ouija boards around about that time. Alex's older brother had a real one he let us borrow now and again. I thought it was a beautiful thing - sepia coloured with a gothic sun and moon printed in the corners. It came with a heart shaped planchette with felt pads on the bottom and a circular window in the middle for viewing the messages from the spirit world. For me the Ouija board was the closest thing to real magic I had ever come across. When Alex couldn't get the board we cut up bits of paper and printed the letters on them, and in place of the planchette we used a whisky glass.