by S E England
After a couple of steps the young woman stopped and looked down at her dress with a puzzled expression. A dark stain had appeared. And it was spreading, beginning to soak through the flowers. Then a couple of drops plopped onto the carpet. And then it poured from her, gushing over the steps to the hall below.
Isobel’s hand flew to her mouth as she watched the scene unfold. In a matter of seconds the girl’s body had crumpled into a pool of bloody rags, and the silhouette of a man loomed large across the wall. The smell of sulphur filled the air, and from one of the rooms off the landing the disembodied sound of a baby began to cry.
Again a baby…
She looked up. Blinked. Looked down again.
The vision faded.
She took a few deep breaths and steadied her breathing. Well, it seemed there was little doubt now. And if she didn’t do her best to find out what happened and wrong a right, she would never forgive herself.
Or be forgiven…
***
My God, my God, my God….
Boy was she wide awake. Wired, in fact. And tomorrow could not come soon enough.
Hopefully Branwen had got home all right. They’d waited a good hour since hearing the stone dislodge outside, and after that Branwen had pulled on her boots and fled through the back door, over the fields to the village.
Time for yet another coffee. There was so much to think about, especially all the fairy tales about crimbils or changelings. Everything else made a kind of sense but not that. In fact the scariest thing about it was people here believing in all that nonsense - apparently even committing murder because of it. Now that was scary. Being shot at was scary. Being frightened half to death by angry spirits was scary. But fairies… not really.
So why is that painting in the front room with its face to the wall?
She smiled to herself. This nagging inner voice, now she’d started to take notice of it, was annoying. Besides, it was right. Why was the picture in the other room? Her friend had painted it and given it to her, after all. With that thought she brought it into the lounge and propped it against the mantelpiece over the electric fire.
“There, now,” she said to the little creature. “So you are who Branwen talks to, are you? All right, well I don’t believe a painting is going to hurt me and I’m fed up of being scared of everything anyway, so I’ll hang you there.”
After signing off the email to Nina, she closed the laptop and settled into the armchair, trying not to look at the painting. Jeez, there was something about it, though… Still, it was only that – a painting. And it would be good to try and get a few hours rest. It wouldn’t help anyone if she was weakened, tired and hungover, would it?
Her thoughts drifted, hovering between overload and exhaustion. Tomorrow she’d walk in the woods Branwen used. It was miles away from the Payne’s farm, and by the sound of it the locals were terrified of the place, believing it to be haunted by Annwyn, Lord of the Dead. For herself it should be the most private and quiet place to think and re-charge before the night to come…For now she would think only of good things…of memories that brought joy, of people who had given their love, of the beauty of everything in nature.
Please let me sleep… I will do what you ask…I will, I promise…
And when morning came the world was a different place, in a way she could not describe without sounding as if she’d taken a few magic mushrooms. Except the colours were as vibrant as if backlit, and the air was photographically sharp. The birds in the eaves clamoured in a cacophony of excitement, their feet hopping on the tiles. And above all that, her heart had lifted and exhilaration fizzed in her veins.
“Hello!” she said to the crinkled hunchback staring back at her from over the mantelpiece. “I’ve decided to call you Immie, after Branwen’s little girl.”
And now I’m ready. I think this is me. Where I’m supposed to be. My God, after all these years…I feel like I’ve come home. So show me! Show me my tasks and I’ll do this.
It didn’t feel unnatural to think and talk in this way. In fact it was the most normal, wonderful, life-affirming mind-set she’d ever had, everything leading up to this tailing away in a sepia blur of mistakes and confusion. She ran a hot bath, had breakfast, made up her face and washed her hair. .
And the mood continued during the walk towards The Hill of Loss, a name no longer laced with foreboding. This was a place where battles had been fought to hold onto a much loved land. Druids had worshipped in this haven of beauty and tranquillity, and little had changed over hundreds of years. It seemed to no longer be a brooding, remote forest overshadowed by the Black Mountains, but a gateway to something glittering and compelling. She gave no thought to running into Lorna or her husband, instead slipping into the misty woods under cover of the blue-grey dawn as if it was the most natural thing in the world.
Almost immediately the ground became muddy underfoot, branches dripping steadily into the long grass. And other than the soft fall of her own footsteps there were no sounds at all, the muted forest veiled with skeins of ethereal blue. There was a feeling of letting go here, of floating almost, stepping away from the world at large. Little wonder people through the ages had found this part of the world, put down their roots, and called it magickal.
Hoping to find the path from yesterday and the fairy ring Branwen used in order to meditate, it soon became clear however, that there wasn’t one. There were no paths at all. In fact, the further she ventured the more the trees became densely packed, and no matter which direction she chose, the undergrowth prevented entry. Puzzled, she stopped to listen for the fresh tinkle of the mountain spring. Yesterday she had crossed the water so it stood to reason if she followed that either up or down she would come to the same crossroads with the etched boulder.
Alas, the stream proved totally elusive, and very quickly the morning mist thickened once more with rain. Out of breath now, she paused on the crook of a bend, leaned against an old oak and closed her eyes, face up to the mizzle, absorbed in the silence of the forest. Okay, she was lost. Totally lost. And suddenly incredibly tired.
Then she opened her eyes and saw her.
Real or a vision?
A small, wizened creature with parchment-white, crinkly skin, was standing on the path in front. Having turned to look over her shoulder, the tiny woman was squinting as if she couldn’t see well, leaning heavily on a forked stick. Oddly, she was dressed in the long black garb of a Victorian lady in mourning, but even more bizarrely she was less than three feet tall.
The two stared at each other as if each had stepped out of another world. The little creature faded and loomed, faded and loomed. Then the ground rose in a soft swell as if it had turned into water, and the rich aroma of moss and damp wood filled the air. An icy coldness permeated her back and a crowd of voices echoed in the treetops, which rocked and swayed as if a storm was brewing. And then, from far away, a long, low whistle began like an express train hurtling through a tunnel towards her. Suddenly the trees were rushing by at great speed, and the voices were no longer voices but high pitched screams.
She fell to her knees with hands pressed over her ears.
But there was no stopping it.
The vision. A full reminder of the darkest moment in her life - the man in black leaning against the church railings, waiting…was now standing before her with his arms folded.
The image flashed.
Followed immediately by the face of the man at the cell door.
Flash. Flash.
Like resuming a film it had picked up exactly where it had stopped the night before - this time running on in graphic detail. Less than a hundredth of a second but she would never forget the face shown. The thin twist of razor-wire for a mouth, the pointed tongue flicking across wet, glistening lips, and a hard glassy stare emitting the most malignant hatred she had ever witnessed from another human being.
And just like the man in black, he was dressed in the harsh Victorian attire of one in mourning, his skin bleached of
life. And he too was smoking.
She had also seen him before. Very recently.
***
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Flora
All Hallows Eve, 1893
In order to become physically fit enough to escape, I have taken to walking around and around this prison cell, stretching my limbs, using dance steps I once learned. And to keep my mind alert I practice arithmetic, French, spelling and general knowledge – testing my own learning as if tutor and pupil.
The layout of the upper floor and exterior of the house are now as a map inside my head and staff routine provides a clock of sorts. Locating a sharp implement has been the most difficult of tasks, but eventually it came to me. These walls are padded but underneath there is stone and mortar. It took a long, long time…weeks…of feeling along the cracks in the wall in the dark, but finally a loose shard came away and it is this I have taken care to hone to the sharpness of a blade. I have it now. And if ever that pig assaults me again, I will have his eye like a pickle on a fork.
Now to the staff routine. Myra Strickland replenishes the laundry cupboard and it is her footsteps which click along the corridor last thing at night and first thing in the morning, checking the doors are locked, rattling the windows for steadfastness. It is also she whose footsteps clang on the metal staircase to the attic. Three times a day Myra Strickland goes up, unlocks a door, and a few minutes later comes down again. No one else ever goes up there. Not ever. And I know because my prison is adjacent to that stairwell.
I wonder who lives up there. Some poor disfigured soul who whines and laments, occasionally screaming and pounding on the walls? I swear sometimes there is the pitter-patter of more than one set of feet. Perhaps that is where they confine the maddest of the mad? It is difficult to imagine one more insane than Cora, or more dangerous than Beatrice, but it must be so. I hope only never to be further punished and find out.
I feel it unlikely however, that they will subject me to further danger. The soft swell in my tummy is growing and the doctor’s probing has ceased. It seems they leave me to harvest the progeny. And as autumn deepens, with no glimpse of the outside world, my other senses have become more acute to change - the wind blows more ferociously, rain lashes the stone walls more harshly and the birds have ceased to chatter in the eaves. A flock of geese flew noisily across the fields a while ago, and the owls screech and call less often. Yes, the days shorten and the year turns, bringing with it the smell of decay and wood smoke, and a crisp chill to the air – such a magical time for the artist with its smoky mists and apple-red leaves. How I miss it, how I ache…
The depression is the worst. The utter despair whenever I dare to think this will not work, that I will fail to escape and be subjected to whatever horror lies ahead. And riding on its wave, sharp pangs of memory cut into those wounds. There was the wedding, a brief flare of golden light when I thought in my young heart that I would be the lady of my late parents’ house and bear a family of my own; that I would paint and sketch, sit by the fire in gentle companionship with my husband and sister. And so it transpired for a while. Samuel was the local schoolmaster and without material wealth, but Amelia had most taken to him and insisted he and I marry at once – that he would be perfect. The elder of two sisters, I had been bequeathed the house and woodland on marriage, and he was a good, principled man with an education – so entirely different to the pompous fops I had previously met. The three of us, she said, could be so happy, and thus my guardian agreed. I was eighteen.
I did not look, for I suppose I did not wish to see. Those recollections visit me now though, and how! Perhaps I did not like him as well as I ought. The pain on the night of our wedding was unbearable, and once I had conceived we took to our separate rooms. I bled. Constantly I bled, all the way through the pregnancy and confinement ran almost the whole term. Oh, I saw them both in the garden and I noticed the touch of hands, the lingering looks, but then they had much to bear tending to my needs…
Slam! Slam! Slam!
The scene, to a point, replays in the deadness of dreams, yet never quite to the end. The baby was screaming in his cot by the window. The blinds were shut and I reached out but he would not stop. And then it occurred to me that the screams were not the child at all but myself – still enduring hour after hour of labour…with morning turning into evening…night to dawn…until finally the child was ripped from my womb.
I drifted in and out of a laudanum induced sleep, the doctor in attendance, but I know not how long I lay there. I know only that my heavy eyes lifted for long enough. To see the sash slam down across the child’s head. Over and over and over. And to watch her turn to face me with the headless baby in her arms.
I wake up now bathed in cold sweat.
Amelia. The screaming was hers.
The child shoved into my arms a bundle of blood-soaked rags.
Samuel at the doorway. The look on his face…
Yet who would believe me? Who? When both of them swore to the local doctor it was I. And when the doctor himself heard me talk of spirits in the wood and faces in the walls…
Amelia, Amelia…what happened? Is that why you never wrote me in all these months?
***
Well now, I believe it is All Hallows Eve. And the time has at last arrived. Mary, dear pudding-brained Mary, tells me the ‘carryings-on’ will be tonight, shakes her head at the tom-foolery. She chats a little to me these days, believing there is no harm seeing as I won’t be going anywhere or speaking to anyone. That I have not a friend in the world.
And thus the house tonight is quiet as a crypt, the season turns once more, and I am ready. If I wait until the winter solstice it will be too late.
Mary is lumbering down the corridor…clomp-clomp-clomp…keys bouncing against her rump. Methodically she locks the heavy double doors behind her. Clomp-clomp-clomp…almost here…and my heart is thumping so hard I swear a craftier soul would hear it.
I must keep my demeanour absolutely deadpan. She will not pick up a nuance or change in me as long as nothing is said, no agitation shown. Mary is their plodding, reliable simpleton – a woman in need of bed and board who can be relied on to restrain an imbecile should they thrash around. That is all.
Her breathing now is laboured outside the door, rattling one key after another until she happens on the right one. I am her last chore this evening. There will be no other up here until Myra Strickland takes a tray up to the attic and checks the locks. An hour. For weeks I have counted every last minute that passes between these two visits. And there is one hour precisely.
As usual Mary nods pleasantly enough, before her great washerwoman’s hands grab my upper arm for the short trip to the bathroom. She is tired, the weight of it bearing on her – it is in her wheezing chest and plodding gait. She dreams of sitting by the fire tonight with a bottle or two of beer before an early rise again tomorrow. Still there must be nothing out of the ordinary to alert her, and thus as always I feign weakness, leaning against her, stumbling once or twice. She hauls me along as a dead weight, sighing while I use the lavatory; turning now to gaze outside… and how could she not? The night is ablaze with dozens of bonfires lit as beacons across the landscape. Sparks fly into the air, and from high on the hills voices carry on the wind.
Diane’s death.
“Halloween tonight, is it? I forget.” My words are cotton wool inside my mouth, sounding peculiar to my ears.
Distracted, she nods. “Aye, it’s a strange carry-on - burning things, drinking, dancing and the like.”
“Burning?”
“Everything diseased goes on those fires - from bad harvest to sick livestock, while they get merry and cavort about like animals. You’ve never seen the like! Then once the fires die back they run home screaming fast as they can before the black sow rises. Ask me it’s all an excuse to get up to mischief…”
There are eleven keys on that ring. The largest fits the door to the stairs and the small one’s for the laundry cupboard. The ri
ng is tied to her pocket with string, and although there would never be enough time to undo the knot, there is enough to slash through the cord with my knife.
I stare at it til my eyes burn. I must do this. I can do this. That key is mine. I am holding it…that key is mine…..
Now or never. One chance.
Still talking she is caught off-guard. One split second and the ring of keys plops into my hand. Another second to the laundry cupboard. Another and the door is locked behind me. I’m in!
Mary’s screams fair raise the roof, her fists pummelling the door. But who will hear her? Who? And she is locked in – alone on the top floor - until Myra Strickland comes around in one hour’s time. And round about now, Myra will be taking supper in the kitchen on the ground floor.
So who will hear Mary?
I must keep calm. Think. I have time but not much. And from here on in I have no plan.
The sash window is jammed and will not lift above a few inches, but there is just enough of a gap to peer out. The grounds roll out towards the moonlit lake, a droopy willow shadowing the lawns. Alas, below lies a stone terrace which will shatter my bones on impact. This is thirty or forty feet high with nothing to break the fall.
Dear God though…what heaven is this…Soft mist mixes with bonfire smoke and the smell of fresh, clean pines. I have to get out.
Mary’s fists are pounding what is only a flimsy wooden door. Pray it doesn’t splinter and crack. She will be terrified of the recriminations and desperate to reclaim her escapee. Poor woman. Poor, stupid Mary. If I were her I would push straight past Myra when she arrives and just keep running. But I cannot afford to think of her fate at this moment. The minutes are ticking and the window will not open wide enough. Nor is there a drainpipe or anything at all to latch on to.
There must be another way out.
Oh no, oh God in heaven…something, anything…