He reached for her again, and she swatted him away again, but not very wholeheartedly. ‘I said behave!’
Later he didn’t behave himself at all, and in the most delightful ways.
6
TOBY
‘SONOFABITCH!’
Toby liked hearing his dad swear. It was shocking, given how fiercely both his parents had policed his language since forever, but also made him feel more grown-up and oddly trusted, as if his dad felt like Toby wasn’t a baby anymore, almost a bit more of an equal.
Between them they were attempting to move a writing bureau up the stairs of Stone Cottage into Toby’s room; it wasn’t particularly heavy, but quite awkward to manoeuvre, and it was making his dad swear a lot.
‘Tobes, mate, try to get that bit over… no, over…’
‘Dad, it’s not going to…’
‘See if you can… yes, little further…’
It slipped, one corner bashing a dent into the wall.
‘Jesus fucking Christ!’
Toby grinned.
The day after they’d moved in, Ms Markes had called around to give them the keys to the lock-up where all the old furniture that had been moved out of the cottage was being stored, telling them that they could have their pick of what was there, and that whatever they left would be auctioned by the Trust. His parents had hired a van and they’d driven out to a large, bland industrial unit near the motorway. Toby had been fully prepared for another boring afternoon of going through old people’s stuff, but it had been like opening an Aladdin’s cave of antique dark wood and gleaming brass. There were wardrobes packed like dominoes beside bookcases and glass-fronted cabinets stacked on chests of drawers next to tables with scrolled legs and piled with rolls of musty-smelling rugs, ornate mirrors reflecting candelabras and bedsteads and vases and a massive metal gong and a coal scuttle full of peacock feathers and crates full of picture frames. His mum and dad had filled the van easily, chattering excitedly about where each thing would go, and it was nice to see them so happy. When Toby’s eyes had lit on a writing bureau which he thought might actually be quite cool to do his homework on, that had gone in too.
It seemed more real, that was the thing. It had three drawers with rattling handles below a slanted face which folded down into a writing desk complete with an actual leather blotter, and inside were loads of little compartments for filing correspondence and small drawers for keeping stationery. It wouldn’t have anywhere near enough room for all his drawing materials, obviously, but he could definitely use it to house his textbooks and write essays. It looked like it had been made by actual people using actual tools, rather than extruded from chipboard and laminate, sold through a warehouse and then put together with a screwdriver and lots of swearing. Though he couldn’t have put the feeling into words, there was a weight to it which was more than just the amount of wood, but had to do with the lives of the people who had sat at it over the years and written birthday cards and job applications and letters of love or desperation. Like everything else, it smelled of dust and furniture polish.
It was a bit weird taking it back to the house from which it had been removed – he wasn’t sure where it belonged but it probably wasn’t his attic room – but he hoped that if objects had spirits then it would forgive him.
It was certainly putting up a fight so far.
‘Bastard thing!’
Finally they shuffled it over the last step and into his bedroom, and his dad leaned against it, wiping the sweat from his forehead. ‘All yours now,’ he grunted. ‘I better see what I can do about that dent before your mother finds out.’
‘Thanks. I’ll take the fucker from here.’
‘Oi! Watch your language!’
His dad stared at him. Toby stared back and raised his eyebrows. Really? His dad turned and clumped downstairs, shaking his head and muttering, but Toby could hear the smile in his voice all the same.
* * *
Below its set of main drawers the bureau stood on four short legs, which made it impossible to slide along the carpeted floor of his bedroom to the wall where Toby wanted it, so he had to tip it up on one leg and pivot it a hundred and eighty degrees in the right direction, then repeat. Fiddly, but doable, as long as he didn’t overbalance the thing and bring it down on top of himself. It was while he was in the process of doing this that he heard a creak from the back of the unit and saw something small and pale seesaw to the floor.
Toby lowered the bureau and bent to examine what had fallen out.
It was a single sheet of paper, yellow with age, about the same size as the page of a school exercise book and torn along one edge as if that was exactly what it had been ripped from. He guessed it had slipped between the writing surface and the back of the unit and been presumed lost. There was writing on one side – elegant, cursive handwriting which it took him a little time to decipher.
But when he did, what he read made no sense at all.
* * *
Toby meant to ask his mum about it over dinner, but it slipped his mind when mealtime conversation turned into an argument about school.
It had started with his asking a simple question: ‘So what’s this Rogation Sunday thing all about, then? Is it like a church thing?’ His parents had the kitchen calendar out on the table and had been wrangling out their various commitments for the next month. The twenty-sixth of May had been marked out with a star.
‘Sort of,’ said his mum. ‘But don’t worry,’ she added, seeing his expression, ‘you won’t have to go. None of us has to go. In a funny way, it’s coming to us.’
‘Oh-kay,’ he replied, still wary. ‘Not weird much.’
‘Rogation days are the days leading up to Ascension Thursday, which is the day Christ supposedly got taken straight up to heaven.’
‘This was after he did his reverse zombie act?’
‘His what?’
‘Reverse zombie. Comes back from the dead and lets other people eat him.’
His dad laughed at that.
‘If you want to put it that way, yes.’ Mum seemed less amused.
Toby shrugged. ‘Holy escalator. Why not.’
‘Anyway, Rogation days are supposed to be all about fasting and prayer in preparation for this but there are a lot of other very old traditions which go along with it. Haleswell, like a lot of places, has a big fair on the Sunday. Carnival rides, balloons, candy floss, that sort of thing. Plus they have a tradition called the Beating of the Bounds.’
Toby looked up from his lasagne. ‘People get beaten?’ This was suddenly interesting again, and not in a good way. He blinked away a sudden flash of Green Skull’s fist curving in towards him.
‘No. It means they go around the old parish boundary to each of the stones that mark it. I suppose there are some prayers, but mostly it seems to be more of a parade around the neighbourhood with stops for drinking and eating cake. One of the stones is in the bar of the White Hart Inn down the road, so I don’t imagine that it’s entirely serious.’
‘And,’ his dad put in, ‘since we have one of the parish stones, we get to open our back garden up to dozens of strangers and feed them cake.’
‘It’s going to be fine,’ said his mum. ‘Great-aunt Stephanie did it every year and there’s no reason why we shouldn’t carry it on. We actually have to, anyway. It’s one of the conditions of the leasehold. It’ll be fun; you can invite your friends and turn it into a garden party.’
‘You mean like that sick spree at the vicar’s with those really interesting old people?’ He danced his knife and fork in the air. ‘Bring it.’
His dad nudged his mum. ‘I don’t know where he gets this sarcasm from.’
She scratched the bridge of her nose with her middle finger. Toby knew that she was really flipping him off. Both his parents knew that he knew, and he knew that they knew that he knew. His heart swelled with love for them so he buried it by attacking his lasagne again.
‘Anyway,’ continued his dad. ‘You should be grateful t
o those old people. I’m meeting with Mr Nash tomorrow about doing some work for him on one of the Trust’s projects.’
‘Jobs for the boys,’ commented his mum. ‘Oh, which reminds me…’ She went to the fridge, to which an official-looking letter had been stuck with a magnet. While they’d been out at the storage place, the post had arrived, bringing with it an invitation for Toby to visit nearby Pittfield Grammar School, quite informally, and have a chat with the deputy master about whether he thought he might like to apply for a place in the coming summer term.
Toby’s lasagne dried to ashes in his mouth. He swallowed and with difficulty managed to choke out, ‘What? What grammar school? I didn’t know anything about this! I thought I was going to the comp!’
‘It’s an excellent school,’ said his mother. ‘It’s close by, and I hear it’s got a great art department. We should at least go and look.’
‘But you’re supposed to sit the eleven-plus exam to get into a grammar, and I haven’t done that! All the kids there are going to be really clever. I’m not going to be able to keep up with them. They’ll know I’m thick the moment I open my mouth!’ He looked to his dad, but Peter Feenan was chewing his food with that silent intensity which Toby knew meant that he’d decided to stay out of it.
‘Of course you’re clever enough,’ said his mum, reaching to pat his arm. He pulled away. ‘The letter says that they’ve seen your grades from your old school and that you seem to be a very promising young man.’
‘How have they seen my grades? Who said they could do that? That’s like, data protection or something, isn’t it?’
‘I think you might be overreacting a bit—’
‘So, what? They’re going to fudge it and let me in anyway? How’s that going to look? I’m going to be the thick estate kid who only got in because his parents pulled some strings. They’ll eat me alive!’
‘You don’t think you’re jumping to conclusions just a bit?’
Toby made an effort to control his breathing and speak in calm, measured tones; his voice had broken a year ago but it still had a tendency to squeak when he was stressed, and the last thing he wanted was to sound like a child. ‘Mum,’ he said, ‘you don’t understand what it’s like. That kind of thing – that sort of unfairness, jumping the queue that everybody else has had to stand in – it’s social death. They’ll crucify me. Please, it’s bad enough that I’m having to leave all my friends anyway, please let me just go to a normal school with normal kids.’ He had no qualms about resorting to emotional blackmail. You fought with what weapons you had.
His mum sat back in her chair with a little sigh of surprised resignation, as if she genuinely could not understand why he was turning down such an amazing opportunity. ‘Well then I suppose of course, if you really don’t want to go, you shouldn’t have to.’
‘He’s a clever boy,’ said his dad. ‘He’ll be clever wherever. That wasn’t meant to rhyme, by the way.’
It defused the tension to some extent, and the conversation quickly turned to other, more neutral matters.
* * *
A couple of hours after dinner, while Toby was at the big desk in his room drawing a stone circle but making it cooler by turning it into an interdimensional arena in which alien gladiators fought, his dad came to see him. One of the disadvantages of this being a converted loft space was the fact that it had no door – steps led straight up from the upstairs hallway, so by the time his dad had knocked on the wall and coughed he was effectively already in the room. He didn’t say anything straight away, of course. He hovered. He glanced at the posters – Aston Villa, something with superheroes, something with zombies. He trailed around the furniture – new bed, new bookcases, new wardrobe, TV and games console – like an old-fashioned butler looking for dust. He even looked over Toby’s shoulder at his picture and made approving noises even though it was obvious that he didn’t get it.
‘Room okay?’ he asked.
‘It’s okay,’ Toby replied.
His dad went to the window and looked out over the back garden. ‘Bit far away from everything, right up here.’
‘I like it.’ He didn’t mean that to sound as defensive as it came out; he knew his dad was only making small talk to build up to something. ‘Also I won’t disturb you with my loud rock-and-or-roll music,’ he added, trying to make a joke of it.
Eventually his dad cleared his throat and said, ‘Try not to be too hard on your mother, yeah?’
‘Dad—’
‘I know, I know. It’s just that the last few years have been hard on us all, and now this has fallen in our laps,’ he made an encompassing gesture which meant not just the room, but the house and the neighbourhood surrounding it. ‘And I think she’s just keen to make up for lost time, you know?’
Toby nodded. ‘I get it. It was just a bit of a surprise, that’s all.’
‘Felt like people talking about you behind your back?’
Toby’s heart swelled with sudden love and gratitude, mingled with surprise that his dad understood – at least some of it. He hid it by turning back to his sketch and adding some more shading that it didn’t need. ‘A bit. But yeah. I know she means well.’
Dad nodded. ‘Okay then.’ As he passed, he laid a hand on Toby’s shoulder. ‘For what it’s worth, I think you made the right decision.’ He patted it, and moved on. ‘Oh, hey,’ he added. He’d stopped by the old bureau which was in one of the only really tall spaces by the stairs. ‘This looks good here. Nice job.’
It was only after he’d left that Toby remembered the piece of paper that had fallen out of it.
7
THE DEAD GIRL
TOBY READ ITS SINGLE LINE AGAIN.
Heb13/2 Is58/7 Ez16/49–50
Lying in bed with just the screen of his phone filling the room with its cold blue glow, he googled it on the off-chance. The Internet threw up three biblical references:
—Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by this some have entertained angels without knowing it.
—Share your food with the hungry and provide the poor wanderer with shelter—when you see the naked, clothe them, and do not turn away from your own flesh and blood.
—The crime of Sodom was pride, gluttony, arrogance, complacency; such were the sins of Sodom and her daughters. They never helped the poor and needy; they were proud and engaged in filthy practices in front of me; that is why I have swept them away as you have seen.
Then he googled the story of Sodom, which he read with deepening unease. As much as the details were disturbing in themselves – of a father offering his virgin daughters to a violent mob in order to protect his house guests from being gang-raped, and the entire city being razed to the ground in punishment – more disturbing to him was the sense he got of the person who had written the note. He’d never given much thought to Stone Cottage’s previous owner, other than as a distant relative of his mum. Never imagined her as a solitary, elderly woman living in a house of empty rooms, approaching her death. His imagination fashioned the shape of her sitting at her bureau, which now stood in the shadowed recess of his room, the curve of her spine against a straight-backed chair, paging through the crackling onionskin pages of an ancient Bible with liver-spotted hands as she read stories of betrayal, angelic curses, and genocide into the dusty silence. So easy to imagine her stop, straighten as she became aware of his presence, and turn to look at him with eyes which—
Toby jerked awake with a cry. For a moment he couldn’t remember where he was. There was no familiar street light here or sound of traffic on the busy road outside. It was altogether too dark, too quiet. His phone had just fallen to the floor, uplighting the room and pulling the shadows high towards the odd-angled ceiling in skewed perspectives. He checked the time: 1:43.
Stone Cottage. New home. Not the flat.
Obviously there was nobody sitting at his bureau. Just another intruder nightmare brought about by staying up too late on his phone. Nothing to see here, folks, move along. All the
same, he got up and went to the window just to be sure, listening to the strange new creaks of the floor under his feet, wondering how long before they became familiar, before this place would feel like home. This place is safe. It’s protected, she’d said, but she’d lied.
Because there was someone in the back garden.
Toby’s breath stopped.
He tried to tell himself that this was just another hallucination like the one of the old woman created by his doze, and for a moment he almost believed it.
A girl, he was fairly certain of that, from the slightness of her figure, the shift-type dress that she wore, and her long hair. Beyond that he couldn’t tell much because of the darkness that left her face in shadow, but her pale arms looked somehow blotchy. She was standing in the middle of the lawn, right by the parish stone.
No green skull, no crowbar. She didn’t look like she was about to smash her way through the kitchen window and beat him up. She wasn’t doing anything, as a matter of fact, just standing there. It occurred to him that she might be a junkie, either looking for something to steal or simply too high to notice where she was, although he couldn’t imagine how she’d got in because the back gate was firmly locked; she’d have had to climb the fence and she didn’t look strong enough for that. In fact, given that it was still only April and had been raining all day, he wouldn’t have been surprised to find that she’d caught her death of cold. She didn’t look dangerous. For a moment he wondered whether he should get his parents to call an ambulance or something – maybe that shift thing was a hospital gown. Maybe he should let her in for some warmth and shelter.
‘Some have entertained angels without knowing it,’ he murmured.
The girl’s head snapped up, staring straight at his window. Her face was still in shadow but now there was the glitter of eyes deep in sunken sockets.
Staring straight at him.
He yelped and fell back. It was impossible that she could have seen him – almost as impossible as her being there in the first place.
The Plague Stones Page 5