A Skinful of Shadows

by Frances Hardinge

  ‘Ma!’

  With Makepeace’s help, Mother unsteadily rose to her feet. She was ashen pale, and even in the darkness Makepeace could see inky lines of blood pouring down the left side of her face. She was moving wrong as well, one eyelid drooping and her right arm jerking awkwardly.

  ‘I’ll get you home,’ whispered Makepeace, her mouth dry. ‘I’m sorry, Ma. I’m sorry . . .’

  Mother stared at Makepeace glassily for a moment, as if she did not know her. Then, her face tensed and contorted.

  ‘No!’ she screamed hoarsely, and lashed out, striking Makepeace across the face and then shoving her away. ‘Stay away from me! Go away! Go away!’

  Caught off balance, Makepeace fell over. She had one last glimpse of Mother’s face, still fixed in a fierce and desperate glare, and then took a kick to the face that set her eyes streaming. Somebody else trod on her calf.

  ‘Be ready!’ somebody was shouting. ‘Here they come!’ Gunshots sounded again, as though the stars were exploding.

  Then strong hands were hooked under Makepeace’s armpits, and she was hauled to her feet. A tall apprentice tucked her over his shoulder without ceremony, and carried her bodily away from the front line, while she struggled and called for Mother. He dumped her in the mouth of an alleyway.

  ‘You run home!’ he screamed at Makepeace, red-faced, then plunged back into the fray, hammer raised high.

  She never found out who he was, or what happened to him.

  Nor did she ever see Mother alive again.

  Mother’s body was found after the bloodshed and the arrests, after the rioters were thrown into retreat. Nobody was ever quite sure what it was that had struck her in the head, and caused her death. Perhaps a wildly swung poker, perhaps an accidental kick to the head with a hobnailed boot, perhaps a stray bullet that struck her and moved on.

  Makepeace did not know, and did not care. The riot had killed Mother, and Makepeace had led her there. It was all Makepeace’s fault.

  And the people of the parish, who had bought Mother’s lace and embroidery when it suited them, decided that their precious churchyard was no place for a woman with a child out of wedlock. The minister, who had always been kind in the street, now stood in the pulpit and said that Margaret Lightfoot had not been one of the Saved.

  Mother was buried instead in unconsecrated land on the edge of the Poplar marshes. It was stubbornly brambled, welcoming only the wind and the birds, and as secretive as Margaret Lightfoot herself.

  CHAPTER 3

  You’ll be the death of me.

  Makepeace could not forget Mother’s words. They were her companion through every daylight moment, every nocturnal hour. She could imagine Mother saying them, but now in a tone steady and cold.

  I killed her, Makepeace thought. I ran away and she followed me into danger. It was my fault, and she hated me for it at the end.

  Makepeace had thought that now she might find herself sleeping in the same bed as her little cousins, but she was still left to sleep alone on the bolster she had shared with Mother. Perhaps everybody sensed that she was a murderess. Or perhaps Aunt and Uncle were no longer sure what to do with her, now that Mother’s lace-making was no longer paying for her keep.

  She was alone. The little fence that had run around Makepeace and Mother now ran round only Makepeace, cutting her off from the rest of the world.

  Everyone else in the house prayed as usual, but with extra prayers for Mother. Makepeace found she could no longer pray the way she had been taught was right, baring her soul before the Lord. She tried, but her insides seemed to be full of a wild, white emptiness like an October sky, nothing she could put into words. She wondered whether her soul was gone completely.

  On the second night, alone in her room, Makepeace tried to force the lid off her feelings. She made herself pray for forgiveness, for Mother’s soul and her own. The attempt left her shaking, but not from the cold. She was afraid that God was listening with cold, implacable wrath, looking into every rotten crevice of her soul. And at the same time she was afraid that He was not listening at all, had never listened, would never listen.

  The effort wore her out, and afterwards she slept.

  Tap. Tap, tap.

  Makepeace opened her eyes. She was cold and alone in bed, with no curve of Mother’s back beside her. The loss was vaster in the pitch blackness.

  Tap, tap, tap.

  The sound was coming from the direction of the shutters. Perhaps they were loose. If so, they would rattle all night and keep her awake. Reluctantly she rose from the bed and felt her way to the window, knowing the room too well to need a light. She stroked the latch and found it fastened. And then beneath her fingertips she felt a tremor as something tapped the outside of the shutter again.

  From behind the wooden slats, she heard another noise. It was so soft and muffled that it was barely more than a tickle in the ear, but it sounded like a human voice. There was something terribly familiar about its tone. Hairs rose on the back of Makepeace’s neck.

  There it was again, a smothered sob of sound, close against the other side of the shutter. A single word.

  Makepeace.

  In a hundred nightmares, Makepeace had battled in vain to keep dream-shutters closed and stop maddened ghosts rushing in to attack her. Her hands shook at the memory, but still her fingers rested on the latch.

  The dead are like drowners, Mother had said.

  Makepeace imagined her mother drowning in the night air, flailing in slow motion with her black hair floating wide. She imagined her helpless, alone, desperate for something to cling to.

  ‘I’m here,’ she whispered aloud. ‘It’s me – Makepeace.’ She pressed her ear to the shutter, and this time thought she could just make out the words of the muted response.

  Let me in.

  Makepeace’s blood chilled, but she told herself not to be afraid. Mother would not be like the other dead things. It was different. Whatever was outside, it would still be Mother. Makepeace could not abandon her – not again.

  She unlatched the shutter, and opened it.

  Outside a few dim stars glimmered in a charcoal sky. A clammy breeze seeped into the room, tickling her with goosebumps. Makepeace’s chest tightened with the certainty that something else had entered with the wind. The darkness had a new texture, and she was no longer alone.

  Makepeace was filled suddenly with a terrible fear that she had done something irrevocable. Her skin was tingling. Once again she felt it, the tickle of spider-feet across her mind. The reaching, tentative touch of the dead.

  She flinched back from the window, and tried to steel her mental defences. But when she thought of Mother, her private incantations became as useless as nursery rhymes. Makepeace closed her eyes tight, but she found herself remembering Mother’s face, looking as she had by candlelight on that first night in the chapel. A strange creature, with an unreadable expression, and no softness in her at all.

  There was a wintry draught against her neck, the breath of something breathless. A tickle against her face and ear – an escaped strand of her own hair, it had to be. She froze, breathing shallowly.

  ‘Ma?’ she asked, in a whisper so faint it barely grazed the air.

  A voice answered. An almost-voice. A molten mess of a sound, an idiot slobber, the consonants broken and spilling like egg yolks. It was so close to her ear, it buzzed.

  Makepeace’s eyes flew open. There – there! – filling her vision was a swirling, moth-grey, distorted face. Its eyes were holes, its mouth a long, wailing droop. She lurched backwards away from it, until her back hit a wall. She stared and stared and wanted to be wrong, even as it lunged hungrily for her eyes with fingers of smoke.

  Makepeace closed her eyes only just in time, and felt a cold touch settle on her eyelids. It was the nightmare, it was all her nightmares, but now she had no hope of waking. She covered her ears, but too slowly to stop herself understanding the soft, horrible sounds.

  Let me in . . . Let me in . . . Makep
eace, let me in . . .

  It felt its way across her mind, her defences. It found the cracks made by her grief, love and memories, and tore at them with cruel, eager fingers. It ripped pieces out of her heart and mind, as it dug its way in. It knew the way past her defences, the path to her softest core.

  And with the savagery of terror, Makepeace fought back.

  She lashed out with her mind at the thing’s smoky softness, and felt it scream as she mangled and tore it. The loose pieces of it flailed senselessly like severed worms, and tried to bury their way into her soul. It grappled and clung and raked at her. It could form no words now, only whines and wails.

  Makepeace did not mean to open her eyes again. But she did, just for a mere instant, at the very end. To see whether it was gone.

  So she saw what the face had become, and what she had done to it. She saw fear and a rictus of something like hatred on its twisted, vanishing features.

  It was barely a face at all. But somehow it was still Mother.

  Afterwards, Makepeace did not remember screaming and screaming. The next thing she knew, she was sitting on the floor, blinking in the light from her aunt’s taper, and trying to answer the family’s questions. The shutter was ajar, and banging slightly in the breeze with a tap-tap-tap noise.

  Aunt told Makepeace that she must have fallen out of bed during a nightmare. Makepeace needed her to be right. It was not completely reassuring, since she knew that ghosts battled in dreams were sometimes real. But, please God, not this ghost. This one could not have attacked her, and Makepeace could not have torn it to shreds. The very thought was unbearable.

  It had been a dream. Makepeace clung to this idea in desperation.

  It was only a week later that rumours spread of a ghost abroad on the marshes. It was said to haunt a particularly lonely stretch, too soggy for the cattle to graze, and striped with stray paths where the footing could be only sometimes trusted.

  Some unseen thing startled a wandering pedlar by crashing through the reeds, leaving a mangled path behind it. The local rooks were found to have abandoned their rookery, and the wading birds had fled to other parts of the marshlands. Then the Angel Inn, lurking on the outskirts between town and reedbeds, found itself a haunt of more than just sailors.

  ‘A vengeful spirit,’ Aunt called it. ‘They say it came at sunset. Whatever it was, it knocked in a door, caused a world of damage and beat some strong men black and blue.’

  Makepeace was the only person who heard these rumours with a painful stab of hope as well as fear. Mother’s grave was on the edge of the marshlands, not so very far from the Angel. There was a horror in imagining Mother’s ghost rampaging maddened, but at least if it was at large, that would mean that Makepeace had not torn it to pieces after all. At least she had not murdered Mother a second time.

  I must find her, Makepeace told herself, even as the thought made her sick. I must talk to her. I must save her.

  Nobody from Makepeace’s church frequented the Angel, except Old William during his lapses. Whenever he had reeled home drunk, the minister made an example of him in the sermon, and asked everyone to strengthen him and pray for him. Taking the rutted lane to the inn, Makepeace felt self-conscious, and wondered whether she would be accused of drunkenness the following Sunday.

  The Angel’s stone buildings were crooked like an arm, cradling its little stable yard. A heavy-jawed woman in a stained cotton cap was sweeping the step, but looked up as Makepeace approached.

  ‘Hello, poppet!’ she called. ‘Have you come to bring your father home? Which one is he?’

  ‘No, I . . . I want to hear about the ghost.’

  The woman did not seem surprised, and gave a curt, business-like nod.

  ‘You’ll buy a cup of something if you want a look.’

  Makepeace followed her into the darkened inn, and with a pang of guilt spent a coin of Aunt’s shopping money on a cup of small beer. Then she was led out through the rear door.

  Behind the inn lay a sawdust-covered stretch of bare ground. Makepeace guessed that this was where the inn’s entertainments took place when there were enough crowds to merit it – shaven-headed pugilists fighting each other bare-knuckle, cockfights and badger baiting, or less bloody games of quoits, skittles or bowls. Here and there it was blotted dark by old spillages of ale or blood. Beyond this space lay a low wall with a stile in it, and then miles of marshes, the wind-stirred reed-forest shimmering softly in the late afternoon light.

  ‘Come – look at this.’ The woman seemed to take a professional pride in showing Makepeace the damage. The back door’s bar was shattered, and one of its panels splintered. A window was broken, the leading bent, several of the little panes frost-white with fractures. A cloth sign had been ripped to tatters, only shreds of the image still visible – a pipe, some drums, a dark bestial shape of some sort. A table had capsized, and two chairs had broken backs.

  As she listened, Makepeace’s heart began to sink. It occurred to her belatedly that none of the ghosts she had ever encountered had left real damage one could see. They had attacked her mind, but never broken so much as a cup.

  Perhaps it was just an ordinary brawl, thought Makepeace. She cast a furtive glance at the landlady’s worn, canny face. Perhaps she made the best of the damage, and pretended a ghost caused it, so inquisitive folk would come here and buy drinks.

  The landlady led Makepeace over to two men who were grimly sipping from their tankards in the late afternoon air. Both were lanky and leathery from the sun. They were not locals, and Makepeace guessed from the packs at their feet that they were the travelling sort.

  ‘Come to hear about the ghost,’ said the woman, jerking her head towards Makepeace. ‘You can tell her about that, can’t you?’

  The two men glanced at each other, and scowled. Evidently this was not a story that put them in good humour.

  ‘Is she buying us a drink?’ asked the taller of the two.

  The landlady looked at Makepeace with her eyebrows raised. Feeling sick, and even more sure that she was being conned, Makepeace parted with another coin, and the landlady hurried off to fetch more ale.

  ‘It came at us out of the dark. You see this?’ The taller man held up his hand, around which was tied a grubby handkerchief dark with spots of blood. ‘Ripped my friend’s coat – nearly knocked my brains out against the wall – smashed our fiddle too!’ The fiddle he brandished looked as if someone had stamped on it. ‘Mistress Bell calls it a ghost, but I say devil. Invisible devil.’

  His anger seemed genuine enough, but Makepeace still did not know whether to believe him. Everything’s invisible if you’re blind drunk, she thought.

  ‘Did it say anything?’ Makepeace could not help shivering when she remembered the molten voice from her maybe-dream.

  ‘Not to us,’ said the shorter of the two. He held out his tankard as the landlady returned with a jug, and let her top it up. ‘After it was done pounding us like a pestle, it left that way.’ He pointed out towards the marshes. ‘Knocked over a post as it went.’

  Makepeace finished her drink, and rallied her courage.

  ‘Watch your step out there, poppet!’ shouted the landlady as she saw Makepeace climbing over the stile that led to the marshes. ‘Some of those paths look fair enough, but slip under your feet. We don’t want your ghost coming back here too!’

  The rustle and crunch of Makepeace’s steps sounded loud as she set off across the marshes, and she realized that she could hear no birdsong. The only other sounds were the dry music of the reeds rasping stem on stem, and the papery ripple of occasional young poplars whose leaves flickered grey-green and silver in the breeze. The quiet seeped into her bones, and with it the fear that, once again, she was making a terrible mistake.

  She glanced back nervously, and was chilled to see that the inn was already a fair distance behind her. It was as if she were a little unanchored boat that had drifted unwittingly from the shore.

  And as she stood there, Makepeace was unexpe
ctedly struck and overwhelmed by an invisible wave.

  A feeling. No, a smell. A reek like blood, autumn woodlands and old damp wool. It was a hot smell. It itched and rasped against her mind like breath. It filled Makepeace’s senses, fogging her vision and making her feel sick.

  Ghost, was her one helpless thought. A ghost.

  But this was nothing like the cold, creeping attacks of the ghosts she remembered. This was not trying to claw its way inside her – it did not know she was there. It blundered against her, hot, terrible and oblivious.

  The world swam, and then she barely knew where she was, who she was. She was swallowed by a memory that was not her own.

  The sun stung. The reek of the sawdust choked her. There was a terrible pain in her lip, and she could not shape words. Her ears filled with a buzzing drone and a cruel, rhythmic thud. With each thud, something yanked painfully at her mouth. When she tried to flinch away, a red-hot slice of pain cut across her shoulders. She burned with a rage born of agony.

  The wave passed, and Makepeace doubled over. Around her, the world still burned with sunlight, beating drums in her head and making her feel sick. Half blind, she took a clumsy step to steady herself, but instead felt her foot slide from beneath her on the moist, uneven ground. She slithered off the path and landed sprawling among the reeds, hardly feeling them scratch her arms and face. Then she leaned over and threw up, retching over and over.

  Her head gradually cleared. The strange agony faded. But she could still smell something, she realized, mixed with a choking smell of rot. And she could still hear buzzing.

  It was a different sound now, however. Before, it had been a queasy, heart-grating music. Now it settled into a insectile whirr. The buzz of dozens of tiny wings.

  Rising unsteadily to her feet, and pushing the reeds aside, Makepeace advanced further down the slope from the path. With each step the ground grew softer and claggier. She was not the only creature to have come this way, she realized. There were broken stems, gouges in the mud . . .