What he had to do then was think like a robber, a crook who was going to come back real soon and take the loot and run away once the cops had been by. He nodded to himself, looked back to the toolshed and knew that was too obvious. If he was going to hide it out here, then, he would have to put it in the well, but cover it with something. Grass, maybe some dirt, so the light wouldn’t shine off it.
Suddenly, lightning sheered out of the clouds, ripping a hole in the night like a sheet tearing in half. He jumped and clutched the jewel to his stomach, closed his eyes and waited for the thunder.
When it came, cracking the air and smashing over his head, his ears stoppered, and he yelled, jumped to his feet and stared wide-eyed at the house.
This was nuts. He was going to fry out here, all for a stupid piece of chocolate.
Then he put a hand on the plaster lip and looked into the well.
And blinked.
The edge only came to his waist, but it looked like it dropped a hundred miles into the ground. Maybe even a million. Mr. Kneale must’ve dug a hole under it, to pretend it was real and keep them from playing their trick on him again. He smiled; it was perfect. And he leaned over, reached out his hand, and when lightning flared again he could see all the way to the bottom. To the grass. To the lousy damned grass.
“Well, shit,” he said, and without wasting any more time, he hitched himself onto the lip and dropped in.
The wind passing over the mouth sounded like hollow trumpets, and the sides quivered, the peaked roof shook, and the plastic bucket on the chain rocked alarmingly fast. It was a tight fit, but he had plenty of room to dig a small hole between his shoes with his fingers, place the jewel carefully inside and cover it again. Then he waited for the next bolt to be sure his work couldn’t be seen.
When it came, he saw the water, and couldn’t stop himself from falling toward the red eyes floating toward him.
This isn’t funny anymore, Jeremy thought, but he didn’t have the nerve to leave the deacon’s bench and complain. Bernie was in the kitchen again, making something on the stove, rattling pans and banging spoons and whistling so far off-key the noise scraped his spine like claws on a blackboard.
This isn’t fun.
He looked over his shoulder, out the window to the yard that flicked in and out of his vision, white, black, white again and jumping over the well in the centre. He had thoughts, a few minutes ago, that he’d seen Stacey creeping around there, but when the lightning came again and there was nothing to see, he changed his mind. Stacey was crazy, but not crazy enough for that.
His tongue touched his upper lip.
His left foot tapped on the floor.
He looked to the stairwell when he thought he heard Will, then looked to the back door when he thought he heard Stace.
Then the kitchen door slammed open, and Bernie walked in.
He blinked, and tried to smile, but there was an ice cube settling on the back of his neck, and it grew when he heard the first spattering of rain on the window.
Bernie sat in his father’s chair by the fireplace and looked at the charred logs, raised her head and smiled straight at him. Her face was in partial shadow, and he could see only one eye, only one part of the mouth, only a few of her teeth.
“Are you worried about your friends?”
He nodded, and swallowed because he thought he was going to break down and cry, and that was the one thing he’d promised himself he’d never do again. All it ever did was get a slap from his father, or a shout from his mother—act your age, Jeremy Kneale, you’re not a baby anymore.
“I wouldn’t,” she whispered. “They’re doing just fine.”
“How do you know?” he said, more angrily than he’d intended. “All you do is make that stupid popcorn. Will is hurt somewhere, I just know it. And Stacey must be out there in all that rain.” He rose and stood in front of her, hands clenched at his sides, fighting the burning that flushed his cheeks. “You don’t care. You just want to get us in trouble again, that’s all. Our folks are gonna come home, and we’re gonna get in the biggest trouble in the world.”
Bernie clasped her hands in her lap and watched the logs again, as if they were burning. “Jeremy, do you know what bog butter is?”
He frowned, looked away, looked back. “What?”
“It’s our game, Jeremy. Surely you haven’t forgotten the third game. Now answer my question: Have you ever heard of bog butter?”
“I . . .” He felt a tear in his right eye, a lump of coal in his throat. “Huh?”
She smiled dreamily, and sighed. “In the old days, long before there was even a United States, they used to bury people in marshes over in England. You know what a marsh is?”
He nodded.
The rain slapped at the pane, ran over the edge of the gutter and poured into the shrubs cringing under the window.
“Well, sometimes, when they dug these people up, they found that the bodies had oozed a kind of wax over themselves. It looked a little like butter, I guess, so they called it bog butter.”
“That’s nice,” he said, knowing it sounded stupid, but what else could he say? His friends were lost in the storm and in the house, and Bernie was sitting in his father’s chair talking about dead bodies and butter and god!, he wished she’d shut up so he could talk to her.
“At the time, of course, they didn’t know what had caused it, or why it was there.”
He edged away, his head ducking, his hips turning before he did. And when she didn’t seem to notice, he backed up to the staircase, then flung himself up, racing down the hall to his room on the far end. He checked under the bed, in his closet, under his desk, in the toy chest. He looked out the window and saw nothing but the rain.
He ducked into his parents’ room, and looked in everything that could have held Will, and everything that couldn’t, not caring that they’d find out when they saw the mess he made.
The guest room was just as empty.
“Will?”
The bathroom echoed thunder.
“Will!”
He was sweating now, and he couldn’t stop his fingers from snapping, couldn’t stop his lips from moving as if he were talking to himself. He checked the hall closet, but it was locked. He shook the door as hard as he could, then turned the bolt over and reached in for the string that snapped on the light.
Something fell against his legs, and he jumped back, yelping, then scowling at an empty shoebox that had dropped from the high shelf.
When he turned the light on, he saw nothing, not even when he crammed himself in and pushed everything aside that he could move, or kick, or butt with his hips.
Will wasn’t there.
He stood in the middle of the hall, turning in a tight circle and yanking his head away from the lightning.
“Will, where are you?”
In the bathroom, a faucet began dripping.
“Will!”
Downstairs, then, into the living room, the dining room, the coat closet, the pantry.
He raced through the den, and heard Bernadette still talking about corpses in old England.
He flung open the front door and stood in the rain, not caring how wet he was getting, just hoping to catch a glimpse of Stacey returning with fat Will in tow. He ran around the house and screamed over the storm into the shrubbery, into the garage, into hedging that whipped at his arms and drew blood on his cheek.
“Stacey!” A cry more than a shout.
“Will!” Begging more than demanding.
There was no one in the tool shed, no one in the well.
He plunged back inside and stood by the table.
“Bernie.”
She sighed, lightning flared, and the lamp flickered out.
“Bernie, answer me!”
He swung his arm and knocked over the bowl of popcorn. He kicked the table’s near leg and toppled the glasses of soda. He picked up a chocolate bar and flung it at the hearth.
“Bernie, dammit!”
“N
ow that,” she said, “is one of the things your father objects to. That kind of language.”
“But—”
“And not paying attention. He said—they all said—none of you pay the slightest attention to them.” She turned her head; he could see it moving though he couldn’t see her eyes. “I could see that the first time I came here. And I could see something else, something rather sad, when you think about it a bit.”
He shook his head and felt the water scattering across the room. “I don’t give a damn about them now,” he said, grabbing the cardtable by its edges and tipping it to the floor. “I want to know what you did with Will and Stacey!”
“You see, Jeremy, there are some people who just aren’t cut out to be parents. They haven’t the innate skills, or the temperament for it. Soon enough, they learn that children aren’t pets, they’re real human beings, and that’s quite a revelation, don’t you think? That children are human beings?”
He started to cry. He couldn’t help it. Frustration at her refusal to respond made him so angry he couldn’t stop the tears, or the way his legs stiffened as he kicked aside the wreckage and started to walk towards her.
“You, of course, didn’t help very much,” she said in light scolding.
“Bernie, please!”
“So your father found someone who knew me. And I came to help them get over their problem.”
He stopped.
He could hear the soft whisper of Bernie’s dress as she pushed out of the chair; he could hear the moist rattling of her breath in her throat; he could hear the odd way her feet struck the carpet as she walked over to meet him.
“Now, do you remember what I said about bog butter, Jeremy?”
He took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and screamed, “I don’t care!”
“Ah, but you should, dear, you should.”
There was lightning, and he gasped.
“They thought, you see, it was a curious little by-product of decomposition.”
There was thunder, and the lamp flickered.
“It isn’t, you know.”
The lamp steadied, and he saw her, saw her soft silken dress and her soft silken hair and the glistening yellow wax that covered her soft silken arms.
“It’s protection, my love.”
He backed away, and screamed.
The lamp sizzled and went out.
“It keeps us alive. So we can help those who need us.” She laughed then, and moved closer. “Now what are you afraid of, dear Jeremy my love. Why don’t you tell me so I can show you what it’s like.”
Catch Your Death by John Gordon
One of the chief joys for any horror enthusiast lies in discovering a new writer. On the advice of Rosemary Pardoe, I hunted through the children’s books section of Foyle’s to find a book entitled Catch Your Death and Other Ghost Stories crammed in beside books about Fluffy the Bunny and the like. While the characters in these stories are often adolescents, there is nothing childish about John Gordon’s fiction. This is one of the finest collections of horror stories in many years.
John Gordon was born in the North of England, the son of a teacher. His family moved South in the Depression of the 1930s, and he was educated at a Grammar School in East Anglia before joining the Navy in 1943. After the war he became a journalist and worked on a number of newspapers. He is now a full-time writer. Gordon is married and has two grown-up children. He enjoys music and walking. His books include The Giant Under the Snow, The House on the Brink, The Ghost on the Hill, Waterfall Box, The Spitfire Grave, and The Edge of the World, and he has published many short stories.
“I seen it.”
“Ya never.”
“It were bigger’n me. Bigger’n you. Bigger’n her, an’ all.”
“Bigger’n Sally? She’s only little, your little sister is.”
Ron Stibbard’s head jutted forward. “I’ll give you a crack acrost the skull if you don’t shut up. It were bigger’n all three on us put together. It were huge.”
“I should think it was huge, then.” Wayne Spencer had his arms spread as though he was about to fight or fly; it didn’t matter to him which it was. He had taken off his anorak and tied the sleeves round his middle so that it hung behind him like an apron in reverse. “It must have been huger than anything I ever see. Huger than anything anybody ever see, I reckon. Hi, Miss!”
He spun away, and Ron and Sally watched him barge into backs, fronts, shoulders, anything in the way of his elbows as he ran up the slope of the playground towards the teacher. Miss Birdsall was looking out to sea across the rooftops, the winter mist in her eyes.
“What’s he going to do?” said Sally and put her hand in her brother’s coat pocket where he felt it stirring like a little mouse. It said more than her voice did. She was frightened.
“It don’t matter what he do. We seen it.”
“Hi, Miss.” Wayne’s shout reached them down the slope. “Ron Stibbard reckon he have seen something in the lane.”
Miss Birdsall’s gaze came slowly back from the smooth roll of the sea under the mist, crossed the slate roofs, drifted in over the railings and fluttered to rest on Wayne. “What has he seen?” she said. “And there’s no need to shout.”
It had no effect; they could still hear him. “He have seen a big black dog, Miss. Bigger’n him himself, and me, both on us together. What do you reckon, Miss?”
Her smile seemed to have a pale colour, something like the blue of her eyes. “I should think he’s seen a big black dog,” she said. “Did it bite him?”
“It don’t have to bite him, Miss. Not if it’s Black Shuck. You only have to see it and you die.”
In the long lane along the cliff the boy’s voice was no more than a gull’s call. A shadow shifted in the hedge. Brown eyes blinked.
I hang in the hedge, a scatter of shadows. I am dog-shape and pad these long lanes. I am Death-Bringer.
“I had that liver for me lunch. You know I did, dear.” Mrs. Birdsall always held a little handkerchief, and now, as she gazed up at her daughter, she teased it between her fingers. “I warmed it up, just like you told me, Mary. That and a few veggies, which I done meself.”
“I meant it for supper, Mother. There was enough for both of us.” Mary Birdsall’s soft voice had no more rise and fall to it than the sea shushing against the beach at the end of the road. She gazed vacantly into the red glow of the fire. The little parlour was almost in darkness, and for a long moment the only sound was the ticking of the big clock on the mantel. She turned a sigh into a deep breath, but her mother was not deceived.
“You didn’t want me to go hungry, Mary, did you?” The handkerchief was stretched like a drumskin. “An’ you know very well you left it on the shelf for me. Why was it there if it wasn’t for me?”
“There was some cold meat, Mother. And a salad. Surely you saw them.”
There was a silence in which the handkerchief was pulled from hand to hand until it nearly tore.
“You did see it, Mother?”
The handkerchief was screwed up suddenly and raised to the corner of an eye.
“You didn’t eat that, too, did you?”
“It were so little, Mary. It weren’t hardly filling.” Her voice was a whine from the deep chair by the fireside. “And me legs have been playing me up so terrible. I can’t hardly move. I’ve had an awful afternoon, awful. I been feeling so terrible I almost got someone to run up to the school and fetch you. But I know you don’t like being interrupted, Mary.”
“Mother!” Mary Birdsall took a step nearer the short, plump figure that reclined in the low chair with both legs resting on a stool. “You know that’s not true. If you’re really bad you’ve got to send for me.”
The head with the tousled thin hair was turned away and the screwed-up handkerchief was pressed to the base of the nose. “I’m a martyr to me legs, Mary. You know I am. I was just starting the washing-up when it struck. I was right against the kitchen sink, and I had to cling there for I don’t kno
w how long. How I ever got back into this room I shall never know.”
“How are you now, Mother?” Mary Birdsall put the bag she was carrying down on the floor and reached for the free hand that her mother had conveniently left lying limply on the chair arm. “Are you better?”
The hand, surprisingly thin and damp, clutched feverishly at hers. “I can manage. You don’t need to worry about me, dear.” In the dim light of the dying fire, the liquid in her eyes glowed bravely. “I ain’t intending to go just yet. I think I’ve got a few years left to me.”
“Of course you have, Mother.”
Quite suddenly, energetically, old Mrs. Birdsall was elbowing herself upright. The gleam of her eyes had caught sight of Mary’s shopping-bag.
“So you got something for us after all, did you, Mary? I knew that liver wasn’t for supper. There weren’t hardly enough. What did you get?”
Mary Birdsall’s mild eyes glazed at the wrinkled face as the stooped figure got to its feet.
“There’s nothing wrong with your legs, now, Mother.”
“I been resting them. They’ll be all right for a minute. What was it you fetched?”
“I came straight from school. I haven’t been to the shop.” Mary picked up the bag and with the first precise action she had made since coming into the room, she began placing its contents on the table. “Schoolbooks, Mother. I’ve got some marking to do tonight.”
“What’s the use o’ them?” The old mouth turned down at the corners and the rounded shoulders swung away from her daughter as Mrs. Birdsall shuffled towards the door in the corner.
“If you get the washing-up done, Mother, I’ll just go and get something from the shop.”
“I got to pay a call.”
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