The Wrong Train

by Jeremy de Quidt

  “… Hangman’s noose snuffed out my light, burn little candle nice and bright … ”

  Over and over again.

  She heard it in the next song too, and finally, as slowly as though it were coming to her through syrup, she realized that wasn’t how any of the songs went, and that she was dreaming.

  She opened her eyes, but even as she did, she knew that the dream was still going on because the room that she saw wasn’t her room. It was a cold, bare kitchen, and where the dresser should have been there was an iron cooking stove with a shelf above it. A dirty rag-rug lay on a stone floor. There was a chair, a table with a couple of house bricks on it—red and brown. She knew the room was quite dark because it was nighttime, but in the way of dreams she didn’t question for one moment that she was able to see everything that was there very clearly, right down to the color of the bricks. On the shelf above the stove was a black candle—its flame burning with a dirty, greasy smoke, as though the candle had been made from fat and skin, not wax. Its flame drifted lazily in a draft, but it cast no light, no shadows. If anything it made the room even darker still.

  She lay staring at the kitchen and candle.

  As she watched, the door latch lifted and an elderly woman came in. She was dressed as no one dressed anymore—in a long thick skirt with a black bonnet and a shawl—and she was carrying a leather bag. She put it down on the table. There was something inside the bag, but Cassie couldn’t see what it was. She could hear Niall crying now—she even had to listen to him in her dreams. It was almost as if the old woman could hear him too, because she glanced irritably down at the bag as though the sound of his crying was coming from there. But the woman didn’t do anything about it. She tipped her coin purse out and began counting onto the table a whole handful of coins; then she scooped them up and, crossing the room, dropped them into a jar on the shelf beside the candle. The flame guttered darkly.

  Only then did the woman turn and look at the bag. There was a different expression on her face now—wicked and deliberate. She lifted her eyes and looked straight at Cassie. Cassie could only watch dumbly as the woman took a cloth down from the shelf and began folding it into a small pad. When she was done, she walked back to the table and opened the bag. The sound of crying was suddenly louder, and Cassie realized that it was coming from inside the bag, not from Niall. With one hand the woman held the bag open and with the other she reached in with the pad of cloth and, pressing it down, stood there like that for as long as it took for all the crying to stop.

  When there was no more noise, she looked up from the bag and smiled at Cassie. It was a cruel smile. She picked up the bricks, dropped them into the bag, and snapped the clasp shut.

  Then Cassie wasn’t looking at the kitchen anymore. She was standing on the bank of a river by a deep pool and it was dark and cold, and she was watching a leather bag sink slowly out of sight.

  With a start, she opened her eyes wide. The ripples in the dark pool, the riverbank, they’d all gone.

  There was sunlight on the pillow by her cheek. She sat bolt upright and looked at the room, her breath stuffed up in her chest. There was nothing, no stove, no rug, no table. For a moment, she could have said exactly where they’d stood, but even as she looked, the image faded and disappeared. It was just her room with sunlight streaming in. But she was shaking.

  On the dresser the candles had melted and run over the plate into one dirty mess. The room smelled of burning and stale fat. She got out of bed, the linoleum damp and cold on her feet. She opened the window, retching and breathing in great lungfuls of fresh air.

  She felt sick.

  It must have been the candles, she thought. They’d studied carbon monoxide at school—maybe it was like that? She could have suffocated and no one would have known. It had been like a poison.

  She stood there breathing in the clean, cool air. She could hear her mom moving around in the kitchen, the radio on, the sound of the baby crying.

  Like the crying from the bag.

  Her tongue felt fat and dirty in her mouth. Her head ached. She sat on the edge of her bed and tried not to remember the dream.

  But she couldn’t forget the dream.

  * * *

  She still didn’t feel well when it was time for her mom to go into town for grocery shopping—it was the big shop too. But her mom didn’t believe her when she said she felt too sick to go—she’d done that before to get out of shopping—only this time she really did feel sick, and her mom didn’t believe her. She tried to tell her that it was the smell of the candles, tried to tell her about the dream, about the baby in the bag. But when she told her about that—about the baby in the leather bag—her mom’s face had gone white-pale like it only did when she was really angry, and there was nothing Cassie could say or do to put it right then. It ended with her mom calling her vicious and selfish and spoiled—and a whole lot else besides that was to do with her dad, not her—and then her mom put Niall and the buggy and all the rest of his stuff into the car and drove off without Cassie.

  That’s how it always ended up these days—Cassie on her own and her mom with the baby. It never used to be like that.

  It was never like that.

  Her mom hit the brakes hard at the end of the path; she drove like that when she was really angry. The car swung out onto the road and the noise of it grew fainter until there was nothing left but the quiet, and a taste in Cassie’s mouth like dirty wax.

  For a while she sat on the wooden back steps with her earbuds in just looking out at the orchard and wishing that she’d gone with her mom. Wishing that her mom would come back so she could say sorry to her.

  But her mom didn’t come back.

  As time wore on, Cassie began to feel more and more uncomfortable sitting there. It was an unpleasant sensation, and it grew stronger by the moment. She knew she was alone, only it didn’t feel like it. She took one earbud out and looked around at the orchard, at the long path to the road—but there was no one there.

  Quite clearly, from inside the bungalow behind her, she heard a sound.

  A baby crying.

  Just for a moment she thought that it must be Niall and that her mom had come back, only there hadn’t been a car, so it couldn’t have been.

  “Mom?”

  There was no answer, just the sound of a baby crying. Only it wasn’t like the racket that Niall made—it was faint and sickly, like the mewing of a kitten.

  She got unsteadily to her feet. Holding on to the door frame, she stepped into the kitchen; then, pulling out the other earbud, she cocked her head and listened again. The sound was coming from along the hallway.

  Coming from her bedroom.

  More puzzled than afraid, because it sounded like a cat, she went down the little narrow hallway and, pausing by the door to listen, turned the handle and opened it.

  She was looking again at the flagstoned kitchen with the iron stove, only now it was daylight. The woman was there: shawl and skirt and buttoned boots. She didn’t seem to notice Cassie. She was pouring hot milk from a pan into a stoneware baby’s bottle—Cassie could see the baby in a basket on the floor at her feet—but the milk was far too hot. Cassie could see the steam rising from the pan—you can’t give a baby scalding milk.

  The woman turned, looked straight at her, and smiled—and then Cassie didn’t know whether it was real or not, because the iron stove and the bottle, the woman and the baby, they weren’t there. It was just her room and her bed and the sunlight. It happened so quickly—like when you think you’ve seen a bird and you look again and it’s just an old brown leaf, and you don’t know whether you even saw a bird at all.

  That’s how it was.

  The woman was there

  then gone.

  Cassie stood in the open doorway looking at the empty room, at the turned-back duvet, her clothes on the floor. Her head was aching and she didn’t feel well. She wanted to cry now—didn’t want to wait on her own for her mom.

  Not there.

&
nbsp; She took her back door key down from the peg on the fridge, locked the door, and went out onto the path, down toward the road. There was a shop in the village. Nearer than the shop was the church. There was a bench just inside the gate. She could sit there in the sun and watch for her mom.

  A man was cutting the grass. She sat on the bench listening to the sound of the mower and watching the road, but it didn’t make her feel any better. She must have dozed, because the church clock woke her.

  The sun had moved around. When she opened her eyes the first thing she saw among the headstones was a small white marble statue of a little girl holding a dove. She hadn’t noticed it before, but now the sun was actually shining on it. She stretched and stood up. Walked over and read the lead-lettered inscription:

  IN MEMORY OF THE INFANTS OF THE WEIR POND.

  JUNE 1888.

  There was a weir in the river on the other side of the church; she’d seen it from a distance—a pool with willows on the banks.

  And suddenly she knew the place—

  a dark pool with willows on the banks,

  and a leather bag sinking out of sight.

  Something cold had touched her.

  She looked again at the date and the style of clothes the little girl wore—at the buttoned boots and the shawl.

  She could taste dirty black wax in her mouth.

  There weren’t any names on the marble; it just said infants.

  She looked around her. The man who’d been mowing the grass had finished. He’d put the mower away and was coming up the path toward the gate—an old man, flat cap in his hand. The village was full of them. She tried to stop him.

  “Excuse me?” she said loudly.

  He smelled of sweat and tobacco and tweed coat, and he passed her by.

  “What’s this about?” she said, pointing at the marble statue. “This one.”

  But he kept walking, and then she felt stupid and angry just to be left standing there like that.

  Beyond the churchyard wall she saw the roof of her mom’s car go past. It turned up the path.

  * * *

  Her mom had a way of talking when they’d had an argument—short, like a series of statements, not waiting for a reply—and she wouldn’t stop what she was doing either. Wouldn’t look at Cassie. She was already unpacking the shopping when Cassie got back to the bungalow, and that’s what it was like then.

  “I gave a lift to an old woman,” her mom said, pulling things out of the bags on the table and putting them on the shelves. “She was just walking along the road back from town. Had a big leather bag, and I thought, you can’t carry that, so I gave her a lift. We’ve got to get to know the locals, haven’t we, Cassie, now that we live here?”

  She glanced pointedly at Cassie as she said it.

  “She was so nice about Niall. She loves little children—especially babies. And she knew all about the old cottage that was here before this one. That’s where that outhouse comes from, she said. She was a real mine. In fact … ”

  Her mom hesitated as she put the last of the bread in the bin.

  “I’ve asked her to come for tea tomorrow. If I like her—and she’s that good with babies—she could pop in sometimes and look after Niall if I want to go out. After all, you’re never that keen, are you?” This time she looked right at Cassie—she meant to make her feel guilty.

  But that wasn’t what Cassie was feeling. What she was feeling was an emptiness, and a darkness, and it was all lit by a black, greasy candle.

  “What was her name?” said Cassie quietly.

  Because she’d already seen an old woman with a leather bag.

  “She just said to call her Nanny Candle,” said her mom. “Isn’t that sweet?”

  * * *

  Before she went to bed, Cassie threw the plate with its mess of dirty wax out into the nettles, as far away from the house as she could. She heard it land. Then she scrubbed her hands clean under the tap and lay in her room with the light on, but she couldn’t sleep. All she could think of was the old woman. Through the walls she could hear Niall crying, only if she listened carefully she could hear other crying too—faint, and far away. Crying that would stop, then start again, only it was never the same cry. It was always a different one.

  She couldn’t help thinking of the stone-floored kitchen and the iron stove—she could almost see the shape of them rising out of the hard, lightbulb-lit room around her. At last, she pulled on her sweater and padded barefoot along the dark hallway to her mom’s room. She felt safer there. A small lamp was by her mom’s bed—the light from it was soft and butter yellow—and her mom was holding Niall. He was asleep. Cassie climbed into the bed beside her.

  “Please don’t let that lady come,” she said. “I dreamed about an old lady.”

  Her mom shifted a little so that she could put one arm around Cassie.

  It felt so warm, so comfortable.

  “Don’t be silly,” her mom said. “You didn’t see her. She was nice. Just a nice old lady.”

  “She isn’t nice, Mom,” said Cassie.

  She looked up into her mom’s face. “Can we move away?” she said quietly. “I don’t like it here.” And she began to cry.

  Her mom’s face hardened and she took her arm away from Cassie. She still held on to Niall, though.

  “Well, you’re going to have to learn to like it,” her mom said firmly. “Because it’s all that we’ve got, and that’s the end of it.”

  Large, wet tears welled up in Cassie’s eyes and rolled down her cheek onto the pillow. But her mom didn’t put her arm around her again.

  * * *

  It was just after three o’clock the next afternoon that the old woman came.

  Cassie had tried everything she could think of to stop it happening, to make her mom change her mind, but none of it had worked. Short of actually running away, there was nothing she could do, and she couldn’t do that. So she waited, and now the woman was there, sitting at the little table her mom had laid.

  But was it the same woman as in the dream? Cassie couldn’t say. She kept stealing looks at her, trying to decide, but she just couldn’t say.

  At last her mom said, “Don’t stare, Cassie!” And then she said, “I’m sorry, Nanny. Cassie’s left her manners somewhere else today.”

  It wasn’t the sort of thing her mom normally said—and if she’d said “Nanny” once, she’d said it a dozen times. “Nanny, would you like some tea?” “Nanny, would you like some cake?” It sounded so false to Cassie, but the woman just smiled each time and took the tea and took the cake, and looked at Cassie and smiled some more.

  “Lovely little baby brother you’ve got,” she said.

  “His name’s Niall,” said Cassie flatly.

  “Oh, I know that, poppet; your mom told me. And I bet you love him to bits, don’t you?” She turned to Cassie’s mom. “You know, dear, if ever you wanted me to stop by and look after him for a while, I’d never mind. It would be a nice treat for me, lovely little boy like that.” And she leaned forward and pinched Niall’s cheek.

  Her mom smiled. She picked up the empty teapot from the table and made for the little kitchen.

  “I’ll just go and get some more tea, and maybe we can talk about that.”

  “I’ll get it,” said Cassie quickly, but her mom had already gone, and there was just her and the woman.

  The woman carefully sipped at her cup of tea, put it tidily down on the saucer, and looked at Cassie. Only this time it wasn’t the same woman who had sat there only the moment before.

  It was someone else completely.

  It was like a bad dream slowly blossoming in front of Cassie—the old lady in the dream and this other lady were both there at the same time sitting in the same chair—one face over the other—both talking at her.

  “You lit it, then,” the woman from the dream said.

  Cassie stared at her, openmouthed. She felt giddy and sick—could taste the dirty wax on her tongue. Could smell it in the air mixed w
ith the tea and the cake—all stale and fatty.

  The woman smiled at her, and Cassie had seen that smile before.

  “Nanny always leaves a little candle out to light her way back home,” the woman said.

  She put a bony finger to her throat, and Cassie saw on the white of her puckered skin, underneath the collar of her dress, a livid blue-and-black bruise. It went on a slant all the way around her neck.

  “Hangman did that for me, dearie,” she said. “Hardly fair, when all I do is take those girls’ little worries away. Their little mistakes.”

  Looking slyly at Cassie, she picked up her cup and sipped at it again. Only suddenly it was the lady who’d come for cake who was looking at her.

  “You all right, poppet? You look all pale,” she said.

  And then it wasn’t her anymore; it was that other face. Cold and heartless.

  “Like your mommy’s little mistake,” it said.

  Cassie glanced at Niall sitting propped in his chair.

  “Take him too, if you like? Put him in my bag of bricks, and that’ll be the end. Nanny make it all better. You’ll see.”

  Cassie stuffed her hands over her ears to shut the words out, and what actually happened next she couldn’t say, but her mom was there and the table was all turned over and the old lady who’d come for tea was standing pale-faced against the wall, flapping her hands at Cassie, trying to keep her off.

  And then Cassie was alone in the little room among the broken cups and dropped cake, listening to Niall crying from the hallway and her mom showing the woman out of the door, saying over and over again how sorry she was. How really, really sorry she was. And when the woman had left, her mom had stormed back in, face blanched white—Cassie had never seen her so angry. Niall was yelling bloody murder in her arms, and Cassie couldn’t begin to explain any of it, because her mom wouldn’t listen—said Cassie had done it all on purpose just to hurt her. Wouldn’t listen even when Cassie tried to tell her that Nanny Candle was going to come for Niall. That only made it worse.

  And she was so scared.