by Nick Gifford
~
Matt had nearly finished when Uncle Mike appeared. He shuffled into the doorway and stopped abruptly at the sight of the meal in progress. He squinted at the brass clock on the sideboard, then raised a hand to his face in an apologetic gesture.
“Carol, love,” he said. “Sorry. Really, I’m sorry. I was held up. Stuck at the office with the VAT man.”
Carol glowered at her husband, over a half-raised fork. Slowly, she lowered the fork. Then she smiled. “Michael,” she said. “Aren’t you going to say ‘hello’ to Jill and Matthew?” All the time she spoke, her smile never faltered.
Mike looked at Carol and Matt. He still hadn’t moved from the doorway. He nodded. “Evening,” he said. “How was the journey down?”
“Fine,” said Matt’s mother awkwardly.
Tina came in with her father’s fish. Matt hadn’t noticed her slipping through to the kitchen to get it.
Uncle Mike came to sit by Matt. He smelt of beer and cigarettes. He must have had his meeting with the VAT man in the pub.
Mike picked at the fish, all the time under the relentless gaze of his wife. “Where’s Vince?” he asked, after a time.
Carol looked at the clock, then shook her head. “That boy,” she said. “I told him six o’clock.”
Tina and her mother removed the plates and the empty vegetable dishes. There was apple pie and cream for dessert. “Tina made it all herself,” said Carol proudly.
“It looks lovely,” said Matt’s mother.
They ate in awkward silence. Just as they were finishing, the front door thumped shut.
“What are you all gawping at?” demanded Vince, as he appeared in the doorway where his father had stopped only twenty minutes earlier.
“Vincent,” said Aunt Carol, in a warning tone.
He looked around the room blankly. “Yeah?” he said.
“Your mother told you six o’clock,” said Uncle Mike, as if he himself had been there all along.
“Yeah?” said Vince. “And I said, ‘Maybe.’ Okay?”
Mike had turned in his chair, so that Matt could no longer see the expression on his face. His ears were bright red, though. He was angry. Probably very angry indeed.
Finally, Mike said in a low voice, “Aren’t you going to say ‘hello’ to Jill and Matt? They’ve come visiting.”
Vince shrugged. “I’ve got eyes in my head, haven’t I?” he said. He nodded in the general direction of his aunt.
All the time this had been going on, Matt had been aware of a sudden tension in his grandfather’s posture. Gramps was staring at Vince. Tina and Kirsty were staring too.
Vince returned all the hostile looks, then shook his head. “I don’t have to take this,” he said, backing into the hall. “It’s like living in an asylum, this is.”
Seconds later, the front door opened and then slammed shut. Then there was the sound of a car door, a revving engine, a squeal of tyres.
Matt looked round the room. Gramps and his mother were staring blankly at the table again. Mike and Carol were glaring at each other. And the girls were sitting upright, smiling weakly.
Carol straightened, and the brittle smile forced itself onto her face again.
“Something to drink?” she said brightly. “We drink coffee after dinner in this family – I always feel it clears the palate after a good meal, don’t you? Father? Jill? Matthew?”
3 Dead and Buried
He’s in a corridor. Brick walls rise up all around him, a corrugated tin roof closes in over his head. A dark gutter runs along the centre of the concrete floor.
The heat is intense, the stench almost overpowering.
He keeps going, turns another corner. The dark corridor stretches out ahead of him, more brick walls to either side. As he runs, he feels his feet sticking to the ground, pulling him back as if he’s running through mud.
The smell is coming from something dead, he realises. Putrefying flesh.
And it’s following him... catching up with him.
A junction. He guesses left, feels something in his head shifting, as if he is somehow mentally aware of some abominable presence not far behind him.
His chest is aching, each breath a desperate effort. His feet feel like lead weights.
He reaches another junction, swings round the corner and –
~
Matt sat up straight in his bed, his tee-shirt stuck to his body, his chest aching as he gasped for just one more breath...
He peered around his room, the shadows and dark shapes now familiar. He resisted the strong impulse to reach for the cord above his bed and flood the room with light.
He pulled his tee-shirt up over his head and tossed it onto the floor, then lay back. He was sick of Bathside. Sick of long, empty days in an unfamiliar town.
They had been here for eight days now: more than long enough to see Gramps. More than long enough for Aunt Carol’s forced welcome to wear thin. More than long enough to do all they had to do.
He had phoned friends in Norwich a few times, but that hadn’t helped. They just thought he was on holiday, they didn’t realise how awful it was to be stuck in a drab seaside town with family who didn’t really want you around.
Yesterday, he had called home for the second time, but, just as before, he only reached the answering machine: “Hi, Nigel Guilder here – all your copying and reprographic requirements satisfied with the minimum of fuss. Afraid I can’t make it to the phone right now, but if you’d be so good as to leave your number after the tone I’ll get back to you at the first opportunity. Thanks for calling.”
Matt hadn’t left a message. He suspected his father was enjoying his freedom – he would hardly want Matt bothering him with how boring a time he was having.
He wondered if his mother had tried to get through at all. He thought that she probably hadn’t, and he didn’t like that thought.
It was starting to get light now. Perhaps he should just stay awake until morning. Perhaps...
~
In the morning, Matt went with his mother to visit Gran’s grave.
They went out to Crooked Elms in the back of a taxi, a rare extravagance on his mother’s part – she was so careful with money, these days. She’d never been like that back in Norwich.
“If Dad was here we could have gone in the Volvo,” said Matt, sullenly.
His mother pushed a strand of hair away from her eyes and opened her mouth to speak, then stopped herself. His words had clearly hurt her and he wasn’t sure if it was satisfaction he felt, or guilt.
She started again. “Dad’s working,” she said. “We can’t always rely on your father.”
When they left the taxi they followed a gravel path through the crowded graveyard and around the side of the church. The grass between the haphazard rows of headstones had been mown recently, and its sweet smell was heavy in the air.
The grounds to the rear of the church were less crowded, the stones cleaner, sharper-edged, more recent.
Gran didn’t have a headstone. Instead, she had a small plaque set at the foot of a high stone wall. It carried her name and the dates of her birth and death, nothing else.
His mother was kneeling before the plaque, her pale, blue eyes unfocused, distant. Matt stayed at her side for a minute or two, then turned away. Let her be alone, he thought. Give her some peace.
The small path wound around the back of the church and then joined another wider track. To his right, the track led through a kissing gate toward the dark shade of Copperas Wood. He turned left, heading back towards the front of the church.
As soon as he saw the low wrought iron fence he remembered it from Gran’s funeral: the mass grave from some time late in the nineteenth century.
He went closer and saw the year 1898 engraved on the tall stone cross at the back of the small enclosure. He peered through the brambles and tall grass to read the stone slabs that covered each of the six family graves.
Four members of the Sapsford family. Three members of th
e Johnsons. Four Todd-Martins.
“Twenty-one dead, from six families.”
Matt jumped at the sudden voice from behind. He turned and squinted in the harsh sunlight. A young man, blond, glasses, patchy beard. It was the vicar who had conducted Gran’s funeral.
Matt relaxed a little. “I noticed it before,” he said, feeling a need to justify his curiosity. “Were they all from the village?”
The vicar nodded. “A tragic loss,” he said. “It’s hard to put yourself in the position of those who had to endure such a catastrophe.”
“What happened?”
The vicar spread his hands in a gesture of helplessness. “There was a madness in this place,” he said mysteriously. “A single night of quite horrific violence and six families were destroyed and an entire village left in shock. Accounts from the time are confused and unclear.
“I asked the same questions when I came to this parish six years ago. My predecessor was somewhat old-fashioned: he blamed the Devil.”
Matt suppressed a shiver. “Is that why nobody looks after this part of the churchyard?” he asked, waving a hand at the tangle of brambles that covered the enclosure.
“People are scared,” said the vicar. “Scared of the madness, scared of what happened on that night. Each of us has something of the Devil within us: no-one will work here because it reminds them of this fact.”
All the way back to Bathside, sitting on the top deck of the bus, those words kept coming back to Matt: each of us has something of the Devil within us. It sounded like something out of the Dark Ages.
Vicars these days were supposed to be modern, to wear jeans and play tambourines. What must it have taken to make the young vicar of Crooked Elms talk so readily of the Devil like that?
4 The Outsider
They were talking about the possibility of selling the family house at Crooked Elms. Carol and his mother were in the kitchen, with the windows wide open. Matt sat in the shady part of the garden, staring at the pages of a thriller, unable to focus.
“Mike says it’s the best option,” said Carol. “He says it should raise at least a quarter of a million.”
Matt couldn’t see his mother’s expression, but from the long silence he could picture it clearly: eyes down, lower lip sucked in, reaching up to push the hair away from her eyes. When she spoke, the tone of her voice told him he had been right. “I don’t know,” she said, hesitantly. “It seems so... so tacky: that we should be talking like this behind his back. Have you spoken to Dad about it?”
“He didn’t understand,” said Carol, in a strained tone. “He didn’t even know which house I was talking about.”
“Can’t we wait?”
“It’s expensive, Jill, darling.” Carol had adopted a patient tone now, the one she used on her father when he was at his least co-operative. “I’m running two households here on a single budget. Dad’s pension barely meets his drinks bill. I’ve tried to reason with him, but he’s as stubborn as me.”
“But that house has been in the family for generations,” said Matt’s mother. “There have always been Waredens in Crooked Elms.”
“We sell it now,” said Carol harshly. “Or we sell it when Dad’s passed away. That’s the truth of the matter. I never liked that place, anyway.”
~
That afternoon, Matt wandered back into town. This was how his days were: walking from place to place, sitting around reading, just waiting while time passed. He didn’t belong here. He didn’t fit in. It all seemed so pointless...
Eventually, he ended up at the bed and breakfast. He let himself in to the house and climbed the stairs, a heavy feeling of gloom descending with each step.
He pushed at his door, went in and looked around.
Everything was in its place: his books lined up on the dressing table, along with his comb and washing bag. His dirty jeans were slumped in the corner where he had dropped them the night before last. His signed picture of Michael Owen was still Blue-Takked to the back of the door. There was an old crisp packet in his bin and the sticky stain of spilt Coke on his bedside table – Mrs Eldridge clearly had not been in to clean up today.
So why did he suddenly feel as if his space had been violated? Why did his eyes keep skipping around the room as if he expected someone to jump out from some hidden crevice?
He went downstairs again. Somehow he didn’t find the prospect of filling time in his room very appealing any more.
He met Mrs Eldridge in the hallway, emerging from the front room with a pile of ironing up to her chin.
“Oh, Matt,” she said. “I didn’t know you were back. Still enjoying the seaside, are you?”
“Sure,” he said. “Great.”
“Good, good.” She headed for the stairs, then paused on the first step and half-turned to face him. “Oh, I nearly forgot: your young cousin was here. Tina. I said you’d gone out and I wasn’t expecting you back until tea. Poor girl. She looked very disappointed to have missed you...”
~
The next day was a Saturday and they went to visit Gramps as usual.
Tina and Kirsty were sitting on the floor in the front room playing one of their video games.
Matt dropped into a space at the end of the sofa and watched their animated characters kicking and hacking their opponents to death. “What did you want yesterday?” he asked, eventually. When there was no sign of a reply, he added, “When you came to Mrs Eldridge’s.”
Kirsty peered at him and Tina said primly, “I’m afraid I have no idea what it is that you are talking about. You must be mistaken.”
Matt picked up the local paper and scanned its columns. Let her play her juvenile games if she liked, he decided.
Around mid-morning, his mother came in. She smiled at Matt. “Want to be useful?” she asked him.
He looked up. Anything to break the monotony, even if it meant spending the afternoon watching washing go round at the launderette. “Sure,” he said. “What is it?”
“You can go out to Crooked Elms with Vince and check on the house,” she said. “It’s been standing empty all this time: you just need to check everything’s okay, collect the post – that kind of thing. Vince knows what to do.” She held up a piece of paper. “There’s a list here. A few things Gramps has asked for.”
She glanced at Tina and Kirsty, still engrossed in their game. In a quieter voice, she continued, “Gramps seemed quite pleased when I suggested you go along – he and Vince don’t get on at all well.”
“They hate each other,” said Tina, making them both jump. “Gramps calls Vince ‘the Beast’.”
~
The Beast was working on his car in the street outside the house. He was wearing black jeans and tee-shirt, with a pair of wraparound sunglasses pushed up on his head. He looked up after a few seconds, when he became aware that Matt was watching him.
“I...” said Matt, hesitating. “When are you going out to Crooked Elms? Mum wants me to tag along, if that’s okay.” He waved the slip of paper. “She gave me a list.”
Vince rolled his eyes, then spat in the gutter. “Which do you reckon it is?” he said. “Either they don’t trust me, or they want you out of the way. Both, I reckon.” He sniffed loudly, then bent under the bonnet once again.
“Soon as I get these plugs back in,” he added.
A few minutes later, he straightened, wiping his hands down his jeans. “All right, then?” he said, dropping the bonnet and heading round to the driver’s side. Matt hauled open the near-side door and climbed in.
They drove in silence, until they were dropping down the hill towards the roundabout on the edge of town. “What’s on your list, then?” asked Vince. “They never give me lists.”
“Nothing much,” said Matt. “Some clothes, a couple of books, their old photo albums.”
Vince snorted. “I could have got all that for him weeks ago. All he had to do was ask!”
“Maybe it’s Mum,” said Matt, although he knew that the list was his grandfather�
��s. “Maybe it’s her idea.”
Vince said nothing as he swung the car around the roundabout. The main road would have taken them on to Colchester; the small road he took would bring them to Crooked Elms in two or three miles.
“Why don’t you and Gramps get on?” asked Matt, cautiously. In truth, nobody in the family seemed to get on with Vince, but it was Gramps in particular who would have nothing to do with him.
Vince smiled, raising his dark eyebrows. “He never did like me,” he said. “Not since I first came into this weird family.”
Matt wondered at his strange choice of phrase, but not for long.
“I’m the outsider,” Vince continued. “There’s no Wareden blood in me. See, I was adopted when I was little. Carol and Mike thought they couldn’t have children, so they settled for me instead. It often works like that: you can’t have children so you adopt, then suddenly it frees something up and you can have kids. Turns out you weren’t firing blanks at all, it’s just psychological. So they had the ugly sisters and suddenly they wished they’d never bothered with Vince.”
“But...” Matt didn’t know what he had been going to say, so he shut up. It seemed obvious now that Vince had explained that he was adopted: he just didn’t look like part of this family. Matt’s parents had never mentioned it, but then they never really talked about this side of the family at all.
“The old boy doesn’t trust me,”Vince went on. “He can’t fathom me, and since the business with the old girl... He really hates having to live under the same roof. When he was at Crooked Elms he could pretend I’d never happened, but he can’t any more.” Then he smiled, and added, “And he really hates me having those.” He pointed at a bunch of keys resting on the dashboard: presumably the keys to Gramps’ house.
The road climbed up a sudden bank, and through the high hedgerows Matt saw the first fringe of Copperas Wood. They must be close to Crooked Elms, then.
“What do you mean – the ‘business’ with Gran? What happened?” he asked, watching Vince carefully out of the corner of his eye. “I know there was an Inquest.”
Vince glanced at him. “She fell,” he said. “Gramps found her at the bottom of the stairs. They had to have an Inquest because they didn’t know if she had the heart attack and then fell, or if she fell and had the heart attack from the shock.”