Where Monsters Lie

by Polly Ho-Yen

  There was a heartbeat of heavy silence. I could imagine Dad staring into the distance, Kathleen glancing nervously at him.

  ‘I’d better be off,’ said Dad. I heard the chair creak and shift as he stood.

  I quickly darted up the rest of the stairs, as lightly as I could.

  ‘Kev, don’t leave like this,’ said Rob, following Dad into the hall. ‘We stopped being friends when all that happened. Like Kath said, it’s not easy being a parent . . . I know Effie’s carrying on the way she did must have been hard. We’ve never spoken of it before tonight, but maybe now’s the time—’

  ‘You don’t know anything about it.’ The way Dad spoke made me think he was about to cry. With that he left, and by the time I heard the front door close behind him, I was standing outside Finn’s bedroom, my hand resting on the cold brass doorknob.

  I was about to turn it when I heard Rob’s voice float up to me.

  ‘You know what I was going to say?’ he said to Kathleen. ‘That life’s too short to lose a friend.’

  Then there was only the sound of Dad’s footsteps disappearing down the path.

  Chapter Thirty-six

  ‘Effie, love,’ said Kathleen. ‘It’s time for school.’

  I coaxed my heavy limbs from my bed on the floor and felt a pain reach sharp fingers all the way up to my temples as I sat up. The conversation I had overheard last night wove its way through my mind, not letting me forget it.

  ‘Where’s Tommi?’ Usually what wakes me first is the sound of her calling for me.

  ‘Your dad’s been over to get her. Old Bill’s looking after her today; he was able to start early.’

  ‘OK,’ I said, defeated. I wouldn’t be able to protect Tommi if it was only Finn and me who believed the slugs were a danger.

  Dad had brought round a bag of clothes for me, but he’d packed my old school jumper that was too small for me. I felt uncomfortable and restricted in it, as tightly bandaged as a mummy, but there was a cold wind, so I had no choice but to wear it. On top of the bag I found a brown envelope with my name on it, but the writing was not Dad’s.

  ‘What’s this?’ I asked Kathleen.

  ‘Oh, it’s nothing,’ she said. ‘Rosemary Tanner brought it round for you. She said that she saw you weren’t well in the lane yesterday – it’s tea to make you better. Bill told her that you were here – she insisted on leaving it for you. You don’t have to drink it; in fact, you’d better not. I have no idea what Rosemary puts into those remedies of hers.’

  ‘I don’t think I will,’ I said, looking at the grey, dust-like powder that was inside.

  ‘Here – I’ll make you a ginger, honey and lemon instead,’ Kathleen said; she took the envelope and threw it away.

  ‘What shall we do?’ I asked Finn as the school bus set off. Mivtown disappeared behind us, and for an uncanny moment the village seemed stagnant, waiting until our return.

  ‘We could show them the slugs on the binoculars,’ Finn suggested. ‘That’s something they can see in front of them.’

  ‘But Dad didn’t think that there was anything wrong with Buster’s grave; he didn’t reckon it was that strange. Maybe they won’t think the slugs on Mum’s binoculars are that strange either. But how can they not sense it? How can they not see that something’s wrong?’

  ‘Maybe they don’t want to,’ Finn said.

  ‘I overheard our parents talking last night,’ I said. ‘After you went to sleep I snuck downstairs.’

  ‘What did they say?’

  ‘Just that they didn’t believe us,’ I said, not wanting to repeat what Dad had said about me. ‘But they said something about Rosemary Tanner. About Mum and Rosemary Tanner. Do you know anything about that?’

  ‘No.’ Finn shrugged. ‘Apart from – well, they didn’t seem to like each other.’

  I paused, trying to think of the times they had spent together, and found that I couldn’t see them side by side in my head.

  ‘Mum never said it out loud, but I don’t think she liked Rosemary Tanner – or any of the oldies – that much really,’ I said. ‘And Dad doesn’t want her in the house. I think that was because of Mum not liking her.’

  ‘Your mum avoided her,’ Finn said. ‘People don’t like the way she goes on about the legend. I don’t think anyone really believes in it but Rosemary Tanner.’

  ‘But what about the other oldies? They must do.’

  ‘Maybe not in the same way,’ Finn mused. ‘Like Old Bill said, the legend is about keeping children away from the water. He doesn’t really think there are monsters in there.’

  ‘I don’t know . . . he also said that he couldn’t get them out of his head. Maybe there’s something he didn’t want to admit to us. Perhaps the oldies know more than we think, especially Rosemary Tanner. She was asking me about the slugs – when they turned up and that kind of thing. She might think they are like the description the girl twin gave – the feel of them . . .’

  ‘Yes,’ Finn agreed.

  ‘And maybe it’s time to ask your mum about things too. About when we were born.’

  The school day passed slowly, as things do when you are impatient for them to end; the tiredness that hung over me like a cloud didn’t help.

  ‘There isn’t one example of this in this poem, there are many . . .’ Miss Bell’s voice had lulled me into a semi-conscious state. Somewhere between wakefulness and light dozing.

  ‘Here’s one: Did gyre and gimble . . . Second line down.’ I felt my head begin to nod – I couldn’t help myself.

  ‘Who can give me another?’

  Miss Bell’s question sounded foggy and far away.

  ‘Effie?’

  It wasn’t her voice saying my name that woke me but the sharp kick that Finn had delivered under the table.

  ‘Umm . . . pardon?’ I said. I looked around, startled, and blinked my eyes open. A couple of children sniggered.

  ‘Don’t be so rude, Effie Waters,’ Miss Bell said. She fixed me with a stare. ‘It doesn’t suit you.’

  I really hadn’t meant to be rude – although I supposed that didn’t matter because Miss Bell thought I had.

  ‘Sorry, miss.’

  ‘Now that we have your attention, Effie, perhaps you could point us in the direction of an example of Lewis Carroll using nonsense words to create atmosphere . . .’

  I looked down at the page. The words swam in front of my eyes as I tried to understand what Miss Bell was asking me. At times like this Finn and I always agreed that you should concentrate on looking at whatever it is you’re asked about, then pick the first thing you see.

  I scrunched up my face as if I were thinking very hard. After a moment or two I chose a word from the very top of the page.

  ‘Slithy?’ I ventured.

  Miss Bell looked taken aback. ‘Yes, slithy,’ she said. She gave me an appraising look. ‘What does that make you think of?’

  I sighed, but only on the inside. ‘It makes me think of . . . of . . .’ and I scrunched up my face once more and bent over to study the poem. I concentrated on the word ‘slithy’ so much that it stopped looking like a word at all – it was just little black lines and squiggles on the white page.

  ‘Slithy,’ Miss Bell repeated slowly, letting the word slide off her tongue.

  ‘Slugs,’ I said, sitting back up. Finn straightened in his chair as I said it. ‘It makes me think of slugs.’

  ‘Yes, I see what you mean,’ Miss Bell said. ‘I suspect slugs are rather slithy too. Good.’

  The slugs weren’t only in our house now. They were in my head.

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  When I got home from school, I overheard Old Bill talking on the phone. I had slipped in through the back because I’d stepped in a large puddle on the lane and didn’t want to tread mud through the house.

  ‘Listen – listen to me,’ he said, and there was a note of urgency in his voice that I had not heard before. ‘We made the offering, didn’t we? We did the Tindlemas. What’s it got
to do with her?’

  Just then, Tommi saw that I’d snuck into the kitchen and started shouting for me. I heard Old Bill quickly hang up the phone; when he came through to greet me, I noticed that he looked a little flustered and his cheeks were flushed.

  ‘Effie,’ he said. ‘Didn’t hear you come in.’ Was I imagining that he was looking at me anxiously?

  ‘Just had muddy shoes,’ I said.

  ‘Well, I’ll get going now. Your dinner’s in the pot on the stove. Just needs warming through.’

  ‘Thanks,’ I said, and for a moment I thought of asking him if he knew anything else about the legend. But something stopped me. ‘Bye then.’

  ‘Cheerio.’ For a second I thought Old Bill was going to say something more too, but then he turned and left me alone with Tommi – and the sinking feeling that perhaps he was not someone we could trust after all.

  It was harder than I’d expected to ask Kathleen about what had happened when we were born, and to find out what Rosemary Tanner thought about the slugs.

  I rarely saw Rosemary Tanner and I didn’t want to venture to her cottage to ask her outright. I decided to wait until she was round at ours again, or until I passed her in the village.

  Every time I tried to talk to Kathleen, something stopped me. Sometimes it was me: the words were on my tongue, but there they stayed, heavy and stubborn, refusing to budge. Other times, I opened my mouth to speak, and then Finn or Rob would come in, unsettling me; I wanted to ask Kathleen when we were alone.

  Did she wonder why I was hanging around with her rather than with Finn, who was looking through Mum’s binoculars from his bedroom window? She didn’t remark on it. She sat sewing a quilt for the Lambs’ baby, Colan, and the movement of her hands soothed me almost into a trance. Then Rob would come in from work, and I had missed my chance once again.

  ‘It’s looking great, love,’ he remarked, looking at the colourful patchwork of squares on her lap, growing slowly, piece by piece.

  ‘Yes,’ I agreed, and then, thinking aloud, ‘Maybe you could make one for Tommi?’

  ‘Of course,’ Kathleen replied, beaming. ‘I’d love to. You could help me if you wanted. I could teach you . . .’

  ‘Oh, I don’t think I could—’

  ‘It’s not difficult. Really. Just takes time. And practice. Remember, Rob, when I was starting out? I made some right humdingers. But then I got better.’

  ‘Aye, that’s right,’ said Rob. ‘There was a time when every female in Mivtown was wearing a Kathleen Original.’

  ‘Even my mum?’ I asked.

  ‘Aye. Even your mum. Didn’t you make Tori that maternity dress with the little flowers on, Kath? You had matching ones.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said softly – at the same time as I said, ‘I know that dress! It’s my favourite!’

  She smiled over at me. I thought of that dress now: buried several feet under the ground, out of sight, and for the first time I wished I hadn’t put it in Mum’s coffin.

  ‘I liked the flowers,’ I said awkwardly.

  ‘Yes, your mum chose the material. She liked the flowers too. She said they reminded her of the plant that grows at the edge of the loch.’

  ‘Bladderwort,’ I said, the name appearing on my lips like a conjuring trick. ‘That’s what it’s called.’

  Kathleen sat up quickly, as though a thought had just occurred to her. ‘I think I still have some! I’m sure I came across a bit when I was sorting through my fabric for Colan’s quilt. Would you like it?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, suddenly feeling shy.

  Kathleen dug around in the trunk beside her chair and pulled out one of the scraps. It was only a small piece, but it felt silky; maybe a little worn, but all the better for it because it had lost its stiff edge of newness.

  I stuffed the fabric into my pocket so I wouldn’t forget it, and all afternoon I kept delving into its soft, silky folds to check that it was still there.

  That night I fingered the piece of flowered fabric as I lay in bed. It was as soft and reassuring as the old yellow baby blanket that Tommi still liked to sleep with.

  When I slept, I dreamed of Mum. She was at the loch, walking on the water towards me, and even though I knew that this was impossible, I didn’t think it was weird, I thought it was normal. Dreams change the rules of what you can accept.

  Her hair was far longer than it had ever been when she was alive. It hung all the way down her back and looked as silvery as the water itself, but it was her skin that was really remarkable: it was etched with the same flower print as the fabric – the webbed leaves and yellow, trumpet-like flowers of the bladderwort – like a tattoo . . . Although it didn’t look like it had been drawn on like a tattoo; it looked like it was part of her.

  Every part of her was covered in the tiny flowers and leaves – the soft skin of her eyelids right down to her little toes.

  I didn’t say, ‘Mum’ when I saw her. I just said, ‘Tori Waters,’ as if she and I were strangers to each other, meeting for the first time.

  Then she said: ‘Effie Waters.’

  And I woke up.

  This morning I woke from a dream where I was in the water again. The sky turned black, just as it did before, but this time there’s not Da’s arm to rescue me, and I wake at the exact moment when I start to sink down.

  It takes me a moment to remember who I am, where I am, how old I am now. I’m no longer a child.

  That’s when I felt the slug on my arm. It felt quite terrible against my skin. Such coldness, like death itself. I pulled it off. I couldn’t bear to have it touch me.

  It made me think only one thing.

  It has begun . . . And I would do anything to stop it.

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  After my dream about Mum I couldn’t get back to sleep.

  I spent a few moments telling myself that it wasn’t real, but the image lived on in my mind; I couldn’t shake it. Mum’s face was still indelibly etched upon me.

  I dragged my sleep-heavy body out of bed. I stumbled at first, my limbs protesting, but then I got my balance and took unsteady steps towards my window to look out at the loch.

  You could barely see it in the darkness. Each time the moon’s white face appeared from behind a cloud, the light caught the ripples in the water. But otherwise you wouldn’t have known it was there. I could imagine it, though, lying in wait like a slippery secret. Black and full of distorted reflections. So dark that you could never see the bottom.

  There was no sign of Mum walking on the water, though, that was for sure.

  ‘There’s nothing there,’ I said out loud, and by now I was fully awake.

  The house was silent, apart from the occasional drips from the bathroom tap, which always leaked no matter how tightly you turned it. I looked in on Tommi, who was sound asleep in a warm bundle. I checked the room for slugs, and finding none, settled back into my bed, seeking out the warmth of my duvet but finding it cold and unwelcoming.

  I envied Tommi’s ignorance; if she woke up, she expected everyone else to as well. I would like to have woken Dad or Tommi rather than sitting by myself, my feet cold on the floorboards. I no longer believed that I was at the centre of things, and I knew better than to wake Dad, who needed to work tomorrow, or Tommi, who would get upset because she wouldn’t understand.

  In the end I switched on my lamp rather than sitting in the darkness, and after blinking in the golden beam I pulled the duvet around me once more, and reached for my book.

  I suddenly realized that there was something missing from my bedside table . . . Something had gone, but I couldn’t say what. I stared at it for a few minutes, trying to play Spot the Difference against a blurry image in my head. What was it?

  The book was where I always left it, its ragged bookmark still sitting in the page I’d last read; my alarm clock said 3:10 in bright red digits; the lamp stood in the corner. Next to the clock were a couple of hairbands, as there always were, and my wristwatch, face up.

  I couldn�
��t tell you what was missing, but I knew, with the cold chill of certainty, that someone had stolen into my bedroom that night and had taken something from me.

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  ‘If you don’t know what it is, then it can’t be that important,’ Finn said when I told him.

  ‘It is,’ I insisted. ‘It doesn’t matter that I don’t know what it is. The point is, someone got into our house, came into my bedroom and took it from right next to where I was sleeping.’

  ‘But how do you know it was there when you don’t remember what it was?’ Sometimes Finn is frighteningly logical.

  ‘I know it was something . . . something important.’ The idea was racing round and round my head, but each time I thought I was close to it, it sped up and disappeared round the corner, just out of my grasp.

  ‘Try not to think about it. It’ll probably come to you then.’

  ‘OK. Let’s talk about something else.’

  ‘So you didn’t ask my mum in the end?’

  ‘No – I was about to, but your dad came home and— Finn!’ I said. ‘That’s what went missing! The fabric!’ I thought of the tiny scrap that Kathleen had given me. For a moment I’d had a piece of Mum that I could hold in my hand, and now it was gone.

  ‘What?’

  ‘From my bedside table!’

  When Finn’s puzzled expression didn’t change, I explained: ‘Your mum gave me an old piece of fabric yesterday. The same material as my mum’s dress – the flowered one. That’s what’s missing.’

  ‘But why would anyone take an old bit of fabric from your bedroom?’

  ‘Beats me,’ I said.

  ‘Your dad!’ he guessed. ‘I bet he came in to check on you and saw the fabric. He probably just wanted to remember your mum or something.’

  ‘I don’t know, Finn. I don’t think Dad checks up on me any more.’

  ‘Oh, sure he does. Mine does all the time. I’m always having to pretend I’m asleep.’

  ‘Maybe. I’ll ask him.’ I paused, trying to imagine Dad creeping into my room, trying not to wake me. ‘What if it’s not him?’