The Leaping

by Tom Fletcher

  And the attic – I had dreamed of a room like the attic when I was a child: a large room at the top of the house with an angled ceiling, skylights and beautiful wooden beams, and I’d always dreamed of filling it with wooden toys and old books. The attic at Fell House was already full, but of old cardboard boxes, broken furniture, a couple of bent and rusted bikes, empty picture frames.

  There was an outhouse, a little lean-to with a padlocked door stuck to the end of the barn, and inside there was a small, metal chair on which rested a hacksaw. Its walls were lined with whitewashed, rotting plaster, some of which had fallen off in places, exposing the raw stones beneath.

  Draughts prowled the corridors and the walls whispered like they were full of creatures. Old cobwebby blankets or empty tins could be found in small, tucked-away cupboards, alongside coils of rope that were tied like nooses, and rusty hammers. Beneath the floorboards, the dust was a foot deep. Fell House was an old house.

  I lay there, aching, as Jennifer slept. I looked across the room at the window and outside the night was dark. A draught was tickling my face and making my exposed torso uncomfortably cold. We didn’t have any curtains yet. I slowly disengaged myself from Jennifer’s arms and slid off the bed, and then walked quietly across the room, across the bare, splintery floorboards, to the window. I looked out eastwards over the old yard and beyond on to the fellside, so that my line of sight ran parallel to Wastwater. I could see the fell as a pitch-black shadow curved against the sky, and the sky was a solid dark grey cloud that moved southwards from somewhere up above towards somewhere down below the curve of the fell. As a result it looked like the fell was growing, getting even bigger, and in the darkness it all looked even steeper than I remembered. I felt vulnerable and naked and exposed out there, hanging on to the side of this wild stone colossus. Somewhere below us was the lake, and I got the impression that we were all ready to just slide on down and drown. The chilly air was giving me goose-pimples.

  I stepped back from the window, shaking my head slightly, when I heard Jennifer speak behind me.

  ‘It’s moving but it’s not you,’ she said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I touched something and it moved but it wasn’t you.’

  I turned around.

  ‘Jennifer?’ I said.

  She didn’t say anything else. Her eyes were closed and she was talking in her sleep. I sat down on the mattress. The house had been empty for decades.

  I woke up before Jennifer did, although I hadn’t been properly asleep, just drifting in and out of a dream in which we spent the night arguing about not having any curtains. In the dream I’d wanted curtains because I was scared of seeing people at the window, but Jennifer didn’t want any curtains because she said that she wanted people to watch her.

  ‘Watch you do what?’ I had said.

  ‘Make love,’ she had said.

  ‘No. Let’s not, not without any curtains.’ Or something along those lines, but we did anyway, and in my dream I was shouting and trying to push her away, but I couldn’t stop her and she took me, and behind it all loomed this square black hole of a window on to the fellside.

  I lay there, sweating, awake. It was still dark outside. I tried to swallow, but my mouth was too dry. The wind bellowed and fumed around the house like some steam-driven whale. I could understand, completely, why people used to personify high winds or thunderstorms as living beasts. For example, one Sunday, early in the seventeenth century, a dramatic storm swept through the village of Great Chart. People reported seeing a huge bull-like creature charge into the church, killing one villager, injuring another and knocking down part of one of the walls. They took it to be the Devil, of course, furious with the congregation for worshipping God.

  I left the room and closed the door quietly after me, wishing that I could sleep as deeply and as easily as she did. The landing was long; our bedroom was at the end of it, opposite the bathroom. I stood there in between the two doors and looked down the landing, at the end of which was the stairs. There was something wrong, but I couldn’t tell what it was. I counted the doors that opened off the landing: there were five, including the ones for our bedroom and the bathroom. The other three were bedroom doors. Suddenly I saw what was wrong – one of them was open, when I was sure they’d all been closed the night before.

  Outside, the wind roared, and it probably had just been the wind, some draught, that had felt its way into our house and pushed the door open. I looked in on my way past, just to make sure that the room was empty – to make sure that no feral cat or big black bird had found its way in. It was indeed empty. I quite liked that room – it had blue and white striped wallpaper that only reached half-way up. It looked as if it had been torn off above that, like somebody had started stripping it, but never got round to finishing. Where it had been torn off you could see a rich, postbox red colour beneath. And there was also an old, impressively solid-looking wooden beam running from corner to corner, with a hole in the middle like a big, dry, empty eye-socket.

  I closed the door again, making sure it was firmly shut.

  Just the wind.

  When I got back, Jennifer was awake.

  ‘Where did you go?’

  ‘I went to get some water. I brought you some too.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  I passed the drink to her and she sat up to take it. She sipped at it, and then put the glass down on the floor.

  ‘I was dreaming,’ I said. ‘And it woke me up.’

  ‘Were you dreaming about me?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Good.’ She rolled over on to her side and stretched, curving her body backwards.

  ‘We should get some curtains.’

  ‘I like not having any curtains,’ she said. ‘I like feeling that little bit closer to the outside.’

  ‘You were talking in your sleep last night.’

  ‘Was I? Oh Jack, you’ve just reminded me. Yes. I had a horrible dream.’ She rolled back over so that she was looking at me. ‘I dreamt that I woke up needing the toilet and it was pitch-black and on my way past the bed I stumbled and put my hand out and touched something and it moved and I thought it was you but then I realised that it wasn’t. And I ran out of the room and for some reason the bathroom was downstairs, and when I got to the bottom of the stairs some plaster, or some dust, or something, fell from above, and I knew that whatever or whoever had been in the bedroom was waiting for me at the top of the stairs, and I knew that you weren’t there. I carried on to the bathroom and closed the door. And then I just knew, straight away, that whatever had been upstairs was now outside the bathroom door, waiting for me, and so I couldn’t leave. I was trapped in there. This tiny little room.’ There was a silence. ‘It was horrible. And everything was dark.’

  ‘Are you OK?’ I put my hand out and stroked her beautifully sculpted shoulder. Everything about Jennifer was intentional.

  ‘I am,’ she said. ‘But you know when you have a dream and the feeling stays with you.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It’s cold, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  We found breakfast in a farmyard down in the valley after following small, hand-made signs advertising fresh eggs and organic meats and local veg around the small lake road until we came to a gravel lane that wound through a beautiful patch of woodland and ended in a small, clean yard through which a clutter of fat chickens squawked. Jennifer squeezed my hand.

  ‘This could be us one day,’ she said. ‘Wouldn’t that be wonderful?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘It really would be. Come on. Let’s see what they’ve got.’

  We got out of the car. The day was warm for November. We walked over to the white door that opened on to the yard and had a doorbell and a little ‘Ring Here’ notice. Jennifer pressed the button.

  The door was answered by a little girl who looked up at us fearfully. She was blonde-haired and brown-eyed and was accompanied by a little boy of the same colouring and of about the same age.


  ‘Hello,’ Jennifer said, smiling at them.

  They didn’t say anything. They just stood and stared at us. They were joined shortly by an old bent-over woman who rested her gnarled hands on the children’s shoulders. She looked at us with bright little eyes and said, ‘Morning! Here fer eggs? Veg? Sausages?’

  ‘Please,’ Jennifer said. ‘Some eggs would be good. And some sausages. And what vegetables do you have?’

  ‘Well,’ the old lady said, ‘it’s all in that little shed, ower theer.’ She pointed over the yard at a wooden and weathered door. ‘Shoo, you two,’ she said to the kids, and pushed them gently outside. They ran around the corner of one of the farm buildings, chasing a chicken. ‘Ooh,’ said the old lady, shuffling out of the doorway and into the yard. She was obviously arthritic, and wore a misshapen blue cardigan and tatty slippers. We followed her. ‘Always under me feet, them kids are. God love them though. Just so innocent, they are. And Jim always says, “If anybody ever does anything to hurt them two. And if anybody ever spoils their happiness …” You two got any kids?’

  ‘No,’ I said.

  ‘Well, you know when you see kids and they’re just beaming,’ she said. ‘And Jim always says, “If anybody ever hurts them two, I don’t know what I’ll do.”’

  ‘They are lovely kids,’ Jennifer said.

  ‘Oh, they are,’ the old lady said, opening the door. ‘Right, then.’ She gestured inside at a couple of big fridges, and a wall against which tall racks were placed. The racks were full of carrots and potatoes and pumpkins and butternut squashes and apples and turnips and more. ‘First fridge is eggs and milk,’ said the old lady, ‘and second fridge is meats. Theer’s a bucket down here somewhere’ – she waved downwards – ‘and you can jist stick yer pennies in that. Me son normally does this and he weighs everything out like, but he’s off out so don’t wurrit too much about the cost. Just call it two pund and take what yer need. I’d best get back in t’ house though. Just got the fire going. Yer should go and see t’ lake after this, though, cos yer not far from it now.’

  ‘Thank you very much,’ Jennifer said.

  ‘Oh, it’s quite alright, dearie,’ the old lady said to Jennifer, and then ‘She’s a pretty little thing, isn’t she?’ to me, bright eyes twinkling.

  ‘She is.’ I smiled.

  ‘I’ll see you again anyways, all being well,’ said the old lady, and left us alone. I watched her shuffle slowly back across the yard.

  ‘Look,’ Jennifer said, quietly. ‘There’s a price list here on the wall. We’ll use this. Isn’t it all perfect?’

  ‘It is,’ I said. ‘We’ll have to make this our regular.’

  ‘We’ll have to get our fire going too once we get back in. Need to keep the house warm and dry it out a bit.’

  ‘Definitely,’ I said. ‘It needs a bit of heat.’

  We loaded up on fruit, veg, eggs and milk, and left a bit more than the price lists suggested, but even so it was still cheaper than the supermarket we lived near in Manchester. We carried it out into the car in a couple of cardboard boxes provided for the purpose, and set off to see the lake.

  Later, we were sitting on a large rocky mound that looked like it had grown too much and burst out of the grassy skin that once covered it. The grass around us was bright green and the earth was iron-hard – the naturally crumbly soil bound by the cold that descends at that time of year. Jennifer cupped a spliff in her hands, sheltering it from the wind. Despite it being quite mild before, the wind was now bitter. It tugged at our scarves and the hair that stuck out beneath our hats. We looked out across the ruffled and restless surface of the lake and it was the colour of the sky on a stormy night, and on the other side of the lake the monstrously huge fells reared upwards and somewhere up there was our house.

  ‘The deepest lake in the country, apparently,’ I said. ‘I looked it up on the Internet. Also, it was on the news a few years ago because they found a body in there. They only found it because when the body had been dumped, it had floated through the murk to land on a shelf that runs around the inside edge of the lake. If it had been dumped in the middle of the lake, it would have sunk all the way to the bottom and never ever would have been found.’

  ‘No,’ Jennifer said. ‘I guess the centre isn’t where you’d expect it to be. The surface doesn’t accurately indicate what is beneath, it doesn’t map, you know, doesn’t correspond to the depths. You can’t guess at the middle.’

  ‘Also, Wasdale has the smallest church.’ I held Jennifer to me and we sat there, staring at the deepest lake in the country. There was some gravity there that made natural things more significant and impossible things more believable, more possible. Something disturbed the surface of the water with a loud splashing and I jumped, but then saw that it was just a bird.

  ‘They have the Jinny Greenteeth legend here, in the Lake District,’ I said. ‘You know. The freshwater mermaid that drowns children. Although mermaid as in maid of the mere, not as in half-fish half-woman. You know, like in the legend of Beowulf. How the monster’s mother lived at the bottom of a bottomless lake. She was a mermaid, in that sense. The bottom of a bottomless lake.’ I shook my head. ‘How do you reckon that works? When people who believe in them talk about bottomless lakes, what are they imagining?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Jennifer said. ‘I don’t know.’

  The cold penetrated. The sound of several vehicles approaching woke me up. I turned to see an old, rusty camper van rattling down the lakeside road. The van was a short, squat thing that had once been a nice cream colour, perhaps, but was now covered in green streaks, as if mossy. It raced past us and continued on down to the head of the lake, followed by an equally scrappy-looking motorbike, ridden by a huge man wearing full leathers and goggles. He had a grey beard and long grey hair. After him was another camper van, and at first I thought it was a classic Volkswagen, but it wasn’t – it just looked a little similar. It had been painted purple with what looked like household matt paint, and, judging from the brush-strokes, by hand.

  After we’d got the fire going and eaten lunch, I stacked the plates up next to the sink and looked out of the window. ‘The barn,’ I said.

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘We should have a look inside it!’

  Jennifer looked over to the window from her seat. She was sitting on stacks of unopened boxes with her legs crossed, and resembled a stunning Buddha balanced on top of a little tower. I followed her gaze out the window to the barn, a hard dark shape against the boiling greys of the sky. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I think we should maybe – just maybe – start to unpack.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘OK.’ I stood there for a moment looking at the boxes, and I reached for one, but then draw my hand back, suddenly deflated by Jennifer’s words. ‘Jennifer?’

  She didn’t answer. She stared vacantly out over the yard, eyes transfixed by the hulking great barn.

  ‘Jennifer,’ I repeated. ‘Are you OK?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes I am. Sorry. I was just distracted. Sorry.’ She gave me a smile, her lip-rings glinting. ‘I was just thinking, maybe you’re right, you know, about checking out the barn. I don’t like not knowing what’s inside.’

  ‘No time like the present,’ I said.

  ‘Come on then.’ She stood up. Her feet were bare, and she started hopping from one foot to the other. ‘Jesus,’ she said. ‘Is the heating on? These floors are cold.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘The heating’s on. Just getting back into the swing of things, I imagine. It’s the time of year. It’s the stone.’

  The barn was sandstone, and so was weathered and pitted. It had a covering of lichens and moss that colluded with the unevenness of the surface to create a sense of it having rough, scabrous skin, and at one end it had a mouth, a huge, ugly, corrugated steel mouth that was hinged like a door. The metal looked like it had been cut from an even larger sheet of metal, with its edges all bent and sharp, and it had been nailed to some sort of meta
l frame in order to cover the gaping hole that lurked behind it. It was nearly twice as high as I was tall, and about fifteen feet wide.

  It was about four o’clock and getting dark, and the layers upon layers of cloud gave the sky a peculiar depth. Jennifer squeezed my hand.

  ‘It looks like we’re going to have a draughty month or two,’ I said.

  ‘It’s good to get closer to the world, though, don’t you think?’

  ‘I guess,’ I said, although I didn’t know if I wanted the world sticking its million fingers in through my walls. ‘OK. This barn, then.’ I reached out to the fastening, which was an unlocked, rusted latch.

  ‘It’s a bit scary, hey?’ Jennifer said, lightly.

  ‘It’s really scary,’ I said. ‘And I don’t know why.’

  ‘Don’t worry, I’ll protect you.’

  I undid the latch. The door was heavy and, as I slipped it off the bracket of the fastening, its corner dropped to the ground. Looking down, I saw a huge scrape traced out across the cobbles where the bottom corner of the door had been dragged across the yard time and time again.

  I pulled the door outwards. It screeched across the ground so loudly that I imagined all the sheep across the fellside jumping up and bolting, all the people in the valley below looking up at the fell and shuddering.

  It’s just a barn, I told myself. It’s just a barn.

  The mouth was open, and inside the darkness was absolute. It was so dark that the darkness gave the impression of spilling out into the yard, rather than being driven back by the ailing sunlight.

  ‘There we go,’ I said, my voice sounding very small. ‘We should have brought a torch.’

  ‘Never mind,’ Jennifer said. ‘Our eyes will get used to it.’

  And so saying, she strode forward, disappearing from sight immediately. Jennifer strode through doorways without seeming to realise it, as if it were some happy chance that resulted in the portal and her pathway coinciding. My Morgana. I opened my hands and closed my hands and again told myself that it was only a barn, it was only a barn, it was only some space inside some walls. But there was something wrong with the light, unless there was something wrong with my eyes of course, or maybe my brain.