The Leaping

by Tom Fletcher

‘I need to get through to you, Jack,’ he said. ‘I think it’s to do with Jennifer. That thing in the barn, Jack. Please. You saw those people at the party that we didn’t know. You saw the look of whatever took her. Whatever was in the barn – whatever I killed – I mean, it was dark, but I know that it wasn’t just a person. Please. At least try to believe me. And what’s that fucking music?’

  ‘It’s a fiddle,’ I said. ‘He was playing at the party. And now he’s playing down there.’ I pointed down to the small orange glows that trembled and shook amongst the trees down by the lake.

  ‘Apart from that thing in the barn,’ Graham said, ‘they were all gone by the time that I got up to the house. Nobody there.’

  ‘They didn’t pass us on their way down,’ Taylor said.

  ‘How can we really trust anything you’re saying?’ I asked. ‘You’ve been taking God knows what all night, you’re talking nonsense, you’re basically telling us you’ve killed somebody – how do we know you haven’t lost it completely?’

  ‘Think whatever you want,’ Graham said.

  ‘Jack,’ Taylor warned. ‘Come on. Let’s not lose it ourselves.’

  I glared at him, at Taylor, and he held my gaze, his eyes calm and his brow slightly creased. He shook his head slightly. I didn’t say it, but I still thought that if anybody out here was dangerous then it was probably Graham. ‘There are hundreds of paths up and down this thing,’ I said after a moment, stamping my feet in order to indicate the ground beneath us, the fellside, but instead coming across as petulant, or maybe just cold. ‘They could have taken any one of them. They could have just run straight down to the valley and then along the valley road. They could have headed over the other side and then circled round. They could have hiked up the crest and then dropped down further along. They could have—’

  ‘OK!’ Taylor snapped. ‘Jesus! Are we going down there then? Or what? I don’t know. I’m worried about Erin. I’m worried that we’ve left Erin.’

  ‘Come on, Taylor,’ Graham said. ‘All the trouble is in front of us now, down by the lake. Erin’s with Francis. We need you with us. It sounds like there are a lot of them down there. Having a big fucking party. Come on.’

  I didn’t say anything, but looked down towards the flickering flames by the lake. We were standing at the place where I found Francis, the bloodstains looking black in this light, black on the white, and two black, bloody trails led away from it, and one of them led back to Fell House. We followed the other one.

  It led us to the beginning of the scree slopes – a skin of broken bits of stone, grey shards that slid and rolled over each other, no easier to walk on than ice. The gradient too was unhelpful – it was steep enough for you to slip and fall and roll helplessly into the valley if you were lucky, or, if you were unlucky, straight into some ravine, or, worse still, some immovable piece of rock that would snap your neck.

  Taylor fell. He was in front, concentrating on the trail of blood rather than on his feet, no doubt, and it was as if we all became aware at the same time of how his feet were sliding, and they slid down, and he landed heavily on his right side. The rock moved beneath him and started to carry him away, but he plunged his hand into it, in between the moving stones, slate knives, and grasped hold of something more solid beneath, like bigger rocks, maybe. Slower-moving. Graham and I just stood and watched as his hands helped him decelerate until he was completely stationary.

  ‘I’m coming back up,’ he said, at length.

  The pale darkness around us seemed to elongate the time between him speaking and me speaking.

  ‘OK,’ I said.

  He gradually crept back up, like an injured spider, and every movement was wary because he knew that the ground beneath his feet was unstable enough to tip him off again, to throw him. It seemed an age before he reached us, and when he did he held up his hands. They were shredded. His shiny red knuckles were surrounded with white skin that had been grated away from the bone. His fingernails were cracked vertically, with various nails fully or partially missing. The soft flesh of his palms was lacerated with snags and gashes, and all over his hands and wrists blood sprang from raised points and ridges that looked like they’d been created by the skin getting caught between two equally unyielding pieces of stone pressing together.

  I remember reading that people came from all over the world to climb these mountains, they came to climb and walk and scramble and test themselves against something bigger than they were. They came with horrendously expensive clothing and equipment and years of experience and knowledge and maps and compasses, and still some of them died.

  ‘We need to go higher up,’ I said. ‘If we stay on this scree, one of us is only going to fall again.’

  ‘Also,’ Taylor said, ‘the trail is gone now all of this stupid rock has moved.’

  ‘Shouldn’t it be getting light by now?’ Graham asked. ‘What day is it, anyway?’

  Neither Taylor nor I answered. We turned so that we were facing the hard ground that reared up to the right of the route we’d been trying to take, and headed on up.

  FRANCIS

  Everything is black. I’m rising, at speed. I’m falling upwards. Or maybe just falling. I’m travelling at a terrifying speed now. Falling. There can be no doubt that I’m falling.

  My back hits something hard, too hard. My eyes open – again – and I’m looking up at the ceiling. The beam. The dead body of the hanging farmer. Every part of my body is full of blades and vinegar. My body is shuddering across the surface of the floor with the pain of the impact. I have no control over it. It twists and jerks like a kitten with a pin in it. I don’t know why that image comes to mind.

  It is a minute or two before my body stops moving.

  I lie still for a while longer. Then I sit up. I’m sick. This time all over myself. I realise that I’m still naked. The vomit is dark brown. I start to shake again. I start to cry. Now all I can feel is the cold. The biting cold of the snow. And the bitterly cold wind that worms its way in from outside. And the clammy cold emanating from the body above me. And the shameful cold of being naked and wet. And some other, deeper cold, radiating from somewhere in the back of my head. Like fear. Like the tendrils of some disease. The disease. The big one.

  ‘Do you know what has happened?’ Balthazar asks. He’s still sitting on the bed. ‘Have you any memory of it?’

  ‘No.’ I shake my head. ‘I need her, Balthazar. What happened? I need her here. I don’t want to talk to you. You remind me that I’m ill.’

  ‘You emerged, Francis,’ he says. ‘We are all very proud.’

  The way the candlelight is moving sickens me. The constant flicker and flux. The regular creaking of the body hanging from the beam above sickens me as well. I look at the walls. The contrast between the white stripes and the blue stripes makes me vomit again. I roll over. I try to push myself up with my arms, but they fold beneath me. I fall on to my chest. I see that the floorboards are slick with blood. I see it pooling in between them. I cannot tell what is blood and what is vomit. Maybe the cancer has spread. Maybe it is in my throat or stomach. I should speak to Dad. I should ring him up. The pain within me is focusing. Narrowing. Breaking down so that I can tell that it is specific to certain internal wounds. Great rips and tears. I have come apart inside. The evidence is streaming from my mouth. Overflowing. Relentless. Unstopping. Unstoppable. There is nothing I can do to stop the. There is nothing I can do. To stop it. There is nothing I can do to stop the. To stop the. My face is pressed into the stinking floor by the weight of my head.

  I find myself on my back again. I’m looking up at the dead farmer. The pain has gone away.

  ‘Have I got cancer?’

  ‘The story of the farmer who hangs up there serves as a warning to those like you.’

  ‘Like me? What do you mean? Balthazar? Have I got cancer? I don’t understand.’ I try to sit up. But don’t have the strength.

  ‘Let me tell you the story.’

  ‘I don’t want to
hear the story. I don’t want a story. Fuck you, Balthazar. What’s happened to me? Where’s Erin?’

  ‘They were very much in love. The farmer and his wife. Until one day a young man came back to Fell House and claimed it to be his. A young man who went by the name of Bearpit. Still does, actually, and he’s grown a little older now, but they age slowly, these lycanthropes. Anyway. The farmer closed the door in Bearpit’s face. But he came back after dark and waited for the beautiful woman to put the cats out for the night. He grasped her wrist and pulled her out of the house, into the outside world, and the woman screamed. By the time the farmer had picked up the wood-axe that had been resting against the door-frame and arrived at the scene, she appeared dead. The farmer struck Bearpit with such force, Francis. Such force.’ Balthazar shakes his head with an icy crackle.

  ‘If he had been able to kill bears,’ I say, shivering, ‘why was she not dead?’

  ‘He wasn’t trying to kill her. Just … you know. Bite her, maybe. Turn her. Anyway. He had his spine severed for his efforts.’

  The body above spins. Swings. Hangs.

  ‘As the farmer carried his wife inside, he saw that she was breathing, despite the damage that Bearpit had done to her body. She was alive. But she was different. Different in a way that you fully understand, Francis.’

  ‘I don’t understand anything.’

  ‘You will. She was like you, you see. And one night, aroused by the animal keenings of the bastard cats that haunt this place, she became something other than human herself. Wild and free and dangerous. And here we come upon the real tragedy of the piece, Francis. The farmer, transformed by fear from a brave and decent man into a weak-minded fool – he killed her. He swung the axe with all his might as she approached him, and found himself in the morning, a husk, prostrate over her all-too-human body, her dead human body, and he was broken with guilt and with grief, and he was alone. And you know the rest.’

  I do know the rest. How he took her body out to the lake. How he watched her fade into the depths. And then he hanged himself. I see it now. At some point, somewhere along the way, the young man that had come knocking at the door was mended. And he walked away. Bearpit.

  I see it now.

  ‘Where’s Erin?’

  ‘Francis,’ Balthazar says. ‘Look around you.’

  I try to sit up again. This time my elbows remain locked as I prop myself up on them. Erin’s not here. I start to feel sick again as I see how much of myself I’ve coughed up and spat out. Balthazar sits on the end of the bed. He slowly turns red as the snow absorbs my vomit from the floor and blood from the bed. From the bed. I look again at the bed. There is something hanging over the edge of it. It’s like a thin sheet. But looking closely I see that it’s not. It’s too wet. Too limp.

  I raise myself higher. So that I’m actually sitting up now. And can see on to the bed properly. I see a long, white knotted rope lying down the centre of this pale and bloody sheet-thing. It doesn’t mean anything to me. It doesn’t look like anything I’ve ever seen.

  It’s a spine. It’s a spine and some skin. I smash a hand into my mouth to stop the rising tide. But it is futile. Blood falls from my mouth again like it’s a wound. And there’s something else forcing its way up. I am choking. Choking. Coughing up something long and dry. It just doesn’t stop. I am aware of something hanging out of my mouth like a tail. So I start to pull on it with my hands. I see that it is a mass of hair that was once beautiful and curly and red. The hair catches and clogs in the back of my mouth. In my throat. And everything starts to come out of me. Out of my mouth. I can feel it all rising from my stomach. Even more. Inevitable. Unstoppable. Hot fluid courses down my chin. Down the matted cord of Erin’s hair. Over my hands. I try to curl up. My body starts to convulse. I close my eyes.

  Take me away from this. Help me forget.

  The thing inside me wakes up. Whatever it is. The cancer. The darkness. A doctor pointing at an X-ray would call it a shadow. This shadow over your brain. Frontal lobe. Neo-cortex. Whatever. I don’t know science. But the shadow responds. Like it is sentient. Like it hears my thoughts. Like it wants to help me. The thing starts to breathe. Starts to help me forget. Come on. Ignorance is bliss. Help me. It widens somewhere in my body. It swells inside me. Help me. Please. And it’s coming. It’s working. A horrendous shock courses down my spine. My face smashing into the floor. I feel my cheeks tearing as my jaws open and open and open. They just won’t stop. The overwhelming fear is reduction. Being reduced to nothing but a bottomless mouth. Ever-hungry. All-devouring. Endless. Indiscriminate. Widening. Widening. Widening. Bloody. Hot. Wet. Huge. Torn out. And my jaws are widening still. Growing. Opening so widely that they’re folding back over me. And my own jaws clap together behind me, having somehow cut me out of space. Having replaced me. Changed me. Erased me and remade me. I test myself and find myself an absence. Not here, but all too real. Hard. Solid. Strong. Fast. Four feet on the floor. A mouth. The front of me. A mouth. Ravenous. And inside, a growing blankness. It’s eclipsing me. Pushing me out. I’m nearly completely gone. Yes. And the echo of words that are fast becoming alien.

  Oblivion.

  Ignorance.

  Bliss.

  JACK

  ‘It should be getting light by now,’ Graham said. ‘It should be dawn.’

  ‘Well it’s not,’ I said.

  The fellside was steep. We were looking for a way up a particularly difficult series of crags which jutted out into the starry sky above us, silhouettes of hard-edged fingers, sharp and empty.

  ‘We should try and climb them,’ I said.

  ‘I don’t think I could,’ Taylor said. ‘Not with these hands.’

  ‘We have to find her,’ I said. ‘We have to.’

  ‘Don’t you think that there’s a chance that we’re too late?’

  I didn’t say anything at first, I just looked up at the rock-faces and the rock-faces looked back.

  ‘Taylor,’ I said, eventually. ‘What do you mean? Too late for what?’

  ‘You know what I mean, Jack,’ he said.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘No, I don’t. What do you mean?’

  ‘We all know there’s something going on,’ he said. ‘Don’t you think – don’t you think that if she was in danger from – from something, then that – dangerous something – will already have presented itself?’

  ‘I have to try and find her,’ I said. ‘And either you come with me, or you don’t. You must understand, Taylor. Just imagine that it was Erin that had been taken, not Jennifer.’

  I turned and slowly levered myself up a steep grassy ladder between two slippery stone walls.

  And, God help them, they followed, Taylor unable to really bend his fingers, just wedging his hands into cracks so they got stuck and held his weight.

  ‘There’s somebody down there,’ Graham said. ‘Look. Back down the way we’ve come. They’re watching us.’

  We were at the top of the crags, resting on the spine of the fell, Taylor nursing his ruined hands. I looked down over the edge, and Graham was right – there was a figure down there, looking up at us, and it was a person, but disproportionate in a way that I couldn’t make out. They were about fifty feet down. Behind them, the fellside dropped away. The figure raised its long arms and screamed. All the blood in my body suddenly seemed to reverse the direction of its flow, and I turned from the cliff edge and stumbled away, up the ridge.

  ‘It’s one of them,’ I heard Graham say, behind me.

  ‘Run,’ I said. ‘Come on. Just run.’

  ‘Wait,’ Taylor said. ‘Look. It’s gone.’

  ‘We need to carry on,’ I said. ‘It – he might be coming after us.’

  ‘I hope Erin’s OK,’ Taylor said. ‘And Francis. Jesus. How did it come to this?’ He laughed. ‘Look at us.’

  I turned back down to see him gesturing at the fellside and the valley, laughing, and he wouldn’t stop laughing. Graham was smiling too.

  ‘Come on,’ I said. ‘We have to c
arry on. Stop laughing. Stop laughing, the pair of you! Come on.’

  ‘Jesus,’ Taylor said again, and then stopped laughing completely. ‘I just hope Erin’s OK.’

  ‘She’ll be fine,’ I said. ‘She’s inside the house. It’s an old farmhouse. They’re like castles. Don’t worry about Erin,’ I said. ‘It’s Francis and Jennifer that we need to worry about.’

  I turned back to the ascending ridge, which fell away sharply on either side and then levelled out, so it was like a fin, or the visible spine of a thin person, bent over. The effect was enhanced by the regularly spaced hummocks and lesser summits that protruded along its length, like vertebrae.

  And there it was.

  The first one I’d seen clearly, standing a little further up the ridge in front of us, on two legs, like a person, but with the knees bent the wrong way, like Mr Tumnus from The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Its arms were long and hung low, and its hands were also long, with stretched-out bony fingers and vicious-looking fingernails, and they hung limply, like they were dead, and above its tiny waist its torso was bulky and strong-looking. Its head was shaped like a human head, but the features were wrong, as if it was mid-flux – the eyes were unevenly sized and at different heights, pushed up into the forehead along with the flattened nose by the vast opening that was the thing’s mouth, which stretched from where the eyebrows should have been down to the chin and was edged with fraying skin. It seemed to gape open naturally, like the muscles were at rest, and it was bristling with sharp, yellow teeth that were cutting into the bloody lips. They were all at different angles, as if the gums were slowly liquefying. The whole of the creature was covered in thin grey hair, and it was naked.

  It took a step towards us.

  FRANCIS

  The house is difficult to escape from, but for the weakness of the doors. I leave marks, scratches, spittle. And I can smell her scent. Jennifer’s. All over the house. My mouth is open. I am howling the howl. Outside it is cold. There are stars, the sky, white snow, a white moon. Everything is wild and bright and bleak. There is another scent entwined with hers. That of rotten teeth.