Grisly Tales from Tumblewater

by Bruno Vincent

  It was not the slightest bit scarred by fire, but painted cold white. And totally bare – until, creeping forward, I saw the edge of a table. Now my heart rose to my mouth and my fingers tightened on the window sill as I saw the back of a person sitting at the table, facing away from me.

  With a sickening repugnance I saw the sack still placed over her head. The anger gave me strength to ignore the danger and I reached upward and swiped my hand across the window so it disappeared into its casing, but the movement made me lose my balance and I fell backwards, clutching at the sill. My fingers closed over it as my feet fell and I hung there for a second, terrified, kicking my legs to find a foothold, before my toes found the ledge again and I pulled myself up. Breathing hard, I stumbled over it into the room.

  It was breathtakingly cold and utterly still. The window closed behind me without a sound. I didn’t say anything, but crept forward, wondering. No one could survive in this cold. Was she under a spell? Was she alive at all, or a ghost?

  Standing behind her, I reached out and held the tip of the cloth bag. As it shifted at my touch, I recoiled in the fear that she would jump or scream. But she didn’t move. Steeling myself, I drew it smoothly away from her head until I could see the dark curls of her hair. Released from the sack, they fell halfway down her back, exactly as I had pictured them. I walked slowly round the table until I was facing her. There was a chair opposite and I pulled it close to her. Her eyes were open, looking downward, and she was blinking, adjusting to the light. She looked very frightened. I didn’t dare touch her for fear of scaring her (and myself, if she jumped in shock).

  Finally she lifted her eyes and looked at me. Every feeling I hadn’t felt at the graveside poured into me now – the years on my own, wanting to speak to her and ask her questions – but I controlled myself and met her gaze calmly. After our eyes had held for a few seconds, a look came upon her as though she was seeing me for the first time. She realized I wasn’t her captor. I saw thoughts passing behind her eyes as she worked out who I was, and then she grew stronger. I was sure she felt the same as I did – the feeling of recognition, even though I knew for certain we had not seen each other for more than fourteen years.

  She smiled distantly.

  ‘You’ve rescued me,’ she said softly. Then she dropped her eyes again, and tears began to fall down her cheeks. As though provoked by the sight, they began to fall from mine too, unstoppably, and it was with a great strength of will that I held myself back from grabbing her in a hug for which she was still too frail.

  ‘I hoped you would come,’ she said. ‘All those years when I wrote the letters, and willed you to get old enough to come and find me. I hoped and hoped, for day after day. I can’t believe – it’s actually—’

  Crying overwhelmed her for a moment and I pulled her head to rest on my shoulder and put my arm round her.

  ‘It’s all right,’ I said, and thought this was far and away the most grown-up thing I’d ever said, because it was so very much not all right, but I couldn’t tell her that yet.

  ‘Oh, Daniel,’ she said, leaning back to look me in the eyes again. ‘I never thought I would have this chance . . .’ And while her hand fumbled in a pocket for something I took the opportunity to wipe away my tears, hoping she hadn’t noticed them.

  ‘I never thought,’ she said again softly, ‘that I would be able to give you this.’

  She held out her hand. In her palm was a ring.

  I opened my mouth to speak, but the words got jumbled in my throat.

  ‘There are only two of them,’ she said, looking down at it. ‘This one was for you; it belonged to our father. I wear the other, you see?’ She held up her hand and I saw it on her middle finger.

  Again I opened my mouth and again the words caught on each other. She took my hand and hers felt familiar, not like a stranger’s at all. I closed my fingers around hers and spoke urgently.

  ‘We can do that later,’ I said. ‘We must leave now, do you understand? The witch will know that we are here. She will be on her way.’

  ‘Daniel,’ said Maria again, ‘I must see this on your finger before we leave.’ And her eyes met mine with the look of love I had gone without for so long that it had had a terrible effect on me.

  I pulled my hand back.

  A film covered her eyes as she watched the hand retreat, and she became as distant again as when she had first awoken.

  ‘Maria?’ I said, putting my arm round her again. ‘Be strong – we have to leave!’

  ‘I can’t leave, not until you put it on,’ she said, holding a hand to her head as though suffering from a violent headache, and her voice became scratchy.

  ‘I – I can’t . . .’ I said apologetically.

  She threw her head into her hands and let out a strangled groan, her hair hanging down like a curtain.

  ‘What’s happening?’ I asked, getting up and taking a few steps back.

  She tried to speak, but just a croak came out at first. Putting my hand back to the window, I felt the hoarfrost that had grown there since I had come in. It was an inch thick.

  ‘Just put on the ring . . .’ she said, not looking up, sounding exhausted, hopeless. Her voice had changed entirely now; it had retreated, as though coming from far away. Or – it reminded me of something, and I tried to think what – not from far away, but from within something . . .

  I felt the bitter taste of horror and defeat in my mouth as I realised – her voice sounded as though it was coming from the bottom of a well.

  ‘Gora,’ I said, anger and hate surging through me. ‘I know it’s you. Where is my sister?’

  She looked up at me sharply. Her hair was thrown back and I saw Maria’s face melting, wrinkling into Gora’s. The eyes were shut and the mouth was open – her face was disappearing into her mouth, the skin shrinking and folding. Her whole body shrank in a sequence of bone-crunching convulsions so that the clothes appeared to grow around it and cover it up. Only the face remained visible, but it kept wrinkling so that the flesh seemed to sink. It became deathly white, the face of an old woman, and then kept shrinking smaller and smaller. The wrinkles fell over her eyes so I couldn’t see them and she peered out through pea-sized gaps in the skin. Her nose retreated to a tiny button in the folds with the pursed hole of her mouth no wider than a penny. She became smaller and smaller until she was a mean little shape made out of frowns and creases, no taller than my knee.

  ‘So now you see me,’ she said. ‘And you’ve brought me that little box I sent you to fetch, haven’t you, like a good little boy?’

  Repulsed, I nodded slowly and reached inside my jacket, where the letters were tucked in my pocket. Her mouth hovered open and although they were invisible I could sense her eyes were watery with anticipation as they watched my hand. When I brought it out again it was holding Harry’s blade.

  Her whole face and body shook violently and a change came over her. She grew suddenly tall and more muscular, and her skin darkened. The hood and cloak fitted her again, and her looks became beautiful, bronze-coloured – those of a tribe from some far continent.

  ‘You’ll never find your sister,’ she said with satisfaction. ‘I’ve hidden her through a doorway you could never find. I can send myself anywhere, through any door. You’ll never catch me,’ she said with a smile, retreating to the door that looked out over the building’s empty insides, and pausing on the threshold. ‘After I go through, you’ll never see me again. Goodbye, boy’

  ‘I’ve still got your spell,’ I said, walking forward with the blade. ‘It stays on a door for five seconds after you’ve used it – I’ve counted. And you’re tired from using your magic to try to trick me – that’s why you couldn’t stay looking like my sister for long enough. Transport yourself where you like, I’ll be there after you!’

  She looked at me for a second as though she was going to speak, but spat viciously instead. Then she turned through the doorway and vanished into midair.

  I ran forward. I could see out
into the gutted core of the building – a drop of fifty feet down into the bricks and ash. Only the glint of fear and anger in her eyes as she spat at me told me I was right about the spell, and this was my only chance to catch her. So with my eyes closed I jumped through, taking a breath and trusting that the doorway would take me where she had gone.

  I landed hard, winded, but found myself in a large kitchen, cooks all around with their knives out, confused and outraged by Gora’s sudden appearance and disappearance. They were shouting at each other and pointing at the door to a tall ice-box. I squeezed between them and swiped at the door before a hand could grab me.

  It switched. I dived through.

  I skidded on a slippery patch of blood and skin between two rows of fishmongers’ stalls into the marketplace. As I caught my balance, I ducked a handful of fish guts thrown over a fishmonger’s shoulder and felt them slither over my neck. Staring around, I saw the skirts of a woman disappearing through a tavern door on the other side of the street and sprinted for it. My hand reached the door just as I saw it slipping back into place, and I slid it back hard.

  I staggered through it into the cells of the police station. A policeman was right in front of me, staring around him, bewildered, and the second he saw me he reached and grabbed my neck. The grip felt hard enough to squeeze the life out of me, and as I twisted round to get out of it I met the eyes of Inspector Rambull barely ten feet away. He stared at me coolly, raised his eyebrows and walked forward, flexing his fists with satisfaction.

  Another policeman ran past him to help restrain me and I wriggled and squirmed as only a thin lad could, feeling the hands holding me slipping and then grabbing again more fiercely than before. As I fought, I looked around and thought bitterly what a clever trick this was for Gora to play. There were five cells in front of me, men cheering from the doors of four of them, but in the nearest a terrified drunk was shouting about a ghost in his cell. I gave a final wriggle with all my strength, slipped through the policeman’s arms just as Rambull reached me with his fist raised, and dived forward.

  I swiped the cell door, leapt through and found myself in a store of general supplies, with every kind of implement and appliance piled on to shelves and hanging from the ceiling. In its centre stood a burly well-dressed man holding up a sign saying Garstang & Pegley. As I appeared, a dour-looking bespectacled man who had been examining the sign stopped in the middle of saying, ‘I think PEGLEY & GARSTANG sounds better . . .’

  He looked at me and then at the burly man with deep cynicism. ‘Another one! Are you sure you locked the back door, Garstang?’ he asked.

  ‘Which way?’ I asked. ‘Where did she go?’

  ‘That way!’ shouted the burly man, pointing excitedly out of the front, before turning again to his friend. ‘GARSTANG & PEGLEY surely has a better ring . . .’

  Ten feet ahead of me, I saw the witch jump up on to the step of a fast-moving carriage and yank the door open. I sprinted behind and caught it, wrenching it open just in time and tumbling through. Falling confused into the wet mud, I looked around to find I had been transported but was still on the same street.

  Where has she gone, damn it? I thought, sticking the dagger back into my inside pocket so that it tore a deep hole. I had disappeared through the door of one carriage and jumped out of the door of another a few yards down the street, going in the opposite direction. I spun round, struggling to get my bearings. For a second left was right and right was left.

  But the witch was exhausted, I knew, or she would have used her power to cast herself further and further away, not back into the same street.

  I heard a sudden, aggressive screech behind me and saw a man angrily pulling along a creature that refused to be dragged. It was Stanley the Sapient Pig, squealing and pointing with one of his trotters back over my shoulder.

  Turning, I saw a woman leaning tiredly against the wall twenty yards away, and ran towards her. Gora had changed her disguise to a pale red-haired woman, but her anger and panic as she saw me couldn’t be hidden. She took a breath and dived through the nearest door. I started to run, even though I knew I couldn’t make it in time, and heard another squeal of the pig, and a man shouting, ‘Here, miss! Watch out, you daft . . .’ as footsteps ran behind me.

  Barely ten feet behind me, Gora was running across the road to an alleyway between two shops. She had tried to double back on me.

  Now I knew I could catch her. She had hardly any magic left. With a burst of energy I tore down the alleyway behind her. It went steeply downhill and one of us was going to slip in the mud any second. But we came out at the other end on our feet and I pulled out the knife again as I gained on her, but she dived left round a corner into a narrow, unlit alley.

  It was incredibly steep and impossible to keep your footing. The witch slid ahead of me in the mud and I fell face forward behind her, tumbling over and over. I had been here before a few days ago, at night time, sliding helplessly in the drumming rain, and I knew where we would come out. As the hill levelled and we slowed to a stop, I saw five men opposite. It was the tall, melancholy man from the post office and his four tiny helpers. He looked on with no expression while the others yelped and cheered and pointed. One pushed another over into the mud in his enthusiasm.

  Nothing would distract me. As Gora got to her feet and squirmed down a tiny, almost invisible passageway, I was only inches behind.

  Through a thin crack of light we stumbled on to a tiny jetty, a makeshift thing cobbled together from river flotsam, and not a single boat moored to it. The river itself was a hundred yards away beyond high brick warehouses. Brown water lapped quietly, making the jetty lean from side to side as Gora retreated down it ahead of me. I followed her. The frail structure sank under the weight of my boots so that one of them went under the water for a second. She looked around desperately. There was not a door or a window anywhere to be seen.

  ‘How do I find her?’ I said. ‘I’ll let you go. Just tell me!’

  She shook her head, and spat at me again. She put her hand to an inner pocket and produced a small metal key, and looked at me defiantly. She bent her arm and leaned back to throw it as far as she could – I ran forward.

  At once the water exploded. Falling backwards I saw a shape launch into the air and land on the jetty, making it shudder dangerously. It was a huge, scaly creature, a tiger in fish form, and in one movement it landed and snapped its mouth around the witch’s neck. It shook and trembled with the effort of clenching its jaws, and closed its eyes, digging its claws into her sides to hold her still. Drops of water showered all around. It had webbing from its arms to its body and wide flaps behind the ears; a ridge of scarred bone rose from above the holes where its nose should be over the top of the head. With a great final tensing of face muscles it tightened its jaws and a wet snap came from Gora’s neck.

  The creature’s pinprick eyes opened and the fire went out of them. It took long breaths, as though in satisfaction. For a second it looked almost as though it was kissing the side of her neck. Blood poured from its mouth like a tap as it took two steps to the edge with a hunchbacked gait, the witch’s neck still in its teeth, her whole body hanging from its mouth. Then it bent down to the water, slid in and swam away calmly, making a meandering S-shape in the water, the witch’s dress flowing in the same pattern like a rag.

  The jetty swayed gently to and fro, with no sound but the trickling lap of the water against brick. The only evidence that someone had been there was a tiny object on the wood where Gora had stood. I looked closer and saw that it was the key she had been about to throw, half resting on the edge of one of the rickety planks.

  I crawled carefully over and reached out to pick it up. I put it inside my coat pocket and, when I could stand, I did so, and walked back to the street. The silly, grubby little men had gone. Rather than walk past the post office and arouse their curiosity, I turned in the opposite direction and kept walking.

  The streets were full and bustling with the day’s business as
I walked through them. I knew it was dangerous for me to be there, but I didn’t care any more. I didn’t have a drop of fear left, so I trudged on, turning my collar up so that it covered my face up to my ears, and not meeting anyone’s eye.

  Either the danger towards me had passed overnight, or Nuala’s disguise worked perfectly. No one approached me, or even noticed me, that I could tell.

  I watched all the hours of the day pass as I walked, the business going on at the streetside, the sweeps and lamplighters coming at the end of the day and the beggars rising as the light faded to shake off the day’s rain and find a hole where they could rest as warmly as possible away from the policeman’s stick. Many – most of them, perhaps – would find their way to the Under-ground.

  The night came on and the streets emptied, but still I saw evidence everywhere of people sleeping alone, wet and cold. Yet gaping windows showed empty houses on every stretch of the hill, for streets at a time. I passed up the main road to the crossroads, and beyond into the rich squares and beautiful houses in the north of the city, then back down through the heavy factory district with its thick grey fumes resting in the foggy air, waiting for the machines to start up again in the morning and get them churning afresh.

  I found myself walking through crooked streets past riverside inns where singing sailed out of the windows, and through terrifying slums that never slept where murderous characters lurked at each corner, and past the Courts of Justice, and over the river, and back again.

  In those hours the course of my life, which I had already begun to see taking shape, became set as hard as stone. I reached the district of Tumblewater again. In a few short days this place had given me three burning purposes for living and I’d stay here forever if that was what it would take to find my sister and destroy Caspian Prye. And then I would keep walking these streets until there were no more stories to write down. But I knew that that day would never come.