Henry sighed and forced a smile.
‘I’m not going to steal it,’ said Henry. ‘I’m just going to have a look at it. As soon as I’ve had a look at the point we’ll leave it here and go and fetch Father. Then he can do whatever one is supposed to do. Write a letter to the British Museum or who knows what. How about that?’
Martin considered this for a moment, but after weighing it all up, he shook his head.
‘I’m going back to Grandmother’s cottage,’ he said. ‘I really don’t think you should be touching that thing. I don’t like it here.’
And with that he began to scrabble out of the hole he had made in the roof.
‘Martin!’ shouted Henry. ‘Martin! Don’t be a boring girl. Come back!’
But Henry knew very well that once Martin’s mind had been made up, no amount of shouting, cajoling or bullying would change it.
‘I’m only going to have one tiny look!’ he shouted after him.
But there was no reply and, without Martin beside him, it suddenly seemed a little darker in the barrow.
Henry grabbed the spear with both hands and tried to pull it out. It would not budge. He cursed Martin under his breath for leaving. It would have been so much easier if they had both pulled.
He sat back to catch his breath. And that was when he saw it, covered in dust in a dark corner of the barrow. He realised what it was straight away and left off trying to extract the spear to fetch it.
The head of the beast. It was big, far bigger than the size of the body would have suggested – but there could be no doubt it belonged, for it was as strange as the skeleton at his feet.
What had this creature been? What kind of thing had teeth like that: two rows of teeth? And the sharpness of them. Henry had never heard of any kind of animal with jaws like that. He whistled appreciatively.
Kneeling down, he placed the skull in position at the head of the skeleton to try to get some feel for what this strange creature must have looked like. As he got up to admire the completed skeleton, he grabbed the spear for support and it fell sideways.
His earlier efforts had evidently done their work. The spear was now free of the earth and the tip rested loosely among the ribs of the beast. Henry grinned and lifted it up for a better look.
The tip was less interesting than he had hoped. It seemed to have been made of iron and had corroded over the centuries so that it was black and scabrous and eaten away.
But however badly Henry wanted to show Martin that he was determined to investigate more, there was no way he was going to stay there on his own with that skeletal shark-toothed beast.
Henry clambered out of the barrow and called to Martin, whom he could see had deliberately dawdled, not wanting to leave his brother alone.
He called and waved the spear over his head, and Martin turned round and squinted into the sun, which was skirting the tops of the trees, throwing them and Henry into silhouette.
‘What’s that?’ shouted Martin.
‘It’s the spear thing!’
‘Put it back, Henry,’ came the disappointing response from Martin. ‘We should go home and tell Father, like you said.’
‘You’re such a bore sometimes, Martin,’ Henry yelled back. ‘I found the skull. You should see the teeth!’
‘I don’t care,’ he said.
Henry sighed. Martin was as stubborn as a mule and there would be no changing his mind.
‘All right,’ said Henry. ‘But I’m bringing this spear thing with me.’
‘You said you were going to leave it there and fetch Father!’
‘Well, I’ve changed my mind. I’m going to show him instead.’
‘I don’t see why you have to take charge of everything all the time, Henry!’ shouted Martin. ‘It was me who found it.’
‘All you did was fall through the roof!’
‘All the same,’ said Martin, determined not to let his brother have everything his own way.
‘Very well, then,’ said Henry. ‘You take it!’
With that, he threw the spear and it flew in a shallow arc, landing with a thud in the ground between them.
But Henry didn’t see the spear land, because as he had released it into the air, there was a noise behind him that made him turn in alarm. Something large seemed to have shifted noisily nearby. He wondered if another part of the barrow had collapsed.
‘Henry!’ Martin shouted crossly. ‘That was really stupid. You might have broken –’
Henry looked back across the barley towards his brother, but Martin was no longer there.
He stared around in confusion. It was as if Martin had simply vanished mid-sentence. But then he detected a movement some way off, near to where he had last seen his brother. The barley was being flattened in a narrow channel coming back in a wide arc towards the island.
Henry climbed down from the barrow with a grin.
‘Very funny, Martin,’ he said. ‘But I can see you. Some Boy Scout you are!’
But the stalks of barley continued to fall and Martin made no reply. Henry shook his head indulgently and waited for his brother to get bored with this lark and reveal himself.
The trail of falling barley reached the island, but just round the back, beyond Henry’s line of sight. A moment later he could see movement behind the yew trees and again he smiled at Martin’s lack of stealth. But then he saw something move among the trees, something that made him shudder to his guts.
‘Martin!’ he screamed. ‘Martin!’
The thing loomed out of the shadows into a clear patch on the barrow’s ridge. It was big and on all fours. It was dragging something wet and ragged: it was dragging Martin – or something that had once been Martin – into the barrow.
Henry turned to run, sobbing to himself as he did so. He was not that far from the road. He was fast. He was the fastest in his year at school.
But then he thought of the spear. The spear must have been pinning that thing to the earth. Maybe if he could get to the spear . . .
Henry went back and tugged it from the ground. He pulled his arm back to launch the staff, but even as he did so, he could see the barley flattening in a path that hurtled towards him. The thing was on him before he could cry out.
g
A search was undertaken for the missing brothers. The farmer and two constables found their bodies and the circumstances of their discovery was so unusual it made The Times newspaper.
The boys were found in a partially collapsed barrow in the middle of a field. The farmer himself had no idea it was even there.
They seemed to have been attacked by a wild animal, and stories abounded for several weeks, with reports of sightings of everything from rabid dogs to escaped tigers. There was even an old tramp on the Avebury road who swore he saw a crocodile!
Near to the barrow detectives found a curious iron-tipped copper-shafted spear, the significance of which is still being debated by experts at the British Museum.
*
‘Oh my,’ said the Woman in White when she had finished the story. ‘Your face! I do believe I have shocked you.’
‘Not shocked, no,’ I said, trying to smile at her. But I was finding it difficult to rid myself of the rather vivid image of that gore-flecked creature dragging those unfortunate boys to its lair.
‘I was merely a little taken aback by the subject matter of your story. I assure you, it would take more than that to shock me.’
She gave me a strange half-smile that I took to mean she did not altogether believe me.
‘After all, it was only a story,’ I said, determined to prove her wrong. ‘All manner of terrible things may happen in a story. They may be startling at the time, but it passes. One gets caught up in the narrative, but the dangers aren’t real, are they? Things happen in any way the storyteller chooses. It is all just made up.’
‘Perhaps,’ she said, turning to look out of the window with a curious expression.
‘You say “perhaps”,’ I ventured uneasily. ‘Surely you
’re not suggesting that such a story might be true?’
She turned back to me and smiled, searching my face until I was forced to look away, unable to hold the intensity of her gaze. But she made no reply.
The light on the cutting had changed subtly and it created the illusion of the sides being even steeper than they had been before. Everything was as still as a picture: not a leaf moved, not a bird flew. Not even a bee or a butterfly disturbed the scene.
I pressed my face to the window again and tried to peer down the track, but could see nothing. The air of our compartment felt stale and I stood up and tried to open the window to create a little ventilation and to gain a better view, but the catch was jammed and after a few moments all I succeeded in doing was bruising my thumb. The Woman in White smiled benignly at me the whole time, as if she were watching a fish in a tank.
I sat down and looked at our fellow passengers to see if there were any signs of them waking up, but they remained as sound asleep as before. The Farmer’s head was rather comically lolling on the Major’s shoulder. The Bishop, who sat next to me, let out a plaintive moan. I took out my watch and gave it a shake, hoping to bring it back to life, but with no success.
‘How long have we been here, miss?’ I asked.
‘Not long,’ said the Woman in White cheerfully. ‘As I have already told you.’
‘But it feels like an age,’ I said grumpily, a trifle annoyed at her refusal to actually tell me the time. How long do they intend to just leave us here? I thought to myself. Are they simply going to keep us sitting about like fools? I was sure Father would never have tolerated it, though I was less sure as to what ought to be done about it.
The Woman in White clasped her hands together in a rather maternal fashion and gave me a concerned, but patient, look.
‘There is no sense in becoming agitated,’ she said. ‘It would be far better to simply relax, as these men have done. Are you not tired?’
The curious thing was that until she had said these words I hadn’t in any way felt tired, but I had to confess that I did now feel most overpoweringly weary. My head felt heavy and my neck was suddenly aching with the effort of holding it up.
‘Sleep if you wish,’ said the Woman in White. ‘I shall not be offended. Sleep.’
And sleep did seem deuced attractive in that instant. My eyelids had become great leaden weights that seemed to have no other course than to sink down over my eyes and usher in a dark and delicious slumber. Maybe the excitement of the journey and of starting a new school had affected me more than I realised. My eyelids fluttered, making the Woman in White flicker like a magic lantern show.
Then suddenly, instead of the Woman in White, I saw a vivid image of my stepmother, her face pale and wild as it had been when she awoke from her dream. I could almost hear her voice saying, ‘Danger! Deadly danger!’ It brought me straight back to a state of wakefulness.
‘My dear boy,’ said the Woman in White. ‘Are you quite all right?’
‘I am well, thank you,’ I said. ‘I was just thinking of my stepmother. She had a strange dream before I left her. She was troubled by it. She is very superstitious.’
‘But you are not?’ asked the Woman in White. ‘Neither superstitious, nor troubled by her dream?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘I think I have rather a distrust of superstition, actually. My stepmother likes to believe in omens and portents and the like, but I find it all a little foolish.’
‘But did she not have some kind of premonition that something was to happen on your journey?’
‘Why, yes she did – did I tell you that?’ I said, wondering when that could have been.
‘So you think it unimaginable that someone might be able to foretell the future?’ she asked.
‘I don’t know,’ I said with a grin. ‘But I find it very hard to believe that, were that possible, such a gift might have attached itself to someone like my stepmother.’
The Woman in White did not return my grin.
‘Perhaps it is not a gift in that sense,’ she said. ‘Perhaps it is more that a curtain that has hitherto been concealing other times or places – other worlds, if you like – is for a moment pulled aside. Perhaps it is a moment of revelation and nothing more.’
‘A moment of revelation?’ I asked, uncertain of what she meant.
‘Yes,’ she continued. ‘A moment when, for whatever reason, a person is given access to a different kind of sight: a sight that allows them to glimpse another time or place. Do you not believe it to be possible?’
‘Perhaps,’ I said. ‘I’ve heard of such people, of course. But I suppose I always assumed them to be con men – or crazed. Do you believe it?’
She smiled.
‘Oh, there is no question,’ she said.
I was taken aback by the matter-of-factness of this reply.
‘Have you had experience of it yourself, then?’ I asked, instantly regretting giving her the opportunity to recount some garbled nonsense of the kind my stepmother was always coming out with.
‘I have no need of such things,’ she said with a little sigh and a smile.
‘But . . .’ I began, but got no further.
The image of that boy – Oscar – and his parents in the grip of that plant returned unbidden and with a frightening clarity and vigour. It made me jump as though electrocuted.
It was a curious thing, but I realised that listening to these stories was different to listening to any stories I had heard before. I felt myself actually there, as if I were a witness to the events being described. It felt as though, instead of listening to the words the Woman in White was saying, I was actually seeing images, hearing voices; it was like a dream, but at the same time more real than any dream.
‘Are you sure you’re all right?’ said the Woman in White. ‘You’re looking rather pale.’
‘I am quite well, miss, thank you,’ I said.
But I was not feeling as well as I pretended. The carriage was awfully warm and stuffy. I got to my feet and tried to open the window again, but it still would not budge, despite repeated attempts.
I smiled at the Woman in White, cursing silently at my inability to perform this simple task. I was certain that I detected a trace of enjoyment at my discomfort in her cool smile.
Then, quite suddenly, I felt dizzy and had to reach out for the luggage rack to keep my balance while the carriage and all its occupants seemed to spin around me in a vortex.
‘Can I be of assistance?’ she said, rising to her feet and reaching out to me.
‘No!’ I said, more sternly than I had intended. But I really did not want to be mollycoddled by this strange woman.
Besides, there had been something about the way she had reached out to me that set my nerves on edge. No doubt, I thought, it was an effect of my light-headedness, but she seemed to move with a horrible fluency and speed that made me recoil.
I sank down into my seat and gradually the spinning slowed and then stopped, though everything remained a little blurred. I focused on the Woman in White, who now looked the very picture of English reserve, sitting prim and demure, gazing out of the carriage window.
‘We have been forgotten, surely,’ I said, trying to regain my composure, and following her gaze out towards the cutting. ‘How long have we been sitting here and not a single person has walked past, inside or out? It’s a disgrace.’
I had no idea whether it was actually a disgrace, but I rather liked the sound of the words. My father would have said the same, I was sure of it. Why would she not just tell me the time? I gave the sleeping passengers a despairing look. These men might have had nothing better to do than sleep the day away, I thought, but I needed to get to London. Whatever the problem was, surely we should at least have been kept informed of any progress in resolving it.
I thought these things with some degree of passion, and it immediately brought on a recurrence of my dizziness. An intense pain stabbed my temples and I closed my eyes for a moment. When I reopened them, the Wo
man in White’s face was alarmingly close to my own.
‘I am certain everything will be quite all right,’ she said, with a smile that seemed to say she was as happy to be there as anywhere and had all the time in the world.
‘But I have things to do,’ I said falteringly. ‘I cannot simply sit here all day.’ I threw a glance at my sleeping companions and deliberately raised my voice, hoping to rouse them. Was I the only person on this train with somewhere to be?
‘Patience is a virtue,’ she said.
‘I had a governess who used to say that,’ I said. ‘Patience is a virtue. Patience is a virtue. She was like a parrot – except not as pretty. Lord, how I hated her.’
I suddenly realised this might be construed as an implicit criticism of the Woman in White and blushed. She seemed to enjoy my unease.
‘Were you frightful to your governess?’ she asked.
‘Well, I . . . I don’t, er . . .’ I burbled.
The truth was that I had indeed been frightful to my governess. I had made the poor woman’s life a misery for no other reason than that I could.
She was treated as just another servant by my parents and in some ways, worse, for they had a grudging respect for the other servants – or, most of them at least. But the governess’s work did not result in crisply ironed shirts or delicious desserts. She was invisible when effective and an irritant when she failed in the most important of her tasks: to prevent my parents being in any way inconvenienced by me.
‘The life of a governess is often an unhappy one,’ said the Woman in White sadly.
‘Do you speak from experience?’ I asked, for though she had denied being a teacher there was something of the buttoned-up air of a governess about her.
‘Bless you, no,’ she said. ‘I have never been a governess, though I have come to know a few over the years. Shall I tell you about one of them?’
‘I don’t –’
‘Very well, then,’ she said.
g
A New Governess
Amelia Spenser sat studying the elegant drawing room as a carriage clock on the mantelpiece struck the quarter hour. The room was tastefully and expensively furnished, and although drawing rooms were often feminine, there seemed a particular confidence in the femininity here, and in the house as a whole, of which Amelia thoroughly approved.
Tales of Terror from the Tunnel's Mouth Page 4