The Beggar's Curse

by Ann Pilling

  Winnie Webster was hard, for all her good deeds. Posie Massey was missing, presumed drowned, old Miss Brierley was near her end, and all she could talk about was making an effort. It was as much as the poor woman could do to raise her head.

  “No, thank you,” he said bleakly, and after a few minutes he got up and went home.

  At about three that afternoon the children were coming down the hill from Blake’s End when they saw a small procession making its way along Coffin Lane. They thought Posie had been found at first; four men in shiny black suits were walking slowly towards the pit, carrying something yellow between them. Prill froze, then she realized that the stretcher blankets were red, not yellow, and it was much too big to be a little child. When they reached the water’s edge she saw that it was a rubber dinghy. The whisper went round the village like wildfire. They’d found nothing in the canal yet. Blake’s Pit was next.

  Colin wondered if they ought to go back to Elphins, it was ghoulish just hanging around, but Oliver had already marched up to the frogmen and stood with some other boys, watching them unpack their equipment. Prill stood all alone, by a great willow tree, her hands dangling limply at her sides, staring out across the sullen water, her face tearless and blank.

  The frogmen struggled into flippers, adjusted heavy harnesses and checked oxygen cylinders. People wandered down from the village in silent little groups and stood watching, at a distance. But the Edges weren’t there. Colin wouldn’t have put it past Harold and Frank to shut their shop up, in case they missed something, but he couldn’t see them in the crowd. Sid and Tony weren’t there either, and the door of the rusty caravan remained firmly shut.

  It was Colin who first noticed Rose Salt. She was making her way down one of the little tracks that led from the Heath to join the path that went round Blake’s Pit, and she was pushing something. When she saw the crowd she waved, and Colin waved back, but at the same moment one of the frogmen signalled to the bank, and the babble of voices on the police radios changed to a high, monotonous bleep.

  A stillness fell upon the watchers. The police officers exchanged looks and walked quickly from their cars to the water’s edge. “Hello,” Rose shouted cheerfully, not really understanding why nobody was taking any notice of her. “Hello, everyone, look what I found on the Heath.” And she started to pick her way down towards the muddy path, pushing Posie’s blue buggy with the old shopping bag strapped into the seat, like a sleeping child.

  As if from nowhere, from the very hedges and ditches, figures appeared and began to move slowly towards her. The caravan door was open now, and a string of small figures trooped out of it, creeping towards Rose. The crowd at the pit had suddenly thickened. They saw Tony Edge, and Sid too, sidling away from the others and making their way up the hill. “Let’s ask her what she’s got in that damned bag,” someone said. “Don’t believe she found that pushchair. Do you?”

  Rose was soon surrounded and Colin looked across anxiously at the police and the frogmen, expecting them to row rapidly to shore, to intervene and get the poor girl out of trouble. But he saw, to his horror, that they were busy pulling a dripping bundle out of the water and into the boat; they had no eyes for what was happening behind them, on the slimy green slope. All the Edges seemed to be there now, in a solid ring round the terrified Rose, hurling questions at her.

  “What you bin up to, Rose Salt?” Sid yelled. “Police bin lookin’ for you.”

  “Give over,” Jack Edge told him savagely. “Get back to the others, will you? Now listen, Rose,” he began. “A child’s gone missing. You know that, don’t you?”

  “Where d’you get that pushchair?” one of the Puddings squealed, like a stuck pig. “They’ve bin on the lookout for that pushchair.”

  Rose Salt looked in terror from one to the other. She was confused and the strange questions frightened her. “I went to me auntie’s in Brereton Cross,” she whimpered. “She’s got bad legs. The house needed bottoming.”

  “But what about that pushchair?” Tony Edge bellowed.

  “I found it up there under them trees, thought I’d just—” But fear swallowed her speech. The Edges were terribly close to her now, their dark bristly faces were thrust right up against her, like huge rats, and the older children had sticks in their hands.

  From the water’s edge the crowd watched the pathetic little figure slithering downhill, the pixie-hood bobbing idiotically, the brown mack flapping. “Come off it, Rose,” someone shouted. “Where’s the kid? You’ve bin hiding her, haven’t you? Think there’s a reward out or summat?” And with great crowing noises the Edges pursued her down the slimy grass, laughing to each other, and pointing, and waving their sticks.

  Rose couldn’t stop now, she was going too fast. The flimsy buggy, weighted down by the heavy bag, pulled her along. Heavy rain during the morning had turned the main track into a river of mud and slippery stones. Rose shot across it without even stopping and began to career down the few remaining feet, faster and faster as the bank dropped away to nothing, towards the glinting black water. There was no real shore on that side of the valley.

  Suddenly, both feet flew out from under her, she lost a shoe in the mud, and with a great scream she half slid, half fell into the pit, thrashing about and making hideous quacking noises which were abruptly cut off as the icy waters met over her head. There was no bank, no tree or bush to cling on to, nothing to save her. The buggy, with the contents of the bulging bag now dropping out of it, hit the water with a great wallop, and floated about for a while till it got caught up in a mass of drifting tree branches. But everyone had their eyes fixed on Rose as she plunged about in terror, making awful gobbling sounds as she tried to keep afloat, the baggy old mack filling with air like a brown balloon.

  She couldn’t swim but she wasn’t going to drown without a struggle. The Edges stood above the lake in a black knot, watching the helpless, screaming figure, and saw two of the frogmen swim over to her, each taking an arm and flipping her over on to her back. Within seconds she was in the boat, and Colin saw them chuck the sodden lump of rags overboard again. His knees almost buckled under him with sheer relief. So it couldn’t be Posie, and there was still a chance that the child was still alive.

  Rose Salt certainly was, and a few minutes later they were all on the other side. The frogmen were swaddling her in blankets, and the policemen were bending over her, and she was screaming the same sentence over and over again. “Bin to me auntie’s at Brereton Cross. Bad legs. House needed bottoming.”

  “All right, Rose,” they kept saying. “It’s all right now. Let’s just get you home.” But she was making such a racket that nobody noticed the tiny figure at the top of Coffin Lane, a miniature silhouette against the lead-coloured sky. Only when Rose paused for breath did they hear the baby cry of greeting, like the cheep of a bird. “Hello, Prill,” it called out. “I’m hungry now. Go home to Sam and Mummy now. I’m cold.”

  There were no signs at all that Posie Massey had been wandering over Stang Heath for twenty-four hours. She was immaculate. The blue dungarees and cherry-red anorak were spotless, so were the shoes and the little white socks. Her face was shiningly clean, and the gold curls clustered round her head like a halo.

  When the policeman took her in his arms and walked briskly up the hill towards the village she didn’t cry or protest, she simply announced that she wanted her mother, and a drink of juice. She couldn’t say where she’d been. All she ever said, when they asked, was “Dark. . . dark. . .” and if they persisted she started to cry.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  It was awful at Elphins that night. Molly shoved them all into the damp sitting room, with plates of bread and cheese, and said they could watch television for the evening. Nobody wanted to, and nobody felt very hungry. With no Rose around to coax the fire into life, it remained a feeble dribble in the grate. They sat hunched over it miserably, empty and shivering, chewing on the cold food and thinking of her gorgeous soups and stews. “Molly just can’t be bothered
with us,” Prill grumbled. “I wish we could go home. I hate it here.”

  “Don’t be so daft,” Colin exploded. “That’s just selfish. How do you think she feels, with policemen crawling all over the house?”

  “Only two.” But Prill felt uncomfortable, all the same. It was dreadful for Molly, and when she’d seen them carrying Rose up the garden path she’d looked an old, old woman, trembling and grey-faced.

  “But where on earth did Rose go with her? That’s what I’d like to know,” Colin said. “The kid looked so clean and everything, as if she’d been through a car wash.”

  “Well, they must have got it out of her by now,” Prill mumbled, through a mouthful of bread. “They’ve been questioning her for hours, and she’d made enough noise about it.”

  Oliver gave a queer little smile and jabbed at the fire with a poker. “What are you grinning at?” Colin demanded rather irritably. “Do you think it’s funny or something?”

  His cousin said nothing. “Funny” was the last thing he thought; he smiled because he believed he knew the truth about Posie Massey’s disappearance, and because it was awful and beyond anyone’s understanding. It was that nervous, idiotic smile that sometimes creeps across the face when a person gets terrible news, when words don’t mean anything any more, and tears aren’t enough.

  “I expect Molly will tell us tomorrow,” he said calmly, putting down the poker and standing up. “I’m going to bed, it’ll be warmer. Is anyone else coming? Molly’s put the bottles in.”

  She had asked them not to go into the kitchen, but as they went up the stairs they could hear Rose Salt loud and clear, still protesting to the police that she’d found the buggy on Stang Heath, and about Aunt Elsie’s bad legs.

  Molly didn’t go to bed till one in the morning. When the police had gone, and she managed to get Rose to sleep, she wandered into her studio with the dogs padding after her, wondering whether to start packing the kiln. She’d planned to do a firing this week. But arranging the pots on their various shelves was painstaking, laborious work. She was tired out and her hands wouldn’t stop shaking. She decided to leave it till tomorrow, she’d feel calmer then.

  On her way to her room she peeped in on the three children. The old oil lamp she carried round at night cast its soft light on their sleeping faces. They all looked so peaceful: Oliver neatly tucked up like a parcel, Colin with parted lips and one hand under his head, the girl quite still, her thick auburn hair tumbling over the pillow.

  But they didn’t make Molly feel peaceful. Nothing had gone right since these three had arrived in Stang. She looked at them again. Oliver worried her somehow, he was so adult in the way he looked at everything, and he asked such penetrating questions. In ghost stories it was children like that who made things happen.

  And yet she didn’t believe in ghosts, or in luck, any more than Winnie Webster did. What was she going to tell them about the child’s disappearance? She didn’t understand it herself, and neither did the police. It seemed that Rose Salt’s story was perfectly true, they’d been over to check. Aunt Elsie’s little house had been as clean as a new pin, and the old woman sitting cheerfully by a good fire, saying she hoped Rose wouldn’t leave it so long next time. Just what had happened to little Posie Massey was still a complete mystery, and the police were baffled in spite of all their efforts.

  Molly fell asleep the minute her head touched the pillow. Colin slept too, wrestling with the frogmen in Blake’s Pit. Prill’s dreams were of horses, thousands of them, rising up from huge cauldrons and staring at her with that pitiless Edge face.

  Only Oliver didn’t dream. He knew the police file on Posie Massey would be closed eventually, and that no trap or lunatic would ever be turned in for questioning. There were simply no procedures to deal with what had happened, but nobody understood that yet except him. He knew also that in spite of that witch-hunt this afternoon, the Edges weren’t to blame either.

  Something had been unleashed in Stang, something to do with that family and the black lake they lived by. It had forced him on to that nightmare ride with Tony Edge, it had nearly killed Jessie; today it had turned time on its head and spirited away a little child. In Stang churchyard three Massey children lay dead and rotten, tragically lost in Blake’s Pit one hundred and thirty years ago to the day. It just couldn’t be coincidence.

  Why was all this happening? Why now? It was as if a dragon, thousands of years asleep, had woken up ravenous and roamed the land. He wondered what was going to happen next in this village, and what anyone could do to stop it. What could he do?

  It was typical of Oliver to fall asleep before actually deciding. Two things were obvious: the Massey child was safe and well, and Rose Salt was not to blame. There might be rather a lot to do in the morning and a good night’s rest was the best preparation for whatever lay ahead.

  When it was all over they said he must have dreamt it all, but Colin knew it had happened. Oliver’s snoring had woken him up, and that was real enough. When he turned over on his back his mouth dropped open and he made an irritating snuffling noise, quiet enough, but rhythmic and monotonous, just the thing to drive you bananas in the middle of the night.

  He thought about his cousin as he walked through Stang. “I couldn’t stop myself,” Oliver had blurted out in Molly’s kitchen, after that weird episode on Tony Edge’s motorbike. “I didn’t want to go with him. I wanted to walk. He made me.” And it was all Colin could ever say about what happened that night.

  He’d opened his eyes to hear the church clock striking three, and felt wide awake at once. His mind was in tumult, filled with a jumble of faces; the Edge tribe turned into horses, rats, and poodles, a crowing rabble that forced Rose into a pit of darkness, filling her mouth with mud. And in his nightmare there was an undertow of the most terrible crying, mothers weeping for their children, a sound so desolate and bleak it seemed to embrace the sadness of the whole world.

  He didn’t want to be walking through Stang at three in the morning. Why couldn’t he be tucked up in bed like the others? But something had lured him out of Elphins, like an animal towards a snare, and he found himself walking through the sleeping village in bright moonlight, towards the waiting waters of Blake’s Pit.

  He didn’t dare lift his face till he was clear of the cottages, but concentrated on his feet, clambering up the rutted track that led away from the shore, up towards the Edges’ farm. Whatever drew him now was so powerful, so hard to resist, that Colin dreaded looking up in case he saw someone standing there, some dark and terrible shape with its finger beckoning; Harold or Frank, the big bullying Jack, even Sid or Our Vi. It didn’t matter who it was. They were all one.

  But the gloomy farmhouse was dark and silent, and there was no figure lowering over him. He stopped and looked back at the silent, moonlit valley, and saw for the first time that there was a direct line between Pit Farm and St Elphins, with its strange, lopsided steeple. There were no trees or houses in the way, and the ugly line of telegraph poles marched away to his left, across fields. From here the Edges must have always looked across on Stang, on its huddle of cottages, its pub and its church, on all its living and all its dead.

  “God’s finger pointing up to heaven” – that’s what Grandma Blakeman had always told him about church steeples, in her bedtime stories, years ago, when he was little. But Stang spire was crooked and deformed. It was almost as if it cringed away from the brooding farmhouse, and its devilish crew; it was as if, centuries ago, one of them had put the evil eye on it and knocked it sideways. . . Colin knew that was ridiculous; he understood all about the leaning buildings in Cheshire, and the salt pits, and the subsidence, perfectly well.

  Even so, a stab of cold made him shiver violently, but it was nothing to do with the chilly night, or the clear brilliance of the moon and stars. It was a cold that sliced through him like shock waves, turning his legs to jelly, prickling his flesh. He’d felt it the first time he’d seen Tony Edge, and when Rose had fallen into the pit. Oliver mus
t have felt it too, as he careered along the lanes on that lunatic ride.

  Was that story about the beggar just a legend? Molly had told them Blake’s Pit was cursed. Did it matter that it all happened centuries ago? Did it make the evil less? In the last few days they’d seen enough horror in this village to last them a lifetime. “That family can’t seem to help itself, somehow.” Molly had said that, at the beginning. One of their ancestors must have cursed the old city into the lake, but had somehow cursed himself also, and all who came after. The Edges were tainted.

  Weak legs carried him down to the pit. He settled himself in the dinghy and took up the oars. Like a man in a dream, not asking why, he rowed out strongly into the middle of the lake, rippling the still water like black silk. All he cared about now was distancing himself from the looming mass of Pit Farm; he was breaking the scent, like a hunted animal that crosses a stream.

  When he reached the middle he rested on his oars, listening to the night sounds. A dog barked somewhere, and a light went on in a cottage. He thought of Prill and Oliver, tucked up in bed at Elphins, and of old Miss Brierley dying at Blake’s End; he wondered whether Posie was asleep, curled up with her mother for safety.

  There was a lot of debris bobbing about on top of the water, bits of old rag and what looked like lumps of soggy newspaper. He peered over the side, thinking about Rose’s bulging bag. It was still in the lake presumably. One drifting mass was much bigger than the rest and for one horrible moment Colin thought he was clutching at the shoulders of a floating corpse. But it was only a wadge of sodden rags, caught up with some drifting tree branches. He pulled it on board, and dropped it into the bottom of the boat.

  Then he stared over the side for a second time, suddenly aware that it was getting lighter. But the sun didn’t rise at three in the morning, not even in Stang, and as he looked down into the water he realized that the strange brightness was coming from below.