Crooked Daylight

by Helen Slavin

  “So, you’re babysitting today then.” Seren, it seemed, was not in the best of moods as she walked in, now draped in her towel, from the porch.

  “I have the day off and I’d like to spend it here at the lake with you.” Anna was bright, managing to keep the shake out of her voice despite the fact that there was still a small echo of the voices ringing around her head. A choir. She had a sudden thought of the chapel and that also proved difficult to handle. All the events tried to link up in her head, last October, Grandma Hettie’s death, the arrival of Seren Lake. They had built into an onslaught of sorts, Anna finding she had to manage this rush of emotion and information, of instinct. Ah, there it was, the word came to her at last.

  “It would be easier for you all if I just left.” Seren hesitated beneath the arch of the kitchen.

  “No it wouldn’t. This is what we’re here for.” Anna offered a cup of tea, Seren glanced at it.

  “You say that as if it’s some sort of mission… not everyone who runs holiday homes has this attitude.” Seren managed a smile.

  “We’re not everyone, Seren. Cob Cottage is not your average holiday home.” Anna’s voice was gentle, and its meaning reached Seren. She nodded.

  “I’ll get dressed.”

  Before long, Emz and Charlie were up, and the women grabbed the bits of breakfast that Anna tempted them with and, as Seren showered, Anna pushed packed lunches on her sisters.

  “Look just take them, it’s just a chickeny salady thing, you might be hungry later…” As they reached for the waxed paper packages they accidentally formed a triangle of hands and a sudden vision of Tighe Rourke flashed up between them.

  “Did you see that?” Anna asked, hardly daring to look at her sisters. They wore the same guarded expression until Emz nodded and the tension between them vanished.

  “Not to be too Vanessa about this but… can we do an experiment?” Charlie asked. The other two nodded. Charlie put her sandwich into her deep pocket and offered her hands. They joined up.

  “What?” Anna asked. Charlie nodded.

  “Didn’t happen did it?” She seemed cheered by this. Emz looked at their hands.

  “Are we holding our hands a different way?”

  Charlie broke the triangle, fiddled in her pockets for her keys.

  “It was a Grandma Hettie flash…” Anna tried an explanation “… a one off…”

  Charlie grabbed their hands, the flash lurched into their heads

  “TA DA!” Charlie grinned. “It’s not to do with how we hold our hands… we have to hold our minds a different way… thinking about it switches it off.”

  Each sister was climbing aboard their own mental bicycle, feeling back in time for the balance, the speed. Anna’s heart was rushing again, and she found she couldn’t speak. The sisters looked at each other. Emz adjusted her little finger and a glimmering ancient memory shimmered briefly in their heads, uncatchable, for now.

  “Anyway. Safe to say that’s a warning about Mr Rourke, I think…” Charlie said. “Are we all warned?”

  They nodded and with a team bounce of their hands Charlie and Emz headed out for brewery and school.

  Anna patrolled the edge of the lake. At first, she did not know what she was looking for, she didn’t have Emz’s binoculars on her. As she walked towards the jetty she could see her grandmother, sitting in her black waxed raincoat on the flat rock beyond, the sight triggered something in her brain. Anna thought of Charlie’s theory, that direct thinking about the Strengths pushed too hard, so ease up on thinking, Anna. She stepped out of herself and her thoughts and she had an image in her head of her grandmother beside her a long time ago, teaching them how to make twine with bramble stems. Instruction. But that had only been half the lesson for the sisters. The memory focused. Fox. Reach for the fox. You know he’s in the wood.

  Anna let herself go. Reached.

  Water, drift, sky, wood.

  She picked up Tighe’s trail, could see it written into the woods, like a greasy mental smear. At the end of it, the smearing shimmered, and she was aware of him, squatting on his haunches by a fallen down log about half way up the rise. From here he was completely concealed if she just glanced or looked at the view through the binoculars, but now, as she reached further, certain possessions he had brought into the wood jarred with the landscape, a crumpled plastic packet from a supermarket sandwich, a plastic juice bottle, the shiny film from a chocolate bar. For just a moment she could see herself reflected in the red eyes of his binoculars.

  She stopped reaching, took a breath because it seemed she had been holding hers. You don’t need to do that, keep it simple, just breathe.

  For the first time in many months, Anna Way smiled. Not polite. Not to hide behind. Just smiled.

  Her grandmother’s shade, getting up from the rock, smiled back.

  * * *

  They took a walk up into the woods to rescue Seren’s car and, once they’d brought that back to the cottage and had some lunch, Anna had thought it might be an idea to get away from the cottage for a while. After a phone conversation late last night, Vanessa had suggested that they talk to her lawyer friend, Maggi, about a restraining order. There was no getting out of this, Vanessa had made an appointment.

  As she reached for the key Anna recalled how her grandmother had only ever turned the key after she had licked her finger and drawn a pentacle on the lower board. Anna licked her finger… how did it go? Nope. That was wrong. No. There was a knack to it, something… let go. Anna stopped thinking of the physical mechanics and mentally reached, touched upon the memory of her grandmother’s hand moving hers, teaching her the way to draw it.

  “… See… one fluid movement Anna, so that there are no cracks in it…” There was muscle memory in her finger. Here, sweep down, now over there, up like this, down there, across and… She turned the key.

  They drove into town and their appointment at the solicitor’s office.

  “Convicted?” Anna had not, so far, heard anything useful. “How far does he have to go before she can get help to stop him?”

  “There would have to be a criminal case to warrant it. The restraining order would come off the back of a conviction or an acquittal if there was sufficient evidence in the eyes of the…” Maggi’s words blurred into the air. Anna could see Seren shrinking under the weight of all that had to be done. Proof. Evidence. Seren was polite throughout the whole interview but Anna could see what was in her mind.

  “Nothing will keep him away,” Seren said as they left Maggi’s office no better off than when they had entered. “Whatever he does… whatever I do. He won’t care what any court or judge or stack of paper says.”

  “No.” Anna agreed. It was stupid not to, she felt exactly the same sure sense as Seren. She had argued as much with her mother on the phone. Vanessa, Anna thought, had too much faith in paperwork.

  To lift their mood, Anna suggested a walk around the castle. Seren was not so sure.

  “After that bloke at the castle scared me…” She stared hard at the gates. Anna looked and saw that the WI ladies were just passing the kiosk.

  “Maybe we should get back on the horse then?” Anna suggested. Seren looked puzzled.

  “You want to go horse-riding?”

  “No. You know that saying, if you fall off the horse you should…”

  Seren understood and began to laugh. She nodded.

  “Yes. If you put it like that. It wasn’t the castle’s fault.”

  They strolled around. Seren calmed considerably as they moved through the rooms and showed intense interest in the exhibition displays. It was, Anna could see, an opportunity to lose herself.

  Anna was growing uneasy. It seemed that every time she peered out of a window or squinted through an arrowslit she could see one or other of the WI ladies. She tested it now, standing on the long corridor in the eastern curtain wall. There was an arrowslit, thin and angled. At first, all she could see was the green banking below leading to the well, but as she watc
hed, the woman in red stepped purposefully into her sightline. There was no mistaking the movement. Anna dodged away behind the stonework. She stood for a moment in the sharp breeze that blew through.

  “Let’s go this way…” Anna steered Seren forwards out of the cold draught and they spiralled up the steps to the East Tower. The view of Woodcastle from up there was one of Anna’s favourites.

  Seren was impressed. The autumn foliage of the woods and countryside made for a vivid scene except for that wasp buzzing about. Seren batted it away from her face. As she did so three others buzzed near.

  “Ew… what the?” Seren moved out of the way. The wasps followed. Anna batted at them. They seemed sleepy, as wasps do in autumn, but they were persistent, resting, legs twitching, on Seren’s shoulders. Seren was becoming skittish.

  “No… stop…. ew… get them away…” The largest and stripiest wasp had landed on her hair. Anna swiped at it, it seemed to be tangling into her hair, the buzzing noise increased with their own heart rates and Anna felt panicky. As she did so the black butterflies splashed into her mind, their wings softening the air, brushing away the panicked feeling. More butterflies. She just needed more. Wings fluttered and clustered and Anna reached for the fat wasp snarled into Seren’s hair. Her fingers pinched its body, careful of the sting, she had thrown it over the side of the tower before she thought. Seren was fussing at her hair.

  “Oh my God… ew… I hate anything insecty… oh… urgh.” Her fingers clawed at the hair, straightening out the tangles.

  They made their way down to the courtyard. As they left the tower Anna felt her neck prickle. Not another wasp? She looked around. There were no more wasps, but Anna saw the four WI women sitting on a bench in the shade of the wall. The one with the ratty hair was fanning herself with a map of the castle and the one in beige flapped listlessly at her own reddened face. The elegant one dressed in black was leaning back, a hand to her forehead. The woman in red stared at her, hard and so Anna waved.

  “Hello again.” There was no response. Anna wanted to walk off, but it seemed rude having made the attempt at friendliness. The wasps seemed like a reasonable topic of small talk.

  “A lot of wasps about,” Anna commented and waved her hand in the direction of the tower. “I’d steer clear of the tower if I were you.” She was bright and breezy. Again, they did not respond. Anna decided that manners dictated she’d said enough and she could now go. As she turned away something small and sharp buzzed at her neck. Instinctively she slapped at it, felt a squish beneath her palm. Edgy, she discarded the horrid little corpse without even glancing at it, and, as she and Seren walked towards the gate, Anna did not wish to look back.

  It was late afternoon when, neither talking much, Anna and Seren headed back to Cob Cottage.

  * * *

  They had prepared a meal by the time Charlie and Emz returned. It was growing dark and there was a sense of expectation around the table.

  “How was today?” Charlie asked.

  “Any sign?” Emz reached for the salad dressing. Seren was watching the sisters.

  “He’s going to come tonight,” she said, she had only really pushed the food around her plate. It had come to Anna’s attention this morning too that Seren had appeared to eat something but, in fact, had eaten nothing. She’d disarranged the food, that was all.

  “Hope so.” Charlie gave a wicked grin. “I had a bastard of a day today and I for one am ready for a fight.”

  As she said the word there was a smash, the kitchen window shattered and a rock from the shoreline curved through the air, narrowly missed Seren, crashed into the plates and dishes on the table before it skidded onto the floor. Seren picked it up. It was a blur of movement before the sisters and Seren were outside, Seren giving a throat-tearing scream and hurling the rock towards the cover of the woods.

  “LEAVE ME ALONE.” The sound echoed like a bell and created a wake on the water, the lake water tutting at the shore.

  “You’re mine Birdy…” The voice was moving in the darkness, hard to pinpoint except that Emz suddenly sensed the deeper darkness where Tighe was. If you looked you could see him, the blur of edges where he moved and there where he stumbled, the curse he gave biting out into the night.

  “You need to leave.” Charlie’s voice was stern.

  “You need to give me back what’s mine. Step away.”

  Charlie did not step away, instead, with a quick glance to her sisters, she darted into the woods slightly to the left of where Tighe’s voice was emerging.

  “I’ve seen a lawyer Tighe… I’ve got the law onto you.”

  They heard a low laughing rumble through the trees.

  “Keep away. You need to stay away from me…” Seren’s voice was stretched, thin and desperate. Emz looked at Anna who nodded and Emz darted right.

  “Keep him talking,” Anna said quietly to Seren and moved forwards. At first, there were just trees and in the distance the sound of the odd car rolling along the road. It was dark, she couldn’t hear or see him or her sisters. She thought back to how she’d scanned the landscape before, she’d seen a trail then, why couldn’t she pick up that trail now? Anna’s heart started to race a little and she stopped, listened to it, beatbeatbeat with that simple action she let go, let her mind reach. At once she recognised the greasiness of the dark he left in his wake.

  “Can’t do that Birdy.”

  “I won’t come back, Tighe.”

  “You’re mine, Birdy.”

  Seren let out a frustrated whine, animal-sounding.

  “No… it’s over.”

  Tighe Rourke’s laughter was harsh this time. He was moving as if to come around behind them and snatch Seren away.

  “No. Not over.” There was no argument in his voice, just the bare fact of what he wanted.

  “NO. LISTEN TO ME,” Seren shouted, the anger making her curl over on herself, her fists clenched. “We are DONE.”

  A flash burst in Anna’s head, an image of Seren asleep, her arms trailing in the dirt as she was carried up the rise. Anger made a white-hot blow torch inside her. I will show you. She headed into the trees.

  Inside the trees the darkness swallowed everything up. Anna could sense where her sisters were, Emz a pale light glowing on one side of her head, Charlie a sharp blue needle of light on the other side and, between the triangle they made, the greasy dark of Tighe. They could hear him laughing.

  “Come and get me…” he was sneering, “hahaha… fucking try.” He was moving away, still held in their triangle but, Anna thought, veering now towards Emz. As he did so there was a low growl, deep and rumbling that bounced off the trees. Anna’s heart picked up. Of course, Cry Wolf, exactly as they’d done the other night. She opened her mouth to let out a snarl when there was another deeper growl almost directly in front of her. The sound was guttural and rich, and she was admiring of how well Charlie was doing that. She wasn’t sure she could match up. She let out her own bark which seemed thin beside the two snarls that ripped through the air to the left. There was an odd sound then, Tighe Rourke taking too hasty breaths, he gasped, cried out, stumbled. Anna was surefooted, moving through the dark and aware of her sisters keeping the formation. As the snarls grew Anna’s mind opened out once more and she understood in her bones that all they must do now was keep the triangle of themselves. Charlie ahead, Anna and Emz at the lower points behind him. It was only as she reached out she became aware that there were other things in the darkness. Her heart stuttered slightly, she was not, they as a trio, were not, in complete control here. The wood was drawing out its own responses. The others are with you. Her Grandma Hettie’s familiar voice calm and instructive in her head. She reached for Charlie and Emz, they reached back exactly and as easily as they had when they were younger. Hold tight. They would remove him from the wood. Do not be afraid of the dark.

  They moved swiftly now, up through the trees and they could hear Tighe, his breath tight in his chest and making wheezing noises that were part strangled b
reath and part protest cry help try help whelp.

  Branches broke above, twigs cracked below, the wood shivered as they moved through, pushing Tighe further, higher, farther. push. hard. harder.

  Cry help try help whelp.

  They were up towards the road now, Anna could see where the ground scooped down into Long Lane, the green road that had existed before the tarmac road had ever been thought of, before cars, before the castle; her grandmother had always said the oldest footprints were trampled here. The streetlights glowed like eyes, peeking in through the trees to see what was coming.

  When the moment came there was no way they could stop themselves, the sisters shifted through the trees, visible to each other with Tighe trapped between them, his black clothes scratched at and torn. The Way sisters kept him moving, unrelenting, merciless, further, further to where there was the deepest rumble now, the loudest growl. Earth quaking, tree trunks vibrating. Searing light.

  The snarling engine of the truck was millimetres from Tighe’s chest as, terrified, hunted, desperate for escape, he hurled himself out of the woods and into the road. The concussion of air from the truck’s grille was like hot breath and he looked up to see the driver’s face, white with horror as he swerved. The wing mirror punched Tighe as he tried to turn away, knocking him backwards as the brakes squealed like banshees.

  * * *

  It was three o’clock in the morning when Tighe left the hospital in Castlebury. He was patched and pain-killered and he was going to find a taxi and get back to his car, but he knew he would not sleep. He was wired with battle. This was the best game Birdy had ever played. No one had ever taken things this far. She was his wildest dream.