The Windvale Sprites

by Mackenzie Crook

  The sprite then started leading him down the grassy slope and across the moor. Sometimes it was ahead, sometimes behind like a sheepdog shepherding its herd.

  But it soon dawned on Asa that they were heading towards Benjamin Tooth’s broken-down house and he hesitated. He remembered the macabre scenes of dereliction and decay and did not want the sprite to see Tooth’s instruments of torture.

  ‘No, wait,’ he called out to the sprite who was quite a way ahead. ‘Why are we going there?’

  He was suddenly aware of a movement to his left and, looking down, he saw another sprite in the grass peering at them. Then a whispering rustle made him look behind and there were three more, and then another, and soon the tiny creatures were all around. They rose up on shimmering wings from the sea of grass and hung there, watching.

  Looking back, the sprite was waiting for him. It had a plan and so he followed.

  When they got to the house the creature’s mood changed. It no longer led him but hung back and seemed to be urging him on. The sprite could have entered the house through any one of the broken windowpanes or holes in the roof but for the first time it seemed to want to stay close to Asa and be protected by him.

  He picked his way over the ramshackle remains of the garden and towards the outhouse where he had entered before. The sprite grew more nervous as they approached and clung on to the back of his head, peering through his hair. As he stepped over the rusty junk the sprite gripped his head tightly.

  ‘Are you sure?’ asked Asa.

  Go on, said the words in his head and so he continued into the dark interior.

  Once inside they stopped and the sprite, little by little, started to look about the room.

  It was cloudier today than when Asa had visited before and only the ghostly outlines of furniture could be made out by the dim light that came through the grimy windowpanes.

  ‘I don’t have my torch,’ said Asa. The sprite settled on the thick stub of a candle, folded its wings around, and, with a sharp, rasping, scratching sound, leapt back as the ancient wick flared up and settled into a steady flame. Asa took up the candle and followed the sprite.

  It seemed to be searching for something amongst all the junk. It was momentarily fascinated by the wire tricycle and studied it closely, looking back at Asa as if to say, ‘This is like yours.’

  ‘I know,’ said Asa. ‘It was made for you.’

  The sprite pointed through the door into the next room where Asa had not previously ventured and so together they pushed on into the unknown.

  The door opened out into what would have been the hallway of the house with the remnants of a large staircase leading to the upper storey. The whole of one side of the staircase had collapsed and the remaining timbers were so rotten it would have been impossible to climb. The sprite made a circuit of the hallway and then disappeared under the stairs through one of the gaping holes. Asa picked his way carefully over the broken banister railings and peered into the dark space. He couldn’t see a thing but could hear the buzz of wings coming from down below and he realised there must be a cellar underneath the house.

  The sprite soon reappeared and seemed to be keen for Asa to follow him down. He made his way over more rotten planks towards the back of the hallway where, in the gloom, he could just make out a small doorway.

  19

  An Ancient Find

  The door creaked open on rusty hinges and Asa pushed the candle ahead of him to reveal a stone staircase leading down into the gloom. As he gingerly made his way down, the sprite hovered close by. At the bottom of the steps was a large cellar that was filled with bookcases arranged in rows like a library. Boxes and chests took up almost every inch of floor space and everything was draped in thick cobwebs. Whatever the sprite was searching for it would be like finding a needle in a haystack.

  The only clear space was a path down the centre of the room between the cases and, with his heart pounding, Asa inched his way slowly forward.

  As he passed each bookcase he peered into the spaces between them. Some of the shelves had collapsed and the leather-bound tomes were strewn over the floor and on top of yet more boxes. The candle spat and spluttered and sent shadows racing up to the ceiling as his footsteps tapped on the flagstone floor. But then his footsteps fell silent. He looked down and saw that the ground appeared to be covered in a dusty grey rug of some sort. He crouched down to take a closer look. No, it wasn’t a carpet but more like wool or hair spread out across the floor, and up ahead it appeared to get thicker and deeper as if a pile of the stuff had been dumped at the end of the room behind the last bookcase.

  He took another few steps. Something was not right. The sprite gripped his shoulder. Not wishing to go any further but resisting the urge to turn on his heels and run, Asa leaned forward and peered around the last set of shelves. What he saw was a truly bizarre thing. It did indeed appear to be a large mound of whitish wool piled up in the corner but perched on top of it was a small triangular hat.

  Asa looked at the sprite who was staring at the strange sight with an expression of terror.

  ‘What is it?’ Asa’s voice, though barely a whisper, echoed in the silence of the cellar as though he had shouted. Something beneath the pile began to move. Expecting a nest of rats to come scurrying out, Asa took three steps back and watched. The pile of hair settled again but Asa’s hasty retreat had stirred up a cloud of dust and he could feel a sneeze brewing. He tried his best to suppress it but the more he did the more powerful it became until it burst from him, the loudest sneeze he had ever produced.

  ‘HATISHOOO!’ he exploded. The mound of hair heaved and shifted and the sprite, in a flurry of wings, disappeared back from where they had come. All Asa wanted to do was follow it out of there but his legs had turned to stone and he couldn’t move an inch.

  ‘Who’s there?’ demanded a raspy voice from somewhere inside the heap of hair. It was all Asa could do to stop himself collapsing in a dead faint.

  ‘Who’s there?’ it repeated. ‘What time is it?’

  Asa held his breath.

  ‘Is that the baker’s boy? How long have I been asleep?’

  Filled with horror, Asa watched as a bony hand with long, curling fingernails emerged from the white hair and reached up to push back the tricorn hat. Then it slowly parted the hair underneath to reveal a tiny pair of wire-rimmed spectacles sitting on a thin nose.

  ‘Who are you?’ croaked the voice.

  ‘Asa,’ he managed to squeak.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Asa Brown.’

  ‘Are you the baker’s boy? What time is it?’

  ‘Not sure, about half past four I think.’

  ‘Then you’re late,’ it said. The skeletal hand proceeded to remove the glasses and a pair of beady eyes glared out as if from behind dusty curtains. ‘Well,’ it eventually snapped, ‘have you brought my loaves?’

  ‘Um, I’m not from the bakery,’ said Asa.

  ‘What day is it?’

  ‘Friday, no, Saturday.’

  ‘Well, which is it, boy?’

  ‘Saturday.’

  ‘Curses! I only meant to have a nap!’ The skinny hand replaced the spectacles and disappeared back inside the hair. The pile heaved and shifted as the old man tried to haul himself to his feet. But before long he gave up and slumped back.

  ‘What’s the month, boy?’

  ‘October,’ replied Asa.

  ‘Confound it!’ he shouted ‘I’ve missed my birthday!’ Then the mound of hair leaned slowly forward.

  ‘Who is the present monarch?’

  ‘Queen Elizabeth the Second,’ said Asa.

  The hair pile gasped and wheezed.

  ‘Great Scott!’ it yelped. ‘It’s worked! I’m still alive! I am immortal. Do you know who I am, boy?’

  ‘Are you …’ Asa stammered, ‘are you Benjamin Tooth?’

  ‘Indeed I am!’ he shouted triumphantly. ‘And you, boy, are trespassing on my property for which I am going to give you the thr
ashing of your life!’

  Once again the old man tried to pull himself to his feet but once again he soon gave up.

  ‘Come here!’ he shouted. ‘So that I can thrash you!’

  Asa, of course, was not about to step forward for ‘the thrashing of his life’ and replied, ‘No, I won’t.’

  Tooth thought about this.

  ‘Very well,’ he eventually said. ‘Why can I not stand up?’

  ‘I think it’s the weight of your hair and beard, sir,’ offered Asa. For the first time Tooth looked down at himself.

  ‘Odds bodikins!’ he burst out. ‘Look at me!’ (Asa had been doing nothing else since the ill-fated sneeze.) ‘I must have been asleep for a hundred years!’

  ‘I think it’s more like two hundred, sir.’

  ‘Gadzooks!’ Tooth spat. ‘Fetch me my razor, boy, I must shave this thing off.’

  ‘No,’ said Asa.

  ‘Why the devil not?’

  ‘Because then you’ll give me “the thrashing of my life”, sir.’

  The old man took a second to process this reply and then the hair-pile started to gently shake. At first Asa thought he was quaking with rage but soon realised the dusty heap was silently laughing.

  ‘Clever lad,’ he said. ‘But no, there will be no thrashings today, I haven’t the time. I have two centuries of work to catch up on and I need your help, if you please, to get up and to it.’

  Asa thought for a bit.

  ‘OK,’ he said.

  ‘O-K?’ said Tooth. ‘What does that stand for?’

  ‘Not really sure, but it means yes, I’ll help you.’

  ‘Good! Run up and find my razor, lad.’

  ‘OK.’ Asa turned and carefully made his way back to the stairs.

  20

  A Close Shave

  When he got to the top of the stairs and stepped back out into the hallway, Asa stopped.

  Did all of that really just happen? he asked himself. Was I really just talking to a two-hundred-and-fifty-year-old man who asked me to fetch him a razor?

  The events of the last few days had been so unbelievable that he was now just about ready to believe anything. Then he remembered the sprite, whom he hadn’t seen since the sneeze.

  ‘Hello?’ he called. ‘Are you here?’

  He found the creature back in the room with all the junk and jars. It was hovering up near the ceiling and was clearly in a state of anxiety.

  ‘It’s all right,’ he tried to reassure it even though he wasn’t quite convinced himself. ‘It’s the old man, Benjamin Tooth, but he can’t harm you, he can’t move.’ Asa explained what he had seen and was sure, even though the tiny sprite did not reply, that it had understood.

  Asa started looking around for a razor but in amongst all the rusted tools and artefacts littering the shelves and worktops the only likely thing he found was a large pair of iron shears. The candle stub was nearly gone now so he found another and lit it.

  ‘I’m going back down,’ said Asa. The sprite hung in the air. ‘Are you coming?’ The creature didn’t move.

  ‘It was you that made me come here – I didn’t want to, but now I’ve seen Tooth I can’t just leave him here.’ Still nothing from the sprite.

  ‘Well, come if you want to,’ he said and started towards the door. Immediately the sprite was back at his shoulder as he cautiously descended the stairs.

  The heap of silvery hair was still and silent again so this time Asa gave a polite cough. Again the sprite flitted away but this time only to a safe vantage point up on one of the high bookcases.

  ‘Who’s there?’ demanded the hair-pile. ‘Is that the baker’s boy?’

  ‘No, it’s me again, Asa Brown.’

  A pause.

  ‘Who is the present monarch?’ it demanded.

  ‘Queen Elizabeth the Second,’ replied Asa.

  ‘Still?’ said the old man. ‘How long have I been asleep?’

  ‘Five or six minutes,’ said Asa.

  ‘Oh. Make haste then, lad – did you find my razor?’

  ‘I found these.’ Asa held up the scissors.

  The thin bony arm emerged again and parted the curtains.

  ‘Those are sheep shearers,’ said Tooth after a moment.

  Asa explained that they were all he could find.

  ‘They’ll do for now, boy,’ he said though he was clearly quite insulted. ‘Mind you don’t chop off my nose.’

  ‘Me?’ said Asa, realising for the first time that he was going to have to shear this grumpy fossil himself.

  ‘Who else?’ demanded the fossil. ‘I can’t see a thing.’

  Asa stepped forward, wondering what he was going to find beneath more than two centuries of old man’s hair.

  ‘Not too much off the top,’ snapped Tooth. ‘And leave the curls. Do I still have curls?’

  ‘Um … I think they’re over there.’ Asa pointed back towards the door where, at the farthest extremities of the silvery locks there remained a touch of auburn colouring and some tight curls.

  ‘I don’t think I can save them,’ he admitted.

  ‘Get on with it, boy!’

  Asa carefully removed the tricorn hat and took up a handful of Tooth’s hair, cut it with the shears and let it fall to the floor. Then another and another. He grasped one side of the ancient fellow’s moustache and chopped through it, then the other side. He pulled out a bunch of the hair that fell thickly over his face.

  ‘Ow! That’s my eyebrow!’ said Tooth but it was too late. He did the same to the other side and soon the ancient face started to reveal itself. It resembled a dried prune, tiny and wrinkled beneath the huge mop of hair.

  Handful by handful the locks dropped to the floor until Benjamin Tooth sat there in a rickety wicker chair, blinking in the candlelight. His skin was leathery and creased, his body frail and thin, disappearing into an old frock coat that had probably fitted him many decades ago.

  ‘How do I look?’ he asked.

  ‘Um … great,’ Asa lied.

  ‘Hand me a glass, boy,’ he said gesturing towards a small table by his side that had been unearthed during the haircut. On the table were a notepad, a long clay pipe and a hand mirror, which Asa picked up and gave to Tooth.

  He took it in his bony fingers and gazed at his reflection for a long time. Slowly his fragile body began to shake again but Asa could not work out from his expression whether he was laughing or crying. The shaking began to get more violent and he started to rock backwards and forwards in the chair.

  ‘Heh heh heh!’ a wheezy chuckle bubbled up from deep inside his dusty lungs but there was no smile on the wrinkly face. It sounded like an angry, bitter laugh and Asa stepped back. Tooth looked up at him with mad eyes.

  ‘I got it wrong,’ he hissed and his mouth stretched into a strange manic grin revealing a row of brown, stubby teeth. Two fell out and dropped into his lap.

  ‘Got what wrong?’ asked Asa.

  ‘It didn’t work! I thought it held the key to eternal youth but look at me! LOO K AT ME! I’M … OLD!’

  ‘But you’re still alive,’ said Asa.

  ‘What’s the point of eternal life if you still grow old?’ spat the old man. ‘They tricked me! The little devils tricked me! It’s nothing but a torture device! It’s an instrument of torment!’

  ‘What is?’

  The old man started to lift his other hand from where it had been resting in his lap covered in chopped hair. As he slowly raised it up and the hair fell away Asa could see that he was gripping the carved wooden totem from the pictures in the journal. His gnarled fingernails had grown around and into it so that he couldn’t have put it down if he’d wanted to.

  ‘This!’ He shook the thing at Asa. ‘THIS was supposed to keep me young forever. Instead it’s turned me into a living corpse!’

  Tooth was getting very angry now and as he spoke he spat his remaining rotten teeth across the room.

  At this point the sprite broke his cover and dived down in a flash towards
Tooth. It grabbed the top of the statue and pulled with all its might, not realising that the old man’s fingernails were fused into it.

  ‘AAAGH!’ screamed Tooth in a spitting rage. ‘Little demon! Get away from me or I’ll pickle you in vinegar!’ He swiped the statue this way and that as the sprite held on tightly, then he smashed it down on the table beside him. The sprite darted out of the way and circled round to land on the back of Tooth’s hand where he administered a deep and painful sting.

  ‘YEEEOOO W!’ Tooth screamed and would have dropped the statue if he could. ‘Spiteful swine! I’ll kill the lot of you!’

  Quaking with rage, he summoned all his strength and began to haul himself up out of the chair, which up to now had been hidden. The clumps of hair fell away from what once may have been an impressively embroidered coat and breeches but now they were so rotten they resembled filthy lace and a cloud of moths flew up into the air in surprise. Tooth batted them away from his face and looked for the sprite.

  ‘Where is it? Help me find the devil! I’ll skin it alive! Where is it, boy?’

  ‘I’m not going to help you kill it,’ said Asa. Though he knew this would enrage Tooth even further he also knew that he could leave at any time and the frail old skeleton would not have the strength to follow.

  ‘He’s my friend,’ Asa continued. ‘He brought me here.’

  ‘Your friend?’ Benjamin Tooth was incredulous.

  ‘Yes,’ said Asa. ‘He wants the statue back and I came to help.’

  At this, instead of flying into another torrent of fury, the wind seemed to go out of Tooth’s sails and he slowly sank back into his chair where he sat breathing heavily.

  ‘It’s mine,’ he eventually said. ‘I found it.’

  ‘You stole it,’ said Asa feeling braver by the second. ‘I read your journals, I read how you destroyed their home and looted their treasures.’

  Asa felt the sprite land on his shoulder, listening.

  ‘Nonsense,’ said Tooth. ‘I was doing it in the name of science, in the name of human progress.’