by Mark Cassell
What did this mean? It seemed to be stamped or marked everywhere. Even on the spine of that large book.
Dropping the Polaroid back on the desk, I went to the large map on the wall, in particular to the one of the British Isles and the detailed map of Mabley Holt and the surrounding area. Various coloured pins dotted around it. There were about a dozen, some quite close, others a little further in the fields. One red pin marked the river that I’d fallen into. Again I wasn’t surprised. Thinking of that embarrassing moment, I wondered whether I could still in fact taste the water.
Such was my concentration I didn’t notice Leo had entered the study until he came to stand by my side.
“I …” I began, but couldn’t say anything else.
He laughed and simply said, “Yeah, I know.”
Apparently, Clive hadn’t said much to Leo upstairs and still didn’t reveal whose blood had covered him. When I’d suggested calling an ambulance, Leo had again been firm just as he had when I’d mentioned the police. We then spoke about the artist, Pippa, and he assured me I’d meet her the following day.
The aroma of coffee filled the kitchen where we were both now leaning against the counter, each with a steaming mug in hand.
“Tell me,” I said, “about the Shadow Fabric.”
Leo scratched his stubble. “As I mentioned earlier, the Shadow Fabric is a sentient darkness, existing inside the veil between this world and another.”
I gestured with my mug for him to continue.
“Although the Fabric predates the 17th century, it was about that time all over the globe when the practice of witchcraft threw it into overdrive. It was stitched into such a concentration of evil that it’s been a real pain in the arse ever since …”
I waited for him to continue but he squinted into his mug.
“What do you mean by stitched?”
“Good question.” The look on his face: was that sadness?
“Also, why is the Cat’s mouth stitched up?”
“Without going into details of the apparatus used, I can tell you that stitching is pretty much what it suggests, only without the use of a needle and thread.” He sipped his coffee. “There was … is … a particular technique in witchcraft that can harness evil and when linked, strengthens the Fabric. Stitched, you see?”
“I think so.”
“The stitches that weave the Cat’s mouth closed are no doubt threads of Fabric.”
“It’s all about the Shadow Fabric.”
A brief smile cracked his face. “Last year, I managed to banish it beyond the veil. With help. It wasn’t just me.” He took another sip and rested an elbow on the kitchen counter.
“How has it returned?”
“It seems to be only traces of the Shadow Fabric this time. We won. But from what I can tell, it’s returned on a different level. It seems to be a conduit.”
“To allow the entities to get through?”
“Yeah.” He grinned. “Precisely.”
Given all that had occurred so far, I accepted what he just told me. Twenty-four hours ago I wouldn’t have, but it was like I now trod a different path and I knew for certain I could not view life how I used to. For me, a whole new understanding of our existence had just been unveiled.
As we drank our coffees in silence, Clive came into the kitchen. The old man wore a pair of Leo’s grey combats and a baggy green hoodie. Strange to see him in something else other than a yellow jumper, yet still he looked frail and confused. The poor man.
“I’m so tired,” he said. “I want to go home.”
“You can sleep here if you want,” Leo offered.
I looked at the clock and remembered it was broken. Whatever the time, I guessed it was late.
“Kind of you, thank you.” Clive eyed my mug as I placed it down on the counter.
“You want a coffee?” Leo asked him. “Tea?”
“No.” Clive rubbed his hands together as though blood still covered them. “Thank you.”
“Do you feel any better?” I asked. Although fresh from the shower, his eyes remained small and troubled.
“I’d like to go home now, please,” he said without looking at me.
“Of course,” I said. “I’ll take you.”
“Will you guys be okay?” Leo asked.
“We’ll be fine,” said the independent woman inside me. “I need sleep.” I suddenly realised how tired I was.
“I have some things to sort out tonight.” Leo clutched his empty mug. “There’s a lot I need to make sense of.”
“And I’ll be meeting this Pippa tomorrow, too,” I told him, hoping this man would be good to his word.
“You will,” he replied, “no worries.”
Clive and I saw ourselves out as Leo returned to his study.
A sharp blue moonlight pressed down on us as we stepped outside, and Clive quietly shuffled alongside me. There was much I wanted to ask him, but I guessed he’d had about as much of this as I had. I wanted to go home too, but I knew sleep was far away; what with the evening’s excitement and having just drank coffee, I’d be alert for a while yet.
Luckily the moon lit our way through the canopy of branches over the bridleway, seeing as we were without a torch. With every step, I desperately wanted to ask Clive more about the ghost of his wife, but I felt a little awkward. I still wondered where all that blood came from. Eventually I followed Clive along his path and towards the front porch. As we stopped, I again thought of how strange it was to see him without his yellow jumper.
“Are you going to be okay?” I didn’t want to leave him. “You want me to come in?”
“I just want to sleep,” he said and avoided my eyes. “Thank you.”
“I should come in,” I insisted. This poor man had been covered in blood and filth, and I was convinced that there’d be evidence inside his house.
He shook his head. “Please, I just want to sleep.”
I watched him shuffle through the porch, almost tripping over his own feet. Evidently both doors had been left unlocked. It was lucky we lived in an area where we didn’t have to worry about burglaries. He disappeared inside without looking back. I imagined him walking into his lounge, those curtains still drawn, and him immediately calling for Janice.
For several moments I considered following him inside, just to make sure he was okay, then thought better of it. Back out on the road I gave a casual look across the fields and almost willed the Black Cat to be there; I saw nothing.
I needed to go home. Now. Further along the lane, the silvery haze of fog beneath moonlight drifted across the tarmac.
Then I did see something. Or someone. A silhouette, an ambling shadow. It was Harriet, her slightly rotund frame unmistakable. What was it with my neighbours? All I wanted was to go indoors.
I again wondered if I should phone the police.
Her silhouette shrank into the distance, vanishing into the thickening fog. Half of me wanted to go home, lock the door behind me and wait for all this insanity to pass. But I knew I couldn’t, and it wouldn’t. Whatever was happening in the Holt, I had somehow become part of it.
So, I jogged along the lane to reach where I last saw my neighbour. My other neighbour.
“Seriously?” I whispered.
What was going on with everyone?
I reached the corner of an adjacent lane that wound off towards another section of village.
Still no Harriet.
What I did see was the roadside rescue truck and the towed red van. Still attached, they were parked up in a passing place that was more an unofficial arc of crumbled tarmac and thick mud. The passenger’s door of the truck gaped wide and pressed against the bushes.
I slowed my pace and reached the truck.
The front wheel had sunk into the mud and the driver’s door hadn’t been closed properly. Even though I didn’t want to, my hand went for the handle. It was cold and wet with the moist atmosphere. I pulled – heavier than it should’ve been but I guessed it was due to the v
ehicle’s angle. It creaked as I swung it wide.
The smell of cigarette smoke and energy drinks wafted out at me.
No sign of the men, and the key was still in the ignition. Maybe they had both got out after the truck broke down. A breakdown truck breaking down; there was something amusing in that but I couldn’t even smile. Why leave it with the doors open and the key still inside?
Weird enough for the truck to be left like this … and then I saw the seat belts. They snaked across the seats, shredded. I wasn’t surprised to see streaks of the black fungus – or residue, as Leo had explained – all over the upholstery and dashboard. No evidence of anything else, not even a struggle. Who could do this? More to the point, what could do this?
I stepped back and my foot landed awkwardly in a pothole. I looked down. For a moment, the moon hid behind heavy cloud, dropping an almost suffocating darkness over me. It only lasted a second or two, although long enough to make me freeze. Moonlight again washed over me. Relief. Across the tarmac, streaks of glistening mud led away from the vehicle. All I could think was they had to be drag marks from both truck driver and van driver.
The marks ended in the middle of the road, so I couldn’t tell which direction they’d been taken in – if indeed they had been taken. This was crazy. Maybe … maybe what? They’d gone for a midnight stroll? Perhaps the Cat had dragged the bodies through the small hole in the bushes that led into the fields. Towards the river.
I walked to the centre of the road. Had it been the Cat that had dragged them out? Both men together? I guessed they were unconscious.
All these questions were doing my head in. Within five strides, I made it to the gap in the bushes to look across the field.
Harriet stood motionless halfway between the road and the woodland that led down to the river.
No sign of the men’s bodies.
Fog and shadow drifted towards Harriet, seeming to pump from the ground. Her arms hung, and it looked as though small whirlwinds of mud and mist coiled around her wrists.
And like a tornado, the darkness knotted together and circled her, the fog churning with it. Thicker and faster, obscuring my view. A howling wind spat debris in the air. My breath snatched in my throat as I felt that wind cold against my face. I squinted into it, mesmerised.
No more than two seconds passed and that black hurricane collapsed. It simply slumped, like a magic act where the magician’s cloth first hid the assistant and then didn’t, just flattened to the stage as though no one was there in the first instance. Harriet was gone.
A final blast of wind pushed hair in my face, while my heartbeat seemed to pulse in my head.
The moon spotlighted an empty field.
I returned to my house for a scarf and gloves. As I pushed open my front door, it hit something on the mat and stopped dead. After an awkward manoeuvre, I bent to pick up whatever it was.
A rolled-up canvas.
For a second or two, I stared at it. No guesses as to who the artist could be but why would the woman, whom I’d not even met, remove the wooden frame and post it through my letter box? Given that I’d been out pretty much all day, I also wondered how long it had been there.
I unravelled it and for a moment didn’t understand. The artwork was of something so simple. Much simpler than the other I’d found at Leo’s.
It turned my stomach.
This painting depicted a faded and threadbare rug near a dark wooden bed leg. Simple, certainly, but it was what those familiar vivid strokes of turquoise revealed that got me.
I recognised it.
It was of my grandparents’ bedroom floor. Their rug, to be precise. From the time I’d dropped Gran’s turquoise nail varnish and it stained the fibres.
“What are you playing at?” I screamed at the woman who wouldn’t be able to hear me. My heart seemed to rise and fill my throat.
In seconds, I was up the stairs and across the landing, the canvas screwed up in a fist. There I stood, before my grandparents’ bedroom door that I’d not opened since I’d hidden away their urns. Five months; such a long time.
My hand hovered in front of me.
With a ridiculous amount of effort, my fingers curled around the cold handle. I twisted it and pushed the door wide. A musty smell wafted out at me. Dark blue moonlight pressed through the net curtains, creating silhouettes of the tall wardrobe and the bed, and also the bedside cabinets and a chest of drawers in the corner.
Two ceramic urns sat on the chest. One red, one blue. Gran. Grandad.
I stepped into the room and the smell of them tugged at memories. Gran. Grandad.
I switched on the light and squinted.
The furniture looked precisely the same, although now covered with a haze of dust. The flowery bedspread, smoothed out with crisp precision, reminded me of the time I’d gone shopping with Gran. We’d bought it on a trip to Hastings.
My gaze kept floating towards the urns.
The canvas flopped against my leg as I approached the bed. I didn’t want to go around to Gran’s side, knowing that turquoise stain would be there. But why had Leo’s neighbour painted it, and then posted the stupid thing to me?
Beside the two urns sat Gran’s jewellery box, embroidered and lined with sequins that once glinted. Now, however, beneath a layer of dust the fabric and sequins were dull and lifeless like my grandparents’ ashes. As a child, I used to marvel at how large the box was, yet now, alongside the urns, it looked too small to contain all the treasures I once admired. Gran had always loved it when I made a fuss of her jewellery; I remembered as a girl I’d rummage through rings and bracelets, earrings and necklaces. Old, tarnished, I’d never cared. Nor had I cared that those rings never fit my tiny fingers, or that my ears weren’t pierced, or how the bracelets would never remain on my thin wrists.
Without realising, I’d walked round the room to stand in reaching distance of the jewellery box … and my grandparents’ ashes.
At my feet, and although faint, the turquoise stain dredged up the memory of Gran’s shriek after I spilt the varnish. At the time, it seemed I cried for hours; I’d only wanted to be like her with those pretty fingers, I wanted to be an adult.
Now? I no longer wanted to be an adult; I’d had enough. All I wanted was to be that innocent little girl again, way back when life was easier. Much easier.
My legs folded and I slumped on the edge of the bed. I threw the canvas beside me and sank my head into clammy palms. I felt suffocated, like the ceiling wanted to collapse. Squeezing my eyes closed, I imagined the dark attic above with its cobwebbed rafters … and beyond that, the roof tiles and chimney stack and the thick fog that smothered the house, the village, the world. My world.
No tears. Yet my heart thumped behind tight lungs.
The mattress moved, sank. Like someone—
I pressed my fingertips into my forehead, not wanting to budge, not wanting to look.
It was like someone was sitting at the bottom of the bed.
Just like when I was a child, when Gran or Grandad came into my room to sit on the bed, I felt the mattress tilt beneath their weight.
It was absurd, I had to snap out of this. I was upset and imagining things. I straightened my back, opened my eyes.
Of course, no one was there … But …
An imprint on that once-smooth bedspread slowly rose, settled, and returned to how it had been.
I leapt up, the canvas falling to the floor, and I threw my gaze around the room. Nothing, no one.
No ghosts.
If Janice’s ghost floated around inside Clive’s house, who was to say either of my Grandparents’ ghosts didn’t wander around here, too? I honestly did not know how to feel about that. It was all insane.
Totally. Insane.
I stood there, listening to my breath, just daring something else to happen. Still nothing … Eventually, I crouched to pick up the canvas. It had fallen beside the stained corner of the rug where a tiny triangle of white paper hid beneath the flattened tassels.<
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With a fingertip, I slid it free in a curl of grit and dust.
A photograph.
My grandparents, not looking any different to how I remembered them, smiled back at me from beside a rock that jutted from the woodland floor. The churned mud at its base was disturbed like I’d seen earlier, as though it had pushed up from the ground. Grandad had an arm around Gran while she pressed one hand against the rock. Red and yellow paint covered the surface in places, the same bold curves and lines I’d seen beneath the river. Janice leaned against the other side of the rock, her arms folded. The back of her head rested against it. They all wore big coats and muddy hiking boots. I guessed Clive was behind the lens.
When I finally got to my feet, straightening up and still clutching the photo, I saw that the covers weren’t even wrinkled. Not even from where I had sat a moment ago.
A chill crawled up my spine and clutched at my scalp.
It was all I could do to keep my hand from shaking as I stared at the photograph. I brought it up closer to my face. The markings on the stone looked sharper where Gran’s hand was, almost as though they glowed. Perhaps it was nothing, just the sunlight from somewhere overhead, spearing down through the branches.
My fist pummelled Leo’s front door as my heart raced with my breathing. I’d run all the way from my house to his, making a promise to get my lazy arse to the gym once all this crazy shit had passed – if indeed it would ever pass. The shadows in the overgrown bushes made me think of the way that whirlwind had swept away Harriet.
I banged the door again and rang the bell.
No answer.
Where was he? I thumped on the wooden panel again, this time hurting my hand. My breath plumed towards the moon as I stepped back to look up at a window.
“Leo?” I called in that loud whisper-hiss that wasn’t a whisper at all. I’d not been gone long, surely he couldn’t be asleep already. He’d said he had stuff to do.