by Robin Jarvis
"Dear me," she called sheepishly, "it really is very dusty in there. Terrible neglect—disgraceful."
Nathaniel watched with some amusement as she drew near and then said, "Is this your house?"
Miss Boston looked horrified at the suggestion. "Heavens no!" she declared puckering her face up at the very idea. "I live just off Church Street." The man simply stared at her and she realised how it must look to him. "Forgive me," she cried, "I understand now, you must be wondering what I was doing in there."
"I have to confess to a certain amount of curiosity," he replied. "Why would anyone like you go crawling through the dirt in such a wretched place as this."
"Oh, Eurydice!" she said flatly as if that explained everything. "Look here she is, the confounded animal." From the folds of her cloak she brought out a disgruntled looking cat which only possessed three legs. "Always taking off and scuttling to this hideous ruin." Miss Boston rattled on. "Not the most amenable of felines I'm afraid, I really don't see how Tilly put up with her—Matilda Droon that is, or was. She used to own Eurydice you understand, until she passed on. Oh my dear chap, you look quite bemused—am I making myself at all clear? It really is most confusing, I suppose. Well, suffice to say that I have now taken charge of this little madam and her three latest offspring, although the first action I felt duty-bound to undertake was a visit to the veterinarian. She didn't like that I can tell you—no more litters for her, thank the Lord."
"I can see you are kept on your toes," observed Nathaniel. "But what an awful place to have to search through."
Miss Boston nodded and the hat lurched a little further down the side of her head. "Oh most certainly," she agreed.
"I don't suppose anyone has lived here for many years," he put in.
"On the contrary," she fiercely corrected, her chins wobbling adamantly, "only two months ago it was inhabited. Why I even had afternoon tea there! It was most certainly cosy enough then, I can assure you."
"Then what could have happened in two months to bring it to this sorry state?"
"I doubt if you would believe me young man. You'd only think I was a dotty old woman imagining things—most people do you know."
Nathaniel turned the power of his smile on her. "I'm not that young," he began, "and you're not that old."
Miss Boston clucked like a happy chicken, tucked Eurydice back into her cloak, leaned forward and looked from right to left in case anyone else was listening. "Well," she said excited to have an audience for her story, "the last owner of the house was not all she pretended to be. Totally mad she was and wicked to the core. I could tell you a few tales about that one which would curl your hair! Never has Whitby been host to a more evil person and she almost destroyed everything."
The old lady's face changed and an expression of fear and dread stole over her as she remembered that dark time.
"What became of this person?" asked Nathaniel softly.
"She... she died."
"How?"
"The tower. It collapsed."
"Explain!"
Miss Boston stared up at the man, he was almost shouting. Why was he so interested in Rowena Cooper? A terrible drowsiness began to creep into the old lady's muscles and he demanded once more that she tell him.
"I tricked her, manoeuvred her backwards in time to a point when..."
Suddenly the cat beneath the cloak began to struggle again and one of its claws snagged Miss Boston's skin. It was like a pin bursting a bubble. Nathaniel's control was banished from her mind as the sharp pain raked down her arm.
The old lady was free. She shook herself and shivered, wondering what it was she had been about to say. Then she recalled what had already been said—Miss Boston was appalled. Why had she been so careless? How could she have spoken to a total stranger about those matters? Taking a deep breath she reprimanded herself and stuck out one of her chins defiantly.
"I'm terribly sorry," she said, rubbing her arm and looking at her watch. "I must get back home—the children will be out of school soon and wanting their tea. Excuse me."
Nathaniel simply smiled at her, then opened the gate. "No doubt we shall meet again," he told her.
Miss Boston slipped by him. Her gabbling tongue had unsettled her and she had grown suspicious of this charming stranger. All she wanted to do was get smartly away from him in case she let anything else slip. "I'm afraid we probably shan't," she declared, "meet again—I mean. Not for a while anyway—Bother!"
A corner of her cloak had snagged on a nail and she fumbled with it in agitation. Nathaniel went to her assistance.
"It would seem the house is reluctant to let you leave," he laughed.
"Devil take the house!" fumed Miss Boston impatiently, "And Devil take this gate because I am leaving—leaving Whitby as a matter of fact! There! Oh blow, it's made a little hole."
"Leaving Whitby?" Nathaniel murmured. "For good?"
Miss Boston stared at him. What did she have to go and tell him that for? "No," she said with caution, "I shall only be gone for about a week. Tomorrow I leave for London." There was a pause, the man obviously wanted to know more—why should he, the nosey... "An old friend of mine is ill, you see," she found herself saying, "not expected to survive the week. Poor Patricia, such a waste."
She clicked her tongue as if switching the troublesome instrument off, then gave Nathaniel one last look. With a nod she bade him farewell and set off down the lane, hitching Eurydice under her arm.
The man turned back to the house and frowned.
***
The tide was on the turn and the afternoon drawing to a close when the bell finally rang and the primary school children poured out of the gates where mothers waited for the younger ones. In one quarter there was a flurry of paper as the results from the afternoon's art lesson were held aloft in triumph. There was laughter, a game of "Tick" spontaneously commenced, someone bounced a tennis ball along the playground and a group of girls spoke in hallowed whispers of ponies and expensive dolls.
Only one child was alone. Amongst all the cheerful, carefree crowd he had no one to meet or talk with. He was never invited back to anyone's house to play or have tea. Nobody ever kicked the football in his direction and when he walked by a group at break-time he would hear them snigger. In the playground he was always the solitary figure leaning against the wall, watching the others having fun and playing games. No one liked him, in fact there was something about the child that frightened them.
When he had first arrived at the beginning of term they had tried to make friends with him, but he said such odd, disturbing things that they soon learnt to leave him be. Lately, however, several of the older ones had started to pick on him and two in particular had begun to make his life a misery. It was the same wherever he went—he was a freak, the others knew and so did he.
"You've got the Laurenson touch!" shrieked a girl involved in the game of "Tick". "You're 'It' now!" she squealed to the child she had caught. "You're the loony—Ben, Ben can't catch me!"
"Ssshh!" someone hissed. "He's over there!"
Ben turned to look at them. They were eight years old, the same as him—the girl, Mandy Littleton, was in his class. She gaped at him for a second then giggled and pelted away, screaming his name in ridicule at the top of her shrill voice. Ben pushed through the crowd gathered at the gates, he cast one bitter look at the parents still waiting for their children and ran up the lane.
There was someone he could turn to, someone who would understand—apart from his sister and Aunt Alice she was his only friend.
By the shore, the failing daylight glimmered over the moving waters and long shadows stretched down the sand. Upon one of the boulders, beneath the cliffs, a solitary figure sat gazing out to the darkening horizon where sea met sky.
Nelda's eyes remained fixed upon that distant rim of the world, straining through the gathering dusk until it was too dark to see, even for an aufwader. Eventually she covered her face with her hands and sighed.
She was a stra
nge-looking creature, youngest of the sole surviving tribe of fisherfolk who dwelt in caves under the cliffs of Whitby. Her face was as wrinkled and weathered as any human of advanced years, yet to the rest of her people she was merely a child. She knew what it was like to be alone, for there were no others of the aufwader race her age and there never would be. The females of the tribe were cursed; they either died carrying the unborn child or perished with the infant at birth. Such was the terrible punishment of the mighty Lords of the Deep who reigned in the fathomless reaches of the ocean, and so the numbers of the aufwaders dwindled and decreased over long, barren years.
The evening chill deepened but it was some time before Nelda was aware of it. There were too many worries weighing on her mind, too many uncertainties to notice the numbness in her fingers.
"Hoy!" came a voice behind her. "Nelda!"
The aufwader stirred from her troubled thoughts and looked over her shoulder. A human boy was running across the sands towards her. She made room on the boulder and waited for him.
"I wasn't sure if you'd be here," Ben cried when he drew near, "I haven't seen you for weeks."
Conscious now of the cold, Nelda huddled into her gansey and pulled the sleeves of it over her fists. "There has been much to attend to," she replied averting her face from the boy's questioning eyes.
"I thought it was something like that," he said. "I expect with winter coming there's lots to do, storing up your food in the caves..."
"We are not squirrels!" she told him sharply. "The sea knows no lack, there is no dearth in the waters—or there would not be if it were not for your kind." Nelda turned away and glared into the gloom. "What do you know of my life beyond what you see here?" she cried. "Of the caves you know nothing. You have only stood in the entrance chamber—within those tunnels there is much you would not understand. There are places where even I have never been and where I hope never to have to tread. Inside those caverns there is more than the sound of water dripping over stone. Jealousies fester there, dark eyes watch, biding their time, burning with hideous fires that would consume me utterly and which I could never quench. A hunger lives down there! A vile, creeping horror, and it frightens me!"
The boy said nothing, for her outburst startled him and he did not know what to say. As she gazed at the waves washing over the stones he waited in awkward silence but when she turned to him again there was almost a smile on her small, curved mouth.
"Forgive me," she sighed, "I am out of tempers this day. It is nothing—it will pass." Nelda swept the hat from her head and rubbed her tangled hair. "But take care, Ben," she began, adopting a false, light-hearted tone, "you must not hail me so loudly. What if another were to hear you? Unless they are blessed with the sight as you are—they would think you crazed."
"I don't care!" he said. "What if nobody else can see you? I can and that's all that matters. Do you know I've been here every day after school looking for you?"
She lowered her large grey eyes and her face creased into a warm grin. "Have you truly?" she asked.
"Yes, I even thought of shouting your name outside the hidden entrance, but I didn't want to get you into any trouble with the elders."
Nelda shuddered. "Then I thank you for not doing so," she said quickly, "I have no wish to anger them at present. The less dealings I have with the Triad the better."
"What's wrong?"
"You asked me that once before, do you remember?"
He nodded, "Back then you were worried about your father. You were afraid your uncle had killed him."
"And did the truth not reveal itself to be even so?"
"Yes, but what is it now?"
"Me," she replied softly, "I fear for myself."
"Can't I help?"
"Not this time, no, I must face this alone."
A gull flew overhead and Nelda paused to watch it soar over the cliff. When it had disappeared from view she slid from the boulder and stood on the sand, a solemn expression on her face.
"It is said that an aufwader's heart is a sure guide," she told the boy, "and mine is full of despair and dread. Listen to me, Ben, hear me now lest I am unable to tell you in later times. You have been a true friend. In the short time I have known you, you have done nothing but try to aid both me and the tribe. Never shall I forget your bravery in the search for the moonkelp."
Ben shook his head. "What are you trying to tell me?" he interrupted.
Nelda took his hand. "This is what my heart foretells," she answered, "there will be a parting of the ways—our meetings will end, the two races of man and aufwader will be sundered for ever. We shall not set eyes on each other again—not till the seas are lost and the bones of the land broken."
"I don't understand," he mumbled. "Why can't we go on meeting? Has someone forbidden it? Are you ill? You're not telling me everything."
But she was looking up at the sky. It had grown dark and she pulled the hat on to her head once more. "I must return," she said quietly, "back to whatever doom lies in wait. Look for me, Ben, here at this time, when the sun is low. If I am at liberty to come—I shall." And with that she hurried over the rocks and disappeared round the cliff.
Ben knew she had gone to one of the secret entrances which led to the aufwader tunnels. He felt miserable. "Nelda!" he feebly called after her. "Nelda."
Immediately his cry was taken up by two other voices. "NELDA!" they screeched. "NELDA!"
A sickening knot twisted in Ben's stomach as he spun round. There on the shore, where they had been spying on him, were Danny Turner and Mark Stribbit; the two boys who bullied him at school.
"Who yer talkin' to Laurenson?" hooted Danny.
"Nelda, Nelda!" crowed the other.
Danny swaggered forward, he was an ugly boy of ten years whose sole delight was in frightening those smaller and weaker than himself. He had the face of a thug with a skinhead haircut and the manners of a dung beetle—no, worse than that even. Throughout the school his name was a byword for terror and dismay. He was the one the other children dreaded and who the teachers talked about in the staff room.
He knew just about every swear-word that ever fouled the air and had made up a few of his own for good measure. During assembly he would break wind during the Lord's Prayer, much to the distress of those unfortunate enough to be seated near him. His was the mouth which always cheeked the teachers and blew chewed-up pieces of paper through straws at them when their backs were turned. Then there was the infamous day when Susan Armitage took her coat from the cloakroom and discovered that someone had left "a present" in one of her pockets. No one knew how it had got there and although nothing could be proved, everyone suspected Danny. The coat had to be destroyed. Another of his favourite pastimes was travelling on buses and flinging eggs at pedestrians. Recently though he had mastered the dubious skill of spitting through his teeth and launching a thick yellow glob a full ten feet. He was one of the most unpleasant little yobs ever to have dreamt of having his knuckles tattooed.
The teachers despaired, for nothing they could do would change him. He steadfastly refused to be reformed. They had cajoled, bribed, even threatened, but the boy was out of control and in the past few weeks he had become worse.
Last Monday he punched little Mary Gibbons when she refused to hand over her dinner money, on Thursday he caught a seagull and wrung its neck, and now he and his stupid sidekick were concentrating their nastiness upon Ben.
"He's mad, ain'tcha, Pleb?" he said. "We thought yer was but now we know. Always talk to yersen, does yer?"
"Oooh Nelda, cooee!" tittered Mark.
Ben slithered off the rock and eyed the boys nervously. If he could only dash by them and make it over the sand to the pier steps.
"Yer frikened Laurenson?" Danny pouted mockingly. "Ain'tcha gonna tell us any more ghosty stories then?"
"Where's Old Bag Boston now?" sniped Mark. "She's as cracked as you are! Danny, tell 'im what we'll do to that three legged moggy o' theirs if we catch it."
"Tie it to a
rocket on bommy night!"
"Or stick a banger up its bum!"
"Better still, build the bommie round it and roast the fleabag alive."
Ben darted forward, neatly sidestepping the first of his enemies, but Mark was ready for him and his quick fingers snatched his jumper.
"I've got him, Danny!" he yelled.
"Hold him!" snarled the other.
The two of them grabbed Ben's arms and pulled him round until his legs buckled and he tripped. Down on to the wet sand Ben went sprawling. In an instant he was struggling to his feet again but Danny was not finished with him yet.
"Stay down, yer goz-eyed loony!" he bawled, kicking his victim and pouncing on top of him.
Ben groaned as the full weight of the Turner boy flattened him against the sand. "Get off!" he shouted. "Let go!" squirming he managed to roll over until Danny was sitting on his chest and with his small fists tried to lay into him.
At once Mark seized his hands and pinned them down under his knees. Ben started to flail his legs in the air, trying to hit Danny in the back. One sharp punch to the ribs soon put a stop to that and Ben let out a hoarse grunt.
"Take off his shoes," Danny told Mark. In a trice it was done and the Stribbit boy flung them into the sea before returning to kneel on Ben's arms.
"That's better," hissed Danny. "Only donkeys kick, Laurenson, and yer not a donkey are yer?" He smirked and winked at his friend. "Us know what to call the likes of you—people what talk to thesselves are Cretins ain't they? What are you then? Yer a stinkin' little Cret—say it."
Ben said nothing so Danny slapped his face and Mark pressed down harder with his knees.
The boy cried out and in his suffering he wretchedly mumbled, "I... I'm a Cret."
Both tormentors were overcome with laughter and Ben could feel every quaking cackle vibrate through his body. He closed his eyes and wished they were dead.
The vicious mirth subsided and the next stage of the bullying began. "Right then, Cret!" said Danny. "Time for yer to have a wash. But us all knows that Cretins don't use water—they're too gormless for that."