by Lucy Wood
She backs out of the hedge and into the field on the other side. She looks once more through the gap. The cows snort. One of them stamps. She walks back through the empty field. There’s only one way left to go – over to the main road and across from there. All she wants to do is get back. She can’t remember how long she’s been walking. It must be a long time. There is the constant sound of hammering from somewhere. She crosses the first field and enters the second. A gunshot goes off in the distance. This field has long wet grass that sticks to her legs. It tangles in clumps and trips her up. It’s tough and doesn’t snap across her boots. She keeps going. There isn’t far to go. She can’t remember exactly, but surely there isn’t far to go.
The next field is wide and open and more land, more fields, stretch in front of her, strung with telegraph poles and bending trees. The road is in the distance – it thrums with tractors and brewery lorries and lorries delivering frozen food. They flash on the horizon – red, blue, red, blue. They seem very far away.
The gate she needs is ahead, in the opposite corner of the field. There is the sound of a chainsaw somewhere. She starts to cross the field. As soon as she starts crossing, she sees the cows. They are on the far side, walking towards the gate. She walks faster. The cows seem to quicken their pace. She keeps walking. The cows will reach the gate first, she knows it, they are closer than she is. She walks faster. The cows are in a line, now they are in a group, pushing against each other. Her legs ache. She doesn’t want to run but she starts running. The cows start running.
All she sees is the gate. The cows’ hooves strike at the ground. A gunshot goes off in the distance. The cows’ bodies send out a wave of heat and it is behind her as she runs. She stumbles in the mud. Her foot sticks. She gets to the gate. Her foot is on the rung. She slips. A cow thuds against the gate and it shakes on its hinges. She slips again, then she is up and over and on the other side.
She doesn’t turn around until she’s almost across the field. All she wants to do is get back. Then she makes herself turn. The cows have gone. The fields are empty all around her. Below there is a dark line of trees. She hobbles down, mud on her legs, grass on her legs, brambles hooked to the back of her shirt. A crow circles.
Her foot catches on a stone and she stumbles and almost falls. Her nose is raw and the numb feeling has spread up her hands and into her arms. The mist is pushing in thicker now, dropping down so that everything is swathed up to knee height. She can’t see the ground, or her feet. Her feet are very cold. There is the constant sound of hammering from somewhere, and chainsaws, and the terrible screech of an angle grinder.
She makes her way down the slope and towards the trees. Once she is on the other side of the trees she will almost be back. There is a sound ahead of her and at first she thinks it must be her boots hitting the stones in the grass. She keeps going. The crow is still circling. A gunshot goes off in the distance.
The first cow comes up the slope towards her. There are two more behind it. They come in ones and twos, slowly, with their heads down, pushing closer. The whole herd is there, coming up the slope about twenty yards ahead, wading through the mist, and spreading out in a semicircle around her.
She stops. The fields are dark and empty for miles in all directions.
The cows don’t run, they don’t stamp, they just press slowly forwards.
She stays where she is. Her legs ache. She’s been walking for a long time. She can’t remember how long exactly. All she wants to do is get back. There is the constant sound of hammering from somewhere.
She takes a step backwards, and then another, until she’s up the slope and across the field, one slow step at a time. The cows don’t move. She doesn’t take her eyes off them. Their tails flick. Their breath comes out in thick shapes on the air.
She reaches the gate. She climbs back over it. What she needs to do is circle around another way. She needs to go back to the first field and start again. She needs to climb the gate, and then the next one, and then she will be back. She hasn’t been back for a long time – she can’t remember how long, exactly.
She crosses into the first field. The nettles along the edges are taller than she is. She doesn’t have anything with her unless you count the brambles or the moth in her hair. The field is bare and dewy. The barley has just been cut back to stubble. It will be very hot later; the sun will break through and parch everything. She walks faster. She sees the gate. There is the terrible sound of an angle grinder somewhere. Damp gusts blow in like smoke before the fire’s got going properly.
Way the Hell Out
‘Did you hear about the Ellis house,’ Fran says. She picks up her mug, holds it, but doesn’t take a drink.
‘It’s coming up for sale again,’ Morrie says. He leans back and looks around the café. It’s empty apart from a table of three people in the corner. He nods to them. ‘Lyn,’ he says. ‘Jake. Ricky.’
They all nod back then carry on eating.
The owner of the café stands behind the counter, drying glasses and wrapping cutlery.
‘That’s because it’s happened again,’ Fran says.
Morrie nods and takes a drink. The windows drip with steam from the inside, rain from the outside.
Fran puts her mug back down on the table but keeps hold of the handle. ‘It didn’t start straight away,’ she says. ‘When they first moved in, everything was fine.’
‘It’s a nice old house,’ Morrie says.
‘They bought it for their holidays.’
‘They paid a lot for it.’
‘They wanted the quiet.’
‘It’s definitely quiet out there.’
‘No other houses.’
‘No lights.’
‘No traffic on the road.’
‘You wouldn’t see anyone else for days.’
‘Shut the door, light the fire, close up all the curtains.’
Morrie finishes his drink. ‘I like a fire.’
‘You’d need it out there, the way the wind comes in.’
‘It does come in.’
‘The sea mists.’
‘They do come in.’
They both look out of the window. A sheet of rain presses against the glass. The group in the corner sit in silence. There’s just the sound of their forks against their plates.
‘It’s a shame,’ Fran says. ‘The way it starts happening.’
Morrie leans back further in his chair. ‘Same as before?’
Fran leans forward. ‘Same as before. They come back and find the door’s unlocked. At first they think they just forgot.’
‘It’s easy to forget.’
‘But the next day it’s unlocked again,’ Fran says. ‘So they lock everything carefully, check it over, and go to bed. In the morning, all the windows have been flung wide open.’
The café owner starts stacking the glasses on a shelf. Each glass grates against the next as he stacks them.
‘They close all the windows and put the latches down. They check the doors. And for a few days nothing happens. They almost forget about it. The windows are so loose that maybe they just opened by themselves in the wind.’
Morrie nods again, slowly.
‘Then one night they hear someone walking down the road.’
‘No one walks down that road.’
‘But they hear someone. Boots on the gravel. A cough. Whoever it is they’re dragging their feet. They’re unhurried.’
‘It doesn’t seem right,’ Morrie says.
‘They look out and try to see who it is. The road’s empty. There’s no one there.’
‘What about in the trees?’
‘That’s next.’ Fran twists her mug around and holds it with her other hand. ‘They start thinking there’s something in the trees.’
‘What?’
‘They can’t tell – they have those thick pines out there, and at first it just looks like a dark shape, maybe a gap between branches.’
‘Pine trees can do that.’
‘Then they realise what it is.’
A glass falls off the shelf and cracks against the floor. No one jumps.
‘It’s a figure, just standing there, looking across at the house. It’s standing very still. There’s some kind of hood, maybe a long coat.’
Morrie sighs and shakes his head.
‘It’s dark, so they try to find a torch, but by the time they’ve found it there’s nothing there, just the gaps between the trees.’ Fran glances at the group at the other table. They’ve all got their heads down, eating. ‘They try to tell themselves it was nothing. Just the wind, just the trees moving.’
‘The wind does move things out there.’
‘It does.’
A chair scrapes against the floor but no one gets up.
‘They tell themselves they didn’t really see anything. And for a while they don’t see anything else. Everything goes back to how it was, until they come back one day and, as they’re getting out of their car, they happen to look across at their kitchen window.’ Fran stops again and looks down at her tea. There’s half left but she still doesn’t drink it. ‘There’s hands pressed against it, from the inside.’
‘The inside?’
‘Two hands, just pressing.’
‘I don’t like that,’ Morrie says. ‘That’s not right.’
‘After that they stay up all night. They check each room. They sit on the sofa and put the TV on loud. They try not to think about the hands.’
The cutlery clinks as the café owner wraps some more and puts it carefully in a basket.
‘But they must fall asleep, because when they wake up, someone’s in the room.’
‘I don’t like that,’ Morrie says.
‘There’s someone behind them, near the door. It’s dark and they’ve just woken up, and the figure is moving carefully, keeping close to the walls. It walks through the house, down the corridor and out of the front door.’
Someone on the other table knocks their plate with their elbow and it rocks, then slowly stills.
Morrie shakes his head. ‘They only bought it for their holidays.’
‘Not much of a holiday.’
‘What did they do?’
‘Same as the people before. They phoned the police.’
‘There’s no signal out there.’
‘There’s no anything out there.’
‘They probably had to go to the top of the road to ring.’
‘In the wind.’
‘In the rain.’
They look out of the window. The café owner folds and wraps. The cutlery basket is almost full.
‘Of course, by the time the police get there the house is empty again.’
‘What did they say?’
‘What could they say.’
‘The doors are all locked.’
‘No marks, no traces. No other witnesses. What can they do.’
‘It is quiet out there.’ Morrie watches a drop of water as it moves slowly down the window. ‘I suppose they don’t really know anyone.’
‘I suppose not.’
‘Out there on their own.’
Someone walks past the door and slows down. Everyone watches. The person stops, looks in, then carries on walking.
‘They stop coming down so often.’
‘No one they can talk to,’ Morrie says. ‘That’s not right.’
‘And when they do come back, things have been moved.’
‘The rugs?’
‘The books. Furniture.’
‘The rugs?’
‘Probably the rugs.’
‘I don’t like that,’ Morrie says.
The door of the café rattles in the wind. The café owner crosses the room, looks out, then pulls it tightly shut.
‘Eventually they stop coming down at all,’ Fran says.
‘That’s what the others did.’
‘That’s what they always do.’ She watches the café owner as he walks back behind the counter. ‘They stop coming down and then they sell it.’
‘They’ll want to sell it quick.’
‘They will.’
‘It’ll probably be a bargain.’
‘No doubt.’
‘Like last time.’
‘No doubt.’
Fran turns and gets her coat off the back of her chair. She puts it on but stays sitting. She picks up her mug again. The group on the other table hold their forks but don’t eat.
‘Someone’ll snap it up of course,’ Fran says.
‘Buy it cheap, sell it expensive,’ Morrie says.
‘That’s what she always does.’
Fran finishes her drink in one mouthful. The café owner wraps the last of the cutlery and switches on the radio. The group on the other table start to talk amongst themselves.
‘She’s always been a swine, that Jane Ellis,’ Fran says. She gets up and zips her coat.
Salthouse
Winters are when people disappear. One minute you’re elbow to elbow on the street, the next you walk along sidestepping nothing but the wind. Cafés put down their blinds. Houses are locked and dark. The car parks slowly empty and all that’s left on the beaches are a few forgotten shoes. Waiters and waitresses go away to work the ski season, cleaning chalets in a bright glare of snow. Lifeguards pack their tents and dented surfboards and get on planes, following the sun like a flock of migrating birds.
I wait for Gina by the door, my coat and trainers on, and the old, dried-up Christmas tree leaning against the wall. It’s not even four o’clock, but the sky is already dim – one of those days where it never really gets light except for a pale streak above the sea. Gina lives a few streets away in a bungalow that’s almost identical to mine, except hers has a hole in the wall from where her mother once tried to decorate and then gave up halfway through. There’s a TV in front of it now but you can still see the cracked edges. It takes two minutes to walk between our houses; one and a half if you take the alley with the mattress and the bin bags. Down the sides of each street there’s clumps of sea beet, burdock, grass that knots into sandy bouquets. The grass is sharp and tough. We used to take turns ripping out handfuls and seeing who would get cuts across their fingers. There’s sand everywhere around here. When you walk in the wind, grains crunch against your teeth. We’re out on the edge of town, where the cliffs start to crumble and turn to sloping dunes. The dunes are heavy and soft, like flour in a bowl. They never stay still. They slip and shift around; sometimes growing, sometimes flattening out. When the gales come, loose sand blows down the road and heaps at our front doors.
Gina finally knocks and I go straight out, dragging the tree behind me. ‘I thought you were coming earlier,’ I say. I prop the tree up and lock the door, then start hauling it down the steps. We always bury the tree together first thing in the new year, but somehow it’s already halfway through February. The tree’s almost bare, except for a few brown needles clinging on.
‘You look like you’re moving a body,’ Gina says.
‘I thought you were coming earlier,’ I tell her.
Gina turns and looks back up the road, as if she’s seen something, but there’s nothing there. ‘How late are your parents working tonight?’
‘Late,’ I say. The care home they manage is full and low on staff. ‘Mr Richards is sleepwalking again. He’s started getting out and trying to hitch-hike at the side of the road. No one’s stopped for him yet.’
Gina picks up her end of the tree but doesn’t move off the step. ‘Late,’ she says.
I start walking backwards, then turn and hold the tree behind me so that I can walk facing the right way. We cross the street and cut across a few front gardens. A cat follows us, then yawns and sits by somebody’s door. We pass the last of the bungalows, with their banging shutters and wind-cracked paint, and come out onto the road. The dunes spread out ahead of us, humped and dark. We start down the road towards them. Every year we take our tree down to Salthouse and bury it along with everyone else’s, to try and stop the sand moving and
the dunes disappearing. There are rows and rows of old trees. Gina and I always find the best place, and dig ours in the deepest. We do it with my tree because Gina’s is plastic and has flashing lights and a singing snowman on top.
The wind slaps into us. I pull up my hood and button it under my chin. I wait for Gina to do the same, then realise she isn’t wearing her coat. She’s had the same one since we were about seven – a parka with a broken zip and sand in the pockets, which used to come down past her knees. Once, we both fitted into it at the same time. Instead of her coat, she’s wearing a white jumper that looks too small for her, and instead of trainers, she’s wearing long brown boots that must be her mother’s. They’re too big for her. She keeps stopping to wedge her feet in tighter.
‘Where’s your coat?’ I ask. I have a loose tooth and I keep touching it with my tongue. I’ve lost all the others – some have grown back, some are halfway through – and this is the only original tooth I have left. It should have come out weeks ago. Usually I would bend it until it makes a gristly, crackling noise, and twist it at the root, but with this tooth I push downwards, into the gum, until it settles back in place.
Another gust of wind hits us, and Gina rakes her hair out of her mouth. Her hair is very pale and so is her skin and the tips of her eyelashes, like grass that has dried in a heatwave. Her mouth is small and dark and she smells sweet and sour, like a vinegary strawberry I once ate and spat back out.
‘You need to pull that tooth,’ she says. ‘I’ll do it for you if you want.’ I can feel her shivering – it goes down through the tree and into my hands.
We come to the crossroads and I start following the path down to the dunes, but Gina stops and puts her end of the tree down. She picks at a dry needle in her finger. By now our palms are stippled. The lights of town are in the distance. A bus goes past, its insides lit up like an aquarium. There is the sound of the wind, and the sound of the sea, and something I can’t place, a low beating that isn’t the wind or the sea.
‘The fair’s back,’ Gina says.
I can just make out a small, hazy glow past the hotels. ‘Remember the dodgems?’ I say.