by Chris Ward
Perhaps there was the answer. A child, stolen to satisfy there own maternal needs. But Ian didn’t think so. The country was liberal now, two consenting adults with decent incomes had as fair a chance of adoption as any, sexuality notwithstanding. They had no reason to steal a baby from a village so close to where they lived, a village where they were both feared and mocked in equal measure. No.
More.
He knew they had been linked to his dead wife, to Gabrielle. Seventeen years after her death their life together had a dream–like hazy quality. Of their eighteen years together before he (don’t think it don’t think it don’t think it) the first eleven had been perfect, almost idyllic. Gabrielle had suffered the odd bout of depression, but had generally seemed happy, contented. Ian still remembered that Gabrielle and usually omitted the remainder from his mind.
He opened his thoughts, let her memory in.
In the months up to Bethany’s birth she had begun to get sick a lot, suffer stronger bouts of depression. They had blamed it on morning sickness, and treated it with aspirin and prescription medication. Ian had worried, but only after the birth did Gabrielle begin her slide.
As though Bethany had flicked a switch somewhere inside her mother, Gabrielle’s condition had gradually worsened. She was always sick, always depressed, and as the years passed there was no let up from it. She would show occasional flashes of her past self, the odd glorious day when she would get up from her bed, play with the children, walk in the garden, and smile, smile that wonderful, lustrous smile.
But it didn’t last.
The last couple of years were hell on earth. Gabrielle began to change, and the Gabrielle Ian knew had disappeared. During those years Ian’s life became a living nightmare. By the end, she was no longer the woman he had married at all.
He squeezed his eyes shut for a second, forgetting about the road. Those memories could stay away. He didn’t want those back. His wife . . . his wife –
He liked to believe her sickness had been earthly, and that she was just that, a woman, lost and cold that he had found lying in the woods one day. A woman who had lost her way, and had stumbled into love with him.
That she hadn’t fallen from the sky at all.
She had never told him, but he knew there had been a bond between her and the Meredith sisters. There were days when she had gone out and come back hours later, her explanation vague, and rather than suspecting an affair, he had known she had been with them, though Gabrielle never, ever admitted to it. Gabrielle had had some friends in the village, but the sisters were set apart, filling in a piece of her mysterious life that even Ian couldn’t know about. The fear of ever losing her had made him stop short of demanding to know.
In the end he had lost her anyway. But whether he liked it or not, a deep, mysterious acquaintance with his wife meant the sisters weren’t quite as normal as he would like to hope. Something deeper resonated out from them, too.
Despite the shotgun resting on his friend’s knees, and the finger that itched to start pulling the trigger, Ian couldn’t help but feel afraid for Red. Very afraid. Someone might die tonight, and whomever held the gun would have little bearing.
11
‘I think he’s sick.’
Elaina looked up from her book. ‘What?’
‘Jack. I think he’s sick.’
Elaina slammed the book shut, the sound enough to make her sister jump. ‘I’ve told you not to fucking call him that. He’s not called Jack, or Jacky, or any fucking thing, he’s just a baby, and we’ll soon be rid of him.’
‘But that’s his name.’
‘Shut up, you stupid fool. That’s the name they gave him, but he’s not theirs anymore. He’s ours, for now.’
Liana said nothing. She looked down at the baby nestled in her lap. She would die for one of her own. Just to hold something, and call it yours, all yours. She sighed. It would never happen, but at least while she had little Jack she could pretend.
‘I think I’ll mix him something,’ she said. ‘He looks too pale.’
‘He’s a baby. They’re all pale. They’re like little lumps of dough waiting to be baked into bread.’
Liana scowled at the back of her sister’s head from her place on the couch. She was such a bitch, sometimes. Usually it came naturally, but often Elaina adopted her attitude for the sheer hell of it. Just to see the look on her sister’s face.
‘You’re not just a lump of dough, are you?’ Liana whispered, rubbing the baby’s nose with one finger. ‘You’re a special little thing, aren’t you?’
The baby, its doughy face molding into a smile, cooed back at her.
‘Oh, will you just shut up,’ Elaina scowled. ‘Go and put him down somewhere, let him sleep. Stop playing with him like a fucking spot that won’t heal!’
Liana became suddenly mad. ‘Will you just stop it? All you do all day long is berate me, berate him! It was your idea, remember? To take him?’
Elaina glared at her. ‘Can’t I just get a little peace and quiet? For once?’
‘I’ll give you peace and quiet if you stop getting at me!’
The baby began to cry.
Elaina stood up. ‘Now look what you’ve done. I’ve had enough of this. I’m going out for a walk. Get a bit of fresh air. It’s so bloody stale in here. When I get back I want him put to bed, and I don’t want to hear another sound for the rest of the evening, okay?’
Liana returned her sister’s glare. ‘Just go out. I could do with some peace and quiet myself.’
Elaina narrowed her eyes, her mouth set in stone, then with a flourish she turned and strode to the door. She pulled her coat from its hook in one fluid motion and then she was gone, out into the cold and the fog that hung over their hollow like a funeral veil.
After her sister had gone, Liana ran a finger over Jack’s soft, spongy forehead, breathed a few words and watched as he dropped soundly asleep. Not really magic, just a little trick, just something to make him sleep a little better. She wouldn’t want to use what magic she had on one so young, didn’t want it messing with his mind.
She shouldn’t use it at all; it wasn’t hers to use. Whatever she used for good, gave more to her sister for bad, keeping the balance. If her sister used her magic for bad things, Liana gained more to use for good.
But if Liana used too much, Elaina could get sick, and vice versa. The equivalent of a spoonful could give her sister a cold, a stomachache. Say, enough to make a shallow, egocentric man fall in love with the plainest, least inspiring of girls. Liana saw no wrong in it sometimes; often the purest, longest lasting love was found in the least likely of places. Even when she had no right to meddle. Elaina was the same but opposite; could turn a loving man into an abusive, irrational husband, a caring wife into an adulterous bitch. She saw no wrong in what she did, though of course Liana hated her for it, the same way Elaina hated Liana’s uses for their magic. But to use too much, to turn the minds or the destinies of too many in too short a space of time, could spell death for the other twin.
And death for one meant death for the other.
Opposites, yet equal. Different, yet the same.
They both knew it. Therefore they were naturally conservative with it, despite Elaina’s constant threats of lightning bolts and earth tremors to swallow Liana up. She couldn’t do it, of course. All she could do, all either of them could do, was heavily influence, make people believe, make people see what the sisters wanted them to see. Turn their minds towards the vague, turn them away from the obvious. Easy, really. And harmless, in small amounts.
Like the metal scales in their kitchen, a constant balance had to be maintained between them. The use of small amounts of their magic could be corrected, but a large use could tip the scales over. Like a roof supported by two single walls, if one wall fell, the roof fell. So they were careful.
Because neither particularly wanted to die.
Though in what way were they really alive? They existed here as something else, something not quit
e human but also in a way inextricably linked to everything it was to be human, everything that existed with humanity as its core. They came from another place, unsure how, or why, only that they were, and that through them a link to that other place, the place beyond mortality, was forged. And therefore a passageway existed.
They felt sure they weren’t alone. Just as Man hopes he is not alone among the stars, the sisters thought perhaps only in this part of the world, yet they knew of no others like them, others with the same complexities.
They were a link, a doorway, nothing more. A way into the past, the future. But for whom?
In time, others had come, stumbling, unintended, among them Gabrielle, who became a Cassidy. Some they could send back if they found them in time, before the impurities of mortality had set in. Once decay had seeded, there could be no return.
Except – except –
Liana glanced down at the baby in her arms, and her heart lurched.
By restoring purity.
Elaina felt sure if they put their magic together it would work. Liana was not so sure. And she didn’t want to see the baby go.
Didn’t want to see the baby die.
‘There is no good without evil,’ Liana whispered softly to the baby, whose quiet breathing didn’t change. ‘Because what is good without evil? Even something as pure and infinitely beautiful as Gabrielle had her dark side. She sucked the life out of the earth, the trees, the people, in order to preserve herself. Not her fault, of course, she could do nothing to prevent it. The world made her do it.’
The baby didn’t respond.
‘Her son’s anger came from her, I suppose you’d say,’ Liana continued. ‘She sucked the love out of him, as she did with many others. But in the end it wasn’t enough, not enough to save her, not enough . . .’
Liana realised that tears were rolling down her cheeks like milky waves across a sandy shore. ‘Huh. I guess you don’t really know what I’m talking about, do you? You’re just a baby.’ She stroked the child’s forehead.
‘Your grandmother, that’s who. Gabrielle Cassidy. The loveliest woman in the world.’ Liana chuckled. ‘Heaven knows why she came to your grandfather. He’s never been an oil painting. But then, I guess perhaps Heaven does know. Huh. It’s a shame it won’t say, isn’t it?’
She sat in silence for a few minutes, watching Jack’s sleeping form. So sweet, so innocent. Like a tiny package of purity, molded into human form.
It was easy enough to send Gabrielle back, if they conducted a sacrifice.
Liana had felt ill when Elaina first mentioned her plan. It couldn’t work, it was just plain stupid. To sacrifice a child to send someone back, it was sickening, heinous. There was no choice, Elaina had said.
Liana knew what had happened to Gabrielle, knew how lost her soul had become. Now, existing as nothing more than essence, she slowly drew life out of the world around her in order to maintain her own soul.
The community around them had fallen out of balance. Soon, people might begin to die as Gabrielle’s soul began to degrade.
It was always the way with women, according to Elaina. When it happened to men, it was different. Women lost themselves, falling apart like dolls tossed into a fire, molding, twisting into wretched, leprous shadows of their former selves. Wasting away like starving children until their skin and their bones became nothing but dust.
Men, caught up in the corruption of their souls, struck out, destroyed. They took out their anger on the world around them, their homes, their families, especially those close to them, their own loved ones. They rotted inside the mind, degenerating like a battered engine put mistakenly into a brand new car, choking on its clogged components until it burst from the inside out.
Liana sighed. It was tragic, so tragic to see them fall apart. And always, almost always they started out so beautiful. Like Gabrielle had been.
An angel.
Liana guessed that she and Elaina could just die, which would close the doorway, prevent any others mistakenly stumbling through. Gabrielle had been the first in twenty years or more, and the first to go bad that Liana could remember since a young man about 80 years ago, who had called himself Michael Samuels. Michael had been a beautiful, loving boy until he reached his late teens, at which point he had abruptly started to change, the purity of his mind dissolved by mortal feelings like hate and lust and greed. He had murdered four young children over the space of a few horrifying days, children he took from their beds and strangled, leaving their bodies in the forest. Finally, unable to stop himself, he had tried to take one too many and been surprised by alert villagers. He had tried to escape across the moors, but a mob had quickly formed and ran him down within a couple of miles.
Liana closed her eyes, a single tear caught in the tangle of her lashes. She could still see his limp body swaying in the breeze from the bough of the oak where they had strung him up, his head twisted at a hideous angle but a cloth mask thankfully hiding his face.
Although the townsfolk had burnt his body, spat on his ashes and poured them away into the drains, Michael’s soul had remained for years, wandering the village and the forest, lost, unable to leave, too corrupt to return. Tamerton, then even smaller than it was now, had suffered for the ills done against him. Older people started to die of lesser illnesses, curable even in those days. Colds, flu and whooping cough all claimed lives. The fit and strong began to drop their heads, stoop as they walked, cough, sneeze, as though fighting off hands that tried to grasp them and steal the strength from their bodies.
Only when the first innocent baby died did the sickness come to an end. Liana and Elaina searched long and hard for him but Samuels had gone, and the townsfolk, thinking themselves free at last of a curse left by his soured memory, soon began to forget.
Yes, Liana and her sister could just give it up, take their own lives to close the doorway between this world and . . . beyond. They didn’t want to die, but if necessary they could, if it meant the people of Tamerton would be safe. But it wouldn’t solve anything.
It would only serve to trap Gabrielle here.
There were more people in the village now, but no one new had moved to Tamerton in years. Houses stood long empty, abandoned vehicles grew rust like mould. The roads had begun to wear thin, cracks had appeared in the tarmac, hedgerows had collapsed, rotting gates hung neglected from their hinges. No one came to repair anything; no one came at all. Sneaking a peek in through the window of the pub on a Friday night, Liana found no one laughing; few people even smiled. A funeral became an event; coffee mornings and darts matches and Women’s Institute gatherings and craft fairs were abandoned or cancelled.
Soon people would start to get sick. Gabrielle’s lost soul would unwillingly absorb their life, their vitality, their goodness, searching to regain her own lost purity and escape back to her old life. The mortality given her on entrance was gone, only a one-way ticket home remained. But the price of mortality made the cost of getting home high for the people of Tamerton.
Yet Gabrielle had been dead seventeen years. People were miserable, but no one Liana could think of had yet died as a result of her. There should be no reason why Gabrielle could not survive out in the forest for just as long again, give her and her sister a chance to find another way, a chance to give Jack a go at life.
Liana shook her head, so, so sad. Because it wasn’t just Gabrielle, was it? She alone could not ravage an entire community.
There was another.
A man.
Seventeen years ago, a chain of events had begun, and one way or another, it was about to come full circle. Elaina was afraid. She remembered Michael Samuels only too well. The man was close to the edge, Elaina believed. And that meant danger. Never before had two been in the same situation at the same time. Elaina intended for Jack to die to save both.
‘It’s time to go to bed,’ Liana whispered, finger lingering on the child’s forehead. Her eyes rested too long on the baby’s still form, and she wondered if she could ever le
t her sister carry out her plan, despite what might happen if they failed.
She stood up and went through to a back room, the baby held in her arms, so delicately it could be a fragile egg she felt sure would break at the slightest gust of wind. A crib was set up near the back of the room, between a shelf of dusty books and what appeared a piano by outline, a faded blue sheet slung over it. Neither played. Elaina had once made someone sell her the monstrous thing for next to nothing. She had wanted to see the look on the man’s face as a treasured family heirloom fell out of generations of his family’s possession for a few meagre pounds. The delight Elaina had felt had disgusted Liana, but ever since the piano had stood covered up in their spare room, a testament to her sister’s wickedness. Liana had wanted it gone, but her sister had never allowed it. In the end Liana had made do with an old sheet, but she still scowled when she looked at it, even now, years later.
She stepped past a couple of tables, one upturned upon the other, and laid the baby down. She lowered a tea towel-sized blanket over his chest, smiling at the decoration of bears and toy giraffes. She had bought it from a market stall in Plymouth a month ago, and surprisingly Elaina had not wanted to take it away. It symbolised Liana’s silliness, Elaina had told her with a smirk.
‘You sleep tight, my little angel,’ Liana whispered, then immediately became sad at the associations the word brought.
She smiled once more at Jack, then turned and left the room.
12
She had already stopped three times for directions, but when Rachel saw the first of the signs indicating Tamerton, next junction off the A27, six miles, rather than belated relief she felt only a sense of dread.
To Rachel, it seemed every man and his dog and his dog’s whole family of goddamn Pound Buddies had come out in their cars today to keep her away from Tamerton. After finally breaking through Birmingham, she had got stuck for over an hour just past Bristol at the Avon Bridge, and by the time roadside signs just shy of Exeter flashed up their warnings of possible delays to the north of Liskeard she was ready to give up and turn back. If it hadn’t been for the line that seemed to be reeling her in, that three hundred mile stretch of invisible elastic that was inexorably drawing her further south, she thought she might have.