Cool moss was between his bare toes. Sep could almost hear the grass growing around him, almost feel the starlight on his skin.
He turned to the sea. The mainland was close, its windows glimmering like fragments of scattered diamond.
Sep reached out – but something moved in the darkness.
He peered through the bobbing leaves and saw a little patch of night flutter on to a branch. The crow shuffled its legs and rasped its bright tongue.
‘Get!’ said Sep. ‘Go on, get!’
He looked about for a stone to throw. But the crow was joined by another, then another and another, their moonlit feathers a boil of blacks and blues and purples that obscured the mainland completely. Blade-sharp beaks snapped until the air was solid with cries that did not come from living throats, overlapping and echoing until they came from everywhere and nowhere.
Sep realized that their shining eyes, countless as stars, were watching him.
‘Go away!’ he said.
He took a step away from them and stumbled as he felt something loose and warm beneath his bare feet. And although it moved like a piece of clothing, his guts knew it for what it was. He looked down.
A human skin, a woman’s skin – topped by mousy, lank hair – was splayed on the grass, empty and soft, like a blanket.
‘Oh,’ said Sep. He put out a hand.
And the crows screamed.
They came in a noisy cloud, wings beating his face, filling his lungs with their warm air and sour scent. He felt their claws on his scalp and their terrible beaks at his hands and face.
One bird landed on the empty skin and wriggled its head, then its wings, then its body between the lips and into the mouth.
‘No!’ screamed Sep, kicking, pushing, his forehead running with blood. ‘Stop! You can’t do this!’
Another crow pushed its way into the skin, then another and another and another until the skin began to tighten and rise from the ground.
Then the skin’s eyes opened: wide and shiny and black.
And, just as he felt himself yield, a voice called wordlessly from across the grass, from inside the darkness, and he felt the warmth of a human connection flood through his veins.
He woke with a shrug of limbs and a thump in his chest, his head stuck to the pillow.
His bedroom was still. Cold sweat covered his chest and face.
A soft noise moved through him. At first he thought there was a tap dripping somewhere in the house … but it sounded strange, as though it wasn’t moving through the air – just arriving in his head, heavy and thick, like wet cloth swelling around his sore tooth.
Then pain – hot, searing pain – lanced into his skull like a blade. He turned his eyeballs to the window.
There was a shadow on the curtain – a silhouette in the street-bulb orange. It was on the other side of the glass, not a crow this time, but something small and round – one circle atop another, flanked by rigid limbs.
And little round ears.
Barnaby.
The head turned. Eyes like burning green coals stared through the fabric.
Barnaby. The teddy he’d sacrificed, returned from the box – and walking on his stubby, cotton legs.
It’s my turn, thought Sep.
His breath stopped, and he shook his head, trying to dislodge the insistent, tap-dripping sound … then he realized two things.
It wasn’t a dripping noise. It was a whispering, breathy click, like phlegm catching in a wet throat.
And worse, so much worse …
He was hearing it with his deaf ear. It crackled strangely, like a dusty radio coaxed into life.
The blood turned cold and thick in his veins.
Barnaby took a small step, searching, flat paw smearing the glass with earth as he found the gap in the curtains – and Sep saw him, his unmistakable laced-up belly leaning on the window. His fur was muddy and wet; and thick with something, like a layer of snakeskin. He almost gleamed, unalive but … living.
A familiar smell came into Sep’s room: a smell of grass gone flat and white beneath untouched pots; of trapped water gone sour in the heat; of wet, wriggling soil.
Of hospital corridors.
The teddy walked a few more steps and, as Sep watched him move towards the open window, a gut-knot of animal instinct screamed the reason the bear had come.
Barnaby was here to kill him.
Sep’s heart stuck in his neck – and a stone ticked off the glass, inches from where Barnaby stood.
The teddy froze, the burning green light of his eyes flickering for an instant.
He blinked, thought Sep. He blinked.
Another stone, bigger and heavier, thudded against the wall and Barnaby dropped out of sight, leaving nothing but the tension in Sep’s belly and a light rain that kissed the window with such gentle normalcy it took all his strength of mind to trust that the bear had been there, had visited him from beneath the ground, had not been some wakeful night terror.
Because he was awake: cold with sweat and seized with fear. Crumbs of mud clung to the glass, and that smell – that cold, dead stench – lingered in the air.
Another stone hit the window and, with all the courage he had, Sep threw open the curtains.
They were in his garden.
Part 2
* * *
-5
Morning: 1941
‘You’re late,’ said Thom, watching Aileen roll her bicycle into the bushes.
‘Sorry,’ she said without looking up. ‘My mother again.’
She tucked the doll under her arm and pulled up her socks. Lizzie was propped on her elbows, her round cheeks tight in a frown.
‘It’s boring, isn’t it?’ she said.
Thom sighed.
‘What is?’
‘The countryside.’
‘I like it,’ said Thom. He stared past her, through the shimmering heat to the destroyers’ lurking shadows.
‘But you live on a farm – you always get real milk.’
‘Don’t you?’ said Morgan, furrowing his dented forehead.
‘Not when the ships don’t sail,’ said Lizzie, climbing to her feet as they set off. ‘Then it’s only powdered stuff. Do you get extra bacon?’
‘Just the ration,’ said Thom, shifting the knapsack to his other shoulder. ‘But we snares rabbits when we can. My mam showed me how to skin ’em the other day – you don’t even need a knife, you just tear –’
Lizzie pulled a face.
‘That’s what I mean. It’s full of disgusting things – and there’s nothing to actually do; everyone’s a fuddy-duddy. I don’t know why I had to be evacuated. If we were in the city we’d be able to go dancing, or to the picture house or a cafe, but here –’
‘If you were in the city you’d have been blown to bits by one of Hitler’s bombs,’ said Aileen.
Lizzie stuck out her tongue.
‘Lizzie’s right,’ said Shelley, who’d started wearing lipstick. ‘I bet we’d be having all kinds of fun in the city. There’s parties and money and … boys.’
‘There’s boys right here,’ said Morgan, giving her a gap-toothed grin.
She frowned at him.
‘I mean real boys. Men. The wireless said the Americans are there now.’
‘You’re a fast one, Shelley Webster,’ said Thom.
‘And you’re too young,’ added Aileen.
Shelley primped her tightly curled hair.
‘But I look older. I’m going to bag me a GI the first chance I get, then I’ll be living in Chicago, or Miami or … New York.’
‘I don’t reckon you will, though,’ said Thom, pulling the moss from one of the standing stones and straightening his cap. ‘I reckon you’ll end up tumbling a dock worker an’ get stuck here like the rest of us.’
Morgan whistled, then punched him on the arm.
‘Jesus, Thom! That’s the funniest damn thing I ever heard!’ he said as Lizzie chewed a knuckle to hide her smirk.
Shelley scowle
d at them.
‘I will not!’ she said. ‘Mother says I’m not to go to the docks, so there!’
The boys erupted, and Morgan rolled his tobacco pouch in fingers smeared with engine oil.
‘I take it back,’ he said, wiping his eyes. ‘That’s the funniest thing I ever heard.’
Shelley flushed.
‘I’ll get away from all of you anyway,’ she muttered, ‘to America. You’ll see.’
Aileen wiped a drip of sweat from her nose. The others were all a head taller or more, and she was struggling to keep up.
They picked their way carefully, the forest humming around them as they stepped over the thin prints of animals and brushed the bright growths on the trees.
‘This is awful,’ said Lizzie, her nose in the air. ‘It’s sticky and it smells. The city never smells as bad as this, even on bin day.’
‘You an’ that bloody city,’ said Thom, holding aside a curtain of thorns for the others to pass. ‘I bet our bins’re cleaner than theirs.’
‘Is that where you get your clothes?’ said Shelley.
Thom shifted to hide the patches on his trousers.
‘It’s where you got your morals anyway,’ he said.
Morgan laughed again, scattering the tobacco as he ran his tongue along the cigarette paper.
‘So where’s this box?’ said Lizzie. ‘I have to get back. My aunt wants me to muck out the chickens and gather the cabbages this afternoon.’
‘Dig for victory,’ said Thom, nodding. ‘Bet there’s rabbits where there’s cabbages.’
‘I don’t mind digging for victory, but I’m to scrub the steps once I’m done. The outside steps. She’s such a cow.’
‘Scrub for victory,’ said Morgan.
‘You don’t half nurse grudges, Lizzie,’ said Aileen. ‘The box is in the clearing – the one at the top of the paddock.’
‘How did you find it all the way up there?’
‘I sketch the deer sometimes, and last week, after all that rain, this box was just … there.’
‘I got caught walking home in that rain,’ said Morgan, handing Thom the cigarette.
‘Wash your brains out, did it?’ said Shelley.
‘Nope. Got my hat wet, though. What we doing here again?’
‘We’re making an offering,’ said Aileen. ‘A secret thing, for just us to know about.’
‘Like a sacrifice?’
Aileen thought of her father as the submarine vanished around him, leaving him twisting in the water, tearing at his uniform as he sank into the darkness.
‘It’s a silly thing to do,’ said Shelley curtly. ‘We’re too grown-up.’
Aileen flushed.
‘Well, I’m older than you,’ she said after a moment, ‘and I don’t think it’s silly. The war isn’t easy, for anyone, and it’s – it’s important for us to stay together. We don’t see each other as much now.’
‘It’s silly,’ said Shelley again.
‘Don’t –’ Aileen began, but Lizzie interrupted.
‘It’s not,’ she said. ‘It’s a bit like magic. I’ve been reading about witches – they’re real, you know. They curse people. I’m going to curse my aunt.’
‘You don’t half complain,’ said Thom, taking a final drag before handing the cigarette back to Morgan.
They climbed towards the clearing. Off in the distance, over the canopy’s green sea, thin blue smoke twirled from the gamekeeper’s hut and was whipped back towards the town.
‘This isn’t about cursing anyone,’ said Aileen, pulling up her socks again. ‘It’s to be a good thing. We’ve had such a nice summer, and recently we’ve – we just need to remember why we’re friends. It was only us who got along at school. We used to be close.’
‘I wasn’t at your school,’ said Lizzie.
‘Don’t tell me,’ said Thom, ‘your school was in … the city?’
‘With central heating,’ said Lizzie.
‘We’d have been friends if you’d been at our school, and now we’re going to make an offering,’ said Aileen. ‘It’s nice to do something together when things are difficult and people in our families are away – and –’
Thom looked over sharply.
‘It’s – it’s a nice thing to do,’ she finished.
‘You hear that, Lizzie?’ said Morgan. ‘A nice thing. Nice means nice.’
‘You’d never have survived in my school,’ said Lizzie, scowling. ‘The city boys would have given you such a time about your weird-shaped head, and you’d –’
‘What did you all bring? For the offering?’ Aileen cut in.
‘We had to bring something?’ said Morgan.
‘Yes!’ said Aileen, turning at the edge of the clearing and throwing up her hands. ‘That was the whole point of coming here. What did you think we were going to do?’
‘Something nice. Like a picnic.’
The sky began to rumble in the distance and they looked up to see the specks of aircraft, tiny as flies against the white smear of cloud.
‘They’re ours,’ said Thom.
Aileen kept on at Morgan. ‘Do you see any picnic things? And didn’t you wonder why I was carrying an old doll?’
‘Sure. But, you know, you’ve been a bit odd lately, and –’
Thom dug him in the ribs.
Aileen was relieved to find the stone box where she’d left it, as though it might have retreated into the ground, like one of the crabs down by the shore.
She knelt beside it. A smell came from inside, of things that were old and dry – the way she imagined a desert might smell.
‘Just give it something you’ve got with you,’ she said. ‘It’ll keep whatever we give it, and that way we’ll always know we’re friends, even if we move away.’
‘This is a lot of old rot, Leen,’ said Shelley, raising her voice above the drone of the engines. The planes were visible now, the sun glinting on their turrets’ glass.
Aileen turned her head so they wouldn’t see the water in her eyes.
‘You don’t think it’s silly, do you, Thom?’ she said after a moment.
Thom shook his head.
‘I reckon we’re the first folk in a long time to find this thing,’ he said, moving to stand beside her. ‘An’ it never hurts to do somethin’ for your friends, does it?’
He glared at the others.
Shelley flicked her head.
‘I suppose,’ she said. ‘Don’t flip your wig.’
Aileen squeezed Thom’s hand.
‘Put in your offerings then,’ she said, raising her voice as the bombers drew close, ‘one at a time.’
Shelley leaned over the box and dropped in something small and dark.
‘A lock of my hair,’ she said with a sarcastic curtsey. ‘Prettiest thing on my pretty head.’
‘That’s not –’ said Aileen.
‘My tobacco, I guess,’ said Morgan, throwing the leather pouch into the box’s dark space. ‘Only thing I’ve got on me that’s not part of my body.’
‘No! You’re not taking –’
‘Aunt Louise’s ration book,’ said Lizzie, dropping in the little yellow book with a terrible smile. ‘I curse you, you old witch – I curse you!’
‘That’s not what we’re supposed to do!’ said Aileen. ‘We’re supposed to give something good, to bring us together – a commitment to each other!’
Thom squeezed her shoulder, and kept his hand there while he laid a little white body in the stone.
‘Here’n’now,’ he said, ‘the puppet I made with my grandad, given in the spirit of friendship.’
‘Here’n’now?’ mocked Shelley, and Lizzie rolled her eyes.
Aileen put her hand over Thom’s, let go a sob and placed her doll in the box.
‘My old doll, Sadie,’ she said. ‘Given to me by – by my father, when I was small.’ She looked around them. ‘Now we say the words. Here – I wrote them down.’
Shelley peered at the scrap of paper.
‘Your han
dwriting’s frightful,’ she said.
‘It does make it look like a spell,’ Lizzie conceded.
‘Just say them!’ said Aileen, her voice wobbling. ‘What harm can it do?’
The girls shared a look and Morgan puffed out his cheeks, but they stood in a circle and joined hands.
‘Now?’ shouted Lizzie as the planes roared overhead, shaking the teeth in their heads and throwing shadows over the clearing.
‘Now!’ shouted Thom.
‘Never come to the box alone.’
Shelley sneered at the ground, while Lizzie grinned wickedly.
‘Never open it after dark.’
Morgan shifted his feet awkwardly, brow furrowed in concentration, his voice a half-beat behind the others.
‘Never take back your sacrifice.’
They stood back as the planes veered away, and the sound of the trees washed around them once more.
‘Is that it?’ said Lizzie, reaching past her elbow into the box. She lifted the ration book and tucked it in her skirt. ‘Only I need to get this back before she sees it’s gone – she’d kill me if she knew!’
‘Oh, do we get them back?’ said Morgan brightly. ‘That’s good – I’ve got half an ounce of golden in there.’
‘No!’ said Aileen. ‘The rules! You said the rules!’
‘I might as well take this then,’ said Shelley, daintily tucking the lock of hair into the belt on her skirt and turning away. ‘Never hurts to have a lock handy for an admirer. See you tonight – maybe!’
‘But you can’t –’ Aileen said, dropping to her knees in a cloud of dust.
She watched them leave through hot, angry tears.
Thom knelt beside her.
‘Somethin’ happened to your dad?’ he said quietly.
Aileen looked at the box, so deep and dark it might be empty.
‘We haven’t heard anything,’ she said, ‘only that the sub was lost. He might still be – I just wanted today to – I wanted us to be like we were before.’
Thom let her head fall on his shoulder and held her as she wept. The forest breathed around them in hot, floral bloom, and the air was livid with the zip of insects.
‘My mum said that when the world’s tearing itself apart, love is the only thing that can fix everything,’ said Aileen once her tears had subsided. ‘That if we just loved each other a little more, all the darkness would go away. I thought putting something in there – and leaving it – would remind us of why we’re friends, and keep us that way.’
The Sacrifice Box Page 8