by Jack Lewis
I lifted the cover of the book and opened it carefully, as though I expected a poisonous gas to seep out. The diary was the key to it all, I knew. I just didn’t know how. We were leaving in the morning, and this was one last chance to sift through the lies and the secrets. I hardly dared admit it even to myself, but I hoped that there might be a way to stop it all.
I turned the pages and read. I only scanned Emily’s part of the diary, unable to bring myself to decode the adult writing. Something deep inside me, hidden away in my core, knew that written in the careful handwriting were things that should never be read. I cast a glance to the door, and seeing that it stood firm, I read Emily’s story, turning her childish words into adult facts.
At school the teacher - I knew this to be Clive - had taken exception to Thomas talking too much in class. It seemed that he was the class clown, always laughing and joking and doing his best to make his schoolmates smile. So Clive sat him next to Emily, who was always a quiet, serious girl.
Emily didn’t like this at first. Thomas always copied her work. He pinched her under the table, stole her pens, and hid her lunch. Emily tried to get him to tone his jokes down, but the boy wouldn’t be deterred. He talked over the teacher, shouted things out as the class memorised their times tables.
In one lesson, they learned about the witches. It was a watered-down version, a tale that saved the children from the grisly details. Nowhere did the school texts mention the creaking of the trees as the ropes were tied around them, or the snap or the women’s necks as their foot supports were removed.
Emily became obsessed with the witches. She wished she could be one. Then she could make Thomas disappear. She could magic herself some sweets when mum and dad said no. She could trick the sky to make it seem like it was daylight, and that would mean she didn’t have to go to bed. That she didn't have to go up to her room, where things scratched the walls and footsteps creaked on the floorboards. At night she thought of the witches as she fell asleep. She dreamed about them as the house swam in darkness.
Thomas never stopped trying to be friends with her. One day, Emily decided to use it to her advantage. After checking with her parents, she offered for Thomas to go for tea at her house after school. The boy grinned and agreed, and he followed Emily to the cottage. After a meal of pork chops and mashed potatoes they went outside to play. Emily’s parents told them not to stray too far, but Emily was in no mood to listen.
She convinced Thomas that they should go into the woods and explore. She knew from teacher that that the villagers had trials for the witches here, though she didn’t fully understand what a trial was. It sounded bad. Maybe if they were lucky, a witch would still live in the woods. Maybe she would give Emily powers, and she could turn Thomas into a centipede and then leave him to live in the forest.
As the evening light began to fade and clouds stretched over the sky, the children walked into the woods. Thomas was scared, his face went white. He said that maybe they should just play cops and robbers. Emily shook her head. She cast her eye to the darkened elms and knew that tonight they must go.
I sat back in my seat and shuddered. Emily’s entries in the diary ended here, and the rest of the book was written in the adult style handwriting, the paragraphs longer, the words bolder. I wanted to tear out the pages and throw them in the fire. Something told me that they shouldn’t be allowed to exist.
What had happened in the woods? Where had Thomas gone, and what had the children seen as they wandered alone through the trees? My brain screamed inside my skull, told me to stop reading. But I had to know what happened after Emily stopped writing her diary.
I took a deep breath and felt the cold air swirl in my lungs. I applied the cipher to the adult paragraph immediately after Emily’s last entry. As I read the first sentence back to myself, I felt my chest tighten and close in, as though something were squeezing me from the inside.
The new body is fresh. It is young, but we will make it old.
Without thinking I reached forward and swept the diary away from me. It flew off the desk and clattered onto the floor, but even that wasn’t far enough away. I swung my foot and kicked it until it skidded across the room.
My head throbbed in pulses that made me nauseous. My nose ran, and it felt so stuffed that I struggled to suck air through it. I couldn’t read anymore of the diary. My skin shivered and my arms ached. I needed sleep. I was going to be ill for a while, I knew. I’d had enough colds to realise what a bad one felt like.
I picked up the candle and walked over to my bed. As I set it down on the bedside table I must have moved too fast, because a breeze whipped the wick and blew out the flames. I lifted the duvet and climbed into bed fully-clothed. Despite the jumpers, dressing gown and bed cover on top of me, I felt like I was in an ice bath. The room was dark now save for the dim flicker of the fire as the flames chewed through the wood.
I wished there was a hotel nearby. I wished I could just get in the car and leave. Something told me to get far away from this place, that to stay even one more night was madness. I tugged the duvet up to my neck and over my face, so that only my eyes poked out from it.
Something rustled in the hallway outside my room. I lifted my legs and let the blanket hook underneath them, cocooning myself in it. I stared at the door, wanting to close my eyes and let sleep take over but unable to tear my eyes away.
The rustling sound grew, until it sounded like something scraped along the wooden floor outside. My heart pounded against my chest. I stared at the doorway, eyes wide. Darkness pressed against the windows and tried to climb into the room, and the fire put up a weak fight. Soon the logs would burn and the darkness would win. I hoped I was asleep before then.
The sound stopped outside the door. There was silence, a moment of utter quiet that stretched out for what seemed like hours. I tried to take a breath and hold it in, hoping I could still the beating of my heart and throbbing of my head. A sound thudded out and shattered the quiet, a terrible noise that threw my pulse into a beat so wild that I thought my chest would explode.
Knock, knock, knock.
It echoed off the wood of the door. I gasped and pulled the cover tighter around me.
Knock, knock, knock.
Who was it? Did I lock the door? I must have done.
“Jeremiah, is that you?”
Knock, knock, knock.
I knew that I had definitely locked the door, yet as the door handle turned, I realised it would make no difference. A sharp blast of ice covered my chest as the handle rotated and the door started to swing open. I tried to close my eyes and hide away from it, but my brain refused to let them fall shut. A feeling of utter dread seeped into the room and filled the air, and the darkness grew so heavy that it sat on my chest like a gremlin. The door slid all the way open, and I heard the patter of feet as they tread across the floorboards.
27
As the figure moved into the room I knew who it was. I knew I shouldn’t talk to her, that I shouldn’t look at her. My head banged and my forehead burned. The room blurred at the edges, like it was a photograph that had been set alight and had started to curl. You have a fever, I told myself. You’re not right. Maybe she was symbolic of me, of my inner lost child, my own guilt, frustrations, misery. The kind of stuff I wrote in my analytical essays. “The shadows on the curtain represent his diminished ego and sense of responsibility”. How pointless it all seemed now, with my head sweating and the eyes itching.
She moved into the centre of the room, directly facing my bed. She looked at the floor, her neck bent so sharply it looked like it was snapped. I saw her out of the corner of my eyes. I didn’t dare risk moving my head, and the sight brought a burning sense of revulsion to my stomach.
I realised that the door had shut behind her, and somehow I knew that it was locked again. Or had it never opened in the first place? Was the entire thing a product of my panic-filled mind?
Her hair was a sooty black. In another life she would have been a pretty girl.
A happy girl. But now, the figure in my room didn’t represent happiness. Dread and depression seeped off her, as though that was what she exhaled rather than carbon dioxide. I wanted to hold my breath, but I was sucking it through my mouth in such shallow bursts that my lungs didn’t have enough to hold. At the same time it sounded loud, and I was aware of it gushing in and out. The girl’s was raspy and strangled.
I wanted to move further up the bed, get myself into an upright position, but I didn’t dare move. I couldn’t feel my legs underneath me, and it was as though they overrode the commands my brain put out. This is a fever, I thought.
This is not a fever, replied another part of me. I felt like I was draining away. Like I might liquefy and spread into the bedsheets. Where was Jeremiah?
I moved my head a fraction and let more of her come into my vision. She wore pale blue pyjamas with white dots. They looked a few years too big for a seven year old. Seven years old, Christ.
This sent a jolt to my brain. A spark of recognition, a fact learnt, or in this case, not learnt. I knew that Emily was seven years old. That was for definite. I didn’t know she wore spotted pyjamas that were clearly too big for her. That was a detail too rich for my brain to make up, fever or no fever. When you dream your brain takes the images it weaves from reality and it pieces things together that you already know.
I couldn’t have possibly known this detail. I had never been told that instead of buying the correct sized clothes her parents had gone one or two sizes up, obviously hoping to save money on the fact she would grow into them in later years. Years that, in reality, they didn’t get to have with her. Phlegm slid down my throat and landed in my stomach. It spread through my gut into my legs, my arms, up my spine. With it came a numbness that cut through the shivers. The girl was real.
Jeremiah, where the hell are you? I need you!
I knew that I couldn’t look at her. I remembered what Clive had written. She doesn’t want to be acknowledged. She doesn’t want to exist.
“Then what the hell are you doing here?” I said out loud, the words blurting unwanted into the silence of the room.
Slowly, the girl turned her head away from the floor. Inch by inch she lifted it in jerky movements. I didn’t want her to complete the turn. I didn’t want to look into her face, but I just didn’t know the real reason why. Maybe I was worried that I would see myself in her face, and that she was a symbolic hallucination of my own fears. Or even worse that she was real, and I’d be looking into the eyes of a dead child.
Icy tendrils moved in waves across my skin. I couldn’t think of anything else but escape. Getting out of this room, into the car, and driving until the tank was empty. I tried to command my body. This time my legs worked, and I used them to push myself up into a sitting position, as far away from her as possible. I banged into the headboard and realised there was nowhere else for me to go. The girl’s forehead came into view, and then her eyes. So dark they were almost black, darkened rings around the edges. Pupils lost amidst the darkness. Staring at me.
I screamed. My cry seemed to bounce off the walls then die. Marsha wouldn’t hear me, I knew. Even if she did, would she come? Who else knew about this? There was only one person, and he’d left me alone.
She stared at me now. She waited. For what? For me to speak? For me to try to run? I didn’t want to look fully into her face, but I couldn’t take my eyes away from her. So I looked down at her legs, followed them to her feet. There was the nail polish on her big toe, no doubt from where she’d tried to copy her mum. It hinted at a little girl who wasn’t always depressed.
The room was ice, and it was silent except for the banging of the pub gate outside as the wind threw it against its frame. My breath left my mouth in hurried gasps, sighing through the stillness in the room. It felt like this was a deathly peace that should be left undisturbed. To make a sound was like kicking the foot of a sleeping bear. Yet I couldn’t stop the sound of my breathing, and I knew that she could hear it too. Somehow I hoped she didn’t see me, that it was a one way mirror that only I could see through. I knew this wasn’t the case. She took a step toward me, nail-polished foot first.
I looked out of the window and for a second considered jumping out. At the same time, I knew that I couldn’t. There was a fifteen foot drop, and even if my neck didn’t snap when it hit the ground I knew my ankles would. Yet I had to do something. My arms and legs had stopped working. All I could feel was the headboard as it dug into my back, and the drum beating inside my head.
The girl’s footsteps made a soft patter as they got closer to me. There was a smell in the room like earth. Dampness and mud, and something sour. I choked back a retch.
I caught a glint of movement across the room. The doorknob moved, and then stopped. It rattled again. I knew now that the door was definitely locked. There was nowhere for me to go. Nothing for me to do but what the girl craved. I had to look into her eyes.
Cold breath blew on my skin, and I realised that the girl’s face was next to mine now. I felt the ice that drifted off her skin. She wanted me to look at her, and I knew I had to do it.
The door rattled again. Something heavy thudded against it, but the door held firm.
“Marsha! Marsha! Wake up you old cow,” said a voice outside.
My skin tingled and I felt her stare burn onto me. I knew that she peered at me, eyes wide and black, skin pale. I gulped. Against my will, I felt my head begin to turn towards her. Pinpricks of fear dotted up and down my arms, and a voice inside my head told me to shut my eyes. I knew that I couldn’t. I knew the only end for me was to look into those dead eyes. With my breath catching in my chest, I twisted my head and met her gaze.
When I looked into her face, a rush of dread covered me like snow. My heart stopped beating, my arms felt numb. I stared at her young face and I wanted to scream. A realisation hit me as I looked at her. One so sudden that it felt like a hammer on my skull. The figure looked like Emily, but it wasn’t her. There was something in her eyes, something old. Something sick.
The thing stood at my bed, whatever it was, sure as hell wasn’t Emily Jenkins. She was dead and her body was in the ground somewhere. Her poor parents, still shell-shocked a decade later, were testament to that. The figure stood beside me was something else entirely. It wore the body of the girl, but it was something that had used her when she was alive. Now that she was dead, it tied her to the earth as a spectre. It was a drowning spirit that wouldn’t release its grip on the girl’s soul, and it wanted to erase any trace of its retched crimes.
Well I could certainly do that. I didn’t want to bury the secrets away from those who should know, but I was the only one who could put an end to it, I realised. The diary was the key. Within its pages, gouged in ink, was a record of the terrible things that had happened.
I knew who the words belonged to, those that weren’t written by Emily’s hand. I knew what the children had seen in the woods. I knew what swung from the branches of the trees, and what had followed Emily out again.
My legs felt like weights, but I strained and lifted myself off the bed. The figure stood on the other side. It twisted its head as I moved, following me with its eyes as I crossed the room and picked up the diary. Next to me, built into the wall, the flames of the fire licked and spat. The figure’s mouth opened wide as if to shout, but no noise left its lips.
I took a breath and held it firm in my chest. I held the diary in the air, and in one decisive motion I threw it into the fire. The flames welcomed the book, and soon they twisted over the pages and began to melt them into ash.
There was another thud at the door, and this time it burst open. A familiar mass stood in the doorway, a thick body bulging in tight fitting clothes. A mop of red hair, eyes wide and full of fire. Jeremiah paused as if he didn’t know what to say. He looked at me, and then looked at the fire. He saw the book roasting against a charred log, and his face turned red.
“What the hell are you doing?”
I couldn’t sque
eze out the words. I looked over to my bed and expected to see the girl crawling towards me. Instead, the room was empty.
I tried to find my voice.
“Jeremiah...look.”
I wanted to gesture to the left with my head, but I didn’t have the energy. I felt like I was going to collapse.
“What am I supposed to be looking at? Do you have a fever?”
“A ... fever?”
Did I have a fever? I thought back to when I first got into in bed. My head swimming. Feeling like my skull was a balloon ready to burst. The bedcovers scolding hot on my skin. I did have a fever. I was sick.
“That’s enough,” he said. “This trip is finished. You need to get home, get to bed and stay there for a week. You should have told me you were this bad.”
He was right, of course he was right, how could I be so stupid, how did I forget something like that? I looked at Jeremiah. His face was concerned. He guided me over to the bed and watched me as I climbed into it. As he pulled the covers over my icy body, I cast my eye over to the fire. The flames climbed over the pages over the book and roasted it into a black dust. I felt the weight slip off my chest, and my breathing came easier. Soon my eyelids started to drop, and I felt like finally I could sleep.