by Syd Moore
Without thinking about what I was doing, I strode downstairs and threw back the French doors. ‘Listen, Sarah. Listen to me. You do not go to my son again, do you hear me?’ I tried to keep my volume to a whisper but I was shaking with fear and anger and potent maternal outrage.
In the garden the air was tense and alert.
‘I will do what you want but you leave him alone. You hear me? Or you get nothing. Do you hear?’
A bat swooped down low over the flower-boat and arced off into the night.
There was no answer. I stepped inside the doors and closed them, double-locking them to be sure. Then I turned into the house and leant against the windows. The whole thing collapsed on me like a hundredweight.
I don’t know how long I spent down there on the floorboards but at some early hour, when the sky had started turning grey, I got up and went into the living room. I was on autopilot, not conscious of my movements, until I found myself at the sideboard opening the bottom drawer where I kept my favourite photo. Our wedding day, outside Finsbury Registry Office. It was a snapshot taken by my mum. I had my head turned to Josh, lips puckered up, squashed against his cheek, short white veil at ninety degrees to my head. Confetti showers had been captured by the lens so it looked like we were caught in a pastel-coloured snow storm. My husband faced the camera, looking for all the world like he couldn’t believe his luck. His mouth stretched into a proper cartoon smile – a capital D on its side – curved and wide. His eyes were crinkled with laughter yet open wide and sparkling. You could just see his grey topcoat and the rim of his white collar, absurdly smart. But his hair was a mess, as always: rusty gold spokes that no amount of gel could induce to slick down.
The camera had captured his essence. And the total unswerving adoration I felt on that day.
‘Josh,’ I whispered, my face wet with tears. ‘Come back. I need you. I can’t do this on my own.’
I took the photograph and lay on the sofa, curling my body round the frame.
Somewhere in my head I heard a voice saying softly, ‘You can. You know you can.’
Alfie found me there at seven o’clock, still holding on to the picture frame. As I surfaced into consciousness I realized he was forcing my eyes open. Even though the lounge was light, I jumped up, worried that he’d had another bad dream.
‘Alfie, how are you?’
I need not have worried. ‘Fine,’ he said. ‘Hungry.’
I thought about letting him stay off nursery but he insisted he should go in case they went to the seaside, so in the end I dropped him off with extra kisses and a promise from the nursery manager that she’d phone me if he started to look peaky or behave strangely. Then I raced back home and got straight onto Skype.
Marie didn’t answer straight away. After a few minutes an instant message popped up on the screen: ‘Just on a call. Can I call you in the morning?’
It would have been about 12.30 at night but I needed her now.
I responded in caps: ‘NO. NEED TO TALK NOW. PLEASE. URGENT.’
There was a four-minute pause then I got: ‘OK. Give me 5.’ I made a strong mug of coffee and settled back in front of the screen.
When she came on she looked a bit peeved. I didn’t care.
Her hair was falling about her face and she looked flushed. There was a half-filled wine glass by the side of her desk. Perhaps I’d caught her entertaining? ‘Chick, how you doing?’ I could see she was forcing a smile.
My words came thick and fast. ‘Not good. She’s coming to Alfie, Marie …’ I told her what had happened in the night.
To give her some credit, she did understand the urgency immediately. There was a noticeable change in her demeanour when I mentioned the cone in his bed. Not alarm but her eyebrows went up and I saw her top teeth creep out to bite her lip.
‘Why Alfie? Why’s she targeting my son?’ I slammed my fist onto the table, without even realizing it until I heard the thud. ‘And who’s the burning girl?’
‘I don’t know. She might not be connected at all. It does happen sometimes. A kind of sub-haunting. Don’t get too het up about Alfie’s visions. After all, if you think he’s not that bothered by it, that’s great. You’d know if he was, right?’ She’d moved closer to the screen now and was giving it her full attention. ‘That’s the thing with kids. You must have heard all the tales about children seeing things that adults don’t?’
I shook my head. ‘Why would I have heard that?’
‘OK, calm down, Sarah. I’m here. I’m with you. I understand that this must be upsetting for you. It’s taken you out of your comfort zone …’
My noisy exhalation forced the screen to pixellate. It echoed from Leigh to California then back again. ‘My fucking comfort zone! Are you joking? I’m shit scared, Marie. This is my son. My son. I’m a single parent. I’m responsible for this. I can’t do this. I can’t …’ And before I could stop, tears had welled up in my eyes. I put my hands over my face to cover them and stopped speaking, concentrating on pacing my heavy breathing. All of last night’s emotions came flooding back.
Marie said nothing. When I peeled my fingers away from my face and heaved a big enough sigh to slow up the fitful breaths, she was full of sympathy. ‘If I were there with you, I’d give you a hug,’ she said simply.
I wiped my nose, swallowed and apologized.
‘The thing with children,’ she said, modulating her voice, speaking softly now, ‘is that they want to believe. They love magic and fairy tales and Santa. And they don’t see anything funny about visions like these. They’re just learning about the world and these things are part of it. They haven’t been told that they don’t exist. They’ve only been told that they do: in books, films, cartoons. It’s as natural for them to talk to an entity as it is for you to talk to,’ she looked around her room for inspiration, ‘a milkman, or someone you meet in the park or me. They haven’t been told otherwise. Alfie’s what, five?’
I sniffed and corrected her. ‘Four.’
She nodded. ‘OK he’s four. That’s even more pertinent. He’s not even in the school system yet, right?’ She looked up hesitantly, as if worried I might blow up again.
My anger subsided. She was the wrong target. ‘Yes. You’re quite right. I’m starting to get it. But, I went outside and shouted at her. I told her to leave him alone. That I’d do it, that I’d help her.’
‘OK, OK,’ Marie nodded. ‘That’s good. You’re speaking to her. That’s what she wants. Be strong now. Carry on talking to her. Just because you can’t see her or hear her doesn’t mean she can’t hear you.’
The thought made me shudder. I didn’t like the idea of some disembodied entity tuning into me. Though better me than my son. ‘Listen, Marie, I don’t want her coming to Alfie again. I don’t care if he can see things. I’ll do what she wants. Not him.’
‘And you told her this?’
‘Yes. I whispered it aloud on the spot where she first appeared.’
‘That might do the trick. And you’ve started the research. How far have you got?’
‘I, well, I’ve been busy.’
Marie’s face hardened. ‘Listen, Sarah, you want this to stop, you play the game. No wonder she’s focused on your son. She might think you’re a dead end, so to speak. You’re not responding. You’ve got to let her know that you’re helping.’
It was my turn to feel embarrassed now. ‘I will. I’ll start this afternoon.’
To be fair to her, Marie didn’t linger on this. She knew I was frantic. ‘There are other things that you can do, too. I’ve got a book. Hang on.’
She left the screen though I saw her flit across it, presumably going to her bookshelves. She was back in moments.
‘Here,’ she thumbed through a couple of leaves of a blue hardback book. ‘To prevent spirits from entering a dwelling drive iron nails into the corners of the abode.’
‘Where do I get them?’
She smiled a little. ‘Local hardware store?’
I shrugged, awar
e of my silly petulance. It wasn’t her fault. The phrase evoked a memory from last night: it wasn’t Sarah’s fault. That’s what Alfie had said about the burning girl. They had made their peace, after Sarah died.
I shivered and muttered involuntarily, ‘Christ.’
Marie looked up from the book sharply. ‘It’s what it says here. Do you want this advice or not?’
I was quick to backtrack. ‘Sorry. I was thinking about something that Alfie said. That it wasn’t Sarah’s fault – the burning girl. They’d made their peace.’
Marie cocked her head to one side. ‘That’s good. Now listen, I’ve got another call coming through and I’ve got to take this. Sorry. You can also sprinkle salt around the perimeter of your house. That’ll keep her out. It’s an old wives’ tale but I know for a fact that works, OK?’
I nodded, and was about to thank her but the connection faltered. Her face lingered for a moment on the screen, then disintegrated.
‘Right,’ I said to myself. ‘Let’s get to the DIY shop.’
Suffice it to say that the morning was spent sourcing nails and hammering them into the four corners of the house. The plaster cracked when I banged two of them in, but by then I was well past house-proud. The neighbours must have thought I was a loon scattering three pounds of salt outside the house and up the alley on the south side. I was kind of with them on that one. Mrs Lucas from across the road gave me a ‘weirdo’ look when I was doing the front garden but I muttered something about slugs and got on my way.
By the afternoon I had screwed myself into a knot of determination and wasted no time in hitting the library.
It was a magnificent gabled construction with a warm atmosphere. High panelled windows let in the light from all sides and offered magnificent views of the park gardens in which it stood. But it smelt like most public buildings: of musty carpets, dust and the faint aroma of urine.
The local history section was located between Parenting and information on Southend Council and was similarly uninspiring. I browsed through a couple of the hardbacks that I had glimpsed at the Heritage Centre and took time to speed-read a few.
Some were very dated, the language reminding me of childhood day trips – pointing out places of interest using words that seemed so old-fashioned: ‘pleasure grounds’, ‘boating pool’, ‘paupers’. A couple of heavily pictorial tomes piqued my interest. I took them to the reading table and laid them out beside an old emphysemic man who was scanning the Telegraph page by page.
Mostly taken over the previous two centuries, the photographs and illustrations built a vivid picture of Leigh-on-Sea before progress came steaming along the train line in 1852: a pretty town with a main market square (later demolished for the railway) bordered by inns, shops and lopsided cottages. I recognized the Old Custom House, which still stood in the High Street and was now privately owned. A lot of the more picturesque buildings had been destroyed in the fifties. According to local tradition one particularly quaint shop, Juniper’s, was where John Constable stayed when he painted Hadleigh Castle. I squirmed as I read it had made way for a car park.
Another text from the nineteenth century noted, with a prudery that brought a smile to my lips, that the place was notorious for ‘its drunkenness and the coarseness of its fisher men’ until its rehabilitation was overseen by Olivia Sparrow, the Lady of the Manor, and the Reverend Robert Eden in the early to mid-1800s. Though the two had fallen out, for reasons not mentioned in any book, they were credited with rescuing Leigh from the ‘degradation’ into which it had fallen.
A large weather-boarded house on Strand Wharf, owned by a Richard Chester, dated back to the Tudor period. This was demolished after the Second World War.
The old King’s Head was less interesting architecturally but a fascinating entry caught my eye: it had been the meeting place for a society called the Druids. Far from sinister in his description, the author of the book alleged that members attended the meetings, which were loud and very merry, in full regalia. He lamented the fact that the books, banners, staves and insignia were destroyed in a fire at the Peter Boat in 1892. Evidently popular, in 1850 the Druids had over 150 members. I paused to marvel at the commonplace acceptance of druids in this small waterfront town. It sounded rather dodgy, although the impression the author gave was of some sort of social club.
I skimmed through the remaining pages, and finding nothing more of interest, I returned the book to its shelf and browsed through the remaining volumes until I came to a thin paperback that had slipped down the back. It was one of the titles recommended by the lady at the Heritage Centre. On the back cover there was a photograph of the author: a benevolent-looking man of senior years, dressed in a boating blazer.
As I opened it my skin began to prickle. There were several legends of highwaymen and murderers, skeletons and skulls then, just about halfway through, I came to a chapter entitled ‘The Sea-witch’.
Bingo.
It was all about Sarah.
She was, so the book described her, ‘a toothless and crooked shrew with an ugly, wrinkled old face. This shrivelled witch was reputed to brew up satanic concoctions that would poison enemies or bring bad luck on those who touched them. Her manner and breath was foul and her fiendish looks were known to strike terror into the sturdiest of fishermen.
‘Rumoured to have been descended from Romany people, Mother Grey was able to see into the future. She would do this by dripping sand into a silver cauldron and scrying, or reading, the shapes that it formed within.
‘She was also said to live with an enormously fat cat called Harpinker who would eat whole birds, and was often spied fishing at the side of the wharf for his dinner. Many folk alleged that Harpinker was a demon who directed Mother Grey in her spells. For often he would be seen in the window as she went about her satanic business, brewing up her devilish cures which, despite their unholy origin, folk came from miles to buy.’
Brightling described her death just as Corinne had those few weeks back. The captain and his crew of The Smack sailed back to shore to find Mother Grey dead on the wharf, covered in blood, with three gashes in her head.
The bias in authorial interpretation was evident in the two tragic stories he chose to represent the evil witch. A cholera epidemic of 1849 was referred to. I noted the date. During this outbreak, two of Sarah’s sons fell prey to the virulent disease and died within four days of each other. Poor woman, I thought. But Brightling seemed to relish the tragedy.
‘Almost a year to the day of her last son’s death, the Old Town was gripped by yet another outbreak of the pestilent disease. Old Grey took to the gin, some say to alleviate her grief. Others maintain the witch was scheming, devising a plan that would wreak vengeance on the unsuspecting town. When she had at last come to her senses, she returned to her cave-like shack, where she prayed to the Devil and, under Harpinker’s watchful eye, cooked up an appalling potion. This she left on the steps of the cottages of families whose children and babies were afflicted. Of these families who took down the medicine, no babies survived. The sea-witch had poisoned them! Mother Grey would not have young children live while her sons lay rotting in the graveyard.’
Such casual infanticide was not worthy of more comment it seemed. The next story, however, was nastier. I could almost see Brightling licking his lips with glee.
‘The Devil also bestowed on grim Grey the power to kindle sparks in her eyes and flash streams of fire from them. On one occasion, some townsfolk testified, Grey was actually able to kill people with her fireball spell. The parish registers substantiate this as does the honest testimony of one of her potential victims, Emily Langdon, who survived the wrath of Grey’s evil eye.
‘As the story goes, there were three children: Emily Langdon, Thomas and Jane Tulley, playing happily in innocence by Strand Wharf, where they lived. They watched Grey leave her cottage one gusty afternoon. The children were curious souls, as little children are, and spied the door of Grey’s shack banging to and fro in the fierce south-eas
terly gale. Despite her careful trickery in all other things, the witch had not locked her own door.
‘The children said they saw an unearthly red light coming out of her small, squalid cottage. The little ones ran over to it. Inside it was black and miserable. The children looked around: on the farthest wall a shelf was fixed. On this stood an oil lamp and a dozen strange bottles, with a foul smell oozing from them. The stench of damnation no less. As the witch liked to keep the place in darkness, one of the children lit a candle from the hearth fire, intent on examining the fiendish brews. They lifted the candle up to the shelf but just as they did they heard old Grey’s footsteps coming up the passage.
‘Realizing they were about to be caught the children rushed to the furthest corner and banged into the partition wall where the bottles were balanced. A couple of the potions fell over. The disgusting contents dripped down, covering the eldest girl, Jane. In her panic, as she clutched for her friend, seven-year-old Emily knocked over the candle.
‘The door flew open with a howl and the sea-witch entered the room. Sparks flashed from her eerie green eyes and Jane burst at once into flames. The children shrieked and ran out the door. Grey snatched an old canvas sack from the wall and chased after them, trying to catch the burning girl in her witch’s bag, but they had run down the alley to the creek.
‘Alerted by the screams, the children’s parents and neighbours came from their houses to see what was going on. The sight that greeted them was forged into their hearts for ever more. The eldest girl was covered in a cloak of flames, as Grey attacked her with an old sack. But the scene would not last long – there was a strong wind that day, which whipped the flames up, transforming the girl into her own terrible funeral pyre. And slowly her screams faded into silence.
‘Although Emily maintained it was the witch who had done it, Thomas, who was eight years old, suggested that the liquid must have been paraffin, which had ignited on contact with the fallen candle flame. But no one listened to him. The people had seen it for themselves. In fury they turned to look for the witch but she had vanished in a cloud of smoke.’