Rob laid Mr Paws and Chloe gently on the planks. “My bonny lass,” he said softly, as tears ran down the harsh grooves the year had carved into his face, and slipped off the end of his nose. One landed on Mr Paws’ worn fur. “My sweet bairn. Why’d they do it you?”
A ripple ran across the water’s surface, lapping against the edge of the pallet. The surface of the water heaved like a silver skin, and then broke. Something was rising out of the mire. It moved with the slickness of crude oil and was as black as oil too, its head and shoulders rearing from the weedy slime as if it had been lying face down. The smell of the stagnant water rolled over Rob.
Blinking, he tried to focus. Tried to understand. The newcomer was female; he could see the shape of neat little breasts on its torso and he thought that under the thick coating of mud she was naked, but he could not be sure. Her hair was like ropes of pitch. Eyes opened in that glistening head and they were pondweed-green, all the more startling in that jet-black oozy face. But he wasn’t surprised, or frightened. Alcohol buffered the gap between what he knew was possible, and what it was he was seeing.
“Why?” he asked her. “Why did you take her?”
She was now standing clear of the pool to her waist; a slim and not unattractive silhouette (if he overlooked her angular shoulders and the muck oozing down from the crown of her head and dribbling across her shoulders; those clotted lumps like supernumerary nipples sliding across her breasts…).
“Why did you make her?” she answered. Her voice was soft and glutinous, and lacked all emotion. “A glint in the eye; a clench in the balls…we all do as we please at the time.”
“She was seven,” he said, pain roiling in his guts. “She liked dressing up and dogs and making necklaces out of beads. She walked to school with her Mam and always ran ahead to the gate to see her friends. She hated having her hair brushed and wanted to be Rihanna.”
Slowly she tilted her head, staring at him.
Rob drew himself more upright. “It was my job to put her to bed at night. She was a right good little reader, so she read her books to me. Then I’d put the light out and she’d always call me back, and I had to sing the daddy song to her.” Dance to your daddy, my little lassie, dance to your daddy, when the boat comes in. She was scared about monsters under the bed, so he always set out Mr Paws and Chloe on her pillow, either side of her head, and told her that they would beat the stuffing out of any monster stupid enough to stick its nose into her room. That would make her smile, every time. “I told her I’d always look after her. I told her she was going to grow up tall and beautiful and clever, and she’d always be my girl.” For a moment the words choked in his throat.
I lied, I lied. I wasn’t there. She didn’t get to grow up.
“Why would you do that? Why take her away from me?” he rasped.
She blinked, emerald eyes narrowed to slits. “I was hungry.”
“You had no fucking right.”
“I was hungry. I am always hungry. Dogs, rats, ducks…these things do not satisfy. It is centuries since you brought me gifts with honour and celebration. Why have you forgotten? Why have I had to wait?”
Yes—that was what he had half-remembered, from his own childhood. The warning—if you let your dog stray down into the Sleck, it would never come out. Back in those days dogs were just put out the front door in the morning to roam the streets and entertain themselves. Not like now. The roads were too busy now. Back in those days dogs just vanished, now and then. And there were stories, legends told avidly in back-garden dens and under the coat racks at school, of children who had gone missing too, at some vague unremembered point. But even after Bethany, when the journalists went looking, no one ever found documented proof of that.
“We took her away! You didn’t eat her!”
“I ate the bit that mattered.”
The hot sick rage in Rob’s belly turned over and flared brighter. “You know what they’re going to do here?” he asked savagely. “They’ve decided to fill this place in. For safety, like. They’ve finally decided to tell the environmentalists to go fuck themselves, and they’re going to ship in tons of ash from the power station and bury this place. Tamp it down. Build it over. Houses. No Sleck anymore.”
For a moment she seemed taken aback. Her eyes widened. Then she spoke, echoing him: “Houses.” She grinned a little. Her teeth were mossy green and pointed, and the glisten of them made the dark pit of her mouth seem infinitely deep. “Children.”
The ground seemed to sink under him, though he couldn’t tell if that was physical reality or only his own senses. “Don’t you fucking dare.”
“Water rises, you know. Through ash and clay and pipes, through the cracks between bricks. Water finds its own level.” She leaned in toward him, almost within reach. Rob thought how slender her neck looked. He could imagine how it would feel, cold and slick beneath his crushing hands. All his adult life he’d worked a steel-press, and his forearms were thick with muscle. He could imagine her narrow spine snapping like a swamp-rotted stick and her head falling away as he tore it from her shoulders. He imagined the plop it would make as it struck the water.
“You fucking bitch,” he whispered. “You took my daughter. How do I go on without her?”
In she leaned, mouth twitching, her body angled from the water until Rob thought he ought to see waist and hips and not just more and more ribcage: a ribbon of slippery black goo. Her lips twitched hungrily.
“What’s the point of my life now?” he complained softly. “What have I got to live for?”
“Then don’t,” she crooned, drooling a little. “Give up. Join her.”
“Join her?”
“Down in the dark.” Her pupil-less eyes were like green lamps now, lit with greed. “Among the sticks and the bones, soft and dark and safe and kept forever. Pearls shining in the night. Give me.”
She was close enough.
“I’ll give you,” he grunted, and launched himself from his knees. Both hands shot forward and locked around her throat—and squeezed.
She made no sound. Beneath his fingers her oozing tar-flesh squashed and spurted; he had a moment of triumph before she thrashed backward from him, far stronger than he’d expected, and he staggered off the end of the pallet, feet sinking into the mud. But he didn’t let go. Not even when she heaved round in the pool, dragging him this way and that. He could find no purchase with his feet at all, staggering and clinging, He saw her raised hands—those fingers far too long, looking like twigs dredged from the ooze at the bottom of a garden pond—and felt them lock about his own head, pushing it back and gouging at his face. Alcohol was the only thing that cushioned him from agony. He was determined to finish what he’d begun and choke her, but she didn’t seem to feel any need to breathe. And she was stronger than him, he realised dimly through the beer-fug. She was bearing him over, forcing him onto his back. Her face was changing now, growing thinner and longer as the teeth pushed forward into an angler-fish snarl, while those pert little breasts were dissolving to slime and trickling down her torso.
She was too strong. Beneath his hands her throat was a twist of wet leather, boneless and vile. Her fingertips were jabbing his eyes. He wrenched his head from side to side, trying to escape her. His shoulders were in the water, and he screwed his eyes shut as great gobs of filth dripped from her hair onto his face.
Rob didn’t see what it was that roared over his head. He just felt the air shake, and the woman’s hands fly away, and then something smacked him down hard into the water, a glancing blow heavy enough to jar his own hands loose. For a moment the filthy water closed over his head and then he jerked out into the air again, gasping. He caught a glimpse of a heavy brown pelt, thick as the bristles on a broom-head, and a bulk that blocked out the sunlight—and he heard the swamp-maiden screech—but there was mud and blood on his face, filling his eye sockets, and nothing but mud beneath him, cold and viscous and sucking him down. He was sinking again, the slime tr
ying to reclaim him. Rob thrashed over onto his belly, trying to swim, unable to get his face properly clear of the surface. Behind him a struggle was going on, but he could see nothing of it, not even who fought. There was mud in his mouth and up his nose, and it didn’t take much down his throat to set him choking. He clawed for the pallet and couldn’t find it. He grabbed at branches and green stems of the rushes but they broke beneath the force of his grasp.
He was drowning, he realised.
Then a hand closed around his wrist. For a moment he thought that it was her, back again—but the hand was small, though it had a grip like iron. It heaved him to the surface, pulling him until his face smacked up against the rough wood of the pallet. Rob grabbed at the slats, gasping for breath. Through lashes clotted with pond-slime he saw purple-striped tights on long slim legs, standing over him.
That was all.
By the time he pulled himself up onto the pallet, out of the sucking mud, and blinked and wiped his eyes clear, all was quiet. Slowly, still struggling to calm his heaving lungs, he looked around him. The surface of the little pond lay still once more, and the willows of the Sleck lifted indifferent arms to the sun. There was no black pond-lady. There was no furry animal bulk. There was no sign of whoever it was that had pulled him back to safety.
Just the doll Chloe, lying stained and limp on the slats. But Mr Paws the teddy had vanished altogether.
Rob picked up the rag doll and held it to his chest, his eyes wide. "Dance to your daddy," he whispered, "my little lassie."
BLUE AND GRAY & BLACK AND GREEN
Alethea Kontis
Keeping to the tradition of oral history in the hills, this story works best when read out loud, preferably to children around a campfire.
***
Daniel was seven-and-three-quarters. He'd been seven-and-three-quarters forever. Daniel resided at Green Bottom, the one-armed General's big house on the river in Virginia. He liked tin whistles and marbles, especially the red ones. He liked his room at Green Bottom—he woke up every day in the same bed facing the window where the sunset shone through the trees. He liked the peppermint sticks the blue soldiers gave him when they rode through on their horses, though he missed the taste of candy. He liked the horses, too, the way the wind whipped through their manes and tails even when there was no wind. He liked the crazy Egyptian Lady, who wasn't really Egyptian but loved all things Egyptian and was still crazy and a Lady either way. He liked Mrs. Green, his sort-of nanny who kept the house. Daniel saw her as a thin woman with a white apron and bunned hair. The Shawnee saw her as an old woman with clay-red arms and eyes like stars. The slave children saw her as a fat woman with dusty hands and big white teeth. No matter what skin Mrs. Green wore, she always smelled of roses, which made him think of soap and summertime. Daniel liked summertime, and soap was so long ago he couldn't really remember it, but soap made things clean and he liked clean things, so he guessed he liked soap too.
In a way, Mrs. Green was the house, constantly herding the old spirits and ushering in the new. Daniel was one of these spirits, but Daniel had not died at Green Bottom. Mrs. Green told Daniel that he was a stone memory, a time of happiness and laughter that the bricks of Green Bottom held inside themselves so that they might draw more times of happiness into the house. Happiness does not want to stay in a place that is dark and lonely, so part of Daniel's job was to keep things from being dark and lonely. Mrs. Green was very wise.
Mrs. Green let Daniel play with the white children, the Shawnee children, and the slave children alike. Chieska, Young Fox, and Cold Water were best at stone tag. Polly, Suky, and the twins Isum and Eadom were best at jackstraws and scotch hoppers. Betsy was good at scotch hoppers too, and Thomas and William always played him at marbles. Daniel was best at playing hide-and-seek among the outbuildings. His best place to hide was the outhouse, since it had a window. He could peek through and see the other children coming through the wavy glass. He could see Mrs. Green through the window too, but he never hid for much longer after that. Mrs. Green did not suffer silly spirits. When it was time to come in it was time to come in, and Mrs. Green would not have him getting swept away in the river. Daniel did not like the river, with all its noisy rushing and pulling and grabbing. Daniel also did not like the black soldier.
He wasn't sure the black soldier was a soldier to begin with. Daniel had felt something watching him, and awoke to find a dark, swirling man-shaped mist by the window. Daniel said hello to the new spirit and invited him closer, but it just stayed that way, the tall shadow of a heavy object, though there were no objects standing by the window. Daniel tried to guess his name. He asked where the man was from and where he was going and if he had any family and if he missed them. Daniel talked to the shadow until he didn't feel like talking anymore. The shadow never moved or talked back. Until one day Daniel heard footsteps. He opened his eyes. The shadow had come closer.
Each time the shadow moved closer, Daniel could make out more details about his shape. The first thing Daniel noticed was the frock coat. There were two rows of buttons down the front, which meant the man was important, like General Jenkins. There was a sword belt and a buckle, but Daniel could not see the letters on the buckle. Too bad. Mrs. Green always gave him high marks on his letters. Daniel decided not to tell Mrs. Green about the soldier until he knew which side the soldier was on. If he was a blue soldier with the cavalry, Daniel would ask him for a peppermint stick. If he was a gray soldier, that meant he was mean, and Daniel would run and hide in his best hiding place and never look back.
The soldier grew a long black beard around his mouth that never spoke and his hollow eyes with no whites watched Daniel, always watching, but he never turned blue or gray. His clothes were black and stayed black, and his skin was blacker than Polly's and Suky's and Isum's and Eadom's put together, like a starless night, and the wind whistled through the cracks around the window but his hair never budged, and every time there were footsteps, he moved a little closer.
Daniel wondered if the man might be his father—Daniel's father had been a soldier. Isum and Eadom said that fathers were supposed to love their children and keep them safe. The way the black soldier watched Daniel did not make him feel loved or safe. It made him feel cold and hopeless. The way the man watched Daniel made him wonder if he had done something wrong. Maybe Mrs. Green had sent the soldier to deal with him if he stepped out of line. So Daniel did not step out of line. He stumbled through the scotch hoppers and leapfrog. He was ham-fisted with the marbles and the jackstraws. He was the first to be found in hide-and-seek and the first to line up when Mrs. Green came out to call for the children. Mrs. Green's roses smelled of love and safety. Daniel did not just like Green Bottom—he loved it. He did not want to leave.
Daniel wondered what the black soldier might do to punish him. Where did spirits go when they died? For that matter, where did memories go who were not really spirits to begin with? Thomas and Betsy assured him that God took care of all his children, even the ones who were never born and had never died. (William said that the black soldier would swallow Daniel whole and doom him to forevermore, but William was mean, so Daniel beat him soundly at marbles.) Polly and Suky and the slave twins told Daniel that the river would take him and turn his skin to tar and send him far away. Chieska and Young Fox and Cold Water told him that an old Shawnee woman would come for him and turn him into a doll and he would ride her dog into the clouds. The Egyptian Lady told Daniel that memory spirits were like smoke from an extinguished candle, rising up to the sky like a prayer hoping to find a god who would hold it to his or her breast. The Egyptian Lady also gave him gold foil coins and wore peanuts for earrings—but Daniel cracked the window so his smoke might escape and never again closed it, and the footsteps came ever closer.
Daniel eventually stopped playing with the children all together and stayed inside listening to the thunder. His mother had told him once that thunder was the angels bowling—at Green Bottom it was just General Jenkins bow
ling in the attic on the days when he had his good arm. It was a comforting sound. Daniel tried to stay up so late that late became early and early became late and he was confused as to whether up was down and back was forth and fell asleep anyway. Daniel tried to fall asleep in other rooms, but he always woke up in the same bed across from the same window. The black soldier was clearer now. Daniel could make out the eagle on his belt buckle and the stitches on his shoulder straps. He could see the red flames in those dark hollow eyes with no whites and he could feel their fire. Daniel could see the hole in the black soldier's coat where he had been shot in the chest so neatly that the buttons had not come undone. He could see the ragged skin there and the bloody broken bones beneath, all the way through to the black heart that did not beat. Daniel could smell the black soldier's breath and the tobacco made him remember how unpleasant vomiting had been.
The soldier did not do anything to Daniel. He only watched him and said nothing and made footsteps and came closer until when Daniel opened his eyes he could not see the room or the window at all, only black and fire and more black beneath that. If the black soldier came any closer he would be inside Daniel. Daniel did not want that blackness inside him.
Mrs. Green finally found Daniel inside the east chimney. It was his new best hiding place but there were no windows to keep a lookout so he did not see her coming. She pulled him out by the ear.
Daniel apologized over and over until the words sounded funny. He begged Mrs. Green not to send him away. Mrs. Green looked surprised. Mrs. Green never looked surprised. Daniel explained about the black soldier, and how he knew he was in trouble for something but he honestly didn't know what, and if she would only just please tell him, then he promised to stop doing it or start doing whatever it was immediately. Daniel knew it was his job to bring laughter to the house, but he didn't feel laughter inside himself anymore, and if he couldn't do his job then Green Bottom would not want him anymore and forget him.
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