by James Goss
Oh my god.
It was like trying to stand up in icy, horizontal rain. A blast that shook me. The sheer cold – at first it was like a wall in front of my eyes, then I felt it wrap around me like a wet towel… cold and sharp… the worst ice cream headache ever. Then it squeezed.
Behind me, Mrs Harries moaned and fell to the floor. ‘Children! Stop it,’ she cried out.
‘What are you doing?’ I shouted. ‘Please! What are you doing?’
The shouting cacophony continued. I tried to shut my eyes, but I was blind – all I could see were colours dancing and jiggling and then I started to feel my feet giving way.
Each word stabbed at my head.
‘We! Don’t! Know! Leave! Us! Alone!’
I was on the floor. I knew that. My senses jumping around. The floor smelt just like every old wooden floor – polish and plimsolls.
‘Leave! Us! Alone!’
I slept.
Gwen
I pushed Anwen back through the village. It seemed cold and empty, even for Rawbone. I could hear Anwen stirring and murmuring. Like she was having a bad dream. After a few steps… oh, you know how when you’re walking home alone late at night, and you suddenly become convinced that you’re being followed? That there is something behind you, just out of the corner of your eye? Something that means you harm? It was that feeling. The rain had pooled into a mist, a mist that pressed in on the streets, turning the houses into ghosts.
I was utterly alone. The feelings washed over me. Emotions, wave after wave of them – of fear, of anger, of loneliness and confusion and despair. I could hear Anwen crying and I lifted her out of her pram. ‘Oh, baby,’ I said, hugging her close. ‘You feel it too, don’t you? Come on, little miss, it’ll be OK.’ Her crying got louder and louder. Echoing off the wet stone walls.
A curtain twitched distantly.
It was Sasha. She stood there in her front room, looking at me holding my baby. She didn’t offer to help, or even acknowledge me. She just watched. Like she was sheltering from the storm.
I didn’t care. I left the pram, grabbed Anwen, and ran to Sasha’s door, hammering on it. She’d bloody let me in.
*
I sat in her living room. It was plain but comfortable. Like she’d been to a sale at Furniture World a few years ago. A throw stretched over a fuzzy peach sofa. Dusty candles sat on coffee tables next to teddy bears. There were old dried flowers and a comfy rug that needed hoovering.
I held Anwen to me until she stopped crying. Somehow, holding her near made me feel better.
Sasha brought out two cups of tea. Her mug had a penguin, mine had a panda. The tea was weak and grey. She settled down opposite me. Angry.
‘What was that?’ I asked. ‘What was going on outside?’
‘Happens,’ she shrugs. ‘Sometimes. Folks know to stay clear of it.’
‘That wasn’t rain or mist. That was…’ I tried to explain. But I just couldn’t. My thoughts were little mice being stood on. Another mystery in Rawbone that no one spoke about.
‘Yeah. Whatever.’ Sasha’s shrug was heavy, guarded. ‘We know better than to be out in it. You can feel it coming so you get out of the way. When you’ve been here long enough, you’ll know.’ She flicked through a magazine, not meeting my eye.
‘But what causes it? Is it the children?’ I asked.
She didn’t look up from the magazine. ‘We don’t ask. We don’t talk about it. If you’re planning on staying, you won’t either.’
I smiled at her. ‘Well, perhaps someone should find out.’
‘I think you’ve got enough on your plate. With the baby and all,’ she said, sourly.
‘The problem—’ I countered, and then stopped. Don’t be rude, Gwen Cooper, don’t be bloody rude. No, sod it. ‘The problem with this place is that no one asks. There’s so much wrong, but you just accept what’s happening. This village has suffered a terrible tragedy – it’s not just that you’ve got no kids. It’s that you’ve stopped asking why. It’s that you’ve got these… creatures. And you don’t even know what they are.’
‘No.’ Sasha had closed the magazine and was gripping her mug, her hands tight round the capering penguin. ‘We don’t know. But they’re what we’ve got. They’re all we’ve got. So we get on with it. You wouldn’t know. Look at all you have. But you’re not just smug about it – you are judging us. Just cos you’re fertile doesn’t give you the right to act like you’re BETTER. You’ve just got a bloody baby, that’s all.’
‘What about yours?’ I asked. ‘You have got a child of your own, yeah?’
‘Billy,’ she shrugged, dismissively. ‘He’s… he’s fine. He’s 15. I’m 24. He’s been my kid for three years. And he’s always been like that. Not growing up. We don’t bother with birthdays. Ever since I opened the door that morning and he was stood there. “Hello mother.” Those were his first words.’ She scowled. ‘When he bloody came in he asked if there was anything he could help with. Any cleaning, or tidying, or if I would like a cup of bloody tea. Didn’t even ask if he could come in. Davydd just let him. I didn’t want him and there was no getting rid of him.’ She stopped and her eyes were fixed on a patch of artex over the fake mantelpiece. She stared at it harder and harder and I realised she was trying not to cry. ‘Davydd was fine about it… but then he’s always been bloody fine about it. Don’t think he even wanted kids that much. He’d have coped all right, yeah. He just wanted them cos I wanted them. Anything for a quiet life. And he gets a kid that gives him a quiet life. That doesn’t play up, or answer back, that does its own washing. That clears up after itself. That never gets ill or stays out late. Billy plays on the Xbox with him. But never beats him at it. Oh, Davydd’s never spotted that bit. Stupid boy.’ The last bit was said fondly. She tugged at the necklace round her throat. ‘He’s just relieved. That I’ve got something a bit like a kid. That’ll keep me happy. It’s close enough for him. Like when Davydd tried to put up shelves. “Only a bit wonky, soon settle down,” he said. But it’s a child… a child…’ She stopped again. ‘What can you know?’ she said finally.
Anwen started to cry again. She was glaring at me. I knew what that look meant.
‘Listen,’ I said, feeling awkward. ‘She needs a feed. Can I use your bathroom?’
Sasha picked up the magazine. ‘No, no, do it here. Dim problem.’
I fed Anwen. Sasha sitting in stony silence, glaring at me. The magazine was held in front of her, but she wasn’t reading it. She was just watching me feed my baby. A tear formed, ran down her cheek, and hit the paper with a bang.
‘What am I like?’ she cried, standing up. She snatched the mugs off the table, emptied them down the sink, ran them quickly under the cold tap then banged them down on the draining board. She stood over the sink, staring out of the window.
Rhys
I dreamed.
‘So when do we get to see her?’ My mother’s voice boomed down the phone.
‘Ah…’I said.
‘We’re ever so excited,’ she gushed, clearly not hearing the panic in my voice. ‘A granddaughter! We’ve got her a teddy.’ A pause. ‘That is, if Gwen approves of teddies.’
My mother has never quite accepted or understood Gwen. I sometimes wonder who my mother would have considered suitable, but it’s definitely never quite been Gwen. I’d kind of hoped that would have changed with the wedding, but it didn’t. Torchwood got in the way.
Her mood changed just a little with the announcement of the pregnancy, but then, well, Torchwood got in the way again.
And then we went on the run. Or, as I put it, ‘Freelance Contracting.’
‘And what does that even mean?’ My mother sounded so sad on the phone. ‘Don’t forget your pension. After all, Gwen’s not the type to go back to work after having a baby, and you’ll have an extra mouth to feed, and it’s important to think about these things.’
This was my mother – a woman who cut her pot scrubbers in half to make them last twice as long. There was no p
lace in her world for Gwen or for Torchwood.
She took the news that we wouldn’t be paying a visit with bitter stoicism. ‘Ah well, I’m sure Gwen thinks that’s for the best.’
I started to argue, but she just steamrollered over me. ‘Listen, Rhys, have you got an address? So that we can post on that teddy. That is, if Gwen wants it. I know you’re moving around a lot, but it would be nice to think that our grandchild had something of ours with her.’
I explained that we didn’t really have an address. I didn’t say we were staying at a motor lodge on a traffic island near Tenby.
‘Are you sure there isn’t an address, love?’ My mother pressed on. ‘It’s just that there were some old friends of hers from work round here the other day looking for her. Quite why they think I could help, I do not know. But they’re ever so keen to get in touch with her.’
I imagined them. Sat in the front room while my mum fussed around them with shop-bought cake and the floral-pattern china. They probably wore suits and smiles and sunglasses indoors and were ever so polite.
They were still coming for us. And they wouldn’t stop.
I woke up.
‘Oh dear,’ said Mrs Harries, her voice ever so weak. ‘You set them off.’
We were both lying down on the floor of the empty village hall.
‘What the bloody hell happened?’ It felt like a terrible, terrible hangover. A sharp nail was being hammered into my skull right between the eyes.
‘You’ll have taken the brunt of it, my dear,’ Mrs Harries looked similarly pained and her hands were shaking. ‘They don’t get upset… often.’ She sat up, rubbing at her head. Blood trickled from a nostril. She fished around in her handbag, chomped down a couple of aspirin and offered me the blister pack. ‘No water, I’m afraid, but it’s better than bugger all.’
I swallowed the pills and wondered how long it would be before I could feel them doing some good. About twenty minutes wasn’t it? Twenty minutes suddenly seemed such a long time.
‘Where are they?’ I asked.
Mrs Harries’s eyes flicked to the door, nervously. ‘They always make themselves scarce afterwards. Sheepish.’
‘What.… What was it that they did?’ I asked, massaging my forehead, which only succeeded in moving the pain around a bit.
‘It’s…’ Her voice was tight and strained. The poor woman was clearly terrified. As she spoke, I felt a chill spread through the room. She wrapped her jacket tightly around her like it was a blanket. ‘It was… It’s what happens when…’
‘Wait. You’re saying they can control minds?’
‘Not exactly… but they can… Oh, it’s tough to say. Really, we know so little about them. But they can influence their parents. It’s hard to explain. On a hot summer’s day, Mrs Meredith sells out of ice cream very rapidly.’
That was utterly creepy.
‘Normally, it’s fine. You’ll find yourself picking up a few extra things on the supermarket run, doing a special wash for a favourite T-shirt, or watching a TV programme you don’t much care for… but that’s it.’
There was something oddly human about this. Favourite TV programmes and T-shirts? These kids seemed a bit less unsettling. A bit more like human children. Just with better pester power. Only… only they’d just turned my brain off and then back on again.
‘Every now and then… they get locked into… well, a loop. It’s your fault this time, I’m afraid.’ Mrs Harries ran a finger around the old wooden floor. ‘You got angry and scared, they got angry and scared. You were frustrated, and they beamed it right back at you…’
‘Couldn’t you stop it?’
Mrs Harries shook her head. ‘Oh, when they get like that, it’s not easy. I was trying, but it’s hard to send out calming feelings when you just want to climb up the curtains screaming.’
Good point.
‘It’s the other reason why I teach the kids. To learn about them. To try… well, I hope, if not to bond with them, at least to understand them better.’ She looked tired. ‘I don’t. They’re like real children I guess. You just can’t know what they’re thinking.’
I patted her on the arm. Now I’d been on the receiving end of what they could do, I realised that it took guts to be in the same room with them. ‘They don’t age, do they?’
‘No,’ she said.
‘So you’re stuck with a village full of eternal teenagers. No wonder they can’t control what they’re thinking.’
‘You’re bang on the money there, dear.’ Ruefully, Mrs Harries pulled herself to her feet and shook herself down like a wet dog. ‘It’s so sad. We had no idea… at first we thought they would age. That they would grow up and become more… normal. But they don’t change. Not really. They’re always on the edge of becoming adults. Well, they do… alter a little. It’s like they are growing up, but at ever such a slow rate. We decided not to send them out to a real school… when we saw what they could do with their minds…’
‘Right,’ I said. ‘What do we do now?’
‘We go and find them,’ Mrs Harries said, and she looked so scared. ‘They’ll be waiting for us outside.’
She took my arm and we left the village hall. The streets seemed deserted. We found Mrs Harries’s children in the playground, Peter and Paul sat placidly on the swings, the only sound the echoing creak of old metal chains swaying back and forth as the children watched us, staring right through us. It was chilling.
‘Hello mother,’ said the oldest, slipping off the swing. ‘Are you feeling better?’
‘Yes,’ she said, a slight catch in her voice. I felt her grip my arm tightly. ‘Yes, I’m much better now.’ She smiled at them, ever so brave.
‘Good,’ said Peter, running up to her. ‘I am so glad. I am hungry. What are you going to cook for us?’
Her two children dragged her away home. She turned around to say goodbye to me, and there was a look of utter terror on her face. Then she went quietly on her way.
Gwen
Back at home. Safe and sound. Just sit down. Sit down and chill. Just for a minute.
Best put the kettle on, though. Sort out some laundry. Work out what needs doing. Fold away the dry clothes. Put the recycling to one side. Fish the bottles out of the steriliser. Wipe down the kitchen unit where Rhys has left some crumbs. It never ends.
Then Anwen started crying and needed changing. You don’t want to know what happened next, but I had to throw my top on the laundry pile, and try and find a clean one. These days I have more outfit changes than Lady Gaga. Weird how a few months ago the correct answer to ‘How much urine is acceptable on a shirt?’ was ‘None’. Now it’s a bit of sliding scale, to be honest.
The kettle had boiled and cooled. I heated it up again, found a teabag. We were out of milk. Which was kind of ironic. Anyway, I finally flopped down in the chair. It had taken twenty minutes. But finally, a moment all to myself.
Guiltily I caught my eyes sliding to the door, praying Rhys wouldn’t come home. Just a couple of minutes… that’d be all…
I walked into Sasha’s house. She was standing there, arms folded tightly. Simmering with rage.
‘There you are, Billy,’ she yelled, grabbing me by the ear. ‘Where’ve you bloody been?’ She slapped me round the face, twice. Furious and burning with anger.
‘Cry!’ she screamed. ‘Why won’t you bloody cry, Billy?’
‘Would it make you happy if I did?’ I asked.
She hit me again.
‘I can cry if you would like,’ I said.
The blows rained down, and she cursed at me, saying I wasn’t a proper child. That I was fake. That I was useless. That she hated me. That I had ruined her life.
‘But Mother,’ I said. ‘What have I done wrong?’ I wanted her to tell me. To list the things that were unacceptable so that I could correct them. That is all I wanted to do.
Instead she just punched me, screaming over and over again that I was filthy. She dragged me upstairs, slapping hard at me. Each blow stu
ng me, and there was no time to recover before the next one landed. I wanted to fight back, but the voice in my head told me not to.
So I stood in the bathroom, smarting. She started to run a bath. She screamed at me. So I took my clothes off slowly.
‘Get in!’ she yelled, dragging me off my balance.
I stepped into the bath. But it was hot. Too hot. I told her this.
‘I don’t bloody care,’ she snarled, twisting the hot water on full.
‘I would like to get out,’ I said, my voice simple. The water was very hot. It hurt me. Burnt me.
‘You’re not getting out!’ And she hit me again, grabbing hold of me, pushing me down under the scalding water…
Gasping, I opened my eyes. It was dark. The sun had set. Someone was standing over me.
Oh my god.
No. OK. It was just Jenny. Standing there. Ever so polite, watching me, arms held in front of her like she was about to pray.
‘Jenny!’ I shouted. I was startled.
‘Good evening, Mrs Williams,’ she said. Her tone of voice was even, considered. ‘I knocked but you did not answer.’
‘So you just came in?’
Jenny shrugged. ‘Yes. I wanted to make sure the baby and you were OK.’ She said OK like it was a foreign word. Like a newsreader saying 50 Cent. ‘How is Anwen?’
‘She’s fine, thanks. We’re fine. Shouldn’t we be?’ A sudden fear. Where was Rhys? I could still feel my heart pounding from the dream.
Jenny shrugged. ‘I was just making sure. Babies do require a lot of attention.’
‘Tell me about it,’ I said, standing up to put the kettle on.
‘I was hoping you would tell me all about it. I would like to learn,’ offered Jenny. Her clinical gaze considered me. I now knew what it was like to be under a microscope.
‘Oh,’ I said, trying to be casual. On an impulse, I handed Anwen over. ‘Here, hold her. Jenny, you’re my Number One Babysitter.’