by James Goss
Lying there among the rotting leaves was a beautiful young man in a suit. The pod had grown him with a suit. The face was beautiful and calm and tranquil. It was Sebastian. The eyes opened, blinked once and then fixed on me. The eyes were a deep green. They were clear and firm and dancing as he sat up and smiled.
‘Hello, Mother,’ he said.
I reached out to lift him up.
‘No, thanks,’ he said. ‘I don’t need your help.’ He stood and shook himself down like a dog climbing out of the sea.
He was so beautiful. I saw that then. You know that awful thing when sometimes you see someone advertising something and they are so beautiful you just sigh? It was very much that feeling. This is what Sebastian would have looked like younger. I guessed it would be another three decades before this version reached his twenties, but he seemed confident, strong, comfortable in his own body. I remembered my own miserable teenage years – the jocks at high school, all high-fives and hell-yeah, and knowing full well my dating pool would always be the Chess League and the Computer Club. Looking back on it now, of course, I realised they were a lot of knuckle-dragging lunkheads, but back then… oh, I wanted one of them to notice me so bad. Funny how monstrous genetics is. If only, if only I could have been happy with my lab partner, dear sweet little Christopher Chung. Instead, as we sat there studying Mandel’s experiments with sweet peas, I spent my evenings dreaming about entirely the wrong kind of boy – rather than someone who read books and laughed at my Jackie Mason albums.
Funny how we grow up, isn’t it? If only I’d known how things would turn out, then I’d have been happy. If I could just have fancied him a little bit. Poor Christopher. Probably we’d have been married very sensibly now. Couple of kids. All of CSI on DVD. Who knows?
Instead, here I was in a freezing shed in the middle of nowhere, very single, very old, and staring at the most beautiful man I’d ever seen. Actually, strike that, I was gawping.
Sebastian caught my look and his smile changed. It was odd, almost sardonic. He didn’t say anything, but something in the tilt of his neck suggested that he knew full well. ‘The old crone wants me. Good. I can work with that.’
Sebastian stepped forward, bare feet on the cold concrete floor. (So it grew him clothes but not shoes? Odd.) He walked up to me, a firm, confident stride that brought him right up to me. Close. Extremely close. Almost so close that I thought he was going to kiss me. I trembled. I don’t know if I was excited or afraid. Instead he sniffed.
‘Good morning,’ he said. ‘Let’s get started.’
Then he walked out of the shed.
Gwen
The change came gradually. Or maybe we didn’t notice because we didn’t leave the caravan for a couple of days. We shut the door and walled ourselves up. Apart from trips out to the laundry hut.
We just held on to Anwen. She was ours again. It wasn’t paradise. But it was normality. Horrible, messy, sleep-deprived, grumpy, snappy, smelly normality. Neither of us wanted to change it.
Mrs Harries had been waiting for me as we left the beach. We’d shared a look. A look that was beyond shattered. She’d just looked relieved.
We didn’t much care, frankly. We had Anwen back. I didn’t care what happened to Jenny now.
Well, I say that. There were times when it felt as much use as being cross with a flatpack wardrobe, and others where I just wanted to go and stand outside her house and scream at her. Rhys talked me down from that. Truth to tell, it was his suggestion that we lie low for a bit.
Mrs Harries came and knocked on the door. We didn’t answer. She came and stood at the window. But I was feeding and I just looked at her and shook my head. With a little scrunch that said, ‘Sorry, not a good time.’
She nodded: ‘Quite understand, sorry to have bothered you.’ She walked away into the rain.
Rhys waited a day before pointing out that I wasn’t letting Anwen go. Not even to him.
‘She’s mine,’ I said with not even a hint of realising that I sounded crazy.
‘Go on, love.’ His voice was so gentle and soft it was breaking. ‘Get some shut-eye, and I’ll change her. Please.’
‘OK,’ I said. But I didn’t hand her over. He took her gently from my arms. I looked up at him and smiled. ‘Thanks,’ I said.
‘Yeah,’ he murmured. ‘Fighting for a go at a soiled nappy.’ He laid her down and went to work, pausing to grimace. ‘Green. Funny how you never get used to green poo.’
‘Wait till we start her on solid food,’ I said. ‘It’ll get really interesting, then.’
‘If we’re still changing her when she’s 20, we’ll have got this one very wrong.’
‘Totally,’ I said and shut my eyes.
This time the dreams were different. I was back in that bathroom. But I was being dragged forward. Dragged. I was yelling and screaming. I was terrified. I was trembling. The hands that held me were so strong. I fought desperately, I called and I begged.
I could see the white tiles on the walls and the mirror steamed up and the bright light and the cluster of half-finished shampoo bottles.
‘I’ve run you a bath, Mother,’ said Billy.
The bath waiting, the taps running.
The hands that held me, dragged me closer and closer to the water.
I struggled and screamed, screamed for Davydd. But no one came.
Then I looked at his face. Billy’s face, red and scarred. And smiling at me.
‘I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,’ I begged him. ‘Please don’t make me.’
‘It’s OK, Mummy.’ Billy smiled and gestured to the bath. ‘The water’s lovely and warm. Why don’t you get in?’
‘Please, don’t do this.’
But Billy just repeated the command.
And, sobbing, I obeyed.
I woke up.
It was like one of those falling dreams. Sat in the chair, gasping and floundering. A second’s disorientation, like I was waking up in an unfamiliar hotel room, then grasping for Anwen. Realising she wasn’t there, panicking. Seeing Rhys standing over me. Holding Anwen. Looking cautious.
‘It’s OK,’ he said. ‘She’s here.’
I took her from him. Without asking. ‘I had the oddest dream,’ I started to tell him.
Then realised. Mrs Harries was standing outside the window again.
‘We’d better let her in,’ I said.
Mrs Harries looked older, like I’d been asleep for ten years.
When I opened the caravan door I already felt worried. She saw my face. But she pressed on with the social niceties.
‘Sorry to disturb you,’ she said, her hands fidgeting with her coat.
‘Come on in.’
‘You know, don’t you?’ Her face was sharp, all tired angles.
I nodded. ‘I dreamed again. Was it Sasha?’
‘Yes.’
‘What?’ said Rhys.
‘Billy attacked his mother,’ said Mrs Harries. ‘He filled the bath and made her get in it. We couldn’t get to her in time.’
Rhys swore and held my shoulder.
‘We could hear… we knew… it’s.…’ Mrs Harries’s eyes roamed the room sadly. Then she sat down on the chair, clutching the armrests on it. ‘It’s the children. I meant to say. They’ve not been right… not since Jenny… you know…’
‘Since she took Anwen.’
‘Yes. Your little baby girl.’ Mrs Harries shook her head. ‘I assumed… we assumed that they felt sheepish, or collective guilt. Or were afraid of us. Of what we might do to them.’
‘And what did you do to them?’
Mrs Harries smiled, the tired thin smile of a woman who is mostly steel and sinew. ‘I went to the village hall. Most of the parents took their children home. Said it would be fine. I stayed there with mine and whoever else was left. I wanted them all to be safe. In case anything… you know… awful happened.’
‘Did it?’
Mrs Harries shrugged. ‘I just fell asleep. Sorry.’
‘Did you drea
m?’ I asked.
‘No dear, I think that’s just you. They’re no longer interested in my dreams.’
‘So what happened next?’
Mrs Harries considered her hands, how tired and wrinkled they were. ‘In the morning, they were different… At first I thought it was sheepish. Guarded. You see, she…’ She tailed off.
‘Jenny was there, wasn’t she?’ My voice was sharper than I’d thought it would be.
Rhys made a little oof.
Mrs Harries watched the carpet. ‘Yes.’ Her voice was tiny. ‘She was. Mrs Meredith – poor Beth’s so ashamed, she didn’t want her around any more. Jenny’s been ever so odd ever since – almost like she’s in a coma. She just kept to herself at the back of the hall and didn’t speak. In the morning I noticed she was still sat there. I swear she hadn’t moved all night. But the others… they were a little apart from her. As I said, I assumed it was sheepishness. Or shame. But it was something else entirely. Oh my goodness. It was… They were… different. They were colder. They’d withdrawn from her. They were all watching me instead. It was like they were… Oh…’ She shrugged helplessly. ‘You a dog or a cat person, Gwen?’
‘I want a dog,’ said Rhys.
‘Little Anwen’s more than enough of a handful,’ I said.
‘Yes,’ said Mrs Harries, and I think we’d slightly annoyed her. ‘It was like they’d gone from wide-eyed puppies to hunting animals. They were sharp. Instead of blank, they were guarded. As though they were all plotting. They frightened me. They were so polite. But it was… sarcastic? Is that the right word? I got scared. When Nerys turned up –’ (I noticed Rhys start at her name) – ‘When Nerys turned up to look after them for a couple of hours, I came up here yesterday to see how you were. And for a chat. But you…’
‘No,’ I was firm. ‘Not ready then.’
‘So I went back. Tried to teach them a lesson. French.’
She talked on, going through the minutiae of the day. ‘But it was like they didn’t want to learn any more. One of them asked, “Why do we learn lessons, Mrs Harries?” I explained how important it was to learn. To grow. He waved it away. “Yes, that’s all very well. But what about you? Do you ever learn lessons?” I said, “Sometimes. Yes. I mean, when we’re at school and of course sometimes in later life. But we don’t learn like you do.” When I said that, he smirked and said, “No, no, you don’t.”’ She shook her head, shuddering. ‘I should have understood then. What would happen later. I just didn’t think it through. I didn’t realise.’ She leaned back in the chair, wrapping her arms around her tightly. Like she was knocking the air out of her lungs. ‘They laughed then. They never laugh. But they did then. A shared joke.
‘The lesson went on pretty much as normal, but it was like I was talking to them and they weren’t listening. I’d see a smile break out from time to time – the same smile but on different children. Rippling gently across the room. It was almost as though they were pretending to take notice of me. To care. But it was all a fake. I carried on teaching them. But it was strange. The sentences I wrote out for them. L’eau est chaud. L’eau est très très chaud. L’eau est trop chaud pour maman.’
‘Oh my god,’ said Rhys. I felt a bit sick in my stomach.
‘They were planning it, even then,’ said Mrs Harries.
Megan Harries
They waited until the sun set. Until it was evening. Then they stood up.
‘Thanks for the lesson, Mother,’ said Peter, with that little sarcastic smile. ‘But it’s time to teach you all a lesson of our own.’
They filed out. I cried out to them, told them to think, that if they acted rashly the village wouldn’t be the same, that there’d be retaliation… but Peter just turned and looked at me in the doorway, shrugged and said, ‘Whatever.’
I didn’t know what to do. I thought about running after them but I didn’t want… I didn’t want them harmed. I didn’t know what they were up to.
They told me later what was going on. Billy’s dad got home from work. Poor Davydd, pulling up in his tiny, beat-up old car. And there they were. The Scions. Ringing the house. Standing, staring in. Blocking his way.
He tried fighting past them, to get inside. The whole thing was lit up like the fairground by the headlights from his car. Pretty soon people were twitching curtains and coming out of the pub to look.
Davydd had started shouting, and the others were trying too. That’s when I turned up. I wanted to reason with them. But they weren’t seeing sense. They weren’t listening. They were just stood there, holding hands.
Someone threw a punch, but the kid didn’t even show that it connected.
‘My wife’s in there!’ Davydd started yelling, over and over.
One of the Scions, my lovely Peter, acknowledged him. ‘Your son is in there, too.’
That’s when Davydd broke down, howling.
Shortly afterwards the noises came from inside the house. Terrible noises.
None of us could do anything.
I have never felt more helpless.
When the people realised it wasn’t going to work, they started arguing with me. Blaming me. Ordering me to do something.
They won’t listen to me any more. They won’t listen to any one.
That’s when I caught the expression on my Peter’s face. It was a nasty little smile: ‘If only you knew, Mum, if only you knew.’ Oh it was horrible.
Of course, someone called an ambulance… but no one came. There’s always been a problem with mobiles, but even the landlines are down now. We’re cut off. The world is leaving us alone… alone with these children.
They stood there the whole night, you know, circling that little house. Those strange, dreadful flowers grew up around their feet. And the children just stood there, smiling.
Gwen
It was a lot to take in. Worse because I’d seen it all happen.
There was Megan Harries, arms folded, cold mug of tea at her side, staring patiently at me, a little expectant smile on her tired face. As though I was expected to do something. Why did everyone always expect me to do something? I held Anwen closer, tighter, and tried to think. What would old Gwen say at this point?
‘And no one called the police?’
‘Tony Brown?’ Mrs Harries clucked with disdain. ‘No bloody good. Never was. Never would be. Years we spent thinking he was just a stupid, fat drunk… but now it’s obvious. He’s been working for THEM all along.’
‘Them?’ I said before I thought about it. Whenever someone says ‘THEM’ you always fear they’re about to start talking about foreigners, the EU, or…
‘Well, the government, dear.’ Oh yes. Or them. ‘I mean, someone’s had to keep an eye on the village. Make sure we never got much outside help, didn’t talk to the wrong people. Made sure the mobile phone companies never got to put up a mast, that the planning proposal for a supermarket was abandoned, that the caravan park got shut down…’ She waved her hands around. ‘It’s odd, isn’t it? You assume it would require – I don’t know – brainwashing? Guards and things.’ She chuckled. ‘But you can control a village ever so easily. Make sure a few people are looking the other way, that everyone’s pretty much in on the secret, that everyone’s got too much to lose… What are we like?’
I squeezed her hand. She squeezed it back. When she spoke again there was a splinter in her voice.
‘They were my children. They were good enough… They were good enough for me… What happened to my babies?’
Rhys
I sat there, trying to pay close attention while patting the wind out of Anwen and silently mopping up a tiny puddle of baby vom on my shoulder. Gwen says always to use a bib, and she’s right of course, but sometimes it’s the tiny acts of rebellion that mean the most, yes?
The two women sat there, hugging. Mrs Harries old and desolate and Gwen charging up, more awake and energised than I’d seen her for months. Almost like she was sucking the life out of the poor old woman.
‘Haven’t you fo
rgotten something?’ I asked.
Gwen shot me a look. Not now, it said clearly. With an undertone of Put The Kettle On. But there are times, bless her, times when she doesn’t know best.
‘The Secret Underground Base.’
Mrs Harries looked at me. ‘The Weather Station?’
I nodded.
‘We’ve just… why, what can Eloise do? We all know she and Tom just sit up there, doing some kind of research on the Scions.’
‘Well,’ I pressed on, ‘if there has been a change – and they’re supposed to be looking after the kids – well, don’t you think they’d know about it?’
Mrs Harries clucked. ‘Oh, poor Eloise. She’s probably rushed off her feet trying to keep up with it all. No wonder Tom didn’t come home.’
‘What?’
‘No dear, poor Josh says there hasn’t been a sign of him.’
Gwen stood up, making her own cup of tea a little too loudly. ‘Something’s wrong up there,’ she said, dragging a teaspoon round a mug like it was Quasimodo’s bell. ‘I’m going to go and investigate.’
‘No,’ I shouted. I hadn’t meant to shout. I lowered my voice a lot. ‘I mean… It’s wrong. It’s dangerous. Please don’t. I don’t want you going up there. I’ve only just got us all back together. I don’t want to lose you.’
For a second, I thought we were going to have that proper row. That good old proper barney that had been brewing on the horizon like a storm. Instead Gwen smiled. Which was actually more dangerous.
‘Who said I was going up there alone?’
We went to the pub.
Yeah. I know. When the going gets tough, the tough go out on the lash. But it’s more complicated than that… Actually, it’s not. Not at all. Gwen just wanted to find somewhere that contained as many people as possible. Foot soldiers for her crusade. A bloody mad crusade, if you ask me, which is why it would help if her willing volunteers were a bit drunk.
The pub was as grim as ever. But very, very open.