The Rift

by Nina Allan

  The village of Hatchmere was still the same, a cluster of disparate houses, a frowsy-looking pub. It crossed her mind that Brendan Conway might still be living in the village, in the bungalow he shared with his aunt, its yellow paint just starting to peel, its small front garden cordoned off from the road by a length of chain.

  Selena couldn’t remember the name of the aunt, though the bungalow itself she spotted at once, recognising it instantly from the newspaper photographs. It was white now instead of yellow, but otherwise the same. She thought of pointing it out to Vanja but didn’t. What would be the point? It was just a building, the physical shell that gets left behind when a memory dies.

  Could a story change a place? Selena wondered. It was almost as if Julie’s version of Hatchmere – Shoe Lake, the Shuubseet – had contaminated the real one, bleeding into it through the rift to make it more like itself. The idea was ridiculous, she knew that, and yet that was how it felt to her, standing there at the side of the road where Julie had stood – perhaps – twenty years ago, balanced upon the hair’s-breadth dividing line between one version of reality and another.

  Walking up from the station, she had spotted a white Ford van in a lay-by, parked at a careless angle to the road, its front end half-hidden by brambles and other vegetation. A spray-painted logo identified it as the property of the Forestry Commission, yet Selena found the sight of it unsettling, nonetheless.

  Could the scene of a crime be haunted by the crime itself? Jimson was in jail, his van sold for scrap, probably.

  She was talking bollocks. All right then, thinking bollocks. What was the difference?

  “There was a lake like this near home,” Vanja said suddenly. Selena jumped. She’d been so caught up in thoughts of Jimson she’d more or less forgotten that Vanja was there. “Not Berlin. I mean our village, Vasili’s and mine. It is called Bonfire Village, can you imagine? Kostër.” She accented the second syllable, making a ‘yo’ sound. “It’s in Ukraine.”

  “I thought you met Vasili in Berlin?”

  “Uh-uh.” She shook her head. “I’ve known him since we were kids. He was an arsehole then, too.” She laughed. “We used to swim in the lake, after school. All of us did, except this one kid, Semyon Radich. He was so skinny, like a matchstick. I kind of liked him, actually, but he was so easily frightened. He had this terror of catfish and leeches, which is why he wouldn’t go swimming with the rest of us. He believed there was a really big catfish in the lake, a monster, he said, although I’m certain he never saw anything of that sort. Some of the other kids used to tease him about it, try and force him to go in the water when he didn’t want to. There was this other boy called Nika Belyushin who lost a foot from swimming in the lake. We tried to convince Semyon Radich it was a catfish that got him, but really it was because of an old car someone had thrown in there. Nika cut his foot on the metal and it became infected.”

  “We had stories like that, too,” Selena said. “Dad said they were urban myths, that the catfish wouldn’t grow that big here because the water’s too cold. He told us the only place you get giant catfish is in the Mekong Delta.”

  “There are some huge ones in the Dnepr as well.” Vanja sighed. “We used to have races. Swimming across to the island. It wasn’t a real island, just a clump of trees on a patch of dirt, really. But it was our place, just like this was your place.”

  “It wasn’t really our place,” Selena said. “We came here because of Dad.”

  “I always think the only time you get to know a place properly is when you’re a kid. You need to get down in the mud, you know? Get your hands dirty. Unless you’ve swum in this lake you can’t know it. Did you ever swim here?”

  Selena shook her head. “Dad wouldn’t let us. We used to watch people fishing, though. Once there was this guy who tried to show us his cock.”

  Vanja started to laugh. “Was it a monster then, this cock?”

  “Not really. It was just a cock. I’d rather have seen a catfish, quite honestly.”

  They both burst out laughing, doubling over at the roadside, hugging their knees. Selena felt glad they’d come, after all, even though it was still raining and she was starting to feel cold.

  WELS CATFISH (Silurus glanis) is a scaleless or true catfish that lives in slow-moving fresh or brackish water in a wide range of habitats throughout Western and Eastern Europe, and as far as Russia in the east and Greece in the south. Wels catfish live largely on invertebrates, although larger individuals will also eat rats, mice, pigeons and even aquatic birds such as coots and ducks. There have been reports of Wels catfish lunging out of the water in pursuit of prey. The Wels catfish is also known as the Sheatfish. They are long lived, commonly reaching thirty years of age and sometimes much longer. The largest recorded specimens are in the region of three metres long, although there have been isolated and thus far unproven reports of individuals reaching a full four metres in length. Wels catfish thrive in a warm climate. Po delta catfish commonly reach two metres or more in length, although the biggest specimens so far recorded have been in Ukraine. The fish is normally placid and slow-moving, although they will attack if provoked. A fisherman from the village of Győr in Hungary almost lost his life when a Danube catfish caught hold of his leg and attempted to pull him underwater. Incidents such as this one have encouraged a proliferation of urban myths relating to Wels catfish, although most of these are apocryphal. In the United Kingdom, where average temperatures fall below eighteen degrees centigrade, Wels catfish remain relatively small, a foot long and often less. They prefer deep water, with plenty of overhanging vegetation.

  “Let’s go back and find that café,” Selena said at last. “I’m freezing.”

  “In a moment,” Vanja said. She turned to face Selena. The edges of her hair were darkened with rain. “I looked up all the stuff about your sister on the Internet, did I tell you?”

  “I knew you must have done. You wouldn’t have wanted to come out here otherwise.”

  “Do you mind?”

  Selena shrugged. “Why would I mind? It’s all public knowledge. Anyone could look it up, if they wanted to.”

  “It is still painful for you to talk about, I can tell.”

  “Not really.” She thought of telling Vanja that none of it felt real, not the parts of the story that were available through the news archives anyway: the police search, the arrests, the endless news reports. These things felt like common property, film of her life rather than her own lived memories of it, even more so now that Julie had returned. The official narrative was redundant. It no longer made sense.

  She didn’t say anything though, because what was the point? Everything you could read online about Julie’s case was wrong, in any case, or at least partial, a version of history that had never happened. Most people wouldn’t care, though. Most people preferred the movie version of life. It made a better story.

  “You need to lay the ghosts,” Vanja was saying. “That’s what I think.”

  “Ghosts?”

  “You know. The memories. That’s all ghosts are, really, aren’t they? Memories.”

  “I don’t know. I think this is stupid. Coming out here, I mean.”

  “Tell me again, what Julie said. About the man who brought her in his van.”

  Selena wiped rain off her face. “Steven Jimson.” I hate that creep, she thought. I could fucking kill him. She repeated to Vanja what Julie had told her, that night in Dido’s Diner, about how Jimson had offered her a lift into Warrington then driven her out to Hatchmere Lake instead.

  “She told him she wanted to go for a walk,” she said. “It was the only way she could think of to make him stop the van.”

  Vanja whistled through her teeth. “She was brave, your sister,” she said. “And she was what? Sixteen?”

  “Seventeen,” Selena corrected her. “But she was young for her age, in some ways. Young and old at the same time, if that makes sense.”

  “Yeah, it makes sense. Kids like that are always in trouble
because they’re not made for this world. They think about things too much. I would have kneed him in the balls, probably. But then he might have strangled me anyway, just for being such a bitch to him, so what do I know?”

  “I think I’d have been too terrified to try anything,” Selena said. “I don’t like to imagine it.”

  “That’s the point, though. You don’t know what you’ll do until it happens. No point worrying about it. Can you remember where she said he parked this van of his?”

  “I’m not sure,” Selena said, although she did know, more or less, because she’d looked it up on Google Maps, tracing the van’s trajectory as it left the A556 at Delamere, heading north towards the forest boundary and to where it must eventually have ended up, in a lay-by just beyond the village and about ten minutes’ walk from where they were currently standing. Less if you were running. From the lay-by there would be a pathway into the woods, she knew that because you could see it on the map, although she’d never been there to check for herself. “Does it matter?”

  “I think it matters. I want to see where she went. Can we have a look?”

  “If you like.” Selena made a face, trying to convey how unnecessary and unpleasant she was finding it, this expedition, this pilgrimage, this wild goose chase, whatever you wanted to call it. The rain was seeping into her clothes now. She would rather be in the station café, drinking coffee, although she knew it was this – the rain, the dripping trees, the muddy pathway between the trees – that they had come for, and always had been.

  Why had she never come here before, in all these years? It was as if the place was shrouded in time, surrounded by walls of time, the way the walls of Sleeping Beauty’s castle were cloaked in briars. Was Julie like Sleeping Beauty? There were reams and reams of text written on fairy tales, Selena knew that, she had even read some of it – theories about the moon and Little Red Riding Hood and women’s menstruation, the beast as hero and the hero as beast, Rapunzel and the myth of rescue. Selena had never found much point in any of them. A good story will survive, no matter what. Selena always thought Sleeping Beauty was a story about jealousy, about a thwarted, vengeful has-been who ruined everybody’s lives in a fit of pique over not being invited to a stupid christening party, for goodness’ sake. Now she realised it was really about forgetting. About a terrible thing happening, something so terrible you would shut down your whole mind rather than face the memory of it.

  This is where it happened, Selena thought. We have to wake her up.

  MEKONG GIANT CATFISH (Pangasianodon gigas) is a very large, very heavy member of the shark catfish family, a species of freshwater fish native to the Mekong basin in Thailand, Laos, Vietnam and China. In Thai it is called the pia buek, and is a sacred creature. In Thai and Lao culture, offerings of respect would traditionally be made to the fish prior to hunting it. The largest Mekong catfish grow up to three metres in length, over a period of six years. They have traditionally been fished for food for many centuries, although the past few decades have seen a disastrous drop in numbers, partly through overfishing but mainly due to water pollution and other threats to their natural habitat. The Mekong catfish is now on the critically endangered list. Various conservation initiatives have been implemented, along with programmes of captive breeding aimed both at restocking the Mekong river and providing alternative captive-bred sources of fish for sport and for food. The initiatives are promising, with Thai fishermen especially offering their support, but there is still a long way to go before the Mekong catfish’s future is secure.

  The path that led towards the lake had become overgrown, around its opening especially, and if Selena hadn’t known it was there they might easily have missed it. At least the rain’s stopped, she thought. She wondered how long it had been since the path was last used, then pushed the thought away. This is it, Selena thought. This is the place. She felt surprised at how difficult it was to finally be here, how upsetting, like being trapped in one of those found-footage horror movies in which teenagers with loud opinions go in search of a witch or the home of a maniac. All wobbly camera angles and indistinct dialogue, the inevitable fade to black. The lesson of films like these seemed to be that it was better to let things alone, that some secrets were not worth the risk of uncovering.

  Julie must want to be found, though, or she would not have come home.

  A breeze passed through the trees, showering them with raindrops. Not much further now. “What do you think happened?” she said to Vanja. “From what you’ve read, I mean?”

  “It’s obvious, isn’t it?” Vanja stopped walking so suddenly that Selena almost ran into the back of her. “Your sister was kidnapped by this guy, this Jimson guy. He brought her here in his van, to the lake. Maybe he raped her, like he raped the other women he killed. Maybe he kept her prisoner in his garage or his cellar or something. At some point your sister escaped. We don’t know exactly when, only that it must have been some time before this Jimson creep was arrested. Could be it was here at the lake, and she managed to persuade him to take her outside for a walk, just like she says. Could be that Julie doesn’t know any more, that she doesn’t remember. These things happen. My grandmother told me a story about a guy in her village who forgot the whole of World War Two after his brother was killed. The mind is wild, you know, you can’t always predict what it will do.”

  “But you said – you wanted Julie to go and see that woman in London. The metallurgist.”

  “Just covering all bases. Also I thought Nadine would be interested. She enjoys weird stories. She showed me an alien belt buckle once, you know.”

  “What on Earth are you talking about, Vanja?”

  “What I say. A belt buckle, made from something like pewter, only it wasn’t pewter. Nadine said the metal resisted analysis. Those were her exact words – resisted analysis. The buckle was found along with some Roman-era artefacts but it wasn’t Roman. Nadine said it’s like it was dropped here by mistake.”

  “Dropped here?”

  “Yes. By someone passing through. You have to admit it’s possible. But even if Julie’s necklace does turn out to be alien I still don’t think that has anything to do with what happened to her. The necklace is something she found, that’s all. In a junk shop or somewhere.”

  “Did Nadine call you? After Julie went to see her, I mean.”

  “No, why? You think the aliens got to her as well?”

  “I’m sick of aliens,” Selena said. “Mostly I want to know what we’re doing here, what we’re supposed to be looking for. I still don’t see the point.”

  “I don’t know yet.” Vanja turned back towards the path, continued pushing her way forward through the undergrowth. “I think the police must have missed something, though. They didn’t know about this Jimson guy, not back then. So what else didn’t they know?”

  “But even if they did miss something—”

  “It’s ages ago. I know. I want to take a look, that’s all. It won’t take a moment.”

  “Fine.”

  “You sound pissed off.”

  “I am pissed off. You’re worse than my dad.”

  “Your dad? I was thinking more Buffy.”

  “You keep right on thinking that. You realise we’re going to have to walk all the way back to the station after this?”

  “Do you think they do Irish coffee at that café place?”

  “I don’t know. Do you think there’s a god?”

  Vanja laughed. Selena made an annoyed sound, because she knew it was expected of her, part of the game they were playing, and yet she knew also that she would not turn back now, not if Vanja herself suggested it, nor for any other reason. She wanted to see the lay-by, the path running off it. Although she knew it was impossible, she found herself imagining that the tracks from Jimson’s van tyres would still be there, imprinted in the dirt like a fossil record.

  MOLOCH RAINFISH (Siak Thenh, Pearly Rainfish) is a medium-sized freshwater muriad common in the southern hemisphere wherever there are bodi
es of water large enough to accommodate an active population. Argent in colour, both males and females will usually develop large iridescent patches during the spring breeding season, and, more usually in the females, a fiery red striping through the dorsal and tail area prior to egg-laying. The fry are usually hatched following a rainstorm, a fact that has given rise to the common name of ‘rainfish’. The Moloch is plentiful throughout the southern regions, and has always been a ready and popular food source, especially among the Noors, who traditionally keep large stores of the salted fillets to feed their families through the winter. The restaurant Siak Thenh in the Cam-Noor district of Fiby specialises in Noors cuisine, with the rainfish as a staple item on its menu. It can be cooked in a variety of ways, including the famous rainfish stew, with potato dumplings and seasonal herbs, which should preferably be freshly picked prior to cooking.

  The lay-by was empty, windswept. Selena tried to remember what Julie had said about the other vehicles that had been there when Jimson pulled his van off the road. A Volkswagen camper, a motorbike? Julie hadn’t said what kind of motorbike. Dad would have known, though, because he loved bikes. If Dad had been telling the story, that was the kind of detail he would have picked up on. Stories were odd like that. Even when the main facts were the same, different people noticed different things, according to what was important to them and what wasn’t. With Julie it was all that stuff about music, Steven Jimson liking Marillion or whatever. With Dad it would have been the motorbike, only Dad would never have been kidnapped, would he? It was always women and girls, women and girls, with men rushing to find them because of course it was only men who could find them. The women had to stay at home in case they got hurt. Picnic at Hanging Rock, the filthy, agonised face of Michael Fitzhubert, the soiled scrap of lace clutched in his hand.