by Tony Walker
As we sat there in a nervous silence, Victoria and Manuelita holding hands for comfort, the storm raged outside. At times, the wind was so wild that I feared the window would come in. Time went on. I saw that Benji had dropped off and also Annie. Manuelita was the last to fall asleep, she kept staring up at me with her eyes wide as a spooked horse, but eventually these too grew heavy and closed.
It was all too crazy, but it was late and I was emotionally exhausted. My head too began loll. I don’t remember falling asleep but I must have. When I snapped awake, the candle was nearly dead. It was just a flickering yellow flame in a pool of wax on the saucer I’d stuck it to. The three women breathed rhythmically from the bed, Manuelita’s breathing deepening to a slight snoring. I lifted my head up and looked for Benji.
His bed was empty. Where I’d expected to see him, there was only an indentation and disturbed bedclothes. I jumped up. Annie stirred at my movement.
The door was open. I hoped to God he hadn’t gone sleepwalking.
All the women woke suddenly and looked around them.
“Benji’s gone,” I said. I could hear the panic in my voice.
Victoria said, still half asleep, “He’s probably sleepwalking again.”
Annie turned on her. “Sleepwalking? Since when does he sleepwalk?”
Victoria was quiet.
“Apparently he does,” I said. “I’ll go find him.”
But memory had jumped up and snared Annie. “No!” she shrieked. “It’s happening again.”
I had to focus on Benji. I could comfort Annie later.
“I’ll come too to look for Benji,” said Manuelita.
“You don’t have to,” I said, but I was glad of any company. Victoria sat up in bed and swung her legs out. She bent over Annie who was sitting hugging her knees and rocking. The tears were running down her face.
“Victoria,” I said. “You look after Annie,”
“Vale”, she said. “Sure.”
Manuelita and I made our way out of the bedroom onto the landing. She held onto my arm for dear life.
“Upstairs,” she said. “He always tries to go upstairs.”
So we went up the stairs to the floor where Victoria’s bedroom was. There was no sign of Benji. Then I saw that the door to the attic was open.
Manuelita saw it too, and I thought her grip was going to break my arm. We went to the bottom of the stairs and I heard voices. I could hear Benji’s voice. He was talking to a man. It was a definitely man’s voice. I felt my stomach turn over.
Manuelita suddenly sobbed and started reciting the Lord’s Prayer in Spanish. I was shaking, but I had to go up. I heard the sound of someone running upstairs from below. I turned and saw it was Victoria. “I heard my aunt,” she said. “I thought something was wrong.”
And then she too heard the voice of the man upstairs. Her face froze. Manuelita thrust her crucifix into Victoria’s hand and then she fell down on her knees and began to pray fervently.
I took a step up. “Don’t go, Mr. Dougan,” said Victoria. “That thing up there is from Hell.”
“I’ve got to go,” I said. “My son is up there.”
I could still hear Benji’s voice and the voice of Grandfather talking back to him. I mounted the stairs slowly. Each tread was an act of will, my body shrieking against where I was sending it. But I had to go to my son. To her credit, Victoria came up behind me. And as we reached the top, I saw that Benji was sitting there in the middle of the attic, sitting on the knee of a sinister old man. They both turned to me.
“Get off my son!” I screamed.
I could see Grandfather’s teeth were filed to sharp points, and his eyes were black. He looked like the burned soul of a sinner when all the human flesh is stripped off.
“Get the fuck off my son!” I roared, but I still couldn’t force myself to step forward. And as Grandfather met my eyes. He was pure evil.
Benji didn’t even look at me. He was playing with a toy train that Grandfather had given him.
And then Victoria screamed at that wicked thing. Whether she was cursing him with the most foul words she knew, or whether she was calling holy names to drive him away, I couldn’t tell.
I ran forward and covered the ground between me and Benji. Victoria was holding up the crucifix like a weapon.
I grabbed my son, and I held him in my arms. When I looked up the thing was standing in the corner of the attic, and, with its foul mouth, it smiled at me — then it vanished.
Victoria came to me and stroked Benji’s head, muttering and crying. I held him as tight as I could. I thought I’d never let him go. Slowly and carefully I made my way down the steep attic stairs, Victoria behind me. Manuelita was there at the bottom. When she saw Benji was safe, she wept and thanked God and the angels for his deliverance.
We all stood there feeling such relief — such a sense of liberation.
Then I said, “Where’s Annie?”
In our rush upstairs we’d forgotten that Annie was still in the bedroom.
I handed Benji to Victoria, and I ran downstairs. When I got to our bedroom, Annie wasn’t there. I was in a blind panic. I started shouting out her name. Manuelita and Victoria followed me down, still with Benji.
Benji said, “I know where mummy is.”
I turned to him. “Tell me where she is Benji.” I pleaded with him.
He nodded wisely and said, “She’s with Grandfather.”
I felt terror like I’d never know. I ran downstairs. The front door was banging in the wind. The rain had come in. I looked out into the howling night. Without putting on my coat I ran out the front of the house. I needed to find my Annie.
And I did find her; I found her face down in the frigid water of the lake. She was soaked and her hair streamed out on the turbulent waves. I went into the water, up to my waist and I pulled her out, the water drained from her mouth and lungs. But she was already cold. There was no hope — she was dead.
And then I understood. Finally, after all these years, the spirit of dark water ‘Grandfather’ had come back to take the second twin.
16
The Mallerstang Boggle
I’m nearing old age now and no longer live in Cumbria, but I remember the hot summer of 1976 with its drought and swarms of ladybirds. I suppose I thought all spirits were ghosts, and that ghosts were the remnants of dead people then, if I thought about it at all. But I'll get to that.
Let me begin at somewhere near the beginning. My name is Malcolm Ellwood. I now live in Newcastle upon Tyne, but I was born and brought up in Kendal, which at that time was in Westmorland. In 1974, just before this story they merged us with Cumberland and parts of Lancashire and Yorkshire to become the new county of Cumbria, named after the ancient kingdom.
My father and mother had a caravan in Mallerstang, which, and I hope I don’t offend the (few) residents by describing Mallerstang as a bleak and remote valley that leads from Cumbria into the Yorkshire Dales. But my old mum and dad loved it, mainly my dad really — my mum wanted to go to Spain. But he never listened to her, and we went every year to that caravan which was parked on what was in essence a farmer’s field with basic amenities. We stayed every summer for six weeks and if Easter wasn’t bad, we’d go there for two weeks then as well..
I was about 12 then and still happy with fishing with nets in the becks and wandering over the fells and camping up there with the old tent my dad got from the Scouts. It was so hot that year; we swam a lot in the Eden too.
My friends were Alan Tremble from Penrith and John Mossop from Kirkby Stephen. Their parents had caravans there as well and the grown-ups spent the evenings drinking gin and tonic and playing card games while we went on our bikes and made dens.
Pendragon Castle lies in the valley. They say that it was the castle of Uther Pendragon, father of King Arthur, though the ruins of the existing castle only date from Norman times. Who knows, maybe King Arthur’s dad lived there before that.
One night, we camped in the ruin b
ecause Alan thought it would be spooky. We pitched our four-man canvas tent with rope guys and wooden pegs that you had to hammer in with a mallet. I remember the ground was rock hard because of the drought and the mallet hurt my hand.
We set a fire and sat round sizzling pork sausages on forks tied to bamboo sticks with string. Often the string would burn through and the fork would drop with the sausage into the flaming wood and we’d have to pick it out with fingers or sticks. Gritty sausages caked in red-hot cinders never did me any harm.
Alan told ghost stories while me and John Mossop laughed at him. Then we grew tired and simply sat. The shadows grew long around the castle ruins. Cows grazed not far away among the reeds by the river and owls hooted from the trees. It was still warm.
I wasn’t sure I believed in ghosts. If you’d asked me, I would have said, I didn’t, but that airless night, sitting by the dying fire, my actions might not have matched my words. I wasn’t scared exactly, but I wasn’t happy either. Alan had been telling a story about a drowned woman’s spirit coming from the dead. I didn’t believe him, but I kept looking towards the river.
Then we went to bed and crawled into our sleeping bags. They slept. I didn’t. I just had that image of a woman coming out of the river. I heard Alan and John’s breathing. The night was so hot; I climbed out of my sleeping bag. Owls called across the valley: kwik kwik went the males, and the females answered: hoo hoo.
But there was something else out there too. Something moved among the trees. At first I thought I was imagining it. I held my breath so I could hear better, but it didn’t help that there were two people breathing loudly in the tent with me. Whatever it was, it was close. My heart started beating fast. I had images of this woman coming for the river for me -- that she would snatch me from the tent, while the others slept. I was on the left-hand side, by the tent wall. She could just reach under the fly-sheet and drag me out. I shuffled closer in, but I couldn’t get away because John was there. He muttered as I moved into him but didn’t wake.
Something was moving around the ruins. It wasn’t a bird in the trees; it was something on the ground. Something heavy footed.
I froze with fear. It was close now. Maybe it was a cow. Maybe it was a badger, but there was no snuffling noise, it was more like a pecking — like something pecking the ground. That was weird. More than weird, unnervingly scary. It came closer, pecking, pecking, pecking. What the heck pecked?
Then something took hold of the tent, like grabbed it. It ripped the canvas up, like a knife, waking Alan and John instantly who cried out in sleepy terror.
“Jesus, what the hell?” Alan said.
John rolled away. The tent was cut open and more than that, lifted up and thrown away. There was no moon, but the stars sparkled like thrown diamonds in the sky above. And against them was a huge black shape. It was no woman; it wasn’t even human.
I jumped up and ran. I fled out of the ruins, across the fields. I crossed a fence. I don’t even remember crossing it but I must have. I didn’t look back for the others; I was so terrified. I got to the farm and the three caravans. There were no lights on anywhere, and only now, with no one after me and my heart finally slowing, I turned to look back for my friends.
“What the hell was that?” John said. He was first back. Alan appeared as a shadow before I answered. Not that I had an answer. “I don’t know,” I said.
I knocked sheepishly on the door of the caravan and my tousled mother answered. I gave some excuse about the tent ripping which she looked puzzled about but didn’t question. My dad did though the next day. We salvaged the tent from the castle ruins and he ended up stitching it back together. He presumed we’d been messing about with knives because something had sliced the canvas open. He wouldn’t have believed the true explanation, so I didn’t tell him.
“It must have been a lunatic with a knife,” John said.
“Or a sword, maybe?” Alan said.
“A machete,’ John nodded. “That’s it.”
I shook my head. “Did you see the size of it?”
They both went quiet.
“What was it then?” John asked.
“I don’t know,” I said.
“I’m not camping there again,” Alan said. “I’ll stay in the caravan.”
I said, “With a blade like that it could cut through the caravan, anyway.”
News of us ripping the tent apparently spread because we were on our bikes up by The Thrang two days later when we came across Billy Boustead. Billy was a labourer on one of the farms by Shoregill. I have no idea how old he was then. He’ll be long dead by now though. Billy was cutting down ragwort in the fields. He was simple and the farmers just gave him little jobs and paid him pocket money so he could buy beer and fags. He knew us well from all the summers we’d spent there. We stopped to drink some bottles of Coke we’d brought with us.
“Tent got cut, eh?”
Alan and John ignored him and kept drinking. I could never ignore him. He was a nice enough bloke. There was no harm in him.
“Aye,” I said.
“In the middle of the night, down by the castle?”
“Aye, that’s it.” I thought he would say something about us messing round with knives again, but he didn’t.
“That’ll be the boggle,” he said. “Did you see it?”
Alan and John looked round. “Let’s go. He’s an idiot,” Alan said.
I was interested though. “What do you mean, the boggle?”
Billy laughed like it was us who was slow. “The boggle. The boggle that haunts the ruins.”
John said, “I thought a boggle was something up your nose.”
“What do you mean, a boggle?” I called to Billy.
He laughed again. “You don’t know what a boggle is?”
I shrugged. “No.”
“Well, it’s a spirit.”
“Like a ghost?” Alan said.
“No.” Billy grimaced like Alan was really thick. “It’s like a big thing. It’s always been there.”
“What are you talking about, Billy?” John said.
“The boggle that haunts the ruins,” Billy said.
“You already said that,” Alan said. “Come on, let’s go.” He got his bike ready to go, one foot up on the pedal ready to push off.
“It’s a big black hen,” Billy said.
“What?” Alan and John were laughing. “That’s not scary!” John said.
But I remembered the pecking. A huge sharp beak could rip open a tent as easily as a knife. And the shape against the stars wasn’t human at all. Just huge: huge and black.
I said, “A big black hen haunts the ruins? Why?”
Billy said, “It’s not a hen, it’s a boggle. It just takes on the shape of a hen. It could take on any shape it liked: a pig, or a column of sparks, or a big slithering blob.”
“Come on, I’ve heard enough,” Alan said, and started pedalling. John followed him, but I held back.
“What’s it doing there, Billy?”
Billy tapped his nose. “You’d better get on after your friends.”
“Tell me?” I said.
He narrowed his eyes, “It’s guarding King Arthur’s treasure. But don’t tell anyone I said that. I don’t want the Boggle coming after me.”
“Will it come after you?” I said.
“Oh, yes. If the boggle thinks you’re after the treasure, it’ll come and kill you.”
I gave him a long hard stare. He believed what he was saying, and I almost did too. Then he went quiet.
It didn’t look like Billy was going to tell me any more. He probably didn’t know any more to be fair, so I got on my bike and pedalled hard to catch up with Alan and John.
My dad had fixed the tent. He used to have a boat on Windermere and had to repair sails, so he liked to show off his canvas repairing skills. He’d pitched it on the farmer’s field within sight of the parents’ three caravans. “Just to keep an eye on you,” he said.
The three of us lads w
ere outside the tent. John and Alan sitting and me throwing my sheath knife into a stump of wood. I told them about the treasure.
“He must mean King Arthur’s dad’s treasure,” I said. “It was Uther’s castle, not Arthur’s.”
“He doesn’t mean anything,” Alan said. “He’s daft.”
“I mean a huge black hen!” John laughed. “Come on.”
“But what if there is treasure there?” I asked. I had just got hold of a copy of the Dungeons & Dragons rules and had been dungeon mastering it with some friends in Kendal. I liked the idea of finding treasure in a ruined castle, as unrealistic as it was. And I was a twelve-year-old boy of course.
“There’s no treasure there,” John said. “Someone would have found it already.”
“Would they really?” I said. “What it it’s been undiscovered all these years? What if we found it?”
Alan pooh-poohed the idea. John looked more receptive. “Well, we’d have to give half to the British Museum, but we could keep half as treasure trove.”
I wasn’t sure about the law but it sounded reasonable.
“You can’t just go digging in a farmer’s field,” Alan said.
“Besides,” John said. “It’s a scheduled ancient monument. If anybody saw you digging, you’d get the police on you.”
“And then you wouldn’t get to keep the treasure,” Alan said.
I pointed a victorious finger. “So you admit there could be treasure.”
“I admit no such thing.”
But we were boys, and it was the summer holidays and we were in the business of adventures, whether it was wading in the beck among the duckweed looking for sticklebacks and frogs with our nets, or pretending we were Commandoes on a mountain warfare exercise.
I asked my dad for a spade.
“No,” he said without thinking. Then he said, “Why do you want a spade?”
“Just do. For digging.”
“Digging what?”
“Tunnels.” It was the first thing I could think of.
My mother stuck her head round the caravan door from where she was cooking Chicken Fricassee. “You’re not digging tunnels. They could collapse on you and you’d die.”
