The Fetch

by Robert Holdstock

  Someone had crossed the field before her, a line of small footprints quite visible on the wettening grass. They came from the Whitlocks’ house and led straight to the quarry.

  Françoise followed them.

  The light increased and the movement of birds in the winter trees became a distraction. Nevertheless, she was certain she could hear a different sort of movement, farther into the quarry.

  She entered Michael’s castle through the old access, and tried to remember how he had drawn the circular passages and high gates that marked each level of defence until the Castle Keep was reached. She couldn’t recall the drawing at all, and smiled to herself, but even so she couldn’t resist the sound effects of pushing back the great wooden gates, and hauling up the drawbridge single-handedly.

  She moved stealthily through the scrub, aware that the open paths were lined purposefully with chalk and flint blocks, and fragments of dulled iron (what was it called? Marcasite, she thought: iron deposits that formed in chalk under pressure, but were often thought to be the remains of past civilizations, or old weapons from life-forms long extinct). These were Michael’s markers and she walked carefully between them, reaching down to touch the iron in several places, feeling for any sign or sense of use by human hand: the iron was cold and dead, however, giving her no ghost-echo at all.

  When she emerged and faced the rising wall of chalk she felt uncomfortable. There was something there but not there, a disturbance on the quarry wall that was tickling her senses but not her perception.

  She called out for Michael, then corrected herself and tried to summon Chalk Boy.

  Daylight, crisp and sharp, crept over the wall and cast stark shadows in the pit. There was a strange line on the sheer rise of chalk, a curving edge, soft and smooth, a ripple like the shadow of a corpse, deepening, lengthening. It seemed to shake, to tremble. Françoise glimpsed it, turned away, glanced up at the azure of the sky, saw birds in dark, dawn flight, felt the tremble of wind in the dying foliage, the flutter of life, the whisper of drying leaves, the movements of life returning from the chill night.

  She looked back at the cliff and the shadow had moved. Now it deepened suddenly and abruptly, becoming human-shaped, a tall, slender, elfin shadow that stretched away across the white rock, flowing as it traversed the jagged, uneven surface.

  The boy stepped towards her, his eyes opened now, his tall body trembling as the cold ate through his chalk clothes.

  White as the chalk, white as the dead, totally white, totally naked, only his eyes a darker shade, but a pale shade, watching and blinking at the woman who stood there, shocked and shivering.

  ‘I’ve been waiting for you,’ the figure hissed.

  ‘Aren’t you cold?’

  ‘Freezing. It’s always cold in Limbo.’

  ‘Michael?’

  ‘Michael’s sleeping. I’ve already told you that. Michael sleeps. Chalk Boy is awake. Chalk Boy is here with you. Chalk Boy will show you things. Welcome to Castle Limbo, Frances.’

  ‘Françoise. My name is Françoise. I’m French. Glad to meet you.’

  ‘I am Chalk Boy. I am angry. I am from a time before human time. My world is cold. Monsters scream in my world. The chalk is new in my world. Where you stand is a beach. Where I stand is a cave. Where the trees grow is the sea. In that sea there are creatures that will eat people who hurt me.’

  ‘Who is trying to hurt you, Michael? I mean, Chalk Boy.’

  The boy was silent. He was still shaking with the cold and Françoise felt concerned for him, but also very confused as to what to do. Remove her coat and offer it to Michael? But he seemed to want to enact something, a ritual, perhaps, or a dream, or part of his imaginary life. He was a boy with talent, with power, and Françoise wanted to know what part of that power was being demonstrated here.

  She said, ‘You look very cold. Why don’t you take my coat?’

  ‘No.’

  Below the paint, or chalk, or whatever it was with which he had daubed his body, the goosebumps on his skin stood proud and odd. Françoise thought he looked like a plucked chicken. He also seemed unusually unembarrassed about his total nudity. He turned and led the way severely round the wall, walking stiffly. The chalk cracked below his buttocks and behind his knees, revealing pink skin.

  ‘Where are we going? Where are you taking me?’

  ‘You are in Limbo,’ Michael/Chalk Boy growled. ‘I want to show you the Limbo Creatures.’

  He had stooped to crawl through the sharp gorse that covered the metal grille, where a hundred years ago quarrymen had scoured into the chalk wall to make a shed for their tools. Françoise could sense fear in the air; perhaps it was Michael’s sweat, or his manner, but she could sense it through all her channels, a tangible feeling of terror in the boy.

  He emerged from the coarse brush and held out a bundle of sacking. The chalk was beginning to smear on his face. Lines ran through to the flesh below where the sharp thorns had gouged him, scraped him. She could see the ginger of his hair emerging from the calcite.

  ‘What have you got there?’

  ‘Gifts. Things I fetched. Things from Limbo. Chalk Boy’s things. My things,’ he corrected quickly.

  ‘Let me see them.’

  He dropped the sack and opened it. Françoise felt her stomach turn as she surveyed the greying, blackened bodies that were revealed. She counted six even before she approached to look more closely. Chalk Boy had backed off, again pressing himself against the quarry wall.

  They were mummified creatures: a cat and a rabbit seemed obvious; a rat or large mouse; a bat seemed obvious when she looked more closely and saw the crushed wings. The fifth creature was unrecognizable, although its jaw was gaping, revealing tiny white teeth. All these creatures were hairless, tiny, contorted, and if she was to take a guess she would have said: unborn. They were foetal creatures, preserved, mummified after being taken from the womb.

  The sixth was the foetus of a human, its eye sockets empty, its arms slightly stretched, its mouth open, its belly oddly protuberant. A stiffened length of umbilical cord thrust from the tiny shape.

  She reached down and closed the sack over these grotesque shapes, then looked up at Michael.

  ‘Why did you show me these?’

  “The Grail,’ he whispered. ‘I wanted to find the Grail.’

  ‘The Holy Grail?’

  ‘The crystal glass cup of the Last Supper. I thought I saw it. I kept trying to fetch it. But all I fetched was these … all of them… one at a time.’

  He was shaking more violently, not with cold now, but with distress. Tears had smudged the chalk below his eyes. Birds were noisy above the quarry, flapping in the winter trees.

  Michael’s voice dropped from its whisper to a lower sound, a confidential murmur. He seemed terrified. ‘I’m not really Chalk Boy,’ he mouthed, the words almost too faint to hear. He leaned closer and repeated what he had said.

  ‘Are you Michael then?’

  ‘Yes,’ he breathed, then put a finger to his lips.

  ‘Why did you tell me you were Chalk Boy?’

  ‘He is here,’ Michael said desperately, his eyes wide. ‘He’s hiding. But he wants to see you. I know he does.’

  ‘How do you know he does?’

  ‘Because he started to talk about you. But I don’t know where he is now.’

  ‘So was it Chalk Boy who called me on the telephone? Or you?’

  ‘Me,’ Michael whispered. ‘I didn’t think you would come to see me unless you thought Chalk Boy would talk to you.’

  No. I’m sure you didn’t. You poor little man. You poor, desperate little man.

  ‘I think that was clever of you. But you should know, Michael, that I would have come down, even if you had not pretended. But you did the right thing.’

  What had gone wrong? The boy was still trembling, looking nervously about. Something terrible had happened to him.

  ‘When you were looking for the Grail, did you see it? Clearly?’

 
‘I thought so. But I think I was being tricked. I think Chalk Boy is angry. Now he’s hiding. Sometimes I dream bright things, but when I fetch them, they’re all dead. I think he’s laughing. He’s hiding in the caves on the beach, but he’s angry with me.’

  ‘Why is he angry?’

  Michael’s white face creased and his head shook almost imperceptibly. ‘I don’t know. But I can’t find anything any more.’

  Françoise understood. ‘You mean pretty things. Valuable things. Presents for Daddy and Mummy.’

  He nodded grimly. ‘I can’t find anything to fetch.’

  Françoise felt totally at a loss. She reached out a hand for Michael’s and squeezed the cold fingers in a gesture of futile reassurance. ‘But what can I do, Michael? How can I help you?’

  ‘Come with me.’

  ‘Come with you? Where?’

  ‘Into the tunnel. Where I fetch things. Perhaps Chalk Boy will come out again if you’re there too.’

  ‘But how, Michael? How do I do that? You fetch things from here …’ She tapped his head and smiled faintly. ‘I can’t get in there with you.’

  He took off one of the marcasite necklets and passed it to the woman. ‘I’ve been wearing these for weeks. I remembered what you said about being able to see and hear things in precious objects. Maybe you can use this to come with me into Limbo.’

  Nervously, Françoise drew the necklace over her head. She had already gauged that the crystalline metal, gave her nothing. It was empty of ghost-echo, despite the boy’s best intentions.

  The white chalk gleamed in the early morning winter sun. Michael’s face became shadowy, his eyes distant. His tug on Françoise’s hand was almost urgent, a compulsive grip that relaxed then tightened.

  Suddenly the grip loosened and Michael’s body went limp. He was still standing, but his jaw had slackened and his eyes dimmed. It frightened Françoise, and she placed her hands on the boy’s crown, but felt only the faint vibration of his body, a high-pitched shudder, as if he was in deep shock.

  ‘Chalk Boy?’ she called quietly. ‘If you’re there, come out and say hello to me …’

  For a few moments nothing changed, then the body stopped shaking, stiffened completely, a muscular rigor that alarmed Françoise deeply.

  The trees in the pit began to move in a sudden, circulating wind, a freezing wind that blew dead leaves and chalk dust in an increasingly violent spiral about the motionless figures by the quarry wall.

  ‘Michael… ?’ the woman whispered. Michael’s body shuddered. He drew in air suddenly, sucking it in like a drowning man, almost gasping. A strange sound came from him, a keening that shifted into a second drawn breath, then was expressed again in a distant, agonized cry …

  ‘Come back, Michael!’ Françoise whispered urgently.

  But the boy was too far gone. The storm increased. His right arm reached out, the fingers flexing, grasping for some unseen object. His eyes were wide, his mouth stretched into a mask.

  The sound still came, desperate breathing, an attempt to cry out resulting in nothing more than a whine.

  The explosion was so sudden that Françoise screamed with the shock of it, ducking down and covering her head as the air was filled with stone shrapnel and stinking mud. The blast toppled her. She felt a bruise and a cut on her face. Two of her fingers were in agony, though not broken. A slab of concrete had struck her forcibly.

  In the middle of this mayhem Michael was a huddled shape, collapsed, one arm still reaching out, but holding something now, something that glistened, something that flexed, five legs, curling in …

  He threw it away and sobbed. He was clutching the back of his neck, rubbing vigorously where he had been struck, or hurt in some way.

  As quickly as the explosion had come, so there was peace. Françoise sat up and brushed dirt and dust from her jeans. The stone fragments were not concrete, but white stone from heavy blocks. There was a lot of gold-inlaid wood, shards only. Some red cloth, and duck feathers. The air smelled of incense and candles.

  The living hand had ceased to twitch now, but blood still glistened and seeped from the torn wrist.

  Michael was howling, hiding his face. When Françoise went over to him he refused to stand, so she crouched and put her arms around him.

  ‘I’m here. It’s all right, Michael.’

  ‘He tricked me again! He tricked me again!’

  Françoise couldn’t stop looking with horror at the hand, its pigmented skin, its smooth fingers: a man’s hand, large, undecorated.

  Michael sobbed. ‘I thought I saw it. I reached through stone and there was a man sitting on a chair, watching me. He was dying. I think he was guarding a king in a coffin. There was a candle. He shouted at me. I think he was frightened. When I went to fetch the cup, he tried to stop me and all I got was his hand …’

  Again tears, and the reaction of a terrified boy, a huddling, a rocking down, a crushing of his body into as tight a ball as possible.

  She placed her jacket round his shoulders, reached round to button it. ‘You’ll catch your death. Chalk isn’t very warm.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  They sat for half an hour or more and the quarry became very still. All sound seemed to have evaporated. On the cold air Françoise could smell the sea. The sky above the pit was an intense and brilliant blue and she lay back on the cold ground, watching that vacancy, that splendid emptiness. Like Michael himself, she was feeling a sudden, powerful peace.

  Michael became conscious that he was naked but for a jacket. He seemed embarrassed.

  ‘I ought to go home,’ he whispered. ‘I have to get up for school.’

  He rubbed vigorously at the chalk on his face. When he stood, Françoise’s jacket covered him to above the knee. He was getting very tall. He was a thin figure, ten years old and vulnerable, swathed in denim, the sleeves just longer than his hands. He seemed very sad.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ Françoise asked.

  ‘He’s gone.’

  ‘Chalk Boy?’

  Michael nodded. He seemed very forlorn as he looked at the high wall of the quarry, then closed his eyes, as if listening. Françoise waited quietly. Tears filled Michael’s eyes as he turned and walked awkwardly along the cleared path through the trees, Françoise following in silence. Michael said, ‘He’s closed all the gates. He’s blocked off the passage. I can’t see him or hear him. He’s shut me out.’

  How often had she heard this! The sudden feeling of being shut out, shut off from a world that had been familiar, so real.

  She felt sad and sick at heart, distressed for the boy, but she knew exactly what was going on.

  Michael’s talent was dying. It was as simple, and in a way as tragic, as that. Perhaps this fetching would prove to have been his last. Chalk Boy had been Michael’s way of externalizing the gift that had developed in him, the strange power. His imaginary friend, in an imaginary Limbo world, guiding him to the past, the imagined vehicle of his apportive power. Now that talent was fading as Michael grew older. And he rationalized the death of talent by the closing of gates, by the loss of his friend.

  I’m so sorry, Michael. But when it goes it goes forever. I know so many people like you …

  She glanced back at the quarry as they left to walk over the field to the house.

  The place was dead.

  Susan was in the kitchen in her housecoat, making coffee and toast. The arrival of Françoise Jeury and her albino companion startled her. If Françoise had expected maternal anger at Michael’s camouflage, she was surprised. Susan said tiredly, ‘Get washed and ready for school. Hurry up.’

  The boy shrugged off Françoise’s denim jacket and padded up the stairs.

  Susan looked bone weary, not just the sleepy dishevelment of early morning. Her eyes had that haunted, hunted look associated with depression, fear or too much television.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ she asked quietly. ‘What have you been doing? More singing? More adventures in Michael’s dreams?’


  ‘Michael called me. He asked me to come and see him.’

  As she poured coffee into two mugs, Susan glanced suspiciously at the other woman. ‘When did he call you?’

  ‘At two o’clock this morning. I’d just come home from my family. In France.’

  ‘You came here at two o’clock?’

  ‘I was here for sunrise. I met him in his castle.’

  Susan gave Françoise a mug of coffee, then walked past her into the crisp, cold dawn, sipping her breakfast and thinking hard.

  ‘Why did he call you, I wonder?’

  Françoise leaned against the door frame, aware of the concern and fear emanating from the woman before her.

  ‘His talent is gone. It’s all over for him.’

  Susan turned sharply. ‘No. It can’t be.’

  ‘I’m afraid so. These things, these gifts – I mean, the gift of having the power – they never last very long. It might transform, of course. Mine did. But there is something very empty in Michael now. I think he has lost the gift completely.’

  The silence with which Susan greeted this opinion was disturbing in its tangible selfish concern. After a moment she sighed. ‘He hasn’t brought us anything for months. Nothing useful. Nothing pretty … We try to encourage him. But it just upsets him.’

  Patiently, Françoise explained what she understood would be now driving Michael’s behaviour. ‘Of course. He’s frightened. He’s been frightened for weeks. You should try to remember something: to Michael, Chalk Boy, for all his teasing and malicious behaviour, was very real. He has been losing a friend. He has been losing a shadow that was very comforting to him.’

  Susan smiled thinly, then gave an almost perceptible nod. ‘We depended on him too much. Richard has gone away for a while, some sort of business. He’s an edgy and irritable man these days. He’s frustrated.’

  ‘You’re very candid. That reminds me of me. Therefore I like it. But I don’t envy you what you have to do for the sake of your family now.’