by S Williams
Mary stays silent, not wanting to put her foot in it.
After a moment, Athene smiles, and the dark depths in her eyes become calm and shallow. ‘But survivable.’
Mary nods in sympathy, unsure how to respond. Fuck it, she decides. ‘I’m glad you came for pie, and I’m happy to show you around what remains of Blea Fell, if that’s what you want.’
‘Really? Thanks!’ Athene throws Mary a lightning smile, before bending her head to scoop up the last of her pie from her fork. As she does, Mary feels her heart stutter, staring at Athene. Time seems to have flipped over. For a moment she saw the smile attached to a different face.
Mary shakes her head, scattering the image. Shaking it out of her brain.
Because of course it can’t be; the person who had that smile would be Mary’s age if she was alive. And the person who had that smile is dead.
Mary takes her hands off the table and presses them tightly together out of sight, on her lap. All the colours in the café seem loaded like she’d turned up the contrast. She half expected the radio to burst into life, spewing out static and music from another age.
From the nineties.
It’s the Blea Fell coincidence, she mind-whispers. It’s fucking with my head.
‘Mary, are you okay?’ Athene is looking at her, face lined with concern.
Mary blinks herself back into the moment.
Nothing ever really goes away, she thinks. Not really. Not completely.
‘Sure,’ she manages, then borrows a smile from the future, and paints it on her face. ‘It’s just really odd that you got this pop-up, no? About the house? When it’s all derelict and everything?’
Athene nods.
‘Yes. But like you said, the scammers are everywhere.’ She smiles. ‘And if I hadn’t got it then I would never have gotten to taste your pie, would I?’
‘I guess not.’ Mary hopes her voice sounds normal, because she certainly doesn’t feel normal. ‘When do you want to go and look at the house?’
‘How about now?’ Athene smiles.
It’s not only the smile that has triggered her memory, it’s the whole package.
Mary stares at the girl in front of her, and feels the cold snow of her past numbing her.
You look a little like Bella, she thinks.
16
Bella’s Secret Diary: Autumn, 1992
I made friends with a mouse today!
She was at my new school and spent the whole time hiding in the corner until I gave her some cheese. She isn’t really a mouse but that is what she calls herself. Plus the cheese was made-up cheese, really it was a bit of plasticine. The school is built of stone and only has one classroom! Not stone like bricks but stone like a rock. There is a list on the wall that tells what the weather is, and there is a real fire that keeps everything cosy. I think I am going to love it here. For my bedroom, I have a magical tower right at the top of its very own staircase, with its own big wooden door and its own lock.
I can be like a princess or a mad woman or a ghost and I can lock the door and nobody can stop me.
It’s like living in a fairy-story house. Sometimes the fog just appears like it was blown from a dragon’s mouth.
There are these strange trees at the front of the house. They are like those Japanese trees that are made to be tiny. I think they are maybe sailors that have died, trying to claw their way out of the ground. My new teacher says that ages and ages ago this entire valley (she calls it a dale) used to be under the sea. She says that all the rocks called limestone aren’t rocks at all, but are made up of zillions of fish bones! So maybe these trees are the bones of old sailors who got drowned.
I really really love it here. Everything is upside down.
I’m going to take some real cheese in tomorrow for Mouse. We have a pantry, which is like a fridge but a whole room.
I’m going to sleep now, but I will write more soon.
PS
I love it here, all locked away in my castle with dead sailors as my guards.
17
Mary: Blea Fell
‘My God, it’s just so beautiful.’
Mary and Athene are standing on the crest of the moor, looking down onto the ruins of Blea Fell House. The sun is hiding behind fast-moving clouds that hang low over the day and scraps of mist cling to the moor reeds.
‘Yes,’ Mary whispers. It had been years since she had come up here, and she had forgotten the grating scarring beauty of it. Even with the building in tatters, maybe because of the building being in tatters, the place had a foreboding dignity.
‘It looks like it grew there, out of the ground,’ Athene marvels. ‘Like it was part of the rocks or something.’
Mary points to the right of the derelict house; beyond the crumbling drystone walls that once enclosed the field at the back of the property.
‘See there, the dip in the moor?’
Athene follows where Mary is pointing, and nods.
‘Hidden in the dip is a natural pond. In the summer it’s full of frogs and dragonflies. In the winter it freezes over. Kids used to come and skate there during the holidays.’
‘You, too?’ Athene says. Mary looks sharply at her, but the young woman is staring at the moor as if she can see through the gorse and the rough grass to the pond.
‘Yes, me too. I was actually quite friendly with the girl who lived here.’
Athene turns to her, wide-eyed.
‘What, really? That’s amazing!’ She smiles at Mary, then the smile slips, and she looks confused. ‘But when I asked you yesterday, you said at first you didn’t know the house. How come–’
‘There was an accident, a long time ago,’ Mary says quietly.
She’s dying, Trent! She’s fucking dying in front of us!
Mary hears her own voice on the wind, blown from the past. Smells the fumes and the burning and the copper-wire stench of blood.
Athene tilts her head sideways slightly, peers at her, then at the house. Mary can practically see the cogs turn in her head.
‘Oh, I’m sorry. Did your friend…’ Athene pauses, as if unsure. ‘Did she become ill?’
‘Something like that,’ Mary says, her voice short. Then, pointing up at the sky: ‘Shall we go down? Those clouds look fairly nasty. If you want to take a look around then we’ll need to be quick.’
Mary doesn’t wait for a reply and strides down the hill, toward the rotting gate and the cattle grid that separated the moor from the track that wound up to the house. After a moment, Athene follows, her backpack banging against her side as she jogs to catch up.
‘Look, I’m sorry; I didn’t mean to pry.’ Athene touches her lightly on the arm. ‘I’m just a nosey cow. If I think of a question, it comes out of my mouth. Something must have happened for you to be so wary, I get that.’
‘It’s okay,’ Mary says. She feels Athene’s touch slipping from her arm like a burn. ‘Over the years I’ve become wary. Sorry if you think I deceived you.’
The two women cross over the cattle grid, careful not to slide on the cylindrical metal. The grid is slippy, the metal having drawn moisture out of the air, covering the moss that has built up on the grid.
‘No problem.’
Athene is first off the grid and holds her hand out for Mary. After a second’s hesitation, she takes it, stepping onto the loose stone path. Athene gives her hand a slight squeeze, then lets it go, still keeping a light pressure so that Mary’s hand slides out of her grasp, rather than falls.
Mary stays still, watching Athene as she walks ahead, her stride sure, looking over the drystone wall at the juniper trees; at Bella’s ghost-forest. Mary swallows the bile that rises in her throat, her insides a confusion of memory and nausea and anger and hopelessness.
She tightens a lid on her emotions and follows her. It’s been years since she walked up the path, but it feels the same. The low walls built to last a hundred years. Even the house, in all its dark ruin, is familiar. Although the roof has gone, leaving just t
he skeleton of blackened rafters, the walls are mostly there. The small windows, with their stone mullions, and the side porch, still stand. And the juniper trees on the moor in front still remain. Of course they do, she thinks, looking at them obliquely, the dead always watch. That’s all they’ve got to fill up their time. The stunted trees, with their petrified looking trunks, and their strange windswept foliage, would be there forever, she felt. To Mary’s eyes they were always frightening, but to her friend, Bella’s, they were a grave-wood; something to be walked through at midnight, with a ghost-wind tugging at your nightdress.
Thinking of her friend, Mary suddenly looks at Athene, who is standing, arms against the stone wall, peering through the broken window.
Is that it? Are you a ghost? Mary wonders, feeling the days of then and now mash together like they’d been braided. She stares at the young woman’s back and then shakes her head.
Of course she isn’t. Ghosts don’t book into hotels, or drive cars, or use mobile phones.
Ghosts are just what lives on in someone’s head when the person they love has died, and you never got to say goodbye. Never got to hug them, and thank them for all the times they protected you. Never got to tell them that you loved them.
Mary feels her bones ache inside her tired flesh.
Never got to say sorry.
‘There’s actual ivy growing up the inside!’ Athene shouts delightfully, the noise dragging Mary back out of herself. She takes a hard breath and nods.
‘I imagine there is. Not having a roof will do that,’ she says dryly.
Athene runs round to the side of the building and looks at the porch door. It is half open – permanently by the look of the vegetation growing out of the bottom of it.
‘Do you think it’s safe to go in?’ Athene is looking dubiously at the ripped porch.
Mary looks at the door. She can see where the paint has been wind-scorched away over the years, leaving the bare wood, which had become saturated with rain, then expanded until it was distorted and warped.
‘It’s stood here like this for decades; I see no reason why it should collapse now.’
The two women look at each other, then Athene grins and says: ‘Let’s do it!’
She places her back against the wall, then leans her shoulder against the door. When nothing happens she grunts and applies more pressure. Mary watches as the top of the door bends inwards, but the bottom stays firmly locked in the twines of root that bind it. Scattered around the door are splintered pieces of wood from the broken porch, like clubs. She sees that one has a rusted nail sticking out of it.
‘Hang on, you’re going to snap it if you keep that up! Come round the back; there’s another way in. Maybe that door will be easier.’
‘Right,’ Athene says, straightening. She is breathing a little heavier from the exertion, her chest pressing against her jumper, and Mary finds herself blushing. Quickly, she moves around the porch, following the overgrown path to the back of the building.
The rear is as entangled as the front, and Mary has to pick her way carefully, mindful of wood and rusty nails.
‘The front porch was hardly ever used,’ she says. ‘It was just for posh, as we used to say. The everyday entrance is around the back.’
‘You’d think it would be at the front, so you could see the trees and that,’ Athene says behind her.
‘Too windy,’ Mary explains, trailing her fingers across a wall she hasn’t touched in two decades. ‘That’s why the trees are so stunted. It’s only the fact that the roots are coddled by limestone that they stay up at all. The back entrance opens straight into the kitchen, so that food and washing and stuff didn’t have to be dragged through the house.’
‘Must be a pretty big kitchen,’ Athene comments dryly.
Mary stops at the kitchen door, half off its hinges and hanging like a flag, like someone had already tried to smash it in. Foxes, Mary thinks, and twenty years of brutal weather. There is no porch; but rather a vestibule, allowing for coats and footwear and brollies. Mary looks at the empty racks.
I put my boots there. When I used to come and visit.
‘It is. Was. Proper farmhouse kitchen, with a stove and everything. Come on, I’ll show you.’
Mary is suddenly feeling reckless. Reckless and released.
All these years, she thinks.
Pulling the door gingerly, it spins on its one hinge and collapses against the wall.
‘Careful!’ Athene says with alarm. ‘Those clasps look rusty; you could get sepsis or something off them!’
But Mary is already past the threshold. She takes a deep breath and steps in the kitchen that once was.
And freezes.
The large refectory table is still there, albeit looking like some kind of driftwood art piece. Bits of it have been gnawed at by animals, and mushrooms are growing from its shiny top.
The old stove, the Esse that Bella used to go on and on about, sits rusting in the hearth.
Even though there is no roof, and a whole army of rodents obviously live in the space, just being in the room is sending Mary spiralling back to when she was younger. For an instant she sees the ghost of herself and Bella sitting by the fire, smoking cigarettes and drinking stolen whisky.
Mary stands motionless and looks toward the door that once led to the staircase. The door is gone, but the stairs are still there. Of course they are; they are made of stone, like the walls. As she looks round, smells and tastes and the sounds from a different life bombard her, like a radio spewing out information from the static of the past.
‘Hey, there are scorch marks on the wall!’ Athene says, breaking into Mary’s thoughts. She takes a raggedy breath.
‘Yes. After the…’ She pauses, trying to remember what she’d said to Athene. ‘Accident with my friend, Bella, there was another tragedy.’ Above them, the sky makes an ominous rumble. Mary swallows, and looks at the student. ‘Somebody set fire to the building. Due to the inaccessibility of Blea Fell, the emergency services couldn’t get here in time to save it.’
‘Oh my God, how awful! Was anybody hurt?’
Mary looks around the wreckage where she’d sat with her friend.
‘Yes, I’m afraid they were.’
Athene looks at her, as if trying to read her face. She opens her mouth, but before she can ask what she means, Mary’s phone suddenly erupts with the opening bars of Julee Cruise’s ‘Falling’, the theme song used for the TV show ‘Twin Peaks’.
Mary reaches into her pocket, giving Athene an apologetic grin. ‘Sorry.’
Athene smiles and makes a ‘carry on’ gesture. She walks away and starts an inspection of the room. Mary watches her for a second, then views her screen. There is no name displayed, only a number she doesn’t recognise. She swipes the phone and lifts it to her ear, expecting to answer some query concerning the café.
‘Hello, Mary Elland speaking. How may I help?’
‘Mouse? Is that you?’ The voice on the other end of the line is urgent, the tone tight and frantic.
Mary feels the blood drain from her face.
‘Mouse, it’s me! Are you there?’ The voice seems to snake out of the phone straight into her brain.
There is a high-pitched whine deep in Mary’s head. The colours of the room become brighter. The air seems to be charging itself. Mary watches as Athene kneels down and looks at something on the floor. Mary turns away, crushing the phone to her ear.
‘Trent?’ she says, unbelieving. ‘Trent? Is that you?’
‘Of course it’s fucking me!’ The words are shouted, distorting slightly in the small phone-speaker.
It was a stupid question; of course it was him. Even though she hadn’t heard from or seen him for such a long time, she recognised his voice. Older, yes, but definitely his voice, reaching out across the years like a lasso.
‘How did you get this number,’ she whispered. Then: ‘In fact, why the hell are you phoning me at all? You know that I–’
‘Never mind that. Th
ank Christ it’s you!’ There was a pause, then the voice continued. ‘Or maybe not. This is so fucked up, Mouse!’
‘What is? What the hell are you talking about? Where the hell are you, anyway? Are you out of–’
Trent shuts off her question. ‘I’m at work. But I’m going to drive up.’
‘What?’ Mary feels sick. She imagines it’s because all the blood has left her stomach to flood her organs. Flight reflex. ‘What do you mean? You can’t do that. Trent? You don’t–’
‘I do; I’m coming. Don’t worry…’ The man on the other end of the phone laughs quietly; the sound hollow. ‘I’ll book in somewhere.’
Mary turns and looks at Athene. She is holding something in her hand, turning it as if trying to work out what it is.
‘How did you get this number?’ Mary repeats.
‘That’s just it! That’s what makes it so weird!’
‘What is?’ Mary says, her voice rising. Athene looks at her, a question on her face. Mary staples a smile on, shrugging. Athene smiles, turns, and returns to examining whatever it was she had picked up.
‘Your number! It was sent to me, along with the other stuff.’
‘Sent to you?’ Mary leans against the wall. ‘What? How?’
‘By email. I woke up this morning to find an email in my inbox, with a picture of Blea Fell, and this number. Your number, as it turns out.’
‘Fucking hell,’ Mary whispers.
‘Yes. And that wasn’t the worst of it.’
‘What else?’
There is a pause.
‘There was another picture, but this one had been digitally written over.’
‘What was the picture?’
Trent’s voice has an incredulity about it, like a magic trick had just happened. ‘Treachery and violence are spears pointed at both ends. That’s what they’d written. You know what that’s from, yeah?’
Of course she does. Bella had quoted it often enough. Mary bites her lip and concentrates. Trent’s still talking. ‘Then underneath they’d written I know what happened, and I know why. How fucked up is that?’
