by Ross Welford
I stare closely. If this is a costume, where are the joins? Is there a zip somewhere? That’s a fake nose, surely? I’ve seen shows on TV where make-up artists create things like that. Prosthetic something or other. But why would anyone wander around Kielder Water in the dark like that unless they had bad intentions? Halloween maybe, but that was nearly two months ago.
Then, from the backpack, the creature brings out a stick: thickish, like a broom handle, smooth, dark, and about 30 centimetres long. It holds it in its fist and studies it for a moment while we tremble with cold and total fear. I feel Iggy’s hand grip mine and I grip back. If I’m going to die, I don’t want to go alone.
‘This may work, it may not,’ says the person-in-a-costume (I am convinced by now). ‘Your cellular structure iss almost itentical. Put your leck out.’
Iggy shrinks back and draws his leg in.
‘This will not hurt.’ The creature pauses. ‘Do it!’
Slowly, like a turtle coming out of its shell, Iggy extends his bloody leg. He’s whimpering with fear.
The throaty snuffle comes again, followed by the word ‘Light!’
It’s looking at me.
I reach for the torch. In addition to the long, open gash in Iggy’s leg, there is the hook still deeply embedded in his flesh. The blood is pouring out and on to the jetty.
The creature advances further, the rod in its hands, and moves it over the wounds. Then, as we watch, the blood seems to dry, and scab over. The huge fish hook with the lure attached is pushed out by the hardening flesh and falls on to the decking of the jetty. The scabs turn browner, then black, all in the space of about thirty seconds. The creature replaces the stick in its backpack; then, with a long finger, gently flicks at the scabs, which drop off, revealing fresh, pink skin underneath.
It stands up straight and I look at its feet. They are bare and hairy and definitely not fake ones slipped over shoes. He – she? – is smallish, but not tiny: not as tall as me. It isn’t hunched over and creepy like Gollum in The Lord of the Rings – not at all. And, though it is stark naked, it doesn’t seem at all embarrassed by the fact.
Without taking his eyes off the creature, Iggy says to me, ‘It’s a girl.’
‘How do you know?’
Iggy tuts. ‘Look, Tait. No, erm … boy’s bits.’
I hadn’t noticed, but he’s right. I feel oddly embarrassed, staring at it – her – like that. I feel myself blushing.
When she stands up, the still, cold air gives a waft of her smell. Blocked drains? Sour milk? Earwax? It’s all of those things blended together to make a rich, foul odour that is not just her breath: it is her.
‘Jeez, Iggy. She flippin’ stinks!’ I whisper.
Iggy has taken his cap off and is holding it to his nose.
‘Thought it was you at first,’ he says, his voice muffled.
Slowly, Iggy and I get to our feet and the three of us stand there in a little triangle, saying nothing – just, you know, being utterly astonished. Iggy flexes his newly cured leg.
Eventually, he jams his cap back on and pats his chest twice. ‘Me, Iggy,’ he says, and the creature blinks hard.
I could swear she’s thinking, Why is he talking like a halfwit?
All the same, taking my cue from Iggy, I point at myself and say, ‘Me, Ethan.’
I can’t precisely say how I know this, because it’s not like she gasps or blinks or anything, but I can tell she’s surprised. ‘Ee-fan?’ she says.
‘Yes.’
She lifts her chin then lowers it. The action is sort of like a nod, but done backwards. Then she says something that sounds like ‘Helly-ann’ and pats her own chest.
Iggy looks across at me, a triumphant smirk on his face. ‘See? That’s her name. Hellyann!’
But then we hear the shouts, and the dogs, and see the flashlights through the trees in the distance, coming down the path from the main road.
The look of pure terror that crosses the creature’s strange, furry face changes everything, I think.
‘Say nothing,’ she says in her squeaky snuffle.
‘What?’ says Iggy.
‘I say: say nothing. Say you haf not seen me. Lie. You people are good at that.’
‘Wait,’ I say. ‘Who are you? And why should we lie?’
The dog noise is getting nearer, and a huge German Shepherd bursts out of the undergrowth, bounding along the pebble beach towards us.
I hear: ‘What is it, Sheba? What have you found?’
And the creature who says her name is Hellyann fixes me with her intense, pale gaze.
‘Because if you don’t, you’ll neffer see your sister again.’
My sister. Tammy.
Iggy was right. His fishing trip idea worked: for the past hour or so I had hardly thought about her.
But now, on a freezing evening as I stand dripping on to the wooden deck, it all comes flooding back into my head in a wave of sorrow as I remember why I am here.
‘I hate you!’
It is the last thing I said to Tammy. It bounces around in my head and it is the opposite of the truth.
My twin sister. My ‘other half’, Mam used to say, and she was right.
Tamara ‘Tammy’ Tait. Cool name, I think, mainly because of the alliteration. Tammy Tait. And since she went missing, seldom has an hour has passed when I haven’t thought about those three syllables.
An hour? Try five minutes. Try five seconds. It’s exhausting.
Then there will be times when I realise that I haven’t thought of Tammy for a few minutes, and that’s almost worse, so I force myself to replay her in my head, to listen to her again. The way she says ‘Oh, E-thaaaan!’ when she is annoyed with me for something (which is quite often); or how she farted in the bath once when we were little and laughed so hard that she banged her head on the tap, which made her laugh even more even though her head was bleeding.
Then I’ll end up thinking of the last few months, when we moved to Kielder, and started secondary school. We are now in different classes. She has friends who I don’t even know (and at least one who doesn’t even like me. It’s OK, Nadia Kowalski, the feeling’s mutual).
Then thinking of all that makes me sad again, which – weirdly – makes me feel better because it sort of makes up for forgetting to think about her all the time.
And when I am sad, I remember the last words I said to her: I hate you.
I haven’t told Mam that. It would upset her, and Mam and Dad are upset enough. The fact is, Tammy and I said we hated each other far more than we ever said we loved each other.
Which is not hard, because we never said we loved each other. Why would we? It would be like telling yourself.
Still, I wish I hate you hadn’t been the last thing I’d said to her.
It was Christmas Eve, and snow had fallen on the top moor. I think everyone was hoping that a big snowfall would cover the village and make it look like the front of a Christmas card, but it didn’t and, to be honest, it’s not that sort of village anyway.
Kielder is sort of spread out, with a mixture of old and new houses, and no typical ‘village street’ – you know, a baker, a butcher, and a sweet shop like you get in stories. Because of the forest and the lake and the observatory, there are loads of visitors in the summer, but most things shut down in the winter, like the tearooms, and the maze, and Mad Mick’s Mental Rentals, which hires out bikes. Tammy had taken to calling the village Boring-ville. She once said, ‘I don’t belong here. I’m a city person’, as if sleepy Tynemouth – where we used to live – was New York.
There is a pub, though, run by my mam and dad. The Stargazer is set back from the main road, with a swinging pub sign at the end of a short driveway, and a huge Christmas tree outside, and coloured lights in the windows and candles everywhere, because Mam is half-Danish and they’re obsessed with candles.
I can remember almost every detail of that evening, even though I wish I couldn’t. I have gone over it all with the police officers, wit
h Mam, with Dad, with Gran, with reporters and most of all with myself: in my head, again and again and again.
So here goes, ‘one more time from the top’ – as Miss Swann, our music teacher, says.
It was five minutes past six in the evening. Mam had gone over to the pub, where there were going to be carols. Dad was going to dress up and Tammy and I were going to follow later, first going round to the old folks in the village to drop off a Christmas present from Mam and Dad. There was Scottish Sheila, Tommy Natrass and the Bell sisters. They all got a bottle of vodka with a label saying, Happy Christmas from Adam and Mel at the Stargazer.
My job had been to wrap the presents.
Tammy came downstairs with the oblong boxes wrapped in red paper and ribbon in a carrier bag. That’s when we had our row. It started with Tammy holding one of the presents up and saying ‘Nice job!’ sarcastically.
‘I did my best,’ I said.
The paper was scrunched up, the sticky tape all over the place, and the ribbons badly tied. When she held it up, one of the labels fell off. Wrapping presents is hard.
‘“I did my best, Tammy,”’ she mimicked in a baby voice. ‘You always say that! But you never do, do you? You do what looks like your best. You do what people will think is your best. You do just enough so that when you say, “But I did my best”, people will believe you and go: “Aw, poor Ethan – he did his best.” But you know what, Ethan? I know what your best is. I’m your twin, remember? I’m the other half of you. How could I not know? And you haven’t done your best – nothing like it, so don’t lie.’ She waved one of the badly wrapped gifts as evidence, and another label flew off.
‘Where’s your costume?’ I said, to change the subject. We had agreed: we would dress up as elves for the evening. It would be fun.
Tammy rolled her eyes and tutted.
‘You’re so childish, Ethan.’ When she said that, I looked down at my costume from last year’s school parade: striped tights, green buckled jacket and the pointy hat I was holding. I hate it when Tammy says stuff like that: it’s as if being ten minutes older than me gives her some sort of age advantage.
‘But we agreed!’ I said, trying (and failing) not to sound as though I was whining.
Tammy was in her usual clothes: jeans, trainers, thick fleecey top. She’s not big on fashion, is our Tam. She was pulling on her new red puffer jacket, an early Christmas present from Gran, who was staying with us.
‘Well, we can disagree. There. Just done it! I disagree to dress up and prance around Boring-ville like some six-year-old. As for you – go ahead. You look great.’
‘Well, I’m not going to be the only one. I’m going to get changed,’ I snarled, and began to stomp up the stairs.
‘See you at Scottish Sheila’s. I’m going.’
‘You’re not going to wait for me?’
‘No. We’re late as it is. Bye.’ She opened the front door and stepped out into the cold, and that’s when I yelled it.
‘I hate you!’
(I sometimes hope that she didn’t hear me, but she must have done. I yelled it loudly, and she hadn’t even shut the front door.)
Five minutes later, I had taken off the stupid elf costume and had calmed down. Maybe she was right anyway, I thought. I compromised, and put on a sweater with a flashing red reindeer nose instead. (I wasn’t going to give in completely, you understand?) I pulled the front door closed behind me and set off on my bike to catch her up.
Shortly afterwards, I saw Tammy’s bike lying in the ditch at the side of the road, its front and rear lights shining white and red, illuminating the frosty verge, and no sign of Tammy.
I haven’t seen her since.
When people find out that Tammy and I are twins, they sometimes go, ‘Ooh, are you psychic?’, which is so daft that we developed this routine. I would go, ‘Yes, of course we are. Tammy: what number am I thinking of?’ And whatever number Tammy said, I would then say, ‘Dead right! Wow!’
Well, we thought it was funny, anyway. It actually fooled Tammy’s new friend Nadia, but she’ll believe anything.
So no: we’re not psychic. But that evening, when I saw Tammy’s bike at the side of the road with its lights still on, I knew something was wrong. I felt a lurch in my stomach, and I stopped my bike next to hers. A cold feeling spread from my neck and down my back exactly as though someone had dropped ice inside my collar.
‘Tammy!’ I shouted, not so loud to begin with, as, although I knew, I couldn’t be certain something was wrong, if that makes sense. ‘Tam?’
The moon was still low and obscured by thick cloud, and when the sky is like that, Kielder is darker than you can possibly imagine, the only light coming from our bicycle lights.
‘TAMMY!’ I yelled, and cocked my head to hear, but there was nothing. The wind was so light that it made no sound at all as it passed through the bare trees.
Tammy’s bike had stopped near to an overgrown path that leads down to the reservoir and the little jetty where Tammy and I play the throwing-stones-as-far-as-we-can game. I grabbed the light from the front of my bike and started down the path.
It makes no sense, I told myself. Why on earth would she go down here?
‘Tammy! Tam!’ I kept calling.
The path is quite steep down to the lakeshore, and I kept stumbling in the dark until I got to the little beach of shingle and rocks. I stared out over the inky blackness of Kielder Water, and that’s when I heard the noise: a low drone, getting higher in pitch.
OOOOOOMMMMMMMM ooooooooommmmmmmm.
The noise was sort of like an aeroplane, but definitely not an aeroplane. It was sort of like a motorboat, but definitely not a motorboat either; and there was nothing to see. Here, right next to the water, the sky appeared a little clearer and the cloudy moon gave off a little bit of grey light. I narrowed my eyes and stared out over the lake, where a column of mist had appeared, stretching high into the sky, hanging for a few seconds before it dispersed on the breeze.
There was a smell too. A bad smell: very faint, like bad body odour and blocked drains, but that was soon taken by the air as well.
Perhaps she had come down to the lake to do some stone-throwing practice? Was that why she always beat me, because she practised in secret? I knew that was a daft idea, but I think I had already started to panic.
My heart was pounding with fear as I scrambled back up the path to where Tammy’s bike still lay with its lights on.
I yelled her name again, desperately hoping she would come out of the woods that line the road. She would say, ‘Eth-aaaan, for heaven’s sake, what are you shouting for? I just went into the woods for a pee’ or something like that.
But she didn’t, and I knew I had to get help. I took out my phone but there was no signal. There hardly ever is around here. Step out of the village and you might as well be in 1990.
I climbed back on my bike and started to pedal as fast as I could to Scottish Sheila’s house, shouting ‘Tammy!’ all the way until I was nearly hoarse.
If the events leading up to my discovery of Tammy’s bicycle are clear in my mind, then what came next is all a bit of a blur.
As I pedalled along the pot-holed forestry road towards the village, I kept thinking of reasons for Tammy’s bike to be abandoned.
She had left it there and decided to walk. Not likely. In fact, so unlikely as to be impossible.
She had accepted a lift in someone’s car. Again, not likely. Why would she? And besides – who from? Hardly anyone comes along that road, and why would they offer her a lift, and why would she leave her bike? And … the whole thing was silly.
By the time I crossed the bridge over the burn, I was convinced something horrible had happened to Tammy.
The south side of the village is pretty much a single street of old terraced farm cottages. I pulled up next to Scottish Sheila’s house and allowed my bike to clatter to the ground as I leapt off and hammered on the old lady’s door.
‘All right, all right!’ came a voic
e from inside.
I had started talking almost before the door was open.
‘Is Tammy here?’ I jabbered. ‘She was supposed to come here – have you seen her?’
‘Hello, young fella,’ said Sheila with a smile, as though she hadn’t heard me.
‘Well, have you?’ I barked, and she looked taken aback.
‘Have I wha …’
‘Have you seen Tammy?’ I shouted. I was panicking and my manners were shot.
‘Well, no. No’ today. I thought—’
‘Bye!’ I said and ran back to my bike. I turned it around and cycled as fast as I could back to our end of the village.
The Stargazer was lit up, and there were lights on the big tree outside that I had helped to put up last week with Tammy. As I cycled up the driveway, I could hear singing already. The carols had started early, and I saw through the window that Cora Fox-Templeton, Iggy’s mum, was accompanying them on the pub’s jangly old piano. Iggy was standing next to her and Suzy was sitting on top of the piano like she was about to lay an egg. The singing came through the windows:
‘Hark the herald angels sing, Glory to the newborn king!’
I jumped off my bike and burst through the doors into the entrance lobby and went straight into the bar, where the noise and the heat and the music hit me.
‘Peace on Earth and mercy mild, God and sinners reconciled …’
A cheer went up over by the bar and Dad called out, ‘Right, you lot! Who’s for a Goblet of Fire?’ It’s one of his barman’s stunts which I’ve seen loads of times: a tray of cocktails is lined up then they all burst into flames as he sets fire to the alcohol. I love watching it normally.
Mam had picked up the tray, and I pushed my way through the groups of people till I got to her.
‘Mam! Mam!’
She turned to me crossly, shaking her head as she carried on singing.
‘Mam! You’ve got to listen!’
‘Watch out! I’m holding a fire hazard here!’ she said. ‘Right – who wants one? Not now, Ethan!’
