by Joan Aiken
That’s when she sees whatever it is—first a long way off, she can hardly believe it, then coming closer and closer. She looks either side of the track—there’s no escape. The way home won’t do, she can’t run fast enough, for the thing, whatever it is, must be huge. You can tell that by the way she stares—up, down, from side to side. So huge that it could catch her in one enormous leap.
I read once about a creature they have in the forests of Canada, they call it the Wendigo. It has huge fiery feet and it goes hopping through the trees, or high above the tops of the trees, in mile-long leaps, and then it picks you up, that’s the end of you, it drags you along as a hawk might drag a dangling rabbit, with its feet scraping along the ground. If you get picked up and dragged along by the Wendigo your feet get worn right off, right back to the ankle bones.
Maybe some creature like the Wendigo is what Munch’s screamer sees.
(Or that is what I thought at that time.)
Weeks went by and now it was nearly time for the school cabaret. It’s always held on a Saturday evening, in the school hall, which has a stage at one end. Lu-Lyn had only one chance to practice on that stage, for it was used all day long in various ways, school meetings and drama groups and choir practice and parent-teacher evenings and after-school activities. So she was nervous about it. The one time she had a try-out there she told me to bring a measuring tape and a piece of chalk, as well as the tape recorder.
“What’s the chalk for?”
“For my three leaps.”
How her dance ended: when this girl sees the Whatever-it-is coming at her, the only thing she can do is to go backward. And she does that in three terrific leaps, right across the stage.
Lu-Lyn told me once that a very famous ballet dancer, his name was something like Minksy or Pinsky—no, Nijinsky, that’s it, Nijinsky—this fellow was such an acrobat that he was able to hold himself up in the air for a few seconds at the top of his leap. You could actually see him hover in mid-air. Well, Lu-Lyn wanted to be able to do that, it was her chief wish. And when she took those three terrific backward jumps, I almost believed that she had brought it off. She seemed to go up and then hang, like a yo-yo from somebody’s finger, before the downward curve of the vault took her back to the ground.
And to do it backward! That was really something!
I didn’t like my sister Lu-Lyn—never could, never would. For one thing, she didn’t like me. But I did have to respect her for her one-track wish to go on and win, and be the best there was.
You know that piece of nursery magic we had when we were very small kids? Wishing on a star, the first one you see at dusk. “Star light, star bright. First star I see tonight.” Well, I still use that, only I do it at the other end of the twenty-four hours. I wake early in the morning before other people are up. It used to be Henry the pigeon who woke me so early and I’ve never shed the habit. At the time, the time of Lu-Lyn’s dance, just around then, the end of the autumn term, a big full moon used to shine in the bathroom window, which faced southeast, where the sun would later pop up; and often, to the right of the moon, there would be just this one star left over from all the rest, very bright: Venus, our geography teacher told us its name was. The moon would be all worn out, pale as a cream cheese, but Venus was dazzling bright.
So: “Star light, star bright, last star I’ll see tonight, let my sister Lu-Lyn win the prize!” Venus ought to help, she must have been a girl herself once.
You see, the cabaret was also a competition, the act that the audience voted as the best was awarded a prize, which was a free term at a dance and drama college. You can guess how much my sister Lu-Lyn was set on that.
Our school hall is a kind of spooky place to be in when it’s empty and you’re all alone there. That’s because it hardly ever is empty, so it seems unnatural, like seeing an audience watching a play without any actors, or a bus rolling along without a driver in the driving seat. It’s dusty and chilly, and dark without all the lights on, and there’s a strong, sour smell of wet clothes and muddy fiber matting and dust.
There’s a piano down below the stage for the school song—“Stand up, Stand up for ever, we’ll all stand together”—and I played chopsticks on the piano while Lu-Lyn was taking off her raincoat and putting on her dancing shoes.
“Don’t do that!” she said at once.
“Why not?”
“Someone might hear.”
“What difference does that make? You got permission to use the stage from four to five. You can do as you like. No one has the right to turn us out.”
“I didn’t get permission to play chopsticks.”
This surprised me a bit. It was not like Lu-Lyn, who normally didn’t give a rap for anybody’s permission.
“Put on the tape,” she said then. “I want to hear how it sounds in here. Put it on loud.”
4. The Dance
I PUT ON THE BANSHEE’s EXILE tape. It is very, very sad.
It sounded really weird—if there were any actual banshees lurking about, it must have made them feel pretty second rate. The hall had screens at the back and up in the roof to improve the acoustics, and echoes from the long drawn-out wailing music seemed to come from every corner. A couple of bats who’d taken up residence on a rafter were disturbed and came fluttering down, squeaking disapproval, and a loose light bulb dropped away from its fitting and smashed to the ground.
And I thought I heard somebody let out a gasp of fright from the rear of the hall where there were racks for hanging raincoats.
“What was that?” I said.
“Nothing, nothing!” said Lu-Lyn sharply, and she hopped up on to the stage.
She was wearing her costume for the dance. Gran had helped her with it. It was an all-over opaque body stocking, in a leafy, ripply pattern of dark brown and black. Only her face was uncovered and it looked unnaturally white by contrast. Maybe she had whitened it.
The stage was dim, with just one overhead greenish strip light. Although I was so close I could only just see Lu-Lyn flitting about, doing her girl-alone-in-the-woods routine. Her face looked as if it were there on its own, like a white balloon floating around.
“It’s a shame you can’t have a backdrop of trees,” I said. “That would make it seem even more real.”
Lu-Lyn didn’t answer, took no notice. But I was bound to admit that, as she danced, she did somehow make you think of a wood, with big trees all round her, and forest stretching a long way off in every direction. Joining two continents, perhaps.
“Aren’t there any woods on Muckle Burra?” I asked Gran once. But she said, no.
“No part of the island is more than two-and-a-half miles from the sea. Salt spray stops the growth of big trees. But,” said Gran, “all those islands were once part of a big land area long ago all joined together. They have found fossilized forests on the sea bottom. And big bones of great beasts. There were sacred places in the forests. And tracks, leading from one to another, scored deep in the ocean bed. But now the sea level is rising. Global warming. The polar ice melting. In another thirty years many of those islands—Muckle Burra is one—they will all be under water.”
“So then all the poison will be washed off the island?”
“Perhaps,” said Gran. “But nobody living there. Only ghosts.” She paused, then said, “I wonder what the ghosts think when the sea covers their sacred places?”
While Lu-Lyn dances in her imagined forests the music starts to give nervous hints that there is something wrong—maybe it is far away but it’s coming closer, better watch out, better be on your guard, better make tracks for home …
Lu-Lyn picks up her invisible flowers—or mushrooms, or whatever they are—glances nervously over her shoulder and starts along the homeward track, which zigzags to and fro across the stage.
Then she looks back and sees it.
Dropping her treasures to the ground
, her hands go up in the air, while the music, which has been drumming and pounding closer and closer, like a grizzly bear, like a dinosaur on the warpath, lets out that terrific shriek. We’ve had hints of it before, but not the real thing.
Then Lu-Lyn, facing the huge terror—whatever it is—takes her three frantic leaps backward, crossing the whole of the stage.
And at the top of the third leap the Whatever-it-is makes a snatch at her, so she appears to be caught in mid-leap, so that she falls dead to the ground.
She wanted me to make chalk marks on the floorboards, so she would know to leave the ground at the right spot. She was to “fall dead” just at the side of the stage.
“Won’t the marks be rubbed off between now and the night?” I objected.
“Of course they will, stupid! But you must measure today where they are to come, and then mark them for me again on the night. Write it down. I’ve brought a notebook.”
So I marked and measured …
Lu-Lyn got me to put on the tape again and again and went through her routine several times. And I sat in my wheelchair thinking about a poisoned island and about stone forests under the sea. At last it was too dark to go on.
I said, “You’ll fall off the edge of the stage unless we turn on some lights.”
“I don’t want any more lights,” said Lu-Lyn. “I’ve told Mr. Alleyn I want the dimmest possible lights on the night.”
Mr. Alleyn was the English master who looked after stage lighting and props.
While Lu-Lyn was changing back into outdoor shoes I thought I heard a sound from the coat rack.
“There’s that noise again,” I said.
“Rubbish,” snapped Lu-Lyn, but she looked nervously behind her as we made for the door. I knew I heard something, though and, sure enough, as we got close to the entrance, a shadowy shape slunk out from behind the coat rack and put itself in our way. Lu-Lyn let out a gasp of fright—and I probably did too.
The figure was sobbing and snuffling and wringing its hands.
Did you ever read about a ghost they have in Scotland called the Bean-nighe? You find it by streams, washing clothes for dead people—shrouds—and it cries and weeps and whimpers all the time it is doing its dismal laundry. And if it hears you and turns round and catches you, then you are done for. For then the shroud that it washes is your shroud. The shroud is for you.
I read about it in one of Gran’s books, a collection of folk tales.
Well, this creepy character in our school hall reminded me of the Bean-nighe—but of course really it was only Mrs. Bateman. I knew her because she used to be one of the dinner ladies at my first school, when I could still walk. She was Bry’s mother.
“Oh, Miss Lynda, dear!” she says in a sobby, snuffly voice. “Oh, Miss Lynda, my dear, please, please!”
And she grabs hold of Lu-Lyn’s hands. If she’d really been the Bean-nighe, Lu-Lyn would have been a goner.
Lu-Lyn was very angry—I could tell from the sharpness of her voice. A voice she sometimes used on me.
“Who the jig are you?” she said. “And what the shivers are you doing here? Let go of my hand, you sniveling old bag! Let me get by!”
But Mrs. Bateman didn’t. She hangs on to Lu-Lyn as if she was drowning in the river. And she gasps out, “Oh, but please listen, please do! It’s so terrible for the poor boy, so terrible! He was so active! Can’t you please ask your grandma to take it off? To go blind at his age—at his age, Miss Lynda—it’s not right! It’s too cruel!”
“I don’t know what you mean! Tell my grandma? What are you talking about, you daft old crow?” said Lu-Lyn angrily.
“Your grandma—Mrs. Drummond! Everybody knows that she’s got the power. She brought it with her from the island!”
“Power, what power?”
“The power to put the cold touch on somebody. Everybody knows that! And now she has put it on my Bryan and he can’t see! He can’t see! And that’s too cruel on a young boy like him—too cruel!”
The wretched woman was crouching in front of Lu-Lyn, crying and gasping and shivering.
“Cruel?” said Lu-Lyn. “Do you know what your Bryan did to my bird? And other things he’s done? Anyway, my grandmother had nothing to do with what’s happened to him—nothing! Now let go of me.”
“He’ll never do it again—never!” wailed Mrs. Bateman. “He’s as sorry as can be! We’ll get you another bird. Won’t you tell your grandma that?”
“I’m telling you, what happened to your son has nothing to do with my grandmother! Anything that has happened to him is his own fault. He’d better think about that. Now, will you let go!”
She gave a sharp twist to the woman’s wrists, and Mrs. Bateman let out a squawk.
Just at that moment we heard quick footsteps coming along the concrete path, someone walked through the outer door, and all the lights flashed on.
While we were still blinking in the sudden dazzle, an astonished voice said, “What the deuce is going on here?”
It was Mr. Alleyn, come to set up the stage for some parent-teacher business.
Lu-Lyn, cold as a jellyfish, told him, “I think Mrs. Bateman is ill. Would you like me to find the school nurse?”
“Yes, you’d better,” he said, looking at the crying, writhing figure. “Here,” he told the woman, “why don’t you sit on one of these chairs for a minute? What you need is a nice cup of tea.”
We left him trying to compose her.
To my surprise, Lu-Lyn didn’t go anywhere near the nurse’s office but shoved my wheelchair in the direction of our bus stop.
“Aren’t you going for Nurse?”
“Not likely. Why should I?” she said. “Mr. Alleyn can do what he likes with the silly woman.”
But I caught hold of a fourth-former who was passing and said, “Mr. Alleyn wants Nurse right away in the hall.”
When we were on the bus, riding towards Chateau Mansions, I asked Lu-Lyn, “What did that woman mean about Grandma? About the power to put the cold touch on? Why should she say everybody knows about it? What is the cold touch?”
“A lot of rubbish,” Lu-Lyn said. “People make up these spiteful, crazy stories. It’s all in their own minds.”
But I thought of that sheet of black paper. Which I had not posted. Which I had dropped in the river. I wondered if the cold touch would rebound back on me. I had read, in one of Gran’s books, “Beware of how you use the spell of the Evil Eye. For, once dispatched, if it misses its mark, it may rebound on the sender or on any person close at hand.”
I remembered Gran and Lu-Lyn talking about Aunt Arbel, who had died at the age of twenty-five. And Lu-Lyn saying, “Is the power always passed on? Is there always a girl in the family?”
What was the connection?
5. The Death
IF LU-LYN AND GRAN TALKED about Mrs. Bateman I didn’t hear them.
I kept dreaming about waves slapping on a sandy beach. With a row of white houses behind. And lots of little creatures running, running into the sea.
Lu-Lyn was so tired with all her practicing that she cried every night. Or perhaps it was homesickness. Even through a closed door I heard her. It seemed as if her dance, set in some long-ago forest, had stirred up old memories. Memories of a time before she was born, memories from other minds of other people in our family, who had lived long, long ago.
Did I say that the painter, Munch, who painted the Scream picture, he came from the northern parts, way up there among the rocks and mountains, where it is cold and dark for three-quarters of the year. People sleep longer than they do in the south. And dream more.
I’ll tell you one thing about the north. There’s a lot, a real lot of dark in it.
Three weeks went by, and now it was time for the school fête. In the afternoon there were races and athletics. Of course, in my wheelchair I didn’t have any part in th
em.
In the evening it’s time for plays, cabaret, dramatic turns and dancing.
Lu-Lyn’s performance came about halfway through the evening shows, after some songs by a choral group. Before that she sat in the audience. Most people sat with their friends, but Lu-Lyn didn’t have any friends.
She was too tied up in her dancing to have time for other people.
I sat with some of my mates, but halfway through the choral songs Benjy and I left the hall and went backstage. I had my chalk, and my measuring tape to mark out Lu-Lyn’s three taking-off points.
Gran hadn’t come to the cabaret. She never comes to school things. She likes time by herself.
Is she homesick for the island? Like Lu-Lyn? I don’t know. But—like Lu-Lyn—she doesn’t connect with people much at all. She lives in a different world most of the time.
Of course when Benjy and I went backstage we found a whole clutter of scenery and stage props and costumes and musical instruments ready for all the other people’s gigs. I heard a kind of shuffling behind a big concert grand piano, but paid it no heed. There were plenty of other people about, on similar errands.
As soon as the choral group came off and the curtain went down Benjy pushed me on to the stage. I whipped out my measure and chalked the three crosses.
Then we left the stage and went back into the hall.
Lu-Lyn’s music had started. Mr. Alleyn had put on The Banshee’s Exile.
The audience went quiet in a moment.
And when Lu-Lyn came on they went quieter still. Not a cough, not a snuffle. The spooky music sighed and sang and muttered, like the wind in pines, or in dry grasses on a cliff top, and Lu-Lyn did her solitary, carefree, meandering dance among the invisible trees. To and fro, to and fro, back and forth, picking make-believe flowers, dropping them in her imaginary basket. She seems happy, peaceful, relaxed, in the place where she wants to be.
