The Feral Child

by Che Golden

  Sergeant O’Leary snapped the notebook shut. “That will do for now, I think.” He pursed his lips as he tucked it away into his top pocket. “You know, Maddy, we need to find Stephen quickly, and any false information we have been given will make our job a lot more difficult. You will think about that and come and tell me the minute you remember anything else, won’t you?”

  Maddy looked at the ground and nodded silently. As Granny let Sergeant O’Leary out, she could feel all the old women’s eyes boring into her scalp. She felt so stupid. What she had seen didn’t sound right, even to her. She sneaked a glance at Mrs. Forest from the corner of her eye. She was glaring at Maddy.

  “I’m so sorry, Liam,” she heard Granny saying. “She got a terrible fright from that lad in the castle earlier, and all the stories Bat tells her . . . well, I think they got mixed up in her head with bad dreams. She’s only a child.”

  “Maybe so, Maureen, but she’s old enough to know the difference between fantasy and reality. Telling me faerie stories when we are trying to find a missing child is not helping. She is wasting police time.”

  Maddy snorted. All Sergeant O’Leary ever did was sit around on his big bum in the Garda station, stuffing his face. It was impossible to waste his time.

  “I know, Liam. Let her get some sleep, and I’ll talk to her again in the morning.”

  The door closed with a click, and Maddy felt Granny’s gnarled hands on her shoulder, guiding her up and into her bedroom. George’s black and white face peered up from under her bed. Everyone had forgotten he was still in the house.

  “Maddy, I want you to get some sleep, and then we are going to talk to Sergeant O’Leary again,” said Granny. “You need to have a good think about what you saw and get your head straight. This is no time to be messing.”

  “I’m not!” said Maddy.

  Granny sighed. “I know you don’t think you are, love, but honestly—a faerie? That’s not what happened. You were half asleep, and your dreams affected what you saw. You need to remember what really happened. For Stephen’s sake.” She kissed her on the cheek before leaving the room.

  Maddy lay on her bed and looked up at the ceiling. George jumped up and put his head on her chest, gazing at her with sad brown eyes. She heard Granny arguing in the kitchen with one of her friends, and she didn’t need to hear what they were saying to know it was about her. She got up and crawled under the bed, her fingers feeling around in the dark until they brushed a cardboard box she had tucked into a corner.

  She pulled it out and put it on the bed. She took a deep breath before lifting the lid. It was what her mother had called a “sentimental box,” full of the priceless things that Maddy kept to remember the life she used to have.

  Her mother had had a sentimental box on the top shelf of her wardrobe. She used to take it down sometimes, and she would gently pick up each thing inside it and tell Maddy its story. The plastic bracelet that had been on Maddy’s wrist in the hospital where she had been born; her first pair of shoes, fitting snugly into her palm; the candle in the shape of a number one that Maddy had blown out on her first birthday cake; the velvet wedding dress her mother had danced all night in.

  Her mother’s sentimental box, the photo albums, and the jewelry Maddy had loved to stroke with a fingertip had been put away by her aunts, who told her she could have them when she grew up. So Maddy had started her own sentimental box with things she had salvaged in her aunties’ wake as they had swept through her home. A book her mother had been reading, the bookmark Maddy had made for her at school still marking her place; a single earring Maddy had found on the floor; the spare key ring of the car her father had been so proud of.

  But the best thing in her box was a photo a stranger had taken of the three of them on a beach in Spain, the last holiday they had had before the accident. Maddy sat between her parents with her arms wrapped tight around her knees, grinning into the camera, her tangled, salty hair blowing back from her face. Her father was smiling and looking down at her, while her mother was turning her face into her father’s shoulder and laughing, her chestnut hair lifted off her shoulders by the sea breeze, the spreading strands shining red in the sun. They all looked so tanned and happy, elbows and thighs dusted with sand.

  She sighed and looked around her room. Her grandparents had tried, but it really wasn’t a child’s room. Her double mahogany bed, ravaged by the effects of woodworm and sporting a lumpy mattress, matched the rest of the old-fashioned furniture. The wallpaper looked like wedding wrapping paper, and everything Maddy owned was in boxes under the bed. She didn’t feel like this was home enough to ask her grandfather to put some shelves up. She knew her aunts thought she was too much for her elderly grandparents to cope with, and any day now the family might decide she had gone too far and she would be packed off to live in Cork city with one set of cousins and a frosty-faced matriarch. After what just happened, there might not even be time to drill the holes.

  Carefully she lifted a piece of black velvet from the box and unwrapped a cut crystal bottle, half full of pale gold perfume, her mother’s favorite. She wet her pillow with two precious drops and slid the box back under the bed before pulling the pillow beneath her cheek, curling her body around George, and crying herself to sleep.

  Chapter Five

  It seemed like only a few minutes later that she felt herself being shaken awake.

  “Maddy. Maddy, wake up,” Granny was saying.

  The room was dark, and wind and rain were smashing against her window. Granny was grinning like someone had stuck a coat hanger in her mouth.

  “What’s the matter?” Maddy asked, while nearly dislocating her jaw with a huge yawn. George dipped his back and stretched his legs before jumping off the bed and padding out to the kitchen.

  “It’s Stephen—they found him!”

  “Where?”

  “On the castle grounds. Poor little fella was wandering about in his pajamas crying for his mammy—not a mark on him, thank God.”

  “Can I go and see him?”

  “No, darling, not yet. The doctor is taking a look at him, and then he needs to get some rest. You’ll see him tomorrow.”

  “What time is it?”

  “It’s eight o’clock, but don’t worry about getting up—I think after the night we have all had, we could do with a day off.”

  “Eight o’clock? So it took half the village four hours to find Stephen on the castle grounds? They’re not that big.”

  Granny rolled her eyes. “They were looking in other places for him too, and he is a small child. Can you not just be grateful he’s back, safe and sound?”

  Maddy looked at Granny for a second and decided not to push it. There was someone better able to answer her questions. She heard the front door open.

  “That will be your grandfather. Get up, and I’ll make us all a fry.”

  Granda was stamping his feet on the welcome mat and easing his rain-sodden coat off his shoulders when Maddy walked into the room. She waited until Granny had switched the radio on in the kitchen and the bacon and sausages had begun to sizzle before she spoke to him. She didn’t want Granny to hear this conversation. Granda was stretching his long legs out in front of the fire, his tired head beginning to droop on to his chest.

  Maddy sat in Granny’s chair and said, “I told the truth last night.”

  He looked up at her warily, his eyes bloodshot from lack of sleep. “Oh?”

  “Yes—everything. About the way this boy looked, about what he really is, about how it all ties in with those stories you tell.”

  He shifted in his chair and looked into the fire.

  “No one believes me. You need to tell them I wasn’t lying.”

  He still didn’t look at her. All he said was, “You can’t tell faerie tales to the police, Maddy. It’s not right.”

  He couldn’t have hurt her more if he had slapped her in the face. She stared at him with her mouth open, her eyes filling with tears. He could have told everyone she wasn’t
a liar; he could have stuck up for her.

  A tear spilled down her cheek, but she dashed it away with her palm. She glared at him and felt the welcome taste of molten anger ooze up from her belly. She got up and walked over to him. She leaned down and hissed in his ear, “I’ll tell you what isn’t right. You knew what I met last night. You could have sorted him out. You could have stopped this happening to Stephen.”

  He flinched, but he still would not meet her eye. Maddy stormed to her room and began to get dressed. She yanked her anorak on and banged her bedroom door behind her. She pulled the house keys off the hook so violently she almost yanked the wooden key holder from the wall.

  “Where on earth are you going?” Granny was standing in the living room with her apron on and a spatula in her hand. “Breakfast is going to be ready in ten minutes.”

  “You can stuff your breakfast. I’m going to see Stephen.”

  “Don’t you dare speak to me like that, young lady. Get back here right now!”

  Maddy slammed the door shut behind her so hard the windows rattled. It was only half a dozen steps from her grandparents’ front door to the Forests’ house, but it was raining so hard that Maddy’s hair hung in rats’ tails by the time she knocked. Granny wrenched their front door open and hissed, “Get back in here, now!” Maddy glared at her and shook her head. Granny started to step outside, but just then the Forests’ front door opened, and Maddy shot into their hallway.

  The massive shape of Mr. Forest loomed over her as he shut the door. Maddy cringed when she thought of how she must have sounded last night. Remembering the look on Mrs. Forest’s face, she held her breath, waiting for his reaction, but his face split into a huge smile.

  “Maddy, love, have you come to see Stephen? That’s good of you. He’ll like that.”

  Mrs. Forest appeared out of the kitchen, still dressed in the clothes she had worn last night. Her face was tired but happy, and she grabbed Maddy and gave her a huge hug that squeezed all the breath out of her.

  “Maddy, thank you, thank you, for being awake and seeing Stephen go off like that. What would we have done if you had been asleep?”

  “Ummm—”

  “The doctor is with him right now, but he won’t be long. You can go to his room and see him then. Will you have a bite to eat while you’re waiting?”

  “Actually, I think Granny was making breakfast—”

  “Ah, you will,” Mrs. Forest carried on. “Sure, a little bite to eat won’t spoil your appetite for breakfast, a growing girl like you. You need all the help you can get.”

  Mrs. Forest herded Maddy through the sitting room to the kitchen at the back of the house. It was warm and bright, and steam fogged up the windows. Mrs. Forest bustled about making Maddy a ham sandwich and added a slice of jam sponge cake to the plate. It’s obviously never too early for cake, thought Maddy. As Mrs. Forest chattered away, she leaned over with a towel and gave Maddy’s hair a quick rub to stop it dripping rainwater down her neck. Maddy was trying to eat the sandwich and she almost choked, but Mrs. Forest talked on regardless.

  “. . . not a scratch on him, he’s a lucky little devil, wandering around the grounds with no shoes or socks on. It’s funny because he’s never sleepwalked before, but the doctor says it’s a childhood thing, and he should grow out of it. Imagine him opening his window fast asleep, though, and just climbing out! I’ve never seen him do that wide awake . . .”

  Maddy listened, a cold feeling settling in the pit of her stomach. The bread turned dry and lumpy in her mouth. Sleepwalking? she thought. They think Stephen was sleepwalking?

  “What about the boy who was outside the window last night?” she asked.

  “Oh sure, Maddy, you were doing a bit of sleepwalking yourself last night. You just got your dreams mixed up, that’s all.” Mrs. Forest laughed. “Faeries indeed! Your granda is going to have a hard time living that one down in the pub.”

  She heard heavy footsteps in the hall and the sound of men’s voices. “That’ll be the doctor,” said Mrs. Forest, before rushing into the hallway to talk to him. As the doctor and Stephen’s parents stood by the front door, Maddy quietly eased herself up from her chair and slipped into the little boy’s room.

  She pushed the door back, not knowing what to expect, and let out a sigh of relief when she saw Stephen’s little figure sitting up in his bed. The rain poured down the window, and it made the blue walls look as if they were underwater, as the patterns of the storm played over every surface.

  “Stephen?” she whispered. He didn’t look up. She walked into the room and sat on the end of his bed.

  “Stephen, are you OK?”

  He looked up at her then, and Maddy caught her breath at the sight of him. His face was thin and white, his eyes dark holes sunken into his head. His hands were little blind spiders that plucked at his duvet, so pale that every vein stood out a cold blue. It was weird. It was like he was . . . fading. He’s just tired, thought Maddy.

  “It’s OK, you know. I saw it all,” said Maddy. “I know you weren’t sleepwalking. You can tell me what happened.”

  The hands stopped their plucking then. Somewhere in the depths of his eye sockets were two pinpricks of light that focused on her face. He was listening to her now.

  “Say something, will you?” Maddy offered him a little smile. “You’re beginning to freak me out here.”

  The hands began to pluck again, and the little lights in his eyes shifted away into blackness. The smile died on Maddy’s face. This just wasn’t like Stephen.

  She leaned forward to touch his hand, and as she did so, the iron cross that hung around her neck slipped loose from her V-necked T-shirt and swung in front of Stephen’s eyes. Maddy watched in horror as his face crumpled in on itself. He opened his mouth wide and hissed at her, baring sharp yellow teeth. She froze and felt her skin go into goosebumps all over her body. She slid back cautiously. The creature in the bed began to pluck at the duvet again.

  “You’re not Stephen, are you?”

  The lights flickered in its eyes as the creature in Stephen’s bed, wearing Stephen’s favorite dinosaur pajamas, looked straight at her. Then it began to laugh, a dry, rasping wheeze that would have sounded more at home in a graveyard than in the chest of a three-year-old. The wind outside whined in sympathy.

  Maddy tried to look calm, but her legs shook as she got up and walked backward toward the door. She felt for the cool brass knob, keeping her eyes on the creature. Her body hummed with tension as she imagined the creature leaping for her, ready to sink those yellow teeth into her throat. But its eyes were dull again, and it stared listlessly out the window.

  “Don’t get too comfortable, pal. You’re not staying,” she whispered, as she wrenched the door open and bolted into the hallway, slamming it shut behind her.

  Maddy almost ran out of the house, eager to be gone before any of Stephen’s family stopped her. She didn’t think she could talk to any of them right now, not until she figured out what was going on. But Stephen’s father poked his head around the kitchen door as she reached for the door handle.

  “Are you off already, Maddy?”

  “Yeah, umm, I think Stephen is a bit tired . . . probably best if I come back later,” she said.

  “OK, we’ll see you soon.”

  She was letting herself out when she thought of something and turned back to him.

  “Mr. Forest, you worked on the faerie kingdom on the castle grounds, didn’t you?” she asked.

  “Yes. I’ve heard how much you like playing in there,” he said with a wink. “That was some time ago now—it’s held up well over the years.”

  “Did local people make all the stuff that’s in there?”

  “Some of it. Some of it was already there, like the caves.”

  “What about the faerie mound?”

  “No, no, that was already there. The grounds around the castle used to be stuffed with things like that,” said Mr. Forest. “Some even say there’s a barrow of an ancient king,
stuffed with treasure. They’re always chucking out tourists who are scanning the grounds with metal detectors and trying to dig the place up. But I believe there’s a treasure there as much as I believe in the ghosts that haunt the castle.”

  “So no one created that mound with a backhoe then?”

  “No, we just put a sign on it, and the gardeners tidied it up a bit. Saved us a few days’ work, I can tell you. Why do you ask?”

  “No reason.” Maddy smiled at him. “Tell Stephen I’ll be coming back for him, very, very soon.”

  He looked puzzled—perhaps she overdid the threatening tone—but he smiled a goodbye as she closed the door. Maddy stood on the Forests’ doorstep with her head tipped back and tried to stare at the raindrops as they hurtled toward her eyeballs. She thought of the creature in the house, and that familiar, comforting feeling of anger on the boil begin to swirl lazily in her stomach.

  I’m getting Stephen back if it kills me, she thought.

  Chapter Six

  Granny was waiting for her when she walked back in. Her coat was buttoned up to her throat, her sensible walking shoes were on, and her black leather handbag hung from one wrist. She looked armored up and murderous. She didn’t wait for Maddy to try to say sorry.

  “I will not be spoken to like that, young lady,” she snapped, her fingers whitening as they bit down on her black leather gloves. “I don’t deserve to be treated in such a disgusting way by you—have you anything to say for yourself?”

  Maddy lidded her eyes and leaned against the door jamb. “Sorry.”

  “That doesn’t sound very sincere.”

  Maddy shrugged. Granny clenched her jaw in anger, but Maddy thought her eyes looked a bit watery too. Shame pricked her skin, but she looked away.

  “Are you at least going to tell me what’s got you so riled up?”

  “Why don’t you ask him?” Maddy pointed at Granda with her chin. He was sitting in his armchair, buried behind the local paper.

  “Are you going to tell me what’s going on?” she snapped at him.