Tales of Terror from the Tunnel's Mouth

by Chris Priestley

  ‘You’ll end up in the crazy house,’ said Penelope. ‘Mark my words.’

  ‘Mark my words’ had been a favourite expression of her mother’s, and Penelope found that she was using it more and more and rather liked the sound of it.

  ‘Why do you hate me so much, I wonder?’ said Laura, turning to face her at last.

  There was something electric about the word ‘hate’ being out in the air between them.

  ‘I don’t hate you,’ Penelope said unconvincingly. ‘I don’t even think about you at all.’

  ‘Why do you follow me about then?’ said Laura. ‘If you do not think about me, why not leave me alone?’

  It was true. Penelope did follow Laura about. She couldn’t quite explain why she did so, and she found the question annoying.

  ‘I can go where I like,’ said Penelope. ‘This is my house. This is my garden.’

  ‘It is mine too,’ said Laura. ‘Like it or not.’

  ‘Well, I do not,’ said Penelope. ‘I don’t like it one little bit.’

  ‘Well then,’ said Laura with a giggle and a shrug. ‘I don’t see what I’m expected do about that.’

  Penelope felt the colour rise to her cheeks. She hated the way she looked when that happened, which just made her all the more incensed.

  ‘Everything was fine before you came!’ she hissed.

  Was she going to cry? Oh, how she hoped she would not cry. She couldn’t bear the shame of crying in front of this awful creature.

  ‘Your father seems happy enough with us here,’ said Laura, bending down to pick another daisy.

  Penelope wanted to kick her, to kick her in the face. Hard. More than once. But she controlled herself.

  ‘At least I don’t talk to myself,’ she said.

  ‘I wasn’t talking to myself,’ said Laura with a weary sigh. ‘I was talking to . . .’ Her voice trailed away.

  ‘Talking to who?’ said Penelope with a chuckle. ‘You see – there was no one there.’

  Laura gave her a withering look.

  ‘I was talking to one of the little people,’ she said after a short pause.

  This was said with such bored matter-of-factness that Penelope was too dumbfounded to think of anything by way of reply that would do justice to so incredible a statement. Laura really was crazy.

  ‘What nonsense are you saying now, Laura?’ said Penelope.

  Laura simply smiled and carried on threading daisies. Penelope’s breathing sounded loud in her own ears; she wondered whether it sounded loud to Laura and she hoped it did not. But Laura’s capacity to ignore her was so infuriating, sometimes she really didn’t know what she would do.

  ‘You’re saying that you have seen fairies?’ said Penelope with a snort. ‘Fairies? Do you realise how silly you sound? Do you realise how mad?’

  Laura doggedly refused to speculate on her own silliness.

  ‘Are you saying that you have seen fairies?’ persisted Penelope, her face a picture of condescension, her voice slightly scratchy.

  ‘You might say so,’ said Laura calmly, facing her with a half-smile that Penelope had seen many times before and which she always found acutely annoying. Laura turned back to her daisies.

  Penelope stared at the back of Laura’s head, at the almost liquid sheen of her long auburn hair. She felt an almost uncontrollable urge to pick up the branch lying on the ground nearby and strike her with it. She even imagined the sound it would make as it cracked across Laura’s skull. It was not an unpleasant sensation.

  ‘Prove it, then,’ said Penelope a little breathlessly, her heart still racing with the thought of punishing this irritating creature. ‘Prove that you’ve seen these so-called fairies of yours.’

  ‘I never called them fairies,’ said Laura. ‘You called them fairies.’

  Penelope smiled. Laura was already beginning to back down.

  ‘I said that I was talking to one of the little people when you saw me,’ said Laura. ‘And so I was. If you want to call them fairies, that is up to you.’

  ‘These “little people”,’ said Penelope, sensing she had Laura on the run and placing as much disbelief as she could muster into her pronunciation of the words, ‘are they just people who happen to be short – like my aunt Harriet? Because I had thought there was something special about them from the way you spoke. Oh – but, of course – they must be invisible too, mustn’t they?’

  Laura gave her a long hard look.

  ‘They are not invisible.’

  ‘Really?’ said Penelope with a purse of her lips. ‘Then why was it that I saw no one with you?’

  ‘They are very shy,’ said Laura. ‘They flew away as you walked over.’

  ‘Flew away?’ said Penelope with a chuckle. ‘They can fly, then? Are you sure they aren’t fairies? They sound like fairies.’

  ‘The little people are very special,’ said Laura. ‘But you wouldn’t know anything about them. You’re only interested in shopping. The little people know things you will never know.’

  ‘Well, then,’ said Penelope. ‘If these “little people” are so special, I want to see them.’

  Laura shook her head and gave Penelope a look of disbelief, raising her eyebrows as if the suggestion was the most preposterous thing she had ever heard.

  ‘You can’t see them.’

  ‘I can’t see them because they don’t exist,’ said Penelope triumphantly.

  ‘You can’t see them because they don’t want to see you.’

  ‘You are such an evil little liar,’ said Penelope, jabbing her finger. ‘Though it’s hardly surprising, is it? Your mother’s just the same.’

  Laura gave her a long cold look that made Penelope step away, half fearing that Laura was about to attack.

  ‘I really don’t care if you believe me or not,’ said Laura. ‘Why should I care what you think? What possible reason would I have to care?’

  Penelope stood squeezing her fingers into white-knuckled fists, her teeth clenched so tightly together she felt as though they might suddenly shatter under the pressure.

  ‘Why don’t they want to see me?’ hissed Penelope. ‘These stupid little people of yours.’

  ‘They don’t like you,’ said Laura coolly.

  Penelope scowled and took a step forward. She was troubled by how upset she was by this statement. It shouldn’t matter what feelings Laura assigned to her imaginary creations, but for some reason it did.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Laura. ‘But it’s true. I don’t know why they don’t like you, but it’s better to stay clear of them if they don’t want you around.’

  Had Penelope’s stepmother not arrived at that moment to call Laura in for her piano lesson, Penelope didn’t know what she might have done. She was still shaking as she walked back to the house.

  All Penelope’s energy would now go into getting Laura to reveal what a foolish creature she was. She would watch her at every waking hour and force her to accept that her belief in these so-called ‘little people’ was a pathetic delusion. She would expose her as a fantasist to her father. Penelope knew that her father detested a liar above all things. She shivered with excitement at the shame and humiliation her stepsister was going to endure.

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  The much anticipated humiliation did not arrive, however. Though Penelope gave Laura every opportunity to talk about her little people at the supper table, she steadfastly refused to be drawn on the subject and it was Penelope who came away looking curiously obsessive about fairies.

  The urge to make Laura look foolish took on a darker and darker shade as Penelope’s hatred grew unchecked. She scarcely let Laura out of her sight. She had become fixated with this unrelenting need to catch her stepsister out.

  She was determined that her father in particular should see Laura talking to her invisible friends. But it wasn’t easy to arrange. Every time Laura heard them coming – and she seemed to have the ears of a cat – she would pretend to be doing something else entirely.

  Then, one day, P
enelope saw Laura whispering away to herself by the pond and turned to see her father walking on the other side of the lawn. She couldn’t believe her luck. Putting her finger to her lips, she beckoned him over.

  ‘What is it, my dear?’ he whispered as he joined her. ‘Seen something, eh?’ Her father was a keen amateur naturalist. ‘Kingfisher, is it? I saw one myself the other day. Pretty thing.’

  ‘No, Father,’ whispered Penelope with a smirk. ‘I wanted to show you –’

  But just at that moment a huge dragonfly buzzed up in front of her face and she panicked, flapping wildly, and tumbled backwards into the pond. The water was not very deep and so Penelope was left sitting in a sorry state, enveloped in lily pads.

  Laura came running at the sound of the splash, her face initially a picture of concern. But it was Penelope’s father who was the first to break, his red face shuddering as he let out a trickle of giggles that turned into mighty guffaws, and his stepdaughter soon joined in enthusiastically. Penelope got to her feet and stomped away towards the house, deaf to her father’s apologies and renewed guffawing.

  This embarrassment did not dampen Penelope’s urge to expose her stepsister; on the contrary. It concentrated the venom. Penelope would get her revenge if it took a year. She would wait and she would watch.

  However, her renewed surveillance achieved nothing but yet more burning hatred fuelled by frustration. Penelope had caught Laura skulking about and occasionally talking to herself, but that was not enough. She still needed something that would show her father what his precious stepdaughter was really like. But what?

  Finally, one night, that opportunity arrived when Penelope heard a creaking floorboard outside her bedroom door and, on quietly opening it, saw Laura making her way furtively down the stairs. Astonished, Penelope heard the grating noise of the bolts on the outside door being drawn back.

  Penelope grinned and went back into her room and across to the window. Was Laura really going out in the middle of the night? Yes – there she was, wandering out into the moonlight. She was crazier than Penelope had thought.

  Penelope toyed with the idea of rousing her father there and then and seeing how Laura would explain this eccentric behaviour.

  But she did not. Though she couldn’t allow herself to admit it, some tiny, hidden-away part of her wanted to believe that Laura might actually have contact with fairies.

  Hastily putting on her robe, Penelope tiptoed down the hall and stairs and out of the house, walking barefoot across the lawn, the ground still warm from the heat of the day.

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  Moonlight washed across the scene, staining everything in its pale and dreamy glow – pale and dreamy, but bright enough to cast bold blue shadows across the lawn.

  Laura was walking towards the garden gate, her white nightdress almost luminous in that eerie light. She looked more ghost than mortal child, flickering like a will-o’-the-wisp as she drifted into the murky shade of the copse.

  Penelope followed her across the lawn as soon as she was in no danger of being seen should Laura turn and glance behind her. She could feel her heart beating with excitement as she wondered what to do next.

  Should she shout out and rouse the household? Laura would have to explain what on earth she was doing wandering about the garden at midnight. But then so would Penelope.

  She could see the figure of Laura glimmering ahead as she walked into the copse of oak and hazel trees that stood beyond the garden at the meadow’s edge.

  An owl hooted high in the trees above her and another replied from somewhere at the back of the house. Penelope looked up into the silhouetted branches and the owl hooted again. When she looked back, she saw that Laura had stopped.

  Penelope crept forward inch by inch, denying herself even the quietest of winces when a bramble scratched across her bare ankle. Eventually she rested against the trunk of an oak and peered round at Laura and stared in open-mouthed astonishment. So incredible was the scene she was witnessing that her mind struggled to agree with the evidence of her eyes.

  For there, quite plainly lit by the moonlight, was Laura, kneeling on the ground, her nightdress spread out on the grass of a little glade within the copse, and all about her – on the ground and flitting about her head – were dozens and dozens of tiny fairies.

  These creatures seemed to have some kind of supernatural luminescence and they glowed like fireflies, and each movement of their bodies increased the intensity of the glow until they shone like tiny stars. They flew back and forth in front of Laura’s face and around her head, creating a kind of halo that shimmered with a beautiful blue-white light.

  One of the fairy-folk seemed to spot Penelope and flitted towards Laura’s shoulder. It whispered into Laura’s ear and she turned slowly round.

  Penelope stepped out from her hiding place and smiled expectantly, hoping that Laura would beckon her over to share the spell, but the expression on Laura’s face was one of pure malice. Having given her a long stare so cold it made Penelope shiver, Laura turned away.

  Penelope could see that Laura was speaking to the fairies, but could not hear her. The fairy-folk clustered around her in the air, hanging on to her nightdress and sitting on her shoulders. More and more appeared from the darkness; there must have been hundreds of them now.

  Penelope watched in anticipation as, once again, Laura turned to face her, and a bright mass of little faces did likewise. Then Laura’s mouth moved in a tight-lipped whisper and there was a soft rustling as all of the fairies took to their wings and hovered in a swarm before moving towards Penelope.

  Penelope was slow to react, still mesmerised by the beauty of these magical creatures and the wonderful glow that emanated from the cluster as they flew.

  It was not until they were hovering only a few feet away from her face that she actually saw them for what they were; only then did she see their faces clearly, their terrible, black and twinkling eyes, their scabrous flesh, their grinning mouths, their vicious teeth and grasping claws.

  Penelope opened her mouth to scream, but the swarm was on her in a heartbeat.

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  Penelope’s stepmother found her in the morning when she went for her morning commune with nature. She was entangled in a coil of brambles, her pale flesh scribbled with scratches, her eyes wide open in panic.

  The cause of death could not be determined. The doctor surmised that Penelope had walked in her sleep, become ensnared in the bushes and the ensuing panic had resulted in a heart attack. Some people’s hearts were weaker than others, he explained.

  It was all very tragic, but Penelope’s stepmother rather enjoyed tragedy. She certainly took to organising the funeral with enthusiasm, and everyone agreed it was a most moving and beautiful service. Laura read a poem of her own creation.

  It was about fairies.

  *

  The image of that swarm of devilish little creatures seemed reluctant to leave my mind. Again I had a dreamlike vision of the scene, and again that same strange impression that there was someone or something else away in the shadows that had not been mentioned in the tale.

  I was so distracted by my efforts to discern what this might be before the vision’s inevitable dissolution that I think the Woman in White may have spoken to me more than once before I finally replied.

  ‘Hello?’ I answered, rather stupidly. ‘Sorry, yes – I was . . .’

  I didn’t quite know where that sentence was destined to go and so I let it die partway between us. My brain was begging for the comfort of sleep. I shook my head drowsily.

  ‘You seem troubled,’ said the Woman in White, but in a way that did not quite speak of concern. It was as if she were interested and intrigued by my every action. She patently seemed to regard any discomfort caused by her tales as a kind of achievement, though I could not begrudge her that. Were I to tell a tale like that, I should want to trouble my listener a little. After all, that was half the fun.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘Not troubled, exactl
y. The story was rather strange. Had I heard it as a bedtime story, it would probably have disturbed my sleep. But luckily I do not believe in fairies – vicious ones or otherwise.’

  ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘You’re a rationalist, as we have established.’

  ‘I suppose I am. I don’t know.’

  ‘You seek a rational explanation for the world.’

  ‘Nevertheless, I enjoy stories of a supernatural sort,’ I said. ‘But I know they are just stories. I don’t think such things truly exist in the real world. Sometimes I wish they did.’ I smiled and then added, ‘Though I am happy to do without murderous fairies.’

  ‘The real world?’ she said in a questioning tone.

  ‘Yes,’ I said, not fully understanding how there could be any confusion. ‘This world.’ I waved my hands about to encompass the carriage, the train, the cutting and beyond. ‘Our world.’

  The Woman in White smiled her strange smile, eyes glittering.

  ‘Have you never had any hint, then, that there might be more to this world than there appears?’

  ‘I’ve never seen fairies, I know that,’ I said with a smile. ‘I think I should have remembered if I had.’

  ‘Your stepmother is of a rather different opinion regarding these things, though, isn’t that true?’

  Again, the conversation seemed to have returned to my stepmother.

  ‘Undoubtedly,’ I said. ‘She is entitled to her opinion. I think she is mistaken, however.’

  The Woman in White cocked her head, studying me intently.

  ‘Do you not think it odd that your stepmother had a vision of a tunnel and here we are?’

  I had no recollection of telling her the content of my stepmother’s vision. My mind really was becoming quite addled.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I suppose that it is odd. She did see a tunnel. But then she also saw . . .’

  I remembered my stepmother’s premonition of a kiss and blushed. It felt unseemly to mention it to this young woman whom I barely knew.

  ‘Yes?’ said the Woman in White with a raised eyebrow.