"Why?" At that age I had no tact at all.
"Oh, for heaven's sake. Because I think she probably died on her way home from coming here. That's the last time anyone saw her. She must have been in such a rage that she slipped at the edge of the pond—I told you it was pouring with rain. Well, how was I to know what had happened?"
Perhaps her resentment concealed a need for reassurance, but I was unable to help, for I was struggling with the idea that she had been partly responsible for someone's death. Was nothing in my life to be trusted? I was so deep in brooding that I was hardly able to look at her when she cried out.
Presumably her needle had slipped on the thimble; she'd driven the point beneath one of her nails. Yet as she hurried out, furiously sucking her finger, I found that my gaze was drawn to the dress she had been sewing. As she'd cried out—of course it must have been then, not before—the dress had seemed to twist in her hands, jerking the needle.
When I went to bed I couldn't sleep. The room smelled faintly of earth; was that something to do with spring? The wardrobe door kept opening, though it had never behaved like that before, and displaying my clothes suspended batlike in the dark. Each time I got up to close the door their shapes looked less familiar, more unpleasant. Eventually I managed to sleep, only to dream that dresses were waddling limblessly through the doorway of my room, towards the bed.
The next day, Sunday, my aunt suggested a walk on the fells. I would have settled for Skiddaw, the easiest of them, but it was already swarming with walkers like fleas. "Let's go somewhere we'll be alone," Aunt Naomi said, which excited me in ways I'd begun to enjoy but preferred not to define, in case that scared the excitement away.
We climbed Grisedale Pike. Most of it was gentle, until just below the summit we reached an almost vertical scramble up a narrow spiky ridge. I clung there with all my limbs, trapped thousands of feet above the countryside, afraid to go up or down. I was almost hysterical with self-disgust; I'd let my half-admitted fantasies lure me up here, when all my aunt had wanted was to enjoy the walk without being crowded by tourists. Eventually I managed to clamber to the summit, my face blazing.
As we descended, it began to rain. By the time we reached home we were soaked. I felt suffocated by the smell of wet earth, the water flooding down my face, the dangling locks of sodden hair that wouldn't go away. I hurried upstairs to change.
I had just about finished—undressing had felt like peeling wallpaper, except that I was the wall—when my aunt called out. Though she was in the next room, her voice sounded muffled. Before I could go to her she called again, nearer to panic. I hurried across the landing, into her room.
The walls were streaming with shadows. The air was dark as mud, in which she was struggling wildly. A shapeless thing was swallowing her head and arms. When I switched on the light I saw it was nothing; she'd become entangled in the jumper she was trying to remove, that was all.
"Help me," she cried. She sounded as if she was choking, yet I didn't like to touch her; apart from her bra, her torso was naked. What was wrong with her, for God's sake? Couldn't she take off her jumper by herself? Eventually I helped her as best I could without touching her. It seemed glued to her, by the rain, I assumed. At last she emerged, red-faced and panting.
Neither of us said much at dinner. I thought her unease was directed at me, at the way I'd let her struggle. Or was she growing aware of my new feelings? That night, as I drifted into sleep, I thought I heard a jangling of hangers in the wardrobe. Perhaps it was just the start of a dream.
The morning was dull. Clouds swallowed the tops of the fells. My aunt lit fires in the downstairs rooms. I loitered about the house for a while, hoping for a glimpse of customers undressing, until the dimness made me claustrophobic. Firelight set the shadows of dress forms dancing spastically on the walls; when I stood with my back to the forms their shadows seemed to raise their arms.
I caught a bus to Keswick, for want of something to do. The bus had passed Fanny Cave's path before I thought of looking. I glanced back sharply, but a bend in the road intervened. Had I glimpsed a scarecrow by the pond, its sleeves fluttering? But it had seemed to rear up: it must have been a bird.
In Keswick I followed leggy girls up the narrow hilly streets, dawdled nervously outside pubs, and wondered if I looked old enough to risk buying a drink. When I found myself in the library, leafing desultorily through broken paperbacks, I went home. There was nothing by the pond that I could see, though closer to Aunt Naomi's house something grey was flapping in the grass—litter, I supposed.
The house seemed more oppressive than ever. Though my aunt tended to use whichever room she was in for sewing, she was generally tidy; now the house was crowded with half-finished clothes, lolling on chairs, their necks yawning. When I tried to chat at dinner my voice sounded muffled by the presence of so much cloth.
My aunt drank more than usual, and seemed not to care if I did too. My drinking made the light seem yellowish, suffocated. Soon I felt very sleepy. "Stay down a little longer," my aunt mumbled, jerking herself awake, when I made to go to bed. I couldn't understand why she didn't go herself. I chatted mechanically, about anything except what might be wrong. Firelight brought clothes nodding forward to listen.
At last she muttered "Let's go to bed." Of course she meant that unambiguously, yet it made me nervous. As I undressed hastily I heard her below me in the kitchen, opening the window a notch for air. A moment later the patch of light from the kitchen went out. I wished it had stayed lit for just another moment, for I'd glimpsed something lying beneath the empty clothesline.
Was it a nightdress? But I'd never seen my aunt hang out a nightdress, nor pyjamas either. It occurred to me that she must sleep naked. That disturbed me so much that I crawled into bed and tried to sleep at once, without thinking.
I dreamed I was buried, unable to breathe, and when I awoke I was. Blankets, which felt heavy as collapsed earth, had settled over my face. I heaved them off me and lay trying to calm myself, so that I would sink back into sleep—but by the time my breathing slowed I realised I was listening.
The room felt padded with silence. Dimness draped the chair and dressing-table, blurring their shapes; perhaps the wardrobe door was ajar, for I thought I saw vague forms hanging ominously still. Now I was struggling to fall asleep before I could realise what was keeping me awake. I drew long slow breaths to lull myself, but it was no use. In the silence between them I heard something sodden creeping upstairs.
I lay determined not to hear. Perhaps it was the wind or the creaking of the house, not the sound of a wet thing slopping stealthily upstairs at all. Perhaps if I didn't move, didn't make a noise, I would hear what it really was— but in any case I was incapable of moving, for I'd heard the wet thing flop on the landing outside my door.
For an interminable pause there was silence, thicker than ever, then I heard my aunt's door open next to mine. I braced myself for her scream. If she screamed I would go to her. I would have to. But the scream never came; there was only the sound of her pulling something sodden off the floor. Soon I heard her padding downstairs barefoot, and the click of a lock.
Everything was all right now. Whatever it had been, she'd dealt with it. Perhaps wallpaper had fallen on the stairs, and she'd gone down to throw it out. Now I could sleep—so why couldn't I? Several minutes passed before I was conscious of wondering why she hadn't come back upstairs.
I forced myself to move. There was nothing to fear, nothing now outside my door—but I got dressed to delay going out on the landing. The landing proved to be empty, and so did the house. Beyond the open front door the prints of Aunt Naomi's bare feet led over the moist lawn towards the road.
The moon was doused by clouds. Once I reached the road I couldn't see my aunt's tracks, but I knew instinctively which way she'd gone. I ran wildly towards Fanny Cave's path. Hedges, mounds of congealed night, boxed me in. The only sound I could hear was the ringing of my heels on the asphalt.
I had just reached t
he gap in the hedge when the moon swam free. A woman was following the path towards the pond, but was it my aunt? Even with the field between us I recognised the grey dress she wore. It was Fanny Cave's.
I was terrified to set foot on the path until the figure turned a bend and I saw my aunt's profile. I plunged across the field, tearing my way through the grass. It might have been quicker to follow the path, for by the time I reached the gap into the second field she was nearly at the pond.
In the moonlight the surface of the pond looked milky, fungoid. The scum was broken by a rock, plastered with strands of grass, close to the edge towards which my aunt was walking. I threw myself forward, grass slashing my legs.
When I came abreast of her I saw her eyes, empty except for two shrunken reflections of the moon. I knew not to wake a sleepwalker, and so I caught her gently by the shoulders, though my hands wanted to shake, and tried to turn her away from the pond.
She wouldn't turn. She was pulling towards the scummy water, or Fanny Cave's dress was, for the drowned material seemed to writhe beneath my hands. It was pulling towards the rock whose eyes glared just above the scum, through glistening strands which were not grass but hair.
It seemed there was only one thing to do. I grabbed the neck of the dress and tore it down. The material was rotten, and tore easily. I dragged it from my aunt's body and flung it towards the pond. Did it land near the edge, then slither into the water? All I knew was that when I dared to look the scum was unbroken.
My aunt stood there naked and unaware until I draped my anorak around her. That seemed to rouse her. She stared about for a moment, then down at herself. "It's all right, Naomi," I said awkwardly. She sobbed only once before she controlled herself, but I could see that the effort was cruel. "Come on, quickly," she said in a voice older and harsher than I'd ever heard her use, and strode home without looking at me.
Next day we didn't refer to the events of the night; in fact, we hardly spoke. No doubt she had lain awake all night as I had, as uncomfortably aware of me as I was of her. After breakfast she said that she wanted to be left alone, and asked me to go home early. I never visited her again; she always found a reason why I couldn't stay. I suspect the reasons served only to prevent my parents from questioning me.
Before I went home I found a long branch and went to the pond. It didn't take much probing for me to find something solid but repulsively soft. I drove the branch into it again and again, until I felt things break. My disgust was so violent it was beyond defining. Perhaps I already knew deep in myself that since the night I undressed my aunt I would never be able to touch a woman.
The Trick (1980)
(Also published as Trick Or Treat)
As October waned Debbie forgot about the old witch; she didn't associate her with Halloween. Halloween wasn't frightening. After the long depression following the summer holidays, it was the first night of the winter excitements: not as good as Guy Fawkes' Night or Christmas, but still capable of excluding less pleasant things from Debbie's mind—the sarcastic teacher, the gangs of boys who leaned against the shops, the old witch.
Debbie wasn't really frightened of her, not at her age. Even years ago, when Debbie was a little kid, she hadn't found her terrifying. Not like some things: not like her feverish night when the dark in her bedroom had grown like mold on the furniture, making the familiar chair and wardrobe soft and huge. Nor like the face that had looked in her bedroom window once, when she was ill: a face like a wrinkled monkey's, whose jaw drooped as if melting, lower and lower; a face that had spoken to her in a voice that sagged as the face did—a voice that must have been a car's engine struggling to start.
The witch had never seized Debbie with panic, as those moments had. Perhaps she was only an old woman, after all. She lived in a terraced house, in the row opposite Debbie's home. People owned their houses in that row, but Debbie's parents only rented the top half of a similar building. They didn't like the old woman; nobody did.
Whenever the children played outside her house she would come out to them. "Can't you make your row somewhere else? Haven't you got a home to go to?" "We're playing outside our own house," someone might say. "You don't own the street." Then she would stand and stare at them, with eyes like gray marbles. The fixed lifeless gaze always made them uneasy; they would dawdle away, jeering.
Parents were never sympathetic. "Play somewhere else, then," Debbie's father would say. Her parents were more frightened of the witch than she was. "Isn't her garden awful," she'd once heard her mother saying. "It makes the whole street look like a slum. But we mustn't say anything, we're only tenants." Debbie thought that was just an excuse.
Why were they frightened? The woman was small, hardly taller than Debbie. Boys didn't like to play near her house in case they had to rescue a football, to grope through the slimy nets, tall as a child, of weeds and grass full of crawlers. But that was only nasty, not frightening. Debbie wasn't even sure why the woman was supposed to be a witch.
Perhaps it was her house. "Keep away from my house," she told nearby children when she went out, as though they would want to go near the drab unpainted crumbling house that was sinking into its own jungle. The windows were cracked and thick with grime; when the woman's face peered out it looked like something pale stirring in a dirty jar. Sometimes children stood outside shouting and screaming to make the face loom. Boys often dared each other to peer in, but rarely did. Perhaps that was it, then: her house looked like a witch's house. Sometimes black smoke that looked solid as oil dragged its long swollen body from the chimney.
There were other things. Animals disliked her almost as much as she disliked them. Older brothers said that she went out after midnight, hurrying through the mercury-vapor glare towards the derelict streets across the main road; but older brothers often made up stories. When Debbie tried to question her father he only told her not to be stupid. "Who's been wasting your time with that?"
The uncertainty annoyed her. If the woman were a witch she must be in retirement; she didn't do anything. Much of the time—at least, during the day—she stayed in her house: rarely answering the door, and then only to peer through a crack and send the intruder away. What did she do, alone in the dark house? Sometimes people odder than herself would visit her: a tall thin woman with glittering wrists and eyes, who dressed in clothes like tapestries of lurid flame; two fat men, Tweedledum and Tweedledee draped in lethargically flapping black cloaks. They might be witches too.
"Maybe she doesn't want anyone to know she's a witch," suggested Debbie's friend Sandra. Debbie didn't really care. The old woman only annoyed her, as bossy adults did. Besides, Halloween was coming. Then, on Halloween morning—just when Debbie had managed to forget her completely—the woman did the most annoying thing of all.
Debbie and Sandra had wheeled their prams to the supermarket, feeling grown-up. On the way they'd met Lucy, who never acted her age. When Lucy had asked, "Where are you taking your dolls?" Sandra had replied loftily, "We aren't taking our dolls anywhere." She'd done the shopping each Saturday morning since she was nine, so that her mother could work. Often she shopped in the evenings, because her mother was tired after work, and then Debbie would accompany her, so that she felt less uneasy in the crowds beneath the white glare. This Saturday morning Debbie was shopping too.
The main road was full of crowds trying to beat the crowds. Boys sat like a row of shouting ornaments on the railing above the underpass; women queued a block for cauliflowers, babies struggled screaming in prams. The crowds flapped as a wind fumbled along the road. Debbie and Sandra maneuvered their prams to the supermarket. A little girl was racing a trolley through the aisles, jumping on the back for a ride. How childish, Debbie thought.
When they emerged Sandra said, "Let's walk to the tunnel and back."
She couldn't be anxious to hurry home to vacuum the flat. They wheeled their laden prams towards the tunnel, which fascinated them. A railway cutting divided the streets a few hundred yards beyond the supermarket, i
n the derelict area. Houses crowded both its banks, their windows and doorways blinded and gagged with boards. From the cutting, disused railway lines probed into a tunnel beneath the main road—and never reappeared, so far as Debbie could see.
The girls pushed their prams down an alley, to the near edge of the cutting. Beside them the remains of back yards were cluttered with fragments of brick. The cutting was rather frightening, in a delicious way. Rusty metal skeletons sat tangled unidentifiably among the lines, soggy cartons flapped sluggishly, a door lay as though it led to something in the soil. Green sprouted minutely between scatterings of rubble.
Debbie stared down at the tunnel, at the way it burrowed into the dark beneath the earth. Within the mouth was only a shallow rim, surrounding thick darkness. No: now she strained her eyes she made out a further arch of dimmer brick, cut short by the dark. As she peered another formed, composed as much of darkness as of brick. Beyond it she thought something pale moved. The surrounding daylight nickered with Debbie's peering; she felt as though she were being drawn slowly into the tunnel. What was it, the pale feeble stirring? She held on to a broken wall, so as to lean out to peer; but a voice startled her away.
"Go on. Keep away from there." It was the old witch, shouting from the main road, just as if they were little kids. To Debbie she looked silly: her head poked over the wall above the tunnel, as if someone had put a turnip there to grimace at them.
"We're all right," Sandra called impatiently. "We know what we're doing." They wouldn't have gone too near the cutting; years ago a little boy had run into the tunnel and had never been seen again.
"Just do as you're told. Get away." The head hung above the wall, staring hatefully at them, looking even more like a turnip.
"Oh, let's go home," Debbie said. "I don't want to stay here now, anyway."
They wheeled their prams around the chunks that littered the street. At the main road the witch was waiting for them. Her face frowned, glaring from its perch above the small black tent of her coat. Little more of her was visible; scuffed black snouts poked from beneath the coat, hands lurked in her drooping sleeves; one finger was hooked around the cane of a tattered umbrella. "And keep away from there in future," she said harshly.
The Collected Short Fiction Page 61
