Shadows of the Lost Child

by Ellie Stevenson

  ‘The child was a boy and he carried on the name of Parks because Clara Parks had never been married and she wouldn’t say who the father was. That boy was Marianne Parks’ father.’

  I slowly carried the mugs to the sink. ‘How odd,’ I said, ‘that Mary-Ann’s nephew should buy this house.’

  ‘It wasn’t,’ said Ginny, ‘it was planned from the start. Clara Parks was living abroad and she’d told her son about Mary-Ann. Reg, the son, was always intrigued, and when, later, he was discharged from the army, after the war, he came to England and met his wife and they decided to buy the house. When it came on the market, of course. Your house.’ She looked at Aleph.

  ‘He thought it might help to be on the spot. Curdizan Church had gone by then, no-one had wanted the church’s living, like I just said, and Mary-Ann running away was a scandal, way back then. And it did help too, because Marianne Parks, Reg’s daughter, discovered the body.’

  ‘Weird,’ I said, ‘but I guess he didn’t plan for that.’

  ‘No,’ said Ginny, looking sombre. ‘But Mary-Ann’s nephew was rather eccentric and very determined.’

  ‘Well, you’d know,’ I told her, thinking. ‘As you’re meant to be Marianne’s cousin. And so presumably, part of the family.’ My head was going round in circles.

  ‘Well, here’s the thing,’ said Ginny sadly. ‘That was another lie, I’m afraid. I’m not Marianne Parks’ cousin. But I do have a vested interest though.’ I waited, patiently. What was coming?

  ‘I’m actually Marianne Parks’ sister.’

  Chapter 77

  Then – Thomas

  I wandered into McCarthy’s shop, leaving the sack of shoes in the doorway. Percy was buffing up glass with a rag.

  ‘Where’s your boss?’ I asked him, warily.

  ‘Gone for his tea,’ said Percy, grinning. ‘What’s in the sack? I bet it’s for me.’

  ‘Shoes,’ I told him, grabbing the sack and tipping them onto the high glass counter. Percy was always polishing that counter. ‘You’ll wear it away,’ I told him, often.

  I saw him start, then his eyes widened as the shoes spilled out, some of them bouncing onto the floor. He picked a shoe up and studied it carefully. ‘Is this the stock Miranda mentioned?’

  ‘It might be,’ I said. ‘There are two sacks to follow, after this one. You know we found them in his house?’

  ‘I wonder why he kept them there?’ Percy was staring at me, waiting.

  ‘He was ill and tired, and now he’s dead. He probably just forgot about them.’

  I felt a twinge about adding a slur to McCarthy’s name, now he was dead, but I hoped he wouldn’t mind too much, because of my ma and Miranda’s mother. I understood they’d been friends of his. And Percy was a mate of mine. I helped my mate to stack the shoes.

  ‘I’ll be back in a couple of days with some more. That’ll give you time to get these moved. You won’t tell him?’ I said softly, glancing out back and meaning the bloke who ran the place. He was ugly as hell and as thick as they come, which was lucky for me, Miranda and Percy. Percy nodded.

  ‘You told me you’d get me a few more fags.’

  ‘You expect too much,’ I said to him, grinning. ‘Maybe you think I’m made of fags?’

  ‘Maybe I know you’ve got two jobs, and a nice little sideline selling on shoes.’

  ‘Oh, no,’ I said. ‘I’ve told you straight. These shoes are nothing to do with me.’

  ‘And I’m the heir to the throne,’ he said. But he grinned and nodded all the same. ‘I won’t say a word, you have my word, so long as you keep me sweet with these.’ He waved a packet of fags in my face.

  ‘You’re sure you wouldn’t like veg instead? Mason gives me a discount sometimes, and then there’s the stuff that’s almost rotten, that comes free.’ Percy’s face was his only answer.

  I sauntered out of the shop, content, thinking I’d go the long way home, via the market’s empty stalls. I didn’t feel like facing the alley.

  I couldn’t help thinking about it, though, how I’d stared out at Scriveners Road, looking for Alice and Curdizan Church, and seeing instead another world.

  I remembered the school looked just the same, just a bit more shabby, a little run down. But even now the school was shabby, I was used to that, and hardly noticed. But the church had vanished, gone completely, and how could a church disappear like that?

  Thinking about it, the trees looked bigger, the churchyard was different, with a lot less grass and a lot more paving and even some seats, it wasn’t a churchyard anymore. Then there was Alice.

  Alice had always seemed different to me but I thought that was because she was posh. She always told me she wasn’t well off, but she looked it to me, with her clothes and her shoes and that lovely clean smell. But now I saw it was more than that, it was something about the way she acted, older and smarter, and I thought I was bright as they come. Alice was so very different from Louise, and Louise was like me, she was bright and tough. No, I thought, Alice is different because she belongs in a different world. A future world.

  There, I’d said it, a crazy assumption and yet, somehow, I knew it was true. I moved to the side to avoid some people, Narrowboat Lane was always crowded. I stared at them briefly, as they passed by, I was always looking, studying outlines, looking for someone who looked like Louise. Was she even alive anymore? Then I saw Alice.

  She knows, I thought, she’s known for a while, that she crosses time’s boundaries, and comes to visit us. That was why she was with Miranda, she’d gone exploring.

  We stood together in the middle of the road, as the horses and carts and the rest went past, the drivers yelling to ‘get the out of the way, or else you’ll be dead,’ but I didn’t care, I just fixed my eyes on this special stranger, now that I knew she was even more special and had come from a place where I couldn’t go.

  ‘But you can,’ said Alice, ‘you almost did.’ She was talking about when we’d been in the alley. It scared me to hell when she read my mind. I said nothing.

  ‘It’s there in your face, you stupid boy,’ said Alice, laughing, ‘and I saw how you looked when I left you alone and you followed me back. I hid behind a tree and watched you, on Scriveners Road. Your face was a picture, total shock.’

  ‘I was,’ I said, ‘and I’m still shocked now. I couldn’t believe the church was gone.’

  ‘Try walking around to Old School Lane. There aren’t any tenements, not anymore.’

  ‘And no Louise,’ I told her, sadly. ‘Not even in the present time.’

  ‘Louise is your friend?’

  ‘She is,’ I said, ‘Louise has gone missing, and I think Pike, he’s the man who runs the school, might have sent her away. Or maybe Wetherby Eisen has harmed her, I don’t really know. I don’t even know if Louise is alive. All I know is, she said she’d tell me if she left, but then she didn’t and that makes me worried. Yet Pike was the one who asked me to find her, he wouldn’t do that if he was involved. Surely he wouldn’t?’

  ‘The School Lane ghosts,’ said Alice, thoughtful, twisting her hair and swinging her legs. We were sitting on the wall right next to the church. At least by the church I knew where I was. And when I was.

  ‘What?’ I said.

  ‘That’s what we call them, the School Lane ghosts.’ She looked at me, and her eyes shifted. ‘I don’t know if I should tell you this.’

  ‘Tell me what?’

  ‘Why we call them the School Lane ghosts.’

  ‘You might as well,’ I said, calmly, but my heart was thumping, as loud as could be. ‘It’s better to know, that’s what I believe.’

  ‘But is it?’ said Alice. ‘Sometimes knowing the truth can be hard. But yes, okay, you wanted to know. Some children went missing, years ago, no, now, in this time. Several kids, who knows how many? But ever since then, there’s been crying and screaming, and sometimes laughter, around about here.’

  ‘Well,’ I thought, and stared at the darkening shadows of the street. They
felt threatening.

  ‘We say it’s because the children were murdered and what we hear are their fearful screams or sometimes their laughter before they were taken. But you have to remember one thing, Tom.’ Alice looked sombre. ‘It’s only a rumour and probably not true.’

  ‘Who do they say was to blame for the deaths?’ I said slowly, not looking at Alice.

  ‘I can’t remember, and nobody found any children’s bodies.’ She paused, thinking. ‘I’ve heard the children crying, though. In your school, where Aleph lives now. He’s a friend of mine.’

  ‘You’re friends with a boy in your own time?’ I asked her, jealous. Alice laughed.

  ‘I’m friends with dozens, we’re all on Facebook. But Aleph’s a man, not a boy. He’s my mum’s friend really, rather than mine. Well, maybe not friends, but she knows him, anyhow.’

  I hadn’t a clue what she meant about Facebook but I let that pass. ‘Maybe the kids you heard were real.’

  ‘It’s a house, now, stupid, not a school. And Aleph doesn’t have kids of his own.’

  ‘I’m not surprised with a name like Aleph.’ I was smarting a little, her calling me stupid.

  Alice ignored me. ‘When I visit his house, which was once your school, sometimes I hear this terrible crying and sometimes screaming and sometimes I hear those sounds in the street. Around the corner, outside the school. It’s only a couple of children, probably, but it’s terribly sad and really quite creepy. I don’t like it.’

  ‘Boys or girls?’ I asked her, quickly, wishing and praying she’d say a boy. Let the crying not be Louise.

  ‘Both, I think, but I don’t really know, sometimes a boy can sound like a girl especially if he’s upset or in pain. All I know is I hate hearing them, especially if Wetherby Eisen killed them.’ She clapped her hand over her mouth, quickly.

  ‘Wetherby Eisen killed those kids?’

  ‘I don’t know for sure, it’s only a rumour, I didn’t want to tell you, it might not be true. You know this man, then Wetherby Eisen?’

  ‘I certainly do,’ I said, grimly.

  Chapter 78

  Now – Aleph

  So Guinevere James was Marianne’s sister. And both descended from Mary-Ann Parks, the murder victim. Which finally explained Ginny’s interest. But why did she think I could solve the murder?

  ‘Ghosts on audio files, Mr Jones.’

  ‘I think we’ve been down that route already.’

  ‘But I know you’ve heard them, haven’t you Aleph? The crying children.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘but I don’t think I’m a reliable witness.’

  ‘Because of the accident?’

  ‘Because I can’t prove I heard them cry, or if I did, that the children are ghosts.’ I sighed heavily. The crash had made me doubt my mind.

  ‘You don’t have to prove it,’ Guinevere insisted. ‘The next time you hear them, just record them, then do a reversal, like you did with Alice’s crying. If you record them, then play the file back, in reverse, we might find out what happened to my great-aunt. My sister and I both need to know.’

  ‘I might not be able to record the crying, or even hear it again, ever. What do you want to know, exactly?’

  ‘The name of the person who killed my great-aunt.’

  ‘That’s rather a lot to ask, Ginny.’

  ‘But you can do it, Aleph,’ she said. It didn’t look like I had much choice.

  The next evening, Cressida rang. Sounding more than a little desperate. ‘Alice won’t talk,’ she said, grimly.

  ‘I’m not sure what you want me to do.’

  ‘Get her to talk, ask her what’s up. She won’t even ‘talk’ to me online.’ She paused, briefly.

  ‘I take it she wasn’t at yours last night? It’s not as if I hadn’t checked.’

  ‘No, of course she wasn’t. She walked around Curdizan Low with Miranda. The girl from the Keepsake Arms, remember? Alice mentioned her on the recording, the one she did with Alison Clipper.’

  ‘But the pub’s closed down,’ said Cressida, puzzled.

  ‘The whole of Curdizan Low’s closed down. Think, Cressida! You went there.’

  ‘So that’s where she went,’ said Cressida, slowly. ‘If only I’d known, I’d have got myself down to the Low straight away. My daughter alone on a building site, in the middle of the night!’

  ‘But she wasn’t alone,’ I said patiently, ‘and it wasn’t a building site at all. She was with Miranda, who lived in the past and Alice went back to the past with her. And I did too.’

  The phone went silent, I thought she’d hung up. ‘Cressida?’ I said. ‘Are you still there?’

  ‘You want me to believe all this?’

  ‘Look Cressida, I was there, and I saw the streets and the pub, the place was alive, and the very next morning, I heard Miranda arguing with her mother.’

  ‘But what about Alice?’

  ‘She and Miranda went down a tunnel, the one that led to Curdizan Church.’

  ‘Just like you were afraid she would.’

  ‘But I didn’t know she would go with Miranda. I couldn’t follow her through the tunnel, the door was locked and I couldn’t get in and Alice got back to the present before me, but she has been with me for part of the day. Guinevere Jones left me a note.’

  ‘The journalist,’ said Cressida, coldly. ‘I’m finding this hard to believe, Aleph.’

  ‘I followed them into the alley, Cressida, I thought the child with Miranda was Alice. I was right, she was. And as for believing, you were the one who first saw Tom.’

  ‘Tom, yes, the boy from the census. Was he there?’

  ‘Not that I saw. But I did met Norah, she’s the horse and a bloke called Scotty, you wouldn’t want to meet him, late at night. Or anytime, really.’

  ‘We have to talk, I’m coming over.’

  ‘No,’ I said, ‘send Alice instead. I’ll try to discover what’s the matter. But don’t get your hopes up, Alice is stubborn.’ Just like her mother.

  When Alice turned up. It was barely light.

  ‘I thought you’d be here much sooner than this. I was starting to worry. You shouldn’t be wandering around in the dark.’

  ‘I didn’t want to come here, that’s why I’m late.’

  ‘I guessed,’ I said. ‘Now, look, Alice, it’s time you grew up. Cressida might not be the perfect mum but she is your mum, and if you’ve got a problem, about her or the boy, the one who died, you owe it to your mother to sort things out. Just tell her the truth, or if you can’t do that, tell someone else, a teacher, or a friend’s mum, or even me. Before it destroys both of you.’ Alice got up.

  She wandered over to the kitchen window and peered outside at the darkening day. I knew she was thinking of Curdizan churchyard, the way she’d seen it, instead of how it was right now, a modern courtyard with all the trappings. She sighed heavily.

  ‘It’s not that I don’t care,’ she said. ‘It’s not that she’s done anything wrong, well nothing she intended to do. I don’t blame her, how could I possibly blame my mum? If only she knew.’ She turned away from the window to face me. Her face was all pain.

  ‘The thing is Aleph, if she knew the truth, if it all came out, our lives would never be the same again, and she’d grow to hate me for letting her know. And I know if I speak, it will all come out in a row or something, even if I don’t mean it to. The moment I’m angry I’ll blurt it out. So, it’s best not to talk and then it won’t happen.’

  ‘You have to tell someone, Alice, believe me. And I really do think that now is the time. Don’t you agree?’ I waited, patiently.

  But Alice didn’t answer, she just stood there, staring, a big fat tear rolling down one cheek.

  Chapter 79

  Then – Miranda

  ‘Someone to see you Miranda,’ said Cath. Miranda pushed the hair back from her face.

  The bar was heaving, crawling with folk, gearing up for a rowdy night of singing in the parlour, and on top of all that, Tom was late. O
n nights like this, she hated her mother for what she’d done. Miranda had been at the factory all day. She raised her eyes to see Mary-Ann.

  ‘I didn’t think you believed in pubs. Especially the pubs that hold music nights.’

  ‘Well, you thought wrong,’ Mary-Ann insisted. She was dressed in her finest outdoor clothes, as if she was going to visit the sick. Miranda smiled.

  ‘I thought you and I were friends, Mary-Ann, until you started telling me lies.’

  ‘I’ve told you no lies,’ said Mary-Ann, sharply, ‘well perhaps just a few, but none that matter. Maybe you’re jealous, because I’m getting married.’

  ‘Not when you’re marrying Wetherby Eisen, no, I’m not. If anything, I feel sorry for you. I notice, you’re still waiting for a ring. Instead, he’s given you a cheap necklace.’

  ‘That’s a horrible thing to say, Miranda, it’s the thought that counts, not the value of the gift. I don’t know why I bother with you.’

  ‘Because we help you out at the church. With the soup on Sundays and the jumble sales, and that reminds me, where’s my dress?’

  ‘We don’t have it. Mrs Mace told you that.’

  ‘That’s not what I was told by Ma. She shouldn’t have given the dress to you, but now that you’ve got it, I want it back.’

  ‘I’ve already told you, we don’t have it. I only came round to give you this. I’d like you to give it to Thomas, from me.’ She unfastened the beads from around her neck.

  ‘Wetherby Eisen’s engagement gift? You’re giving it to Tom? He won’t be pleased.’

  ‘It wasn’t from Wetherby, that wasn’t true. I only told you that to save face. I didn’t want you to think I was soft, saying yes to marriage, without as much as a ring or a token.’

  ‘So you do lie then,’ said Miranda, slyly.

  ‘I’ve said so, haven’t I? This was a white one, totally harmless. The necklace was given to me by Louise.’

  ‘To you, not to Eisen? So Louise might not be dead after all?’