by Helen Slavin
Cob Cottage
Anna slept more soundly than she had in perhaps three years. For the first time her head quieted, her thoughts stilled, and she drifted off thinking about her mother, about the legacy they had inherited from their grandmother, thinking that, for the first time in a long time, Anna Way might have some kind of a future.
She was in the kitchen before the others, although she had heard Emz’s alarm go off a little while ago. In a few weeks it would be the first anniversary of last year’s Terrible October and now she felt she could face that. It was like a peak she was heading towards and she understood that the view from there would be different. She decided against making breakfast today as she was already late for work.
“I’m off…” she called out to the cottage and headed out.
* * *
Emz was not going to school today. Instead she was already out in Havoc Wood making her way to the boundary where the trees from Havoc Wood touched branches with the trees of Leap Wood. She thought she might have been feeling hungry by now and Winn was sure to have a fried egg sandwich handy but no, there was something about last night’s dream that had unsettled Emz and she couldn’t shake it.
She had fallen asleep in her old room at Cob Cottage. It didn’t feel quite familiar yet, with the recent incidents they had had no time to clear away the general ‘holiday cottage’ feeling of the place and bring back all of their own possessions. Even so, she had felt safe and comfortable and of course, at home, so the sleep she drifted into ought to have been deep. Instead she dreamt, the dream switching in almost immediately.
Havoc Wood. She could smell it. Running. Running. Running. As if the trees stepped aside for her. But it was not her path and she was not the one running. She was being carried. She felt arms hooked beneath her, breath panting above her. She couldn’t see him. She could feel his heartbeat, the race it ran beneath her palm. She couldn’t see his face, just taste his mouth. Delicious. His hands on her, mapping her into his memory and he was pressing her deep into the earth, smear of mud, spore of mould, and inside she was molten fire.
Awake. She glanced at her clock and, although it said five and it was still darkish outside, Emz got up anyway. It was a moment’s work to pull on her jeans and sweatshirt, a few moments more took her out of Cob Cottage.
As she came up past Cooper’s Pond in Leap Woods she opened up the hide, sliding back the shutters and checking for yesterday’s litter before making her way up the path to reception.
“For God’s sake girlie. Haven’t you put the kettle on yet?” Winn greeted her. She was attempting to wrestle some medication into a cantankerous squirrel. “Oh, pack it in, you stupid rodent. I tell you small beastie, if you’ve this much energy I think we can chuck you back into the wild,” she yelled at the squirrel. Emz said nothing, moved through into the kitchen.
“Did you see the news?” Winn, her face red from her struggles with the squirrel washed her hands at the sink. Emz’s heart dipped a little, she was not feeling up to a long discussion about Tighe Rourke and his terrible truck-related demise.
“Which bit?” Emz hedged. Winn was outraged.
“Which bit? That bloody awful bank robbery in Castlebury. Terrible old to do. I tell you…” she reached down their mugs, “you’re going to have to pop down to town Emz, we’re almost out of teabags. Anyway, I tell you… I’ve always maintained there are only two things you need to keep your money safe.”
Relieved to be talking financial advice rather than traffic accidents, Emz asked:
“And what two things are they, Winn?”
“A mattress and a twelve bore,” Winn said.
* * *
Last night, Charlie had dreams of being challenged to brew a special lake water beer for a strange old man, bent over and ancient as the castle. The dream went on all night because he was very demanding and there were lots of lists of herbs and decoctions in it that she wondered if she would ever remember. In fact, now, when she ought to be paying attention to what Aron was saying, she was in fact trying to recall the second dream list. A few of the names of things printed themselves in her head alongside images of the plants themselves and where in Havoc Wood she had seen them.
“Are you even listening?” Aron had stopped talking and was staring at her. He had clearly been staring at her for some time.
“Sorry. Lot on my mind.”
“Too true. Shifting that bloody haunted cottage would be high on my list,” he laughed.
“Haunted cottage?”
It was Charlie’s day off and they were sitting in a café at the marina, outside so that Aron could smoke. The cloud of it kept drifting across Charlie and the scents within it were irritating. She could smell, she was certain, every last toxin in it. It was making her nauseous. “Your Gran pops it there. Then it turns out it’s the haunted holiday cottage…” Aron grinned.
“Haunted holiday cottage?” Charlie had forgotten the circumstances of the refund they’d had to issue. Had she told Aron about that? She must have done. She could still see the father of the family, the rest of them crushed into their car with all their belongings, white-faced. She was struggling to recall the details now, at the time the sisters had been more concerned with the family and with the process of refunding their money swiftly. What had the father said? She could recall his face, remember Anna being sympathetic but the reason had seemed silly, an over-reaction. What had he said?
“Haunted. Fuck yes! People knocking on the door all night. Remember?”
With a new clarity, Charlie did remember. The family had been disturbed each one of the three nights they had stayed. It bothered Charlie now where at the time it had seemed a nuisance. She thought of the three nights, of whoever it was who had knocked at Cob Cottage and not found help waiting there.
“I always said it was a creepy little place, up in the woods, like a fucking horror movie.”
“You’ve never been there.”
Aron’s laugh was hard and metallic-sounding. “I don’t intend ever going there.”
“I’m living there,” Charlie announced. She had been talking earlier about letting the lease finish on her flat and he had ignored her comments. He looked shocked.
“What? Is that why you were on about letting the lease go on the flat?” He seemed relieved and Charlie suddenly had a revelatory moment. Clearly, he had assumed the comment about her flat was her subtle hint that she wanted to move in with him. Charlie looked out across the marina at the boats. Everything there was very white and made of plastic and it occurred to her, why didn’t they make green boats? Or red ones? Cheap white. All the cafés at the edges were glassy and slick and for a second she was distracted by an idea of the way the dirt car park crunched as you drove in at Drawbridge Brewery, the comfort and creakiness of the low beamed ceiling on the top floor of the barn, that semi-circular window at the back end of the office which was always covered in cobwebs as intricate as lace.
“You’re moving into the cottage?” Aron was shaking his head.
“Why are you shaking your head?” Charlie asked.
“Because I think you should have asked me what I thought. You living there alone? Or you got a sister or too many going with you?”
She didn’t like him when he was like this. He seemed thinner and sharper. She wanted to walk away but she couldn’t.
“The three of us are moving in. Family thing. Anna needs us just at the minute…”
Aron laughed again, it was a short sound like someone banging on a metal drum, unpleasant.
“What if I need you?”
Aron did not use words such as ‘love’ or ‘need’ and so Charlie was blindsided which is how they ended up driving, not to the designer outlet centre on the other side of Castlebury as planned, but up Old Castle Road.
But they were already arguing by the time they hit the gravel track and then, at last, the dirt track.
“If you’re giving directions baby you need to give them… not just say ‘oh turn in here’ where there�
��s no bloody tur… for Christ’s sake this isn’t even a road!”
Aron’s car bumped and ground its way towards the cottage. At least, as they pulled up he admired the view.
“Shit… that is quite cool.” He stepped out of the car and took a few paces towards the side of the house. “I’m not big on rustic but… that is quite cool.”
They moved around the side of the house towards the porch. Aron took in the front of the cottage and began to laugh, a richer sound than before and his face lighting up.
“You are quids in here Chaz baby… quids in, haunted or not… fuck me.” He turned to the porch steps, stumbled up the first two almost sprawling face first onto the decking, only just at the last second catching hold of one of the chairs and steadying himself. “Need to get that fixed…” he said, casually and turned once more to take in the view.
They headed inside. Or they tried. The porch door was stuck, Aron shouldering it. Charlie was puzzled. The door had been fine that morning.
“Needs sanding,” he said. “There another way in?”
They moved back around the house and Charlie opened the kitchen door. As it shut it did so on the fingers of Aron’s left hand.
Many protests and an ice pack later they moved through the arch into the sitting area. Aron tripped over Anna’s little tapestry footstool and twisted his ankle.
“What is going on?” he said, kicking at the chair leg and giving a yowl as the hard wood of the leg resisted him.
“Can you sit in it instead of abusing it?” Charlie pulled the chair round slightly and Aron sat in it. He sniffed. Sniffed again.
“There’s a funny smell.”
Charlie sniffed. She couldn’t smell anything, except the usual soft scent of mud that Cob Cottage carried sometimes if it had been raining.
They tried eating, Charlie picking a selection of leftovers for them out of the fridge. Aron dripped ketchup onto his t-shirt, bit his tongue so hard it bled and spilled ice-cold juice down his pants.
“For Christ’s sake… I look like I peed myself…”
For a short time he wandered around in a towel as Charlie dug out Emz’s hairdryer and dried his ice cold pants. As he did so he seemed intent upon taking an inventory. In the kitchen he opened a drawer and as he shut it he caught his thumb in it. Opening a cupboard door almost broke his nose, the panel swinging out to clip him in the face. At the sink he was splashed again.
“Fucking dodgy hot tap!” he spluttered, taking the towel off for a moment to dry at his hair.
By now Charlie was interested rather than amused. It was very clear that Cob Cottage did not like Aron. He knocked his forehead on the arch into the sitting room, he caught his shin on the coffee table. The final evidence, for Charlie at least, was that he tried the front door, the one from the porch that he had a tug of war with before, that had not opened at all. This time it opened so speedily that Aron lost his balance and tumbled forwards, skidded across the porch and landed, his pride and backside crumpled, on the grass at the foot of the porch steps. It was even more surprising to Charlie since the door did not, usually, open outwards.
“I am not staying here…” he said, flustered. He looked ridiculous, in his socks, covered with a towel and ketchup making tomato bloodstains on his t-shirt.
“You weren’t invited to.” Charlie heard the words coming out of her. They sounded like her voice, but it was as if someone was typing the letters into her. She had to confess, they were the words she wanted to use.
“What?” Aron stared at her, his face creased with puzzlement, as if she was an annoying foreign tourist he couldn’t understand.
“You aren’t staying here. You weren’t invited to.”
Aron straightened up, his hands sliding to his hips and his head rolling back slightly on his neck as a noise of complete exasperation escaped from him.
“Alright. Okay. You’ve had a rough week. I get it. I think it’s time I took over… get your stuff… you’re coming to stay at mine.”
* * *
There wasn’t a clock in the new brew house, so Michael Chance looked at his watch which he suspected had stopped because it said it was six thirty, and he knew he’d left the Chamber of Commerce shindig at nine at the earliest.
“It’s some time after nine o’clock…” he said, his voice light so as not to startle Charlie. She was busy at the far worktop with an array of lists.
“Hey?” Charlie only half looked up. “… Nine? I thought it was later than that?” She reached and checked her mobile. He watched her delete several messages, some of which were clearly spelt out in capitals. “It’s nearly ten.”
Michael crossed the floor. The smaller experimental tun was giving off heat now so she’d clearly been brewing.
“What’s cooking?”
“Well. I came here intending to have a tinker with the blackberry fermenting thing, but…”
Charlie was stroking her face with her left hand, the fingers rubbing softly and curling into themselves as if she was trying to pull the thoughts out of her head. Michael Chance thought she looked her most beautiful in this stance. Or was it when she was up the ladder with the hop bucket? Or maybe when she was hosing down the mash tun. He had a sudden fantasy of Charlotte Way, naked except for wellingtons, hosing down the mash tun in the main brew house.
“Now I’m not sure. I got distracted with this other project and I think I might have been getting my lists confused. Plus, do you have any idea how poisonous wormwood is?”
“I’m not very well up on…”
“I mean you can brew with it, I do know that you can put it in absinthe for instance…”
“You aren’t brewing absinthe, are you?”
Charlie leaned against the worktop.
“No… But it’s one of those things you can use but you have to be careful with. Bitter for a start. There’s a few different kinds too. Right. Well. I need to look it up…Anyway… I thought I’d just brew up something… different.” She looked at the tun with some degree of suspicion.
“I look forward to a tasting session.”
He watched as she circled a few items on each list, putting a question mark here and underlining there.
“What are you doing here Charlie?” he asked. It had been her day off today and yet here she was, putting in extra time.
“I said, just brewing some… stuff.” Charlie tapped her pencil at the paper in front of her. Michael waited. There was a moment or so of silence and then she threw down her pencil. She took in a deep breath and let out a troubled sigh.
“I have no idea. That is my problem at the moment Michael. I don’t know what I am doing anywhere.”
“If we go to the pub, would you know what you were doing there?” Michael asked.
* * *
They drove to a small pub at the back end of Woodcastle, the Ragged Staff. It was very small and the beams that propped it up were rough-hewn.
“They might sprout leaves at any minute…” Michael joked as they tried the guest ale.
“Do you believe in signs?” Charlie asked after their chat had woven a path from her grandmother’s death to the attack at the brewery and then to the lake incident and the demise of Tighe Rourke.
“Road signs?” Michael joked once more. Charlie gave him a cold look. “I take it you mean signs and portents type signs?”
She nodded. She was thinking of Aron, his hands on his towelled hips, his face weary and patronising.
“Depends I suppose… on whether I think the signs are bad or not.”
Charlie nodded again and thought of trapped fingers, of missed footings, of Aron’s car lurching towards Cob Cottage.
“I mean for instance if I saw a man in a hooded cloak carrying a scythe I might be inclined to think it was a sign of a fancy-dress party rather than… a sign sort of sign.”
He sipped some more beer and winced slightly at the taste. “I mean… where do you stand on magpies? If you’re an ornithologist… you could be keen… if you’re a folklorist, le
ss so.”
Charlie nodded. They sat in silence for some time. Michael thought that the silence was, probably, a bad sign.
* * *
The Way sisters spent a quiet evening at Cob Cottage, the only sound was the rain battering down outside, the lake window streaked with silvered runnels of water. Emz struggled at the kitchen table, keen to complete a couple of stray pieces of her History essay but feeling tired and restless. Anna had not sat down for an hour or more, was posted, sentinel-like by the lake window, lost in her thoughts. Charlie was making another fermenting and brewing list. The words were jumbling strangely and where before she had struggled to make sense of them, now she let that notion go and looked at the jumbling words. There was, to her disappointment, no sign of a map emerging. She pushed aside the disappointment and let herself observe the jumble of letters. This was not a map, this was a recipe, it was trying to rearrange itself so, clearly, some part of it, some ingredient or other must be wrong. It was an interesting thought. She liked it very much and reached for her notebook and a fresh sheet of paper and began rearranging the list.
After fifteen minutes it still had not settled and it was making her eyes ache. She looked up from it.
“Do you think there’s a reason that we haven’t all gone off to bed yet? Because I for one am shattered…”
The other sisters turned to look at her. She clarified her point. “I want to go to bed. I’m tired. But I can’t go to bed. It’s like I’m waiting for something.”
“Me too.”
“What are we waiting for d’you think?” Emz asked, shuffling a few papers so she could look busy. As she did so there was a distinct knock at the front door, followed by two more.
“That.” Charlie said
“Who is it d’you think?” Emz asked.
“Let’s find out… shall we?” Anna was already moving to the door. As she opened it the wind rose and pushed it violently back into the house nearly knocking Anna over. An eddy of wet whirlwinded through Emz’s papers scattering them onto the floor. Charlie came to Anna’s assistance, braving the elements to take a quick look outside as Emz crouched by the table, gathering up her notes.
