by Nina Milton
At the far corner of the cottage stood a massive tree. Its solid trunk sprouted into powerful branches. I struggled through overgrowth until I could touch its deeply fissured bark, as black as coal tar. The tree was bare of leaves, but from the end of each twig hung long catkins with soft green bells, like unfastened necklaces. Instantly, I knew this was a black poplar. I’m no authority on trees, but Rhiannon frequently used such a tree for its healing qualities. She thought the black poplar was darkly magical but with genuine good intentions, and as I leaned against this one, I felt the truth of that. It had aided Cliff in his greatest time of need. He’d fallen through its branches and escaped from the torment of the Wetland Murderer.
I stared up until my neck cricked. Twenty-three years had passed and the poplar had continued to stretch and grow since the house was abandoned. It was pushing heavily against the wall of the cottage like an undefeated sumo wrestler, and one branch had smashed through an upstairs window and crept over the sill.
I reached up to a low branch, cupping my hands round it and fixing the sole of my boot on the trunk. As a kid, I’d been a champion climber of trees. I was taller now and supposedly stronger, but I soon discovered that my childhood ease among the branches had been replaced with short breath and a locked jaw. I clung to that first branch like death, unable to move, until suddenly the rhythm of climbing came back to me and I was off.
In minutes I was sitting astride the branch that fed through the window. I took a rest while I examined the frame at close quarters. I could see shark teeth triangles of glass still imbedded in brittle putty, and my heart sank. I would have to get rid of them, or climb down again.
I eased forward. The branch shifted as my weight pushed against its narrower end. I felt my seat dislodge. The sensation of ice-cold fear for your life tore through me. I grabbed at twigs to steady myself. The unmown grass was a long way down, and I was a lot heavier than Cliff had been when he’d fallen through these branches.
Centimetre by centimetre, I crawled towards the window until I was close enough to touch it. Pulling the sleeve of my coat down, I grasped the hem so that my fist was covered and bashed at the teeth of glass through this armour. Just once, a vicious point sheared across the back of my hand. The blood oozed, slow but livid red.
The cut was a warning. I wrapped a tissue around the site and eased every single bit of jagged glass out of the crumbling putty before I dipped my head through the frame. The branch held my weight because the windowsill was supporting it. With slow care I lifted my legs into the room. On the inside of the windowsill, the branch quickly bent and drooped, sickly with lack of air and sun. I slid off, landing on the bare floorboards with a yelp.
I was in a small room with a low ceiling. Cobwebs hung like the hammocks of grey ghosts from every cranny. The walls were papered with such heavy-duty Anaglypta that thick layers of grime clung to its moulded swirls. The floor was layered with dust and I was lying in it.
I peered around the room, trying to tap into its essence. All I could feel was the bounding of my pulse. The room was almost empty of furniture. A cane-bottom chair lay on its side, the cane seat ripped and missing in its middle. A single mattress lay in one corner. I stared at the wall a metre above the mattress. Screwed through the dusty wallpaper was a thick metal ring. The sort that’s used at country markets to keep bulls from wandering.
I froze through to the core of my body. This had to be the epicentre of Cliff’s appalling experience—the place I’d seen in the first journey I’d made. I stepped closer. The ring was made of silver steel and as thick as my finger. It had been driven deep in, but even so, I could see the plaster disturbed around its root. Something or someone—maybe more than one someone—had tried to drag it from its mooring. But each attempt had failed; it was too deeply imbedded. As I put my hand out to it, a slight movement, a rustle in my ear, made me glance at the mattress. Its contents were exploding, wadding and springs spilling out through the torn cover. With escalating revulsion, I realized that some form of rodent had made this bed into a nest.
I ran, powder flying up from the floor as if this was the surface of the moon. I tried not to breathe in or look back, but I felt my skin prickle.
On the upper landing, I stood for a moment. My voice crackled from under-use. “Aidan? Aidan? Are you here?” This would be a terrible place to imprison a small boy, but I had to check it out. The boards creaked beneath my boots, warning me not to trust them. I passed two more bedrooms. Neither contained anything more sinister that a single dead sparrow lying on its back in a corner.
When I reached the top of the stairs, I discovered what had been barring the front door. Most of the treads and banister rails had collapsed through the stairwell and lay in a pile below. The landing stopped dead where the stairs had once began. I stamped my foot in frustration and dust and grit showered through the opening, snow-flaking down to the ground floor.
I could get down there, I told myself, dropping onto my haunches.
You are kidding, my saner self replied.
I turned so that I was facing belly-in and slid a leg over the unprotected stairwell. I eased the other after it until I was balancing on my arms. I’d always heard this was the way to fall the distance of one storey. Once you’re dangling from the tips of your fingers, your feet are less than a metre from the ground below. But my rib cage was lodged on the rim of the existing floorboards. Allowing my body to slide down so that I would be holding on with outstretched hands seemed an impossibility.
The boards creaked at me in alarm as nails were drawn out of antique holes by my weight. Regardless of my desire to get to the ground floor, I was about to reach it in double-quick time. My coat zip caught on a protruding nail as my grasp slipped. For a couple of seconds I was swaying in midair, like some insect that had flown slap-bang into a web. My coat had protected me in the garden, but now it became a menace. I felt the zip give and remember too late that the dangling arms trick should only be used in case of emergency—fire, that sort of thing—not just because you fancied it. There was a shriek from the ancient wood as a floorboard sprang loose and flew out into the stairwell—the board whose nail I was hanging from. I landed in a heap on the red and black tiles of the hallway and the board tumbled down on top of me.
I groaned feebly, but no one was going to come to my rescue. My knees were smarting, so I rolled up my trouser legs to examine them. They’d taken the brunt of the drop and were raw and stinging. Ah, now it’s in circumstances like these that a knowledge of herbalism comes into its own. I took another tissue from my coat pocket, spat on it, and dabbed them better. I checked the scratch on my hand. The blood had stopped oozing, but the cut looked angry. I gave mental thanks to Gloria, who was severe about things like tetanus boosters.
For long minutes, I stayed on the floor—not because I was unable to get up, but because the dread feeling I’d first sensed in the upstairs room had followed me in my descent. Anyone coming close to this place would have felt the sad cloud of melancholy that lay over the cottage. It was no wonder it had never been claimed or resold. Not even knowing why, people had given it a wide berth until it had fallen into complete disrepair.
When I finally overcame the sensations of foreboding that kept me pinned on the floor, I headed towards what was still a recognisable kitchen. Around the hard edge of the grey stone floor stood a kitchen dresser and a grease-coated New World cooker. A ceramic sink was fastened to the wall, but when I tried the taps, no water came from them.
“Hello?” I shouted. “Anyone here?” I felt silly, listening for tiny noises through the drear stillness, but I wasn’t going to leave until I’d searched every closet big enough to hold a five-year-old boy.
I heaved back the rusty bolt on the kitchen door and stomped through the overgrowth of garden, grateful to be out of the rank house. I discovered what must have once been an outhouse, but only ivied bricks of fallen walls remained. Reluctantly, I went back
into the cottage.
There were two other main rooms downstairs. The back room was as forsaken as the upper storey. The one at the front was lined with rugs, eaten away by rodents and unrecognisable under their weight of dirt. The boarded window cast a grim darkness over everything.
On one wall was a sideboard. On another, a dining table. In the middle of the room was a shabby maroon sofa. I took cautious steps towards the sideboard and kneeled to click open the tiny doors. It was stuffed with filthy plates and cups, the old pale blue type with fluted edges. I breathed in, tasting ancient dust. There was no boy hidden here.
I called out with a sudden urgency. “If you’re here—I’m a friend—I’m here to help—try to make a noise!”
Foolish girl, I thought, sounding uncannily like Gloria. You are the first person here since they boarded up the windows. All this yelling is pointless.
I got up from my knees and brushed down my jeans. It was time to go, and I was glad.
When I’d called out to Aidan, I’d been hoping for a creak or a tap or a grunt. What I heard was not a noise at all. It was a lifting inside my head, as if I’d just knocked back a couple of double gins. A sort of hushed tinnitus.
“Trendle?” I said and found my voice was unsteady.
Sabbie, Trendle hissed in my head. It’s okay, Sabbie.
Something was making me tremble like a beaten dog. I stumbled backwards until my shoulders hit the wall. There was a spirit presence in this room. I had no idea what or who was with me here, but I was not alone, and my call had brought them out. The sofa was shimmering as if the room had a heat haze. I couldn’t take drag my eyes away. The back of the sofa undulated as if it was a flag in a breeze. The effect was so hypnotic that, without warning, I was walking with Trendle, the trance coming down upon me in a moment of time. I could feel the plaster of the wall behind me, but also the cool air of another world chilling my face. The room was visible as if through a dusky net curtain. There was a muted hum in my head.
“Where are we?” I asked.
“Same place, different plane of existence.” To my horror, Trendle’s voice didn’t rise above a whisper. “Don’t worry. Nothing can hurt us.”
“What? What can’t hurt us?” In the dim and flickering light, I saw Trendle beside me now, fully formed and stock-still. His short claws dug deep into the dirty pile of the rug. His fur was standing on end all over his body—my own hair prickled my scalp. I was in the room as it must have once been. A television in the corner fizzed with electrical snow. I kept staring at it, terrified to know what else might be in this previous room.
“You must look,” said Trendle.
“I don’t want to look,” I sobbed at him.
My eyes were pulled towards the sofa. The shimmering body of a woman was sitting at one end with her legs crossed. They seemed painfully thin, emerging from under a tight skirt, one stiletto dangling from her toes. I could not make out her features—she was filled with a hard light, like an overexposed photo taken by a trembling hand—but I could see that one arm was stretched along the back of the sofa, and as I followed its length, I realized that a second blurry outline was manifesting, shifting and changing until a fully human form had joined her. This creature had risen into my trance from somewhere indefinably drear and dark. A thickset form, sitting with his legs splayed out as if just coming round from a nap. His face was lean and closely shaved, as was his head, while the woman’s hair sprouted wildly from her head, creating a halo in the incandescence about her.
As soon as the figures became substantial, I knew I must not lose this moment, which I’d fallen into without intent. I was drifting between the substantial world and a zone of dream and illusion. I had called these shadow beings to me; if I let them fade, I might never regain what I was witnessing now.
The woman extended a thin arm towards me and, dimmed but distinct, I heard her words.
“Help us.”
I could not move. Her voice transfixed me. My chest cavity was crushed in a sort of vise; blood rushed in my ears like the beat of giant wings. Without doubt these were the spirits of unspeakable people. They were asking for my assistance. I could not possibly help the killers of children.
Bile gurgled at the base of my throat. “What are your names?” I asked, silently.
“You can call me Kissie, darling,” said the woman. She had to search in her memory for her name, as if she’d not thought of it for a long time. “We’re Kissie and Pinchie.” She looked at me in such an openly inviting way that I felt my spine contract. The man pushed her, and she swirled up into the air for a moment.
“Shut up,” he hissed.
“No, I won’t. I want to tell it.” Her voice vacillated as if the spirit world connection was weak.
A horror gripped me. I felt my rib cage rise and fall as my breathing panicked. My jaw was open so wide that a dentist could have pulled a tooth. “Stay calm,” whispered Trendle.
The woman began to speak. Her voice was low and rasped as if she’d smoked too often for too long. “All that blood. All that blood!”
“Fat lotta help you were,” said the man.
“I fell asleep in front the telly. Coronation Street. Too much port and brandy. All that blood down your T-shirt. You cried out.”
“Wake up, you stupid bitch!”
“You never said that.”
“I couldn’t fucking speak. I had a bread knife sticking in my chest.”
“You tried to speak. But blood came out of your mouth.”
“Stupid bitch. You could’ve saved me.”
“I couldn’t’ve! It was too late. I couldn’t move. The knife came out of you dripping blood. I couldn’t stop it. Too quick. Outta you and into me. Hardly hurt. Right into me belly, once, twice. Coughing. They were fighting on Corrie. Couldn’t hear ’em prop’ly. Couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t see.”
“Stupid bitch.”
“Stop swiping at me.”
“What does it matter now?” I asked them, suddenly exasperated at their bickering.
They broke off and stared at me. “We want to go,” she said. “But we can’t. We can’t leave. We’re still attached.”
“It’s all your fucking fault,” said the man. He raised grizzled hands and put them firmly around the woman’s neck, rocking her back and forth. She pummelled him with blows.
I had never seen creatures of the spirit world behave in such a ghastly way. They were embodied with hate. I could not bear to watch them. Both my hands were clamped against my open mouth, stifling my breath. The grappling figures were engaged in a silent dance, one attempting to strangle the other, twisting together faster and tighter until they were a single, indistinct outline. As they faded before my eyes, the woman raised her voice in desperation. It pierced my mind like a knife on a plate.
“Help us!”
I heard her cry long after she’d disappeared altogether.
It felt dark in the cottage. My throat was dry and foul and my skin ached. The physical proximity of spirits had brought me this vision. Help us, she’d cried. We’re still attached.
The faded spirits had gone without making the confession I’d hoped for. They’d left me with a burning desire to find them again. I forced myself to go over to the sofa. I lifted cushions, as if the spirits of Kissie and Pinchie might be hidden below them. A spider with thin legs, abnormally long even for a spider, ran up my arm. I gave a high, quavering scream and flung the cushions to the corners of the room.
You’re perfectly safe, girl. I always hear Gloria’s voice in my head when I’m being silly. Wait until there’s something to scream about, for goodness sake.
The only other thing beneath the sofa cushions was a woman’s plastic hair slide, pale blue with a zigzag of glitter running through it. I picked it up and stared at it. A single strand of platinum blond hair was trapped in its teeth. In this bare and abandoned place, t
he slide was the first thing that might be part of the story Kissie and Pinchie had started to tell. I slid it into my back pocket, wondering what else I might find in or under the sofa. I rested my hands on the nearest of its arms, stuck my bum in the air and pushed. The sofa squeaked as it rolled and the cheap mat below caught in its casters and slid away with it, revealing the floorboards.
They were a mess—previously pulled up and slotted back down. Some had been sawn through. The sawing was inexpert, even to my eye, which lacked sawing experience. The boards didn’t fit properly any longer.
Why would people saw through their floorboards? I wondered.
I hooked my fingers over the splintery edge of a board and pulled. With an echoing cry, it came away, revealing the cobwebby blackness beneath.
A smell of must rose up. Something pale reflected in the murky daylight. For a moment I thought I was still in a half trance, still seeing spirits. I grabbed at one loose board after another and they came away like slices of cheese. I knelt, cautious of whatever was under the floor, and peered into the hole I’d made.
Pale, curved strips lay in the bowels of this room, resembling two hollowed mounds. They looked like the wrecks of upturned miniature boats. I had to bend closer; I had to be sure what I was seeing.
Then, with a shiver of abhorrence, I was sure. My body tensed like steel wire, every muscle quaking uncontrollably. I took a step back, then another. When finally I was able to turn my eyes away, I ran from the room, uttering sounds that built into a juddering yell.
Now you’ve got something to scream about, dear, I heard Gloria comment in my head.
But I didn’t take any notice of the thought. I was too busy running.
FIFTEEN
I drove straight home from Brokeltuft Cottage, hitting sixty until a speed camera flashed me and I prayed to the spirits that it had run out of film. But when I opened my front door and threw myself in, I felt no better. What had I been speeding for? So I could pour myself a gin or two or five in the hope I’d blot out the half memory of what I only thought I’d seen? Put on the kettle and have a nice, reviving cuppa? Call the cops?
