In the Moors

by Nina Milton

  “There is a long-haired cat with beautiful ginger fur who calls herself Slatterly.” She giggled. “Have you ever heard such a thing? Together, we’ve had many adventures.” She turned a page. “It is a lot of fun, is it not?”

  I nodded. At that moment, I had almost forgotten what fun felt like, and it was good to be reminded. “What’s this sketch here?” I asked, pointing.

  “The last time I met Slatterly, she took me to such a peaceful place. We came to a still lake and on a tiny island in the middle was a baby—a foetus, really—all curled up with its umbilical cord feeding into the earth of the island. It felt calm and right.”

  “What d’you think it might mean?”

  Marianne looked down at her book, taking a moment to think. “I wondered if this baby was me. I asked Slatterly not to take me back into a previous life, not just yet anyhow, and she hasn’t attempted to do so. But I thought perhaps she had taken me back to the beginning of this life, to show me how I had recovered from the previous one—how pleased I had been to be born again.”

  I nodded. “That sounds good. Has it helped?”

  “Yes. Things feel much better at work. The telephone no longer bothers me. And my boss.”

  “Will Clyde?”

  “Yes. I can hear him speak without a shudder. Even about documents.” She gave a little laugh. “Slatterly has been helping me feel more confident about my work. I can see that Simpson and Grouche is not the only firm I could work for. In a way, it may be time to move on, even before the redundancies are announced.”

  “Sounds sensible,” I said. Her newfound energy was beginning to restore mine. “I ought to go and change, Marianne, so that we can move into the therapy room and have a proper session.”

  “I think not. We should not work if you are feeling out of sorts. Instead, you can tell me all that is wrong with you.”

  I let out a stifled laugh. “Apart from man trouble? Don’t ask! I’ve got myself caught up in stuff that doesn’t concern me, and I don’t think I’m handling it well.”

  “You know what you would advise me?” said Marianne.

  “No,” I replied, struggling to keep the surprise out of my voice. “What would I advise?”

  “Seek aid from your guardians.”

  “Yeah, okay. Well, I’ve done that.” But I realized this wasn’t completely true. Lately, I’d been so caught up with Cliff’s awful inner world that I’d neglected my own. I grasped her hand. “But you’re right, Marianne, that’s great advice—tremendous wisdom. I’m so proud of you. You’re clearly gaining skills that are going to help you time and again in the future.”

  To my horror, Marianne’s eyes filmed with tears. “You think I come towards the end of our work together?” Out of her elegant handbag came a pack of paper hankies. She extracted one and dabbed at her tears without unfolding it, carefully avoiding her mascara.

  “One or two more Sunday sessions and then you’ll only need an occasional checkup from me.”

  She sniffed and placed the tissue neatly back in the cellophane pack. It seemed like a magic trick, but I saw it with my own eyes, so I had to believe it could be done. “Not only the work will I miss, but you. You have become like a friend.”

  I grinned. Sometimes I’m rather relieved when I discharge a client, but I knew I’d miss Marianne. I just couldn’t believe that a career girl with a model figure wanted to be bosom buddies with a woman whose only nail covering was dirt. “You can always pop in for a chat, when I’m not working.”

  “I come and make you tea?”

  “Please do.” We hugged. Swathes of warm affection passed from her into my chilled interior. It made me feel ready for anything.

  After Marianne had gone, I took one of last year’s aubergine moussakas out of the freezer and stuck it in the oven on a low heat, then got under the shower. I spent twenty minutes scrubbing as if I’d been in a nuclear zone, until Ivan was no longer sucking at my skin. As I threw my jeans into the wash, something fell from the pocket. It was the blue slide I’d found at Brokeltuft Cottage. I turned it over in my hand. I had seen this slide in my dream. But nothing seemed to link it with anything I already knew about the cottage. On the other hand, the strand of hair was still caught up in it. I had to consider that this might be a valuable piece of evidence. Or it might just make DC Abbott wet himself with laughter.

  Tomorrow I’d visit the police station, make a statement about what I’d seen, hand over the slide. See Rey, perhaps. Or Abbott, ready with his thumbscrew and his rack. But for now, I wanted to take my client’s advice and journey just for myself.

  The blackness of my closed lids filled with moving coloured shapes; spirals and twisted teardrops, convolutions of cream and white flecked with mud brown. I thought of paisley, or doodles on a telephone pad. The patterns swirled and whorled in time with the drumbeat that thudded at the back of my head. I could hear a roar, as if there was an open mouth within the coils and curls. The white streaks loosed themselves from the dark rolling core as the shapes thundered on, all hooves and flying mane. The smell of brackish water came into my nostrils … fish … damp autumn forests. I was tumbling over and over until my head spun.

  “Trendle?” I asked. “What’s going on?” I felt short, damp fur under my fingers and the warmth of his elongated body. “What is it? Galloping horses?”

  “Almost.” He spoke into my ear. “White horses.”

  Then I saw clearly. The roll of waves. “We’re at sea?”

  “Not sea.”

  I tried to widen my vision. We were being swept along between high banks, pushed downstream at a great rate, carried along on a spring tide.

  “Get me out of here, Trendle.”

  “Hey,” cried my otter. “Just enjoy!” He leaped out of my arms and began to play, diving and leaping from above the rolling waves. “It’s a bore!” he squealed. “It’s a bore, but it’s not boring!”

  I know that we’d become a partnership, my otter and I, because by nature I am a playful person, just like Trendle, someone who tends to see the happy side of things. But sometimes his sunny nature is way too inappropriate. The water was rushing into my mouth and eyes, and he was being no help whatsoever. I splashed out, trying to head for the bank. I could see low branches stretching into the river. I thrust out my arms as I was hurled along. A branch smashed into my ribs, knocking the air from me. I clung to it, coughing and spitting. I could feel the rush of the bore dragging at my legs and hips, working to loosen my hold. The force was persistent. I felt my grip slide away.

  An arm, white and slender, came from nowhere. The fingers slid around my wrist. A woman was leaning out from the bank, supporting herself by the uprights of the tree. Her strength was enough to lift me clean out of surging waters. I felt myself dangle from her one arm, then my feet made contact with the slip of mud. I fell into her breast as I tried to scramble up the bank. She lifted me again and placed me on the path that ran alongside the riverbank. I gazed at the woman in awe.

  She wore a diaphanous cloak that swirled around her body, covering her hands, feet, and most of her head. There were eddies of blues, greens, foamy creams, blacks, and browns within her coverings. The fine flowing cloth masked her features. Surely this was a goddess or other high guardian.

  My heart fluttered. I made a deep bow. “You are the Lady of the river below us,” I hazarded.

  “Did it persuade you of my might?”

  I cast a glance towards that boiling body of water, racing against time, as if on a mission. “Too much. I came on this journey for healing and found myself battling for survival.”

  “That is something I love well in Sabrina Dare. She is a survivor.”

  “What are you saying? That I don’t need to be healed? But Ivan—”

  “Yes, Sabbie. There are threats in your life at the moment. More than one.”

  I took a step forward, but without seeming
to move, the Lady was the same distance from me as she had been. “What wisdom can you impart, Lady?”

  Maybe the tone of my voice was just a little sarcastic. I hadn’t meant it to be; I did know I was in the presence of an Old One. Still, she reacted in the instant. The shimmer of her cloak dazzled my eyes as she turned on the spot. When I could look again, she was gone, and with her, all the scene before me.

  I was back in my dream. Only now I was not dreaming. I looked around. I was in that most hideous of places, the kitchen at Brokeltuft Cottage. The figure still sat bowed on a low chair, brushing and brushing at their hair, as if they had brushed without stopping since I left the dream.

  “Who are you?” I asked, raising my voice, trying to gain control of this journey. My heart was racing as if I was still battling in the water; my breath was coming in fast gasps.

  My words created a reaction. The hand stopped brushing. The figure parted the sheen of hair with both its hands. But it did not part. It fell, like a wig, to the floor, revealing what was beneath.

  I cried out in revulsion. The obscene shine of the scalp was made more grotesque by scabs and blisters. The nose was blotched with red and so big that turned on itself until it hung over the mouth. It dripped slime.

  “Are you Kissie?” I hissed. “Or Pinchie?”

  The creature shook its head, but not at me. It hadn’t heard me at all. It was preoccupied to find itself in such a dreadful state, as if it, as much as I, had expected a beauty to emerge from the mane of hair, not this … horror. It tried to shake off the grotesqueness of its appearance, like a dog tries to rid itself of burrs, scratching the skin of its cheeks, pushing and pulling at the bulbous nose. There was no relief. It swept the hair up from the floor and tried to cover its pockmarked scalp, but the wig would no longer fit. The creature threw the wig at me and wailed in anguish. The gaping hole of the mouth showed blackened teeth filed to sharp points. I smelt the fetid odour of its breath. The cry grated on my ears.

  “Please,” I called. “Trendle!”

  Instantly I was on the soft grass beside Trendle’s brook. My knees trembled so much they couldn’t hold my weight, so I curled into a ball and lay, with my eyes closed tight, until the call-back sign came from my CD player.

  SIXTEEN

  “So,” said Rey. “You are finally prepared to make a statement.”

  I’d arrived at the police station at just after nine in the morning and was swiftly ushered into an interview room. Abbott and Buckley were sitting on either side of a small square table, with me between them like a prisoner. I didn’t respond. I refused to respond to such harassment. I’d told Abbott as much on Saturday.

  “How is Cliff?”

  “He’s in the remand wing of Horfield Prison, Sabbie,” said Rey.

  “Yes, I know.” I didn’t bother pointing out that I’d asked how, not where, he was.

  “Are you happy if we record this conversation?” DC Abbott placed a finger on the recording equipment and spoke into it, detailing the date and who was present at this interview. A tiny tape spun round and round, hissing like a snake. “The information you’re bringing,” he prompted. “Is it relevant?”

  “Yes … no …” I looked down at my hands and forced them to relax under the table. “I don’t know. You’ll have to make up your mind about that.”

  “But you can give us information?” said Abbott.

  “Yes,” I said and, in a sudden fit of anger, added, “sir.”

  “It’s okay, Sabbie,” said Rey. “We’re all on the same side.”

  Abbott said nothing, as if he wasn’t sure Rey was right.

  “This may not be of any relevance at all.” I fished out the envelope that contained the glittery hair slide and let one finger push it across the table.

  “Is this something Cliff has given you?” Rey picked up the envelope but didn’t open it.

  Finally I could see how their minds were working. “This isn’t about Cliff.” Instantly, I realized that wasn’t perfectly true. “This starts with something that Cliff—that I …”

  I trailed off and in the silence that followed, I watched the miniature spool revolve inside the tape recorder.

  “Sabbie?” said Rey. “Just tell us what’s on your mind.”

  “I don’t know where to begin.”

  “Start at the beginning and just keep going,” said DC Abbott. I was instantly reminded of Alice in Wonderland. So Abbot was the Knave of Hearts, was he? Perhaps because I was thinking of rabbit holes and strange, reversible worlds, I did exactly the opposite of what he advised. I started at the end.

  “I’ve found two bodies,” I said.

  For a long time after I’d finished, they sat me in a sort of visitor’s room, a place with no windows, but it did have softer chairs and an ancient coffee table with a pile of magazines, reminding me of trips to the dentist, weighted down by a glass ashtray.

  I stared at the ashtray for long minutes. Trust the police to proffer the means to disregard the statute book, I thought, wishing that I were still a smoker so that I could (a) pass the time, (b) soothe my split-end nerves, and (c) blatantly flout the law.

  I was glad that the hair slide was at last in police custody, because I’d hated having it on my person, especially after the journey I had taken last night.

  I was still in a sweat about that. Nothing had seemed right. I had taken last night’s journey to soothe my bent and broken spirit, but instead I’d confronted a fickle river goddess who had sent me to the place I hated most in the entire spirit realm.

  After the call-back from the CD, I had sat up on my sun lounger in the darkened therapy room and made notes on all I had seen and experienced on that journey. But when I’d reached the part where I had to describe the creature in the kitchen at Brokeltuft, my pen stopped of its own accord. I had wanted to write witch, but Rhiannon and Bren were witches and they only ever did good with their work. This creature was not of their ilk. This was a black witch, and I had not ever thought to encounter such a thing in my spirit world. Because of this, I was still angry with the Lady of the River. I would not trust her again if she came to me.

  Hours seemed to pass before Rey reappeared, carefully closing the door behind him. He laid a thin cardboard folder on the coffee table and sat down in the chair next to mine, one of those old-fashioned winged things, with rough brown upholstery that had gone shiny at the edge of the seat.

  “Did you find them?”

  “Yes,” said Rey. “Two bodies. Skeletal remains only.”

  For some stupid reason, I felt as though someone had swung a body kick into my midriff. “I’ve been hoping I’d found the hulls of boats.”

  “No. No.”

  “They looked like hulls of rotting boats.”

  “Sabbie.” Rey touched me gently on the arm, as if to wake me. “You know these are bodies, that’s why you came to us.”

  My breath fizzed from my lungs. “D’you think they’re Kissie and Pinchie?”

  “Who?”

  “That’s what they told me they were called.”

  “However would you know that?”

  “I just said. She was desperate to communicate.” Boiling fluid filled my veins as I recalled the slow rasp of her voice. “I’m glad those people are dead. They were hardly human.”

  “Wait a moment here,” said Rey. “Let’s see what the pathologist comes up with before we start down that track. Dead bodies are usually considered victims of a crime, not perpetrators. Even so, we would love to wind up that old case. I’ll check to see if those names were being bandied about in the Eighties and Nineties.”

  I felt all pumped up. “You’re finally taking my information seriously, Rey, thank you so much for that.”

  “We take everything seriously, even the whacko phone calls.” Rey was jotting notes into a pad. “Even the half-truths.”

  “Sorry
?”

  “No one could have found those bodies if they hadn’t been given a few clues.”

  “I did have clues. From my journeys.”

  “And the names? Who gave you the names?” Rey stuffed the notepad into his jacket pocket and opened the folder on the coffee table. “My colleagues—”

  “You mean Abbott.”

  Rey ignored the interruption. “Any day now this might become a double murder investigation. Dead kids make the blood run high in this department. We need to know how you found the cottage.”

  A sort of buzzing welled up in my head. Being proved right about something wasn’t necessarily a good thing. “You think Cliff told me where the cottage was.”

  Rey said nothing. He just set his gaze on me like I was a nut and he was the nutcracker.

  “If that’s what you want to believe, nothing I say now is going to change your mind.”

  “Detectives aren’t the most trusting of people,” said Rey. A glimmer of a smile tweaked at one side of his mouth, as if he wanted me to know he was sorry about that. “And you do say some crazy things.”

  “They only sound crazy because they’re out of context,” I began, but Rey moved smoothly on.

  “Take this notebook of Houghton’s.” He shook his head in despair. “Reads like a bad horror movie most of the time. Sacks of hair? Whatever’s that about?”

  “If you took the time to hear Mrs. Houghton’s story, you’d know. When he disappeared as a child, he came back with his head completely shaved.”

  “The disappearance she reported to the police?”

  “Yes. She thought his mates had done it for a dare, but honestly I don’t …” I trailed off. Rey was smoothing out papers from the file he’d brought with him.

  “Summer holidays, wasn’t it?” he said, glancing up briefly. “Clifford Houghton, aged eleven years, three weeks. Reported missing by his mother. Returned home uninjured within forty-eight hours.”

  “You’ve got the report,” I said.

  Rey shuffled the papers. “June the twenty-ninth, just weeks earlier. Disappearance reported at Taunton Police Station by parents Diane and Arnold Napper. Patricia, commonly known as Patsy. File closed, as she never returned. Can’t blame her, looking at the address.” He let a photocopy drop onto the coffee table.