The 1,000 year old Boy

by Ross Welford

  ‘It’s stranger than we thought,’ she said.

  ‘It’s stranger than you thought,’ I corrected her. ‘To me, it’s some lady and her kid living a quiet life in a secluded house until you fall into their backyard.’

  ‘She had a cauldron, a black cat and a broomstick,’ said Roxy, counting them off on her fingers, and nodding her head as if that proved everything.

  ‘No, Roxy. She had a cooking pot, a black-and-white cat and a … I dunno … a brush, like we’ve all got at home.’

  ‘But you didn’t see inside the house.’

  ‘Well, no. But I was hoping you were going to tell me. By the way – how’s your head?’

  Roxy touched the back of her ear gently and frowned. ‘OK, really. Doesn’t hurt any more. She put some lotion on it.’

  ‘You mean a potion,’ I scoffed.

  She narrowed her eyes at me. ‘If you’re just going to mock me then you can get out of my garage.’ She pointed at the door.

  I sighed. ‘I’m sorry. It’s just … well, you do know that witches don’t exist? That magic and stuff aren’t real? It’s all just stories. You do know that?’ I was being sincere, and I was careful to avoid any tone of voice that might have sounded teasing.

  Roxy visibly relaxed. ‘I do know that. Or at least I did.’

  She reached under the desk and pulled out a laptop computer and flipped it open. Roxy hit a few keys and a film started. As it did, my mouth fell open until my jaw hit my knees. Well, almost. You know what I mean.

  At first, I had no idea what I was watching. It was just noise – rustling, crunching – and blurred grey-green stuff as the camera moved through … what?

  Leaves. Undergrowth. Bushes. And there was a voice, clear as anything. My voice saying: ‘Something flattish, with green bits?’

  Then Roxy’s voice: ‘You’ve got it. It’s a roof!’

  ‘Stop the video!’ I said to Roxy, and she leant forward to hit the space bar.

  ‘You were filming all of this?’

  She said nothing but grinned and nodded.

  ‘But … how? You didn’t have a camera.’

  With her left hand, she pulled at the side of her denim jacket and thrust it at me. Peering closely, I could see a tiny glass dome set into the brass button. She flipped open her jacket to reveal a black cable leading to an inside pocket and a little silvery box.

  ‘That’s a camera?’

  ‘Yep. Surveillance camera, 720p HD res, audio and video.’

  I nodded wisely, as if I knew what the heck she was talking about, and added an ‘Oh wow!’ for good measure. It seemed to work, because she became more enthusiastic.

  ‘Yeah, and, even better, this records at 16.4 MBps rather than MJpeg4, so that you can …’ she tailed off, looking carefully at me.

  I adjusted my face to the one you use in class when you haven’t been following what the teacher says, but you don’t want him to know. (Mr Reid, our maths teacher, knows this face well on me.)

  ‘You don’t know what I’m talking about, do you?’

  I shook my head and then said, ‘Did you get this skip-diving as well?’

  She nodded distractedly and pressed PLAY again.

  It was strange watching back everything that had happened only a few hours ago. Roxy fast-forwarded the bit where we were just hacking through the woods until we came to the part just before she fell into the witch’s yard.

  (See? I’m doing it myself now. She’s not a witch!)

  The picture at this stage was just a bit of ground, as Roxy was lying down in the long grass.

  ‘Get down! She’ll see you.’ That was Roxy.

  ‘What? And turn me into a toad? I’ll take the risk, thanks.’

  There was a scuffling noise then a gasp as Roxy tumbled down the slope, and a loud, hard thump as she hit the ground.

  ‘Ow!’ I said. It sounded like a painful fall.

  The picture swooped and blurred and then just stopped, showing mostly sky as Roxy lay on her back, out cold.

  ‘That must’ve hurt!’ I said.

  ‘Like hell,’ said Roxy. ‘But not till I regained consciousness.’

  On the film, there were footsteps, and then a replay of what I had heard, in my cowardly horror, from the bank.

  That strange language. The woman first.

  ‘Al-vuh. Al-vuh! Kuma!’

  That’s what it sounded like, anyway. And then a load of garbled stuff that I couldn’t make out. I gasped as a close-up of the woman’s face filled the laptop screen. She was leaning over and peering at Roxy, and the tiny camera caught it all.

  Roxy paused the film. ‘And there she is!’ She said it like she was announcing a celebrity appearing on a red carpet.

  We stared at the screen and the woman’s face.

  How old was she? I admit that I’m not so brilliant at guessing adults’ ages. After thirty, I reckon, they all look pretty much the same until they’re sixty or so. That’s when they start to get wrinkly and white-haired like Gran and Grandad Linklater.

  So this woman could have been anywhere in that range. She had lines on her forehead and at the side of her eyes, but that might have been because she had a worried expression on her face. Her hair was in a cloth scarf, but some blonde bits were sticking out. Her cheeks were shiny and light red, like Pink Lady apples.

  Roxy pressed PLAY again, and the woman’s face moved back a bit, and side to side, as if assessing Roxy’s injury. She might once have been pretty, but, when she opened her mouth, her teeth were discoloured and worn, with gaps in both rows.

  Then she removed her sunglasses and I saw her eyes, a watery blue colour with pink, damp rims and pale lashes.

  ‘Have you ever seen anyone look as tired as that?’ I murmured to Roxy. ‘She looks like she could sleep forever.’

  The picture went back to sky and there was more conversation in their language, and something I could make out as, ‘In-ann bolld.’ She said it twice.

  ‘This is where they pick me up,’ said Roxy. The image moved and there was a wall, and more sky, and then it went darker as they moved inside. The picture went still again, and I could see what looked like the ceiling and a light hanging down.

  ‘Hello? Hello?’ A different voice now: the boy’s. ‘Can you hear me? Hello? Are you all right?’ There was a light slapping noise, which I took to be someone gently tapping Roxy’s cheek to wake her up, then the woman’s voice came back in, followed by a sharp intake of breath, a gasp and a little moan.

  The boy said something to the woman, and then there was a cough and another moan of pain.

  ‘That’s me,’ said Roxy. ‘I’m coming round, and I try to get up.’

  Sure enough, the picture moved, as if Roxy was trying to sit upright, but then went back to the ceiling as the woman said, ‘No, hinny. Lie back down, pet. You’ve banged y’heed bad. Just rest there a bit, pet. Divvent move. Shhhh.’

  It was a gentle, soothing voice, with a strong north-eastern lilt, and something else as well: another accent. She sounded like Kristina Nilsen at my old school who was Norwegian but had a Geordie accent as well.

  Anyway this was not the cackling voice of a witch, but I didn’t say that to Roxy.

  She fast-forwarded a bit more.

  ‘It’s just me lying down, and them talking in their language.’

  On the screen, there was a glimpse of a china bowl. Roxy said, ‘She had something in there that she bathed my head with, where it got cut. Smelt gross and it stung like anything.’

  Then the woman’s voice said, ‘D’you reckon you can sit up, petal? Come on, up you get. Easy does it. How ye fettlin’?’

  Suddenly there they were, standing in front of Roxy as she sat up and the tiny camera took everything in.

  The woman’s shapeless sweater appeared to be hand-knitted. Her long hands were rough-looking and clasped in front of her in an appearance of concern.

  The top of her head was cut off by the camera, but there was a soft look on her face. She said something to th
e boy: ‘Go-ther svine, Alve. Go-ther svine.’

  The boy was obviously her son: they looked very alike, from the pale eyes to the dirty-blond hair and the long fingers. His teeth, too, were yellowed and gappy. His clothes were old-fashioned: proper trousers (not jeans), button-up shirt. Aunty Alice would have said he looked ‘right smart’, but to me he looked like he’d borrowed his dad’s clothes. The sunglasses hanging round his neck completed the unusual look.

  Behind them was a room that was darkish and cluttered, with old-fashioned easy chairs, and a table piled with papers, and a mantelpiece covered with vases and knick-knacks, and piles of paper on the floor and …

  ‘Sheesh – look at the state of the place!’ I said.

  Roxy laughed. ‘Get you, Mister Houseproud!’ she teased. ‘But I know what you mean. And it smelt …’ She hesitated.

  ‘Bad?’

  She wrinkled her nose as if that would help her to recall the smell. ‘Not bad, exactly. Just … old. Like an old person’s house with old stuff in it. A bit dusty, maybe? It was clean, though.’

  I nodded. Gran and Grandad’s house smells a bit like that, and they’re not even all that old. We looked back at the screen.

  ‘How are you feelin’, hinny? Are you dizzy at all? Try standin’ up – gently, mind.’

  ‘She sounds normal,’ I said. ‘Nice, even.’

  ‘I know,’ Roxy said. ‘You wait, though.’

  ‘Can you move all yer bits, petal? Nothin’ broken? That was quite a bump y’ had.’

  The picture moved while Roxy, presumably, twisted her arms and legs about to check, then her voice said, ‘No, nothing broken, thanks. I’d better be going.’

  And then the boy piped up, off screen: ‘Are you sure? You do not have to go straight away. It might not be safe, you know, if you have been concussed.’

  There followed an exchange in their language, but I still couldn’t make anything of it, though I did hear the word ‘Al-vuh’ again. It was hard to tell because I couldn’t see their faces, but it sounded like the woman was being a bit firm with the boy.

  ‘Pause it,’ I said to Roxy and she did. ‘What was all that about?’

  Roxy shrugged. ‘How would I know?’

  We rewound and played it again. ‘If I had to guess,’ I said, ‘it would be that she was telling him not to invite you to stay. It’s in her tone.’

  We played it a third time, and Roxy agreed. ‘I didn’t want to stay, anyway. I was terrified.’

  On-screen the camera turned so that we saw the rest of the room. Parts of it were piled so high with stuff that the towers of paper and books looked as though they might topple over. On one wall was a bookshelf that probably contained as many books as our school library, crammed in higgledy-piggledy. The camera was moving too fast for me to see any titles, but they looked like old books, not brightly coloured paperbacks. There was a glimpse of a cat’s black-and-white tail passing the camera’s eye.

  Roxy’s voice: ‘I … I really have to go. Thanks. Thank you.’

  The woman stepped in front of her, and her face had become much less friendly.

  ‘But, hinny, you haven’t told me what you were doing. I mean, why were you on our property in the first place? It’s clearly marked as private, and there are fences which you and your friend must have broken through.’

  ‘My … my …’

  ‘Your friend. Oh aye, we saw him, didn’t we, Alve?’

  The boy nodded with a pained expression on his face. It was clear he didn’t like this new line of interrogation.

  ‘W-we just got lost.’

  The woman leant in close. ‘Did y’now? Well, divvent get lost again, or I’ll have the Peelers onto ye.’ Then she smiled: a cold smile that said ‘I’m not being mean, but don’t underestimate me.’

  I had no idea what this ‘having the Peelers’ meant, and looked across to Roxy who gave a half-shrug. It didn’t sound good, whatever it was.

  As Roxy’s voice on the film stammered apologies, the picture showed her progress out of the room, into an equally dark and cluttered hallway, and towards a large wooden door with a small window in the front. Her hands scrabbled for the handle, and then she turned and only the boy was standing before her.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Roxy repeated, and the strangest thing happened.

  The boy gave a shy smile, which was only just visible at the top of the screen, because of Roxy’s lack of height. Then he said, ‘Me too.’ He glanced behind him, then added, quieter, ‘Perhaps I shall see you again?’ His tone was sad, and hopeful. On the film his mother’s footsteps came closer.

  The wooden door was open and he said: ‘That way.’ At the edge of the picture, he raised his hand in a shy wave, and the (mostly) black cat scuttled away in the corner of the frame.

  Then the picture started jerking up and down as the sound changed to Roxy’s running feet slapping the road as she got away as quickly as she could.

  And now she was sitting in front of me, looking smug.

  ‘Told you,’ she said. ‘The strange language, the lotion, the old books, the threat? She is totally a witch.’

  However much I pleaded and scoffed, nothing would convince Roxy Minto that she had not had an encounter with a witch.

  If you’re convinced of something, I guess it’s easy to become stubborn about it if the alternative is admitting that you were wrong and a bit childish.

  ‘Well, obviously she’s not going to wear a black hat and have warts. That would just give the game away, wouldn’t it?’ she declared.

  ‘Oh, so the fact she doesn’t look much like a witch proves she’s a witch, does it?’ I said in exasperation. ‘So what if she had had a black, pointy hat? What would that prove? That she wasn’t a witch?’

  She ignored this bit of logic. ‘And she’s got a cauldron and a black cat!’

  ‘Black-and-white, Roxy,’ I said wearily.

  ‘So what?’

  Everything I said was batted back to me with wide-eyed innocence. Our voices were getting louder and it was becoming an argument, which I didn’t want because Roxy was daring and fun.

  ‘I can prove it, you know,’ she said, and then her phone rang: a jolly, tinkly-tonkly tune on the piano that somehow suited Roxy perfectly. She glanced at the screen but didn’t pick it up. I looked at her quizzically.

  ‘It’s my mum. Gotta go.’

  I’d barely noticed that Roxy had been alone all this time. I mean, wherever I am, usually there’s a parent kicking around somewhere in the background: bringing out juice, checking you’re wearing a warm top, or not running with scissors – just being parentish. But Roxy had been parentless all day.

  Her phone rang out and went to voicemail.

  ‘Where is your mum?’ I asked.

  Roxy jerked her head in the direction of the house. ‘Inside.’

  ‘And she’s phoning you?’

  She let out a deep sigh as she jumped down from her chair and stood up. ‘Long story. Another time, eh?’

  It was as if Roxy had been pricked with a pin and her sigh was all the air escaping, along with her fun and liveliness and everything else. I would swear that even her sticky-up hair lay flatter on her head. She locked the door to the garage and put the key under a stone. She said nothing: she knew I was watching so I knew I was trusted.

  She turned and a flicker of light returned to her eyes when she said, ‘Midnight.’

  ‘Tonight?’

  ‘No. In ten years’ time. Of course tonight.’ She turned to slip through the gap in the fence. ‘It’s the witching hour,’ she said, and then she was gone, leaving me staring into the thick woods, trying to piece together what had been going on.

  Roxy had said, ‘I can prove it, you know.’

  What did she mean by that? Was it, ‘I can prove it: she did a magic spell,’ which of course would be yet more nonsense?

  But there was something in the way she said it, a light of certainty in her eyes, which I couldn’t stop thinking about.

  You see, I wa
s on the point of dismissing Roxy as a harmless crazy: we’d have been friendly but not ‘friends’, the boy and the woman in the forest cottage would have been left in peace, and Roxy would have grown out of her belief in the ‘witch in the woods’.

  But then the disaster happened, and Roxy and I became the last people to see the witch alive.

  I watched the girl go back up the lane. I wanted to go with her, make sure she got home safely, but I do not think Mam would have approved. Besides she did not live far: on the other side of the woods. She had a funny little shed with an illuminated sign hanging by the door. I knew that much.

  Biffa jumped into my arms as I stood there. It meant that, when the girl turned back to look, she did not see my hand give a little wave because it was sort of hidden by Biffa. I am not sure. Maybe she did see.

  R. Minto.

  It was sewn into her jacket on a label. I saw it when I carried her in. She also had something with wires going into the pocket. Probably one of those mobile telephones or something.

  I watched her all the way to the bend in the lane in case she turned back again, but she did not. Biffa hopped out of my arms then and gave a little growl, which made me smile.

  ‘Do you like her, Biffa?’ I said in our old language. ‘Me too.’

  I sniffed the air in the lane. The weather had been hot for spring, but it would cool down later: I could smell it. The sky was cloudless, so, when the sun dipped, the evening would get cold and Mam would want the fire to be lit to keep the chill from the old stone house.

  I should have gone right away to the woodstore to get some old logs, but I was still thinking of R. Minto, and her friend in the bushes, and how Mam had been suspicious of them. Then Biffa came back with a big beetle she had caught and dumped it on its back by my feet, where it lay, waggling its legs.

  ‘No, Biff!’ I laughed. ‘Leave the beetles alone!’ I crouched down to flick the insect back the right way up, and it scuttled gratefully into the undergrowth.

  I completely forgot about fetching the old logs, which turned out to be the biggest mistake of the last thousand years.