by Penny Grubb
Annie woke into a new time of day, a different environment. She lay still and calm. Trees all around. Motionless now. Tall legs growing up to a rainbow awning. She could see every line and contour. Those who didn’t know called it empty forest. Annie pitied them. They thought you could see all there was to see because the trees stood apart from each other. Of course, they couldn’t. No one could see into the heart of the forest. Only Annie. Nothing could hide from her. She lay back on the seat and watched the world through the side window of the car. The trees nearest stood indifferent to her presence. Their barks leached colour into the depths of the forest, snaking vines that carried the pictures of aliens in the wood to the scurrying wildlife that drew away. Straggly shrubs, imprisoned in the earth, had to stay and watch the people in the car, so cloaked themselves in invisibility.
I can see you all.
She pointed her finger and a small rodent scuttled away, trailing a rainbow wake of disturbance through the forest floor.
Annie knew one of the car doors was open, a blue-green draught curled round to tell her. She made a conscious decision to turn her head. Jak sat with his back to her, his legs outside the car. A bland grey presence, he hunched over cupped hands trying to light a match. A flame blazed, spearing crimson darts out into space. Acrid smoke floated in.
He glanced round at her, his silhouette leaving a grey ghost like the tail of a comet. She watched the cigarette at his lips, saw him draw deeply on it. ‘You want to see this, Annie? Or d’you want to go straight on to your father’s?’
Such a feeble, unimportant question, it was hardly worth her while to remember what it was all about. The leg in the loch. The bodies burnt to ash. Her mind ran lazily over the things he’d told her as she’d sunk into sleep on the climb into the mountain. Beyond him in the wood, the colours blended and flowed, parting so she could see inside the souls of every living thing. He was the least important of them all. She reached out and clicked open the car door, saw worry swirl in his eyes. What a fool. He hadn’t a clue.
‘Christ, you’re not used to this are you, Annie?’ The concern flowed from his voice. ‘I only wanted to wake you up. Get you on the ball a bit more. You looked all in. We’ll wait a bit. It won’t be too late.’
She laughed at him. How pathetic with his silly panics and fears. She didn’t need him. She hadn’t needed the mad woman. What she needed to know was inside her, and the colours of the forest would tell her the rest. The life spirit of the trees snaked up to the canopy above, and down into the earth below her feet. All she need do was follow, use the power. She pulled herself out of the car. The uneven carpet of twigs and leaf mould tipped beneath her, made her stagger.
She heard him laugh at her. ‘Annie, give over. A piss-up in a brewery’s the only party you could join and not be noticed.’
He thought she didn’t know where they were or what she had to do. Of course she knew. He’d driven up off the road above the Doll-Makers’ house, up into a clearing under the trees. Yes, she knew exactly where to go.
Her legs became steadier as she climbed towards the small brow. Jak climbed with her, his voice nagging all the way. ‘Annie, you can’t … Annie, I can’t help you if … If they see you, Annie …’
As if she needed his help. As if she didn’t know how to hide herself.
She reached the crest of the small hill and stopped. Observe. Time slowed. She held the branch of a tree and swayed with its rhythm. To anyone who watched, she’d be indistinguishable from the forest itself.
A knot of people, maybe half a dozen, made their way up the track, heads bowed, dark cloaks obscuring their features. In their wake the ground ripped and bled. Ahead of them the doors of the building-with-eyes stood open a crack, spilling darkness into the forest. Annie moved forward, steps panther-like, so in tune with the earth that no one could stop her. Now she could do whatever she wanted.
Jak’s exasperated exclamation from beside her was an irritant to ignore. She was aware that he turned and headed back to the car. Fine.
She slid down on to the track, picked a short length of fallen branch from the ground and floated silently to the wall of the building-with-eyes. She blended into the noise of the forest. The people up ahead didn’t turn. One of them dawdled, fell behind, fiddling with the material of the cloak. Annie moved on her panther legs. Silent sprint, grasp, twist, strike. The figure slumped with barely a huff of surprise. She dragged it round the back of the building, pulled off its cloak.
Hesitate. She felt a disapproving gaze. Dad? Why are you watching me?
She arranged the unconscious bundle in the recovery position and checked its vital signs. Sound asleep, but a good strong pulse.
See, Dad, I know what to do. Why didn’t you see me when I was here before?
The cloak covered her. The mad woman was right. She remembered it all. Jak knew nothing. He’d have blundered in wearing a makeshift cape, not knowing that they counted. The chant. Beautiful beyond dreaming. Terrifying. She slipped through the gap between the doors.
The chant was soft. Not enough people here yet. No crowd. She floated down the centre aisle, felt contempt for some cloaked figure off to the side feeling for the edges of the pews. The trick was not to look directly at the tiny bursts of light from the candles. They put darkness in the soul. Somewhere behind her a door banged. The darkness was complete.
It was good to be back.
Chapter 25
Annie sauntered past indistinct silhouettes who sat still, heads bowed, cloaks rippling as a breeze crept in from outside. The chant, just a background hum now, would swell as the crowd added its voices one by one. It would rise to a wall of sound that ripped her off her feet, sent her screaming back into the shadows. Mummy! Help me! Mummy!
No Mummy to help her now. She was on her own.
Pictures grew as the fragments of memory came together. Elora … head high, feet floating over the stone floor, the burnt smell of incense swirling around her. I see the spirit of the earth.
Look at her eyes, Mummy. Monsters’ eyes?
Quiet, Annie!
I want to see the spirit of the earth, too, Mummy.
And so you shall … drink this … … eat this … … breathe in deep, Annie.
Mummy! Help me! Mummy! Monsters chasing me.
Annie spun round, stared into the darkness to where the fiends would burst through with their claws and red eyes. Silence. No chant. Anger rose inside her, mushrooming suddenly from the black earth, rearing up like a fiend. A feeble background hum. Was this all the packed pews could manage?
She marched to the nearest and grabbed the bowed figure by the shoulder to shake it out of its stupor. It was nothing … so insubstantial, it collapsed under her grasp. A cloud of dust billowed up, something fell at her feet with a dull clatter. This abomination would produce nothing to swell the sound. She grabbed the next one. A broom handle propped scarecrow-like at the seat fell. A length of dark material slid to the floor with a whump that puffed more dust into Annie’s face. It must have been there years. What right, Elora? What right? Desecrating the chant with an old scarecrow.
‘What right!’ Annie shouted into the body of the hall. Her words thundered to the high roof, bounced back, echoed all around. Her gaze darted back and forth, looking for movement in the bowed heads. Nothing. White heat flared inside her. No one used the memory of her mother this way.
‘What right!’ she shrieked, swinging out at the wooden props in the pews. Dust rose in thick clouds around her; dark fabric and cobwebs fluttered to the floor. She tasted age and decay.
‘What right? What right?’ The filth gradually stole her voice, dragged it down into a gravel pit that seared her throat.
A sound from the darkness as the dust billowed. Someone trying to hold back a reflex cough. Annie spun round; stalked the length of the aisle. As she loomed over the crouching figure, a tiny voice said, ‘Annie Raymond.’
Beth cowered, holding out stick-like arms to shield one of the abominations. Annie stared,
then grasped Beth and spun her away. She peered closer at the bowed figure, fingered the cloth that shrouded it. No dust. There was a substantial mass under this cloak. And a tinny, off-key rendering of the chant. Annie leant closer, lifted the cloak. Beth was at her side, fearful, staring from Annie to the gently crooning figure. ‘It’s Grandmother. She don’t hear nothing with her mind no more. She don’t know what they’ve done.’
Annie hummed the chant in time to the old woman’s meanderings. The decay inside the big hall brought a sadness down on her, a malaise that grew from her feet and rose to the top of her head. Tears ran down her cheeks and fell into the dust. She turned her back on Beth and the old woman. The hidden stairs. She knew where to go to find her mother. At last. After all these years. Round the corner of the pillar and down the shallow stairway. Her feet took her without hesitation. As she slipped between the stones, a bellow erupted from the far side of the hall.
‘Beth, what in hell’s the racket?’
‘Grandmother got excited. She’s quiet now,’ Beth’s voice called.
Annie marched from one rough stone step to the next, footsteps sure in the pitch black. The uneven stone carried her down. The rock swallowed all sound, all sense, pressed in on her. She reached out her hand. Nothing.
Mummy, wait for me.
Relief came as she pushed through into the underground cavern, the real hall where the promise of the ritual above was fulfilled. Lights blazed. Harsh neon strips burnt her eyes.
A voice snapped, ‘Take your fucking time, why don’t you?’
She jumped, startled. A hooded figure was at her elbow. He’d waited to count them all in. She remembered the figure she’d ambushed, then watched a paper stuffed in a pocket, heard something slam shut.
The harsh neon had no place in her memory. It scorched her eyes here and now, forced some part of her to wake up. A level of new awareness sliced through, that made her turn away, rather than blast the blasphemer with her tongue.
A tendril of doubt snaked in. Wasn’t she invincible … invisible? Awareness slammed into her mind. She was Annie, tumbling down from a high. Jak! Jak, what did you do?
She knew what he’d done. She remembered his words. I only wanted to wake you up. Get you up on the ball a bit more.
The cake or the cola? Why hadn’t he tried harder to stop her? They were in reach of home and he’d let her barge in here to have the Doll-Makers’ secret laid bare before her. The colours that swirled were sickly sweet, bringing nausea. She edged away. The entrance was barred now, but the shock had cleared her mind. Terror threatened to overwhelm her. Mummy … don’t leave me…
She backed off, step by step, from the irritable figure with the clipboard. Shadows were her only allies. No way out. The door had slammed shut behind her as she’d come in.
No way out … Except … Except no one knew she was here. Until the person she’d attacked was found, she was invisible. And she had her memories, if she could force them to the surface. The ritual … the chant … her mother. Trapped in the labyrinth. No, not trapped. There were ways in and out that avoided the building-with-eyes. A grass track down by a rocky beach. Miles from here. A broken-down hut by a blank cliff face. Flashbacks of real memory.
This vast space under the building-with-eyes was a tiny corner of a winding labyrinth, that spread tentacles out towards the sea.
One of those tentacles had provided a bolthole for people desperate to hide long enough to shake off their followers, to dispose of whatever they’d carried, to get their van to one of the high passes where it could be fired and pushed over.
It’s mountain tracks they’re interested in now, not smugglers’ trails. Her father’s words.
They’d been looking for Julia Lee’s body by then. She spared a thought for Julia who might have been a mole or just a weak link taken advantage of by both sides. They’d have matched her body to the leg in the loch by now. They’d all been so close to laying bare this secret.
There were other exits. Somewhere in her head she knew where to find them.
This was the abomination mad Lorraine had railed against. Harsh neon where there should be candlelight. Drugs processed and packed for efficient distribution where there should be plant extracts painstakingly teased out and distilled for use by the chosen few. Annie’s memory walked her towards a space where senses were heightened, where she could fly with the birds in the forest.
Mummy, I want some too.
Here you are, Annie. Fly away with the fairies …
She backed to the side of the cavern. No one took any notice. She let her feet glide silently along by the wall. Not even local legend knew anything about the labyrinth beneath the mountain. Childhood Annie knew it all, every step, because coming back into the middle of it put her ahead of the home-time sweetie.
Eat this sweetie, Annie.
I don’t want it. It takes stuff out of my head.
Eat!
She had eaten and the memory drained away. No wonder her childhood recollections were so fractured. She’d been stuffed with pills to keep her quiet, out of the way, and pills to make sure she forgot what she saw and couldn’t report back.
Tell me about the picture you saw at the cinema, Annie.
Monsters, Daddy. I didn’t like it.
But I thought it was a Walt Disney.
Oh, you know what the child’s like with her nightmares. Come on, Annie. I’ll make you cocoa. Mummy’s cocoa to make it better. White powder sprinkled on and mixed in. She slept well when Mummy made cocoa. A sharp memory. I want it like Mummy makes it! Mrs Latimer had no idea, but she’d hated Annie’s mother all the same. All these years, Mrs Latimer had cursed the right person for the wrong reasons, and Annie could only resent her for doing it.
She held herself upright as she headed for the far side of the cavern, looking neither right nor left; felt the tremble deep inside her; felt the tear trickle down her face. She was back beside her mother’s coffin. At last, the memory was whole.
I didn’t want her at all. I just wanted to get at the pills in her jacket pocket, as she lay in her coffin. The pills that took memory away, that would make it not have happened.
She let her feet carry her to a half-remembered exit; when she got there she would know the way.
Recognition hit her peripheral vision. She ducked her head. Mr Caine. The cloak covered his face, but she’d know that fussy walk anywhere. With oily obsequiousness, he engaged a large man in conversation. A small pack was in his hands, a limp straw doll at his feet. He still carried on the family tradition, after a fashion. Annie watched from the corner of her eye as she sidled past.
She remembered the plants. The gateway to the Doll-Makers’ world where they were at one with the spirits of the forest. Just a specialist sideline now to keep big brother Caine happy. Someone … who? … had seen the potential of this forgotten labyrinth.
The other brother? The one no one saw or knew about. The one with the odd name, Kovos. He surely was the one Lorraine called the supplanter; the one who’d spoilt it all, wrecked Lorraine’s beautiful existence where potions distilled from exotic plants let her fly with the birds in the forest, sway with the trees, run with the deer. He’d ripped that away and built a modern and efficient drugs-warehousing operation. No mystery now about where a large drugs consignment might disappear for a few hours – into an innocuous looking shed on a remote track, to be swallowed whole by the mountain. As she eased her way across the huge space, her gaze flicked back and forth. Which one was he?
And all the time she kept an eye on Caine. If she recognized him, he might know her. And she remembered Mike and the message from Beth.
He’s keen …
All the interest she’d shown in Beth’s dolls. The dolls she stuffed with special substances for her Uncle Cain. Beth had tried to tell her who was behind it. Mike had been fooled by her accent. He’s keen … He’s Caine. Mike. Annie struggled to hold back a sob.
If only Beth had said, he’s Kovos.
Annie wat
ched Cain/Caine crumple a doll in his hands. It was podgy, a clone of all the dolls that crowded her dreams. He twisted it in his hands and discarded it. Not podgy any more. A limp form fell to the ground, thin, stringy. It was a move Annie had seen a hundred times. Memories reared up, dolls stuffed full, dolls emptied and discarded.
Beyond Caine now, she slipped into the darkness at the edge of the cavern. Her feet knew the way. Damp hung in the air in a corridor partly hewn from stone, partly shuttered with ancient timber. A gleam of daylight where there should have been no light at all glittered across two decades to show her the way.
Voices. Echoes of running footsteps.
She tried to shake the effects of the drug from her head. Another way out. She had to find another way out.
Memory grabbed her by the arm and pulled her along on feet that skipped over the stones as though they did this every day.
Shouts from ahead. She stopped.
There was a staircase. She knew it led back to the hall, behind the lectern in front of the congregation. Memory told her there’d be a fearsome old man haranguing the crowd, but she knew she’d find no more than an old tape-recorded chant playing to a congregation of posed dummies.
She stepped up quickly, kept low.
Once back in the hall, she crept to the dark edge and ran towards the big door at the back. Shadows were with her, and the pursuit underground. Half an eye on the wooden pews. Nothing came towards her out of the gloom.
Then the pounding of footsteps.
She was at the door now. What was holding it? She peered into the darkness. A stout plank wedged across held it shut. An old-fashioned but effective lock. She heaved at it … felt the sweat bead on her brow.
Footsteps drummed louder. Closer.
Wood screeched on metal as she dragged at it. Couldn’t stop her grunts of effort as she heaved it inch by inch. The footsteps closed in. It wouldn’t come free.
