by Joan Aiken
For in spite of my fifty-four years I am a strong woman, and a busy one. I cycle everywhere, in all weathers, and it is rare indeed for me to feel tired. Certainly the gentle incline between the village and our house had never troubled me before. But tonight, somehow, the bicycle might have been made of lead—I felt as if I had cycled fifteen miles instead of the bare one and a half from the village; and when I turned into the dripping lane, and the evening became almost night under the overhanging trees, I became aware not only of tiredness, but of an indefinable foreboding. The dampness and the autumn dusk seemed to have crept into my very soul, bringing their darkness with them.
Well, I am not a fanciful woman. I soon pulled myself together when I reached home, switched on the lights, and made myself a cup of tea. Strong and sweet it was, the way I always like it. Linda often laughs at me about my tea—she likes hers so thin and weak that I sometimes wonder why she bothers to pour the water into the teapot at all, instead of straight from the kettle to her cup!
So there I sat, the comfortable old kitchen chair drawn up to the glowing stove, and I waited for the warmth and the sweet tea to work their familiar magic. But somehow, this evening, they failed. Perhaps I was really too tired; or perhaps it was the annoyance of noticing from the kitchen clock that it was already after eight. As I have told you, I am a busy woman, and to find that the tiresome meeting must have taken a good two hours longer than usual was provoking, especially as I had planned to spend a long evening working on the Girls’ Brigade accounts.
Whatever it may have been, somehow I couldn’t relax. The stove crackled merrily, the tea was delicious, yet I sat, still tense and uneasy, as if waiting for something.
And then, somehow, I must have gone to sleep, quite suddenly, because the next thing I knew I was dreaming. Quite a simple, ordinary sort of dream it will seem to you—nothing alarming, nothing even unusual in it, and yet you will have to take my word for it that it had all the quality of a nightmare.
I dreamed that I was watching Linda at work in the new house. I should explain that for the past few months Linda has not been living here with me, but in lodgings in the little town where she works, about six miles from here. It is easier for her to get to and from her office, and also it means that she and John can spend their evenings working at the new house they have been lucky enough to get in the Estate on the outskirts of the town. The house is not quite finished yet, and they are doing all the decorating themselves—I believe John is putting up shelves and cupboards and all kinds of clever fittings. I am telling you this so that you will see that there was nothing intrinsically nightmarish about the setting of my dream—on the contrary, the little place must have been full of happiness and bustling activity—the most unlikely background for a nightmare that you could possibly imagine.
Well, in my dream I was there with them. Not with them in any active sense, you understand, but hovering in that disembodied way one does in dreams—an observer, not an actor on the scene. Somewhere near the top of the stairs I seemed to be, and looking down I could see Linda through the door of one of the empty little rooms. It was late afternoon in my dream, and the pale rainy light gleamed on her flaxen-pale hair, making it look almost metallic—a sort of shining gray. She had her back to me, and she seemed absorbed in painting the far wall of the room—I heard that suck-sucking noise of the paint brush with extraordinary vividness.
And as I watched her, I began to feel afraid. She looked so tiny and thin, and unprotected; her fair, childlike head seemed poised so precariously on her white neck—even her absorption in the painting seemed in my dream to add somehow to her peril. I opened my mouth to warn her—to warn her of I know not what—but I could make no sound, as is the way of dreams. It was then that the whole thing slipped into a nightmare.
I tried to scream, to run, I struggled in vain to wake up—and as the nightmare mounted I became aware of footsteps, coming nearer and nearer through the empty house.
“It’s only John!” I told myself in the dream, but even as the words formed in my brain, I knew that I had touched the very core of my terror. This man whose every glance and movement had always filled me with uneasiness—already the light from some upstairs room was casting his shadow, huge and hideous, across the landing—
I struggled like a thing demented to break the paralysis of nightmare. And then, somehow, I was running, running, running...
I woke up sick and shaking, the sweat pouring down my face. For a moment, I thought a great hammering on the door had awakened me, but then I realized that it was only the beating of my heart, thundering and pounding so that it seemed to shake the room.
Well, I have told you before that I am a strong woman, not given to nerves and fancies. Linda is the one who suffers from that sort of thing, not me. Time and again in her childhood I had to go to her in the night and soothe her back to sleep again after some wild dream. But for me, a grown woman, who never in her life has feared anyone or run away from anything—for me to wake up weak and shaking like a baby from some childish nightmare! I shook it off angrily, got out of my chair and fetched my papers, and as far as I can remember, worked on the Girls’ Brigade accounts far into the night.
I thought no more about it until, perhaps a week later, the same thing happened again. The same sort of rainy evening, the same coming home unusually tired—and then the same dream. Well, not quite the same. This time Linda wasn’t painting; she was on hands and knees, staining the floor or something of the sort. And there were no footsteps. This time nothing happened at all; only there was a sense of evil, of brooding hatred, which seemed to fill the little house. Somehow I felt it to be focused on the little figure kneeling in its gaily patterned work apron. The hatred seemed to thicken round her—I could feel giant waves of it converging on her, mounting silently, silkily, till they hung poised above her head in ghastly, silent strength. Again I tried to scream a warning; again no sound came; and again I woke, weak and trembling, in my chair.
This time I was really worried. The tie between Linda and me is very close—closer, I think, than the tie between Linda and her mother could ever have been. Common sense sort of person though I am, I could not help wondering whether these dreams were not some kind of warning. Should I call her, and ask if everything was all right?
I scolded myself for the very idea! I mustn’t give way to such foolish, hysterical fancies—I have always prided myself on letting Linda lead her own life, and not smothering her with possessive anxiety, as her mother would have surely done.
Stop! I mustn’t keep speaking of Linda’s mother like this—of Angela, my own sister. Angela has been dead many years now, and whatever wrong I may have suffered from her once has all been forgotten and forgiven years ago—I am not a woman to harbor grievances. But, of course, all this business of Linda’s approaching marriage was bound to bring it back to me in a way. I couldn’t help remembering that I, too, was once preparing a little house for my marriage, that Richard had once looked into my eyes as John now looks into Linda’s.
Well, I suppose most old maids have some ancient, and usually boring, love story hidden somewhere in their pasts, and I don’t think mine will interest you much—it doesn’t even interest me after all these years, so I will tell it as briefly as I can.
When I fell in love with Richard, I was already twenty-eight, tall and angular, and a schoolteacher in the bargain. So it seemed to me a miracle that he, so handsome, so gay and charming, should love me in return, and ask me to marry him. Our only difficulty was that my parents were both dead, and I was the sole support of my younger sister, Angela, We talked it over and decided to wait a year, until Angela had left school and could support herself.
But at the end of the year it appeared that Angela had set her heart on a musical career. Tearfully she begged me to see her through her first two years at college, after that, she was sure she could fend for herself.
Well, Richard was difficult this time, and I suppose one can hardly blame him. He accus
ed me of caring more for my sister than for him, of making myself a doormat, and much else that I forget. But at last it was agreed to wait the two years, and meantime to work and save for a home together.
And work and save we did. By the end of the two years we had bought a little house, and we spent our evenings decorating and putting finishing touches to it, just as Linda and John are doing now.
Then came another blow. Angela failed her exams. Again I was caught up in the old conflict; Richard angry and obstinate, Angela tearful and beseeching me to give her one more chance, for only six months this time. Once again I agreed, stipulating that this time would really be the last. To my surprise, after his first outburst, Richard became quite reasonable about it; and soon after that he was sent away on a series of business trips, so that we saw much less of each other.
Then, one afternoon at the end of May, not long before the six months were up, something happened. I was sitting on the lawn correcting papers when Angela came out of the house and walked slowly toward me. I remember noticing how sweetly pretty she looked with her flaxen hair and big blue eyes—just like Linda’s now. The spring sunshine seemed to light up the delicacy of her too-pale skin, making it seem rare and lovely. She sat down on the grass beside me without speaking, and something in her silence made me lay down my pen.
“What is it, Angela?’’ I said. “Is anything the matter?”
She looked up at me then, her blue eyes full of childish defiance, and a sort of pride.
“Yes,” she said. “I’m going to have a baby.” She paused, looking me full in the face. “Richard’s baby.”
I didn’t say anything. I don’t even remember feeling anything. Even then, I suppose, I was a strong-minded person who did not allow her feelings to run away with her. Angela was still talking.
“And it’s no use blaming us, Madge,” she was saying. “What do you expect, after you’ve kept him dangling all these years?” I remember the papers in front of me, dazzling-white in the May sunshine. One of the children had written “Nappoleon”—like that, with two p’s—over and over again in her theme. There must have been half a dozen of them just on the one page. I felt I would go mad if I had to go on looking at them, so I took my pen and crossed them out, one after another, in red ink. Even to this day, I have a foolish feeling that I would go mad if I ever saw “Nappoleon” spelled like that again.
I felt as if a long time had passed, and Angela must have got up and gone away ages ago; but no, there she was, still talking.
’Well, you may not care, Madge,” she was saying. “I don’t suppose you’d stop correcting your old papers if the world blew up. But what about me? What am I to do?”
“Do?” I said gently. “Why, Richard must marry you, of course. I’ll talk to him myself.”
Well, they were married, and Linda was born, a delicate, sickly little thing, weighing barely five pounds. Angela, too, was poorly. She had been terribly nervous and ill during her pregnancy and took a long time to recover; and it was tacitly agreed that there should be no more children. A pity, because I knew Richard would have liked a large family. Strange how I, a strong, healthy woman who could have raised half a dozen children without turning a hair, should have been denied the chance, while poor sickly Angela…
Ah, well, that is life. And I suppose my maternal feelings were largely satisfied by caring for delicate little Linda—it seemed only natural that when first her father and then Angela died, the little orphan should come and live with me. And indeed I loved her dearly. She was my poor sister’s child as well as Richard’s, and my only fear has been that I may love her too deeply, too possessively, and so cramp her freedom.
Perhaps this fear is unfounded. Anyway, it was this that prevented me from lifting the telephone receiver then and there on that rainy September night, dialing her number, and asking if all was well. If I had done so, would it have made any difference in what followed? Could I have checked the march of tragedy, then and there, when I woke from that second dream?
I didn’t know. I still don’t know. All I know is that as I sat there in the silent room, listening to the rain beating against my windows out of the night, my fears somehow became clearer came into focus, as it were. I knew now, with absolute certainty, that what I feared had something to do with Linda’s forthcoming marriage, her marriage to John Barlow.
But what could it be? What could I be afraid of? He was such a pleasant, ordinary young man, from a respected local family; he had a good job; he loved Linda deeply. Well, he seemed to. And yet, as I thought about it, as I remembered the uneasiness I always felt in his presence, it occurred to me that this uneasiness—this anxiety for Linda’s safety—was always at its height when he made some gesture of affection toward her—a light caress, perhaps—a quick, intimate glance across a crowded room...
Common sense. Common sense has been my ally throughout life, and I called in its aid now.
“There is nothing wrong!” I said aloud. “There is nothing wrong with this young man!”
And then I went to bed.
It must have been nearly three weeks later when I had the dream again. I had seen Linda in the meantime, and she seemed as well and happy as I have ever known her. The only cloud on her horizon was that for the next fortnight John would be working late, and so they wouldn’t be able to spend the evenings painting and carpentering together in the new house.
“But I’ll go on by myself, Auntie,” she assured me. “I want to start on the woodwork in that front room tonight. Pale green, we thought, to go with the pale yellow...” She chattered on, happily and gaily, seeming to make nonsense of my fears.
“It sounds lovely, dear,” I said. “Don’t knock yourself out, though, working too hard.”
For Linda does get tired easily. In spite of the thirty years difference in our ages, I can always outpace her on our long rambles over the hill, and arrive home fresh and vigorous while she is sometimes quite white with exhaustion.
“No, Auntie, don’t worry,” she said, standing on tiptoe to kiss me—she is such a little thing; “I won’t get tired. I’m so happy I don’t think I’ll ever get tired again!”
Reassuring enough, you’d have thought. And yet, somehow, it didn’t reassure me. Her very happiness—even the irrelevant fact that John would be working late—seemed somehow to add to the intangible peril I could feel gathering round her.
And three nights later, I dreamed the dream again.
This time she was alone in the little house. I don’t know how I knew it with such certainty in the dream, but I did—her aloneness seemed to fill the unfurnished rooms with echoes. She seemed nervous, too. She was no longer painting with the absorbed concentration of my previous dreams, but jerkily, uncertainly. She kept starting, turning round, listening; and I, hovering somewhere on the stairs as before, seemed to be listening too.
Listening for what? For the fear which I knew was creeping like fog into the little house? Or for something more? “It’s a dream!” I tried to scream, with soundless lips. “Don’t be afraid, Linda, it’s only a dream! I’ve had it before, I’ll wake up soon! It’s all right, I’m waking right now, I can hear the banging—”
I started awake in my chair, bolt upright, deafened by the now familiar thumping of my heart.
But was it my heart? Could that imperious knocking, which shook the house, be merely my heart? The knocking became interspersed with a frantic ringing of the bell. This was no dream.
I staggered to my feet and somehow got down the passage to the front door and flung it open. There in the rainy night was Linda, wild and white and disheveled, flinging herself into my arms.
“Oh, Auntie, Auntie, I thought you were out—asleep—I couldn’t make you hear—I rang and rang...”
I soothed her as best I could. I took her into the kitchen and made her a cup of the weak, thin tea she loves, and heard her story.
And after all it wasn’t much of a story. Just that she had gone to the new house as usual after work,
and had settled down to painting the front room. For a while, she said, she had worked quite happily, and then suddenly she had heard a sound—a shuffling sound—so faint that she might almost have imagined it.
“And that was all, really, Auntie,” she said, looking up at me, shamefaced. “But somehow it frightened me so. I ought to have gone and looked round the house, but I didn’t dare. I tried to go on working, but from then on there was such an awful feeling—I can’t describe it—as if there was something evil in the house, something close behind me, waiting to get its hands round my throat. Oh, Auntie, I know it sounds silly. It’s the kind of thing I used to dream when I was a little girl. Do you remember?”
Indeed I did remember. I took her on my lap and soothed her now just as I had done then, when she was a little sobbing girl awake and frightened in the depth of the night.
And then I told her she must go home.
“Auntie!” she protested. “But Auntie, can’t I stay here with you for the night? That’s why I came. I must stay!”
But I was adamant. I can’t tell you why, but some instinct warned me that, come what may, she must not stay here tonight. Whatever fear or danger might be elsewhere, they could never be as great as they would be here, in this house, tonight.
So I made her go home, to her lodgings in the town. I couldn’t explain it to her, or even to myself. In vain, she protested that the last bus had gone, that her old room here was ready for her. But I was inflexible.
I rang up a taxi, and as it disappeared with her round the corner of the lane, casting a weird radiance behind it, I heaved a great sigh of relief, as if a great task had been accomplished—as if I had just dragged her to shore out of a dark and stormy sea.
