The Hidden People

by Allison Littlewood

  “I almost fit her dress now,” she said. “Do you see?” She twisted this way and that and I started, because I saw what it was that she held in her hand.

  Her lip twitched. “What do you think, Albie?” Her voice was calm, as if she were about to ask whether I should prefer milk with my tea. “Shall I add a little more wood to the fire? Another stock, perhaps?”

  “Helena—I do not know what this is,” I replied, “but you must stop it at once. You must gather your wits.”

  “Gather my wits, should I?”

  “I . . . You are not acting as a rational person. I thought you disliked the fire, did you not? It is too warm. And—Helena, I thought you did not wish to touch the irons . . .”

  Raucous laughter spilled from her before she composed herself. She held up her hands. They were wrapped around in white cloth—handkerchiefs—entirely covering her skin. She had not touched the irons, then. But what could it matter? Such thoughts, such ideas, could not apply to us. They must not. A man of reason, I reminded myself, and I focused on the thing she held in her hand, the thing that mattered more than any other. “Give me the journal, Helena. You cannot conceive how important it has become.”

  “Oh, but I know, Albie!” She was suddenly furious, her eyes flashing brighter than any flame. Then she gave way; she sagged, looking terribly unhappy.

  “I admit to you, Albie, I once thought this house haunted,” she said. “I heard things—music, calling to me in the night. It made me wish to dance more than I could bear.” Her expression turned to wistfulness. “I thought that it must have been spirits, it was so very beautiful. But then I saw what this place had wrought in you, and I realised: we have no need of ghosts, do we, Albie? What would a ghost do here that we have not already done?”

  She swayed, staring down at the journal as if she did not know how it had come to be there. I stepped forward and reached for it, but at the same time she stepped back, a little closer to the fire. I did not know how she could bear the heat. I could feel the skin of my cheeks tightening; it was like standing at a Hell-mouth.

  “This house is not haunted, Albie. It is you who are haunted.”

  I shook my head in confusion.

  “Yes! You are haunted, but not by spirits. She has always been here, has she not? She is present constantly; she is in your every thought; she is in your heart. How could I ever displace her? How can I fight?” She glanced down at the journal in her hands. “I cannot remonstrate with her; I cannot push her aside, or beg her to go, or banish her. She will always be here, because you will it so: always present to your mind, if never to your eye!” She did not look at me again. She whirled about and in one movement, hurled the book upon the fire.

  I cried out and leaped forward, falling to my knees before the flames. I grasped the tongs and reached after the journal, but they were too short; smoke rose around my hands and between my fingers and I could smell singed hair and overheated flesh. I snatched my hands away and instead grasped the poker, hoping to thrust it between the pages, to catch hold of it in some way and prise it loose, but I dropped the iron with a cry. It was burning hot—it had seared a line clean across my palm. A large blister was rising there, but it did not matter. I grasped my own handkerchief and wrapped it around my fist, preparatory to reaching into the inferno, but even as I stretched towards it, blinking furiously against the sting of smoke, I saw that it was too late, for the pages were blackening, like hair; like skin. The paper was crumbling away, becoming nothing but fragments that floated, wraith-like, up the chimney.

  I cried out, feeling as if I were the one turning to ash. It was entirely hopeless. Lizzie’s words were already far beyond my reach.

  I heard Helena’s voice behind me. “You see? Anyone may be burned by iron, my love.”

  I pushed myself across the stone flags towards her, and once more I was grasping the poker in my fist. I closed my eyes; for a time, I knew only darkness.

  When I came to myself I was kneeling once more before the fire, my eyes closed, my shoulders shaking. My cheeks were wet with tears. I was alone in the room. The fire, once so hungry, had spent itself; it had turned grey, already dying.

  I rose, ignoring the pain in my knees and hands. Outside the window, twilight had come, though I could still make out the shapes around me without need of a lamp. There was the table; there the chairs; there the old faded settle, all as familiar to me now as if this were my own home.

  I turned my back on them and proceeded up the stairs. I went into my room and found all in order, save for the bed-curtains that had been tugged loose and lay still upon the floor; and another book that had been cast aside on my pillow.

  I rushed to it and picked it up, but it was not my book: it was my wife’s. Mine was quite lost, and the pain of it struck me anew.

  I let the pages fall open. Some were loose and drifted to the floor. I let them fall; I had read them already. I turned the pages, letting the words flow before my eyes. I could not make them out; they meant nothing. And then I turned another page and something stilled within me. I read on, not quite believing what it was they told me.

  My breath quickened. As if a veil had been torn from my eyes, I saw what I must do.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  The sun had quite faded, the last of its light already passed beyond the horizon, but the moon had risen. It was waning but still near full, and its yellow, swollen face lit the path before me almost as clear as day. The whole sky was luminous with stars.

  My every step was too loud to my ear and yet at the edges of hearing, there was music: someone was playing the violin, a quick and lively air. I did not pause to wonder at its source; it could have been anywhere—it could have been pouring from the sky or rising from the earth. There was nothing else, no birdsong or distant cry from a cow in the fields or an owl from the glade; all was still, save for my own self.

  I wondered if I should be afraid, but I was not. I felt only a kind of numbness that had spread through each limb and into my bones. My heart alone felt heavy. I could not give way to despair. There was something I must do and if I allowed myself to waver I would fail, and if I failed, I would never be able to bring myself to try again.

  I went on, alone in the world, until I reached the place I sought. I stared at the ground: a patch of sward a little raised from the grass around it: one that I had seen before and had not thought to look at.

  I swung the spade from my shoulder and let its blade rest upon the ground. I stood there a while, allowing myself a brief contemplation, bowing my head in respect or apology, or both; and then I seized it and, ignoring the pain in my burned hand, thrust it into the ground.

  It would not give, at first. The earth was hardened by days of sunlight and I tried again and again, in vain, until I found the place the grass had previously been cut to permit what lay beneath, and it yielded before the blade.

  Beneath it, the soil appeared almost black and images filled my mind. I took deep breaths. My heart thumped against my ribs. My hands were shaking; I did not know what I would be forced to look upon. But I had seen the words in my wife’s book, and I had known what to do.

  I got a spade from the tool-house, and began to delve with all my might—it scraped the coffin; I fell to work with my hands; the wood commenced cracking about the screws . . .

  Everything had become so clear to me when I had read those words and my course remained clear now—and yet it made me think so vividly of my cousin that when I looked up once more I expected to see the churchyard all about me, the quiet stones, the sleeping church, the dark yews standing sentinel about it; and at my feet, Lizzie’s own little grave.

  But I was not there; I was not even in Halfoak, not really. I was standing in the grove, the oak trees all about me, their leaves whispering to one another. At my feet was the little patch of ground beneath the trees, a short distance from what Mary Gomersal had told me was a door. Just in front of my spade, pushed partway into the earth, was an iron knife.

  I did not p
ull it from the ground but wrapped my handkerchief more firmly about my damaged hand and resumed my labours, parting the earth and casting the spill aside. The hole grew deeper and more shadowed and I could not readily see into it. I was glad for that, and yet not glad, for how should I know when I found what I sought? There would be no box, I knew that.

  I went on, allowing my motions to become mechanical. It was an age and yet too little time until my spade met something that was softer than the earth. I jumped back from it. I cast the spade aside and kneeled, pushing away the dry soil with my hands, both wanting to see and dreading what I sought. At first I did not know that I had found it. The cloth was dry as the earth, but it did not give under my hands and I realised it was not earth, and the next thought was relief that it had been wrapped, and that I did not have to see its face. Then horror returned, because I knew I must unfold the cloth and see what was concealed within.

  I carefully freed it from the soil and lifted it onto the grass. The once-white cloth was now stained and darkened, the bundle so small and light and pitiful. I reached out, all gentleness, and folded back its wrapping until I had revealed what had lain hidden so long.

  I stared upon the tiny hands, still closed into fists. I saw the spine, each vertebra clearly discernible, as if the little creature had tried to curl back into the form wherein it had grown, when it had last been warm and safe and loved. Wisps of hair clung to the peeling scalp. It lay with its face turned inward, and I was grateful. I did not wish to look upon its eyes; I could not bear to see its pain.

  I let out a breath and stared into the night, through the trees and towards the stony side of the hill. I remembered what I had seen the night I had last come here at a dark midnight hour: a white form, drifting between the trees. Had I really imagined it, for the slightest moment, to be a fairy? Had I truly thought it had been Lizzie? Of course it had not been. It was Essie Aikin, searching for her lost child. She had buried the changeling, here upon the hill, in exchange for her infant; it should have returned by the light of the moon, but the fairies had cheated her.

  Her child had been here in the ground above Halfoak all the time. Essie had done what she had been told: she had battled the changeling, casting her charms and chanting her spells, and none of it had worked; she had not had her baby returned again; it had not emerged, dancing and happy, after joining in some fairy procession. It was here, and she had not owned it. She had not even named it.

  My thoughts turned to what they had done to it; to what she had been told to do to it. What suffering had they inflicted? Suddenly I did not want to know the truth; it was too much for this world. It was too real. What had they done? Forced herbs down its infant throat? Had they sung wicked songs to it, made it cry, stuck it with pins? And then what? Held it over the fire, thinking it would shriek its way up the chimney, until, finding that nothing worked, that nothing ever could—had they brought it to this place to conceal what they had done? Or had they simply left it here for the fairies to claim, until its breath failed in its body and they were forced to bury it?

  And yet Essie Aikin had come searching for it. She had tormented a creature she had not believed to be her own child—that she did not even think human. She had come, a fond mother, seeking her true child, having done anything—any thing—to bring it back to her again. And what had been her thoughts when the fairies broke their pact? Her living child had not returned; all that remained was this pitiful, nameless creature, barely having drawn breath and already becoming a part of the earth.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  The next morning I awoke to fresh clean sunlight spilling in at the window. The curtains fluttered against the shutters; I must have opened the casement when I returned the night before, perhaps longing for the freshness of the new day. What had passed had taken on the texture and character of a dream and I wished, more than anything, that it could have been one. When I looked down at my hands, though, I could see the vicious burn across my palm. The skin was further callused from my digging; both hands were encrusted with blood, and soil had become ingrained in every line and cut. I rose, poured water from the earthenware jug and washed them, but at once I could feel the grime that clung to the rest of my being. I was not sure that mere water could slough it away, but I tried, and put on clean clothes, making sure that all was straight and smart; that I had at least the appearance of a civilised person.

  Then I went to wake my wife.

  Helena lay with her hair spread upon the pillow, her pale features transformed by repose into the image of peaceful calm. Her heavy eyelids were smooth and her lips were sweet; I was reminded of when we had first been married; for a moment, I almost wanted to kiss them. Then she stirred, as if she knew what I had been thinking, and she muttered something I could not make out.

  I did not touch her, but put my hand upon the bedsheet, gently shaking her shoulder. The effect was startling; she awoke at once, her expression turning to one of alarm. It made me want to shrink from her, but I did not allow myself to show it; instead I met her eye.

  “Helena,” I said, my voice as gentle as I could make it, “pray, let us be reconciled. I am sorry—for all. Please know that I will always endeavour to do what I hope to be right; and to that end, I have decided that we should depart as soon as we can ready ourselves. Would that make you content, dearest?” I forced myself to take her hand, which she had raised to rub her eyes, and I gently squeezed her fingers. My burnt hand I kept at my side.

  “I—I hardly know,” she replied, and her voice was soft; she was half in a daze herself.

  “I will bring something for you to eat.” I smiled at her softly, and it felt more like an old smile, a ghost of the way we had used to be. “Will you like to be back at our own home?”

  She gave a slight nod.

  “Then let us prepare ourselves, my love. We should leave soon. I will hurry to the inn and have their man come for us. If you cannot pack everything, do not worry.”

  “Will you send for the rest, Albie?” She sounded full of sleep.

  I squeezed her hand and smiled at her and stood. “I will make everything ready.”

  I brought bread and butter to her room, and tea, and fresh warm water for washing. She was already engaged in removing her dresses from the wardrobe and folding them for the journey. She looked brighter, and she smiled at me, though she did not speak. This was how it would be, I decided. We could still be as man and wife. We would find our way back to one another again; our wounds would heal. And then there would be three of us, and in that great moment, all would be forgotten.

  I threw several of my own possessions into a bag, leaving some of the clothing and the heavier items where they lay. And then I knocked upon her door and called out that I would go to the Three Horseshoes and that I would return with all haste so that we could depart.

  I hurried along the white road. The day was already warm, though the sun had barely risen. The people of Halfoak had been at their work in the fields for some time. I had thought once that when I left this place I should miss it, but now there was a new darkness at my back; it was still there, on Pudding Pye Hill, although for the moment I had pushed it from my thoughts. I had sworn to myself that I would first take care of Helena, and so I would.

  The inn door was open, but no one was in the taproom at this hour and I gave up waiting. I went outside and let myself in at the wicket which led to the outhouses, stables and wash house—it seemed an age ago that I had witnessed its sorry contents—and I saw a boy there, filling pails from the pump. Upon hearing my enquiry he went chasing off inside, shouting, “There’s someone ’ere!,” and soon the ceiling was a-creak with footsteps, the landlord’s heavy tread was heard upon the stairs and then the man appeared, blinking as if he had just risen, though his rolled-up sleeves and the crumbs of bread in his whiskers suggested otherwise.

  I explained my need of a cart and he listened, nodding. He was attentive, but his manner was subdued and he barely met my eye. I remembered my sorry conduct since
I had come to the village: my protestations over how he had managed the funeral; my wandering about the fields, tearing my clothes to rags. No doubt, in his position at his hatch, he had heard of it all. I had the opportunity to repent my behaviour now, but I said nothing of it; just pressed a remembrance into his hand as he gave his promise to have his man at our door in a trice.

  I hurried back more quickly than I had come. Pudding Pye Hill loomed in my vision and yet I contrived not to look at it directly. When I opened the cottage door Helena was just placing a light bag in the passage. I told her I would bring down the rest, that the cart should not be long, and she smiled.

  I hurried upstairs to collect my own things, and to carry out one final task. I hastily dashed off a note to Constable Barraclough, giving what details I felt necessary, and signed it. I slipped it into an envelope and as I did, my gaze fell upon the other papers I had left in the room: the pages of my wife’s novel, scattered about the floor. I did not like to leave it looking as it did, all chaos and disorder, so I put down my envelope and bent to pick them up, reaching for those that had slipped partially under the bed. There was one that defied my reach and I kneeled upon the floor and peered after it. I was about to retrieve it when I noticed something else: pages other than from my wife’s book, and not discarded upon the floor but jutting from the bottom of the bed-frame. I blinked. Was it only stuffing poking through a hole in the mattress? But I knew that it was not.

  I lay down upon the floor and stretched beneath the bed until I could feel the rasp of paper under my fingers. I pulled it free, then remembered to collect the last page of Wuthering Heights before I stood once more.

  I set aside the novel’s printed sheets, then stood there, struck dumb, clutching the others against my chest. I knew at once what they were and I wanted almost to laugh, or to cry, to do anything that would steady my racing pulse. These were the pages of my cousin’s journal that had been torn free; the ones I had so desperately sought to read. I knew not why they had been secreted there—had Lizzie known, somehow? Had she simply wished to hide them as best she could, in the event that one day, she may need to show them to somebody?