Creeping Jenny

by Jeff Noon

  The whole village of Hoxley was now in slumber.

  Saint Yorick had them in his thrall.

  The hours passed. Nothing happened. The streets remained empty. There was very little noise. The wild birds chattered in the trees, for they were not bound by the village’s rules; likewise the insects in the soil continued to dig and hunt.

  Babies in their cots, boys and girls, young and old, men and women: all slept on.

  Nyquist lay in his bed. He was breathing easily, his eyelids fluttering slightly: evidence of a dream. Every so often his body shifted to a new position.

  The sun reached its highest point and started slowly to descend. Shadows shortened and lengthened. At half past two in the afternoon a little rain fell, wetting the hair and faces of those few villagers caught outside, but not waking them. The shower didn’t last long, and the skies cleared once more.

  The afternoon came and went, and twilight arrived in its place.

  It was a quarter past four.

  Nyquist slept on.

  The village slept on.

  The sky darkened further. Time passed.

  The church clock chimed six times.

  The final chime seemed to act as a signal. In one house after another, in one bedroom after another, in living rooms, gardens, wherever people and pets were sleeping, a movement was seen. It might be the tapping of a finger or the twitch of a cheekbone, the slow wagging of a cat’s tail. The quiver of an eyelash. One by one the villagers stretched and moaned, and then sat up in their beds or wherever they were resting. They all rose up at the same time and started to get dressed, if they needed to. Their eyes were almost fully closed, with only a narrow slit to admit the barest amount of light. It was enough. They moved at a steady even pace, making hardly any sound. Mothers bent down at cots to pick up their babies, wrapping them in extra blankets for warmth. Old men groaned and rubbed at their joints, and then braced themselves for the task ahead. One or two remembered the battlefields of their youth, and this emboldened them. In step with everyone else, they made their way outside and started to walk along lanes and alleyways. They greeted each other with nods and hand gestures only: no words. In this way, the village of Hoxley-on-the-Hale gathered itself for an evening’s stroll. In Lower Hoxley, they did the same, bound by the same spell. Saint Yorick guided them all. In the lower village they made their way to the small central square with its war memorial and dried-up fountain. Whereas in Hoxley-on-the-Hale they congregated on the village green. It was half past six by the time they were all in place: Young boys and girls hanging on to their parents’ hands, babies in prams, teenagers and the newly married, the middle-aged and the elderly, all were there. And all of them still asleep inside their heads; only their bodies moved, following orders that had nothing at all to do with the individual mind. These were the members of the Hoxley Somnambulist Society and Saint Yorick was their guide, and their leader. We are one. One village. Here we stand in waiting. Nyquist was but a single villager among many, his overcoat pulled around him, his face without any expression, his eyes set to a soft focus. Not a thought disturbed him, not even when Dolly Copple started up a tune called Barefoot Maiden on her concertina and Fred Oswaldtwistle, butcher, joined in on his homemade three string fiddle. They played it at half the customary speed, giving it a languid, spectral air. But nobody danced; the beat was too slow and the people too bound by sleep. The skies were clear, the night crisp. Blade of Moon held her branches high and a soft breeze ruffled the waters of the pond. And then it began, as the clock chimed seven.

  The music continued and a young woman started to sing.

  A barefoot maiden

  Across the moors did seek

  her sailor boy so bold,

  Who died upon the silver sea

  Aboard the Ivanhoe.

  It was Becca Fairclough singing, her voice piercingly clear in the evening air. She sang it as June Holler would sing it – simply and cleanly, without artifice – and the melody cut to the heart directly. A few other people joined in, not many; a fragile harmony. Nyquist found himself mouthing the words, even though he had never heard the song before.

  Across the moors

  She heard her sailor cry

  And spied his shape so fine,

  His uniform in tatters

  His blood all mixed with brine.

  And then a hush fell over the congregation. Another four people had arrived on the green, each from a different direction. It wasn’t obvious at first, for these newcomers moved as the village sleepwalkers did, slowly, drowsily. But a faint glow came off them, enough to bring attention, and a murmur ran through the crowd. Some people stepped back in wonder at what they saw. The first to arrive was Mr Brian Holroyd. He moved unsteadily on his feet for he had been seventy-two years old when he died earlier this year, from various ailments. His present body had a translucent, shimmery quality to it, like a cloud pinned together in human shape. His only remaining family member was his nephew, Neil: they met each other awkwardly, neither of them knowing quite how to act.

  The next to arrive was Gladys Coombes, thirty-eight years old. Her wrists held the twin scars from which her blood had flowed into the village pond. She stood at the pond’s edge now, calmly staring into the water. Not everyone saw her, but her widower, Nigel, walked to her, with their daughter Mavis close behind. They both smiled, weakly at first, in disbelief, and then more freely. The third of the dead to arrive was Ian Bainbridge, who had passed away four nights ago, age forty-two. His body showed all the symptoms of moonsilver poisoning. But his face showed no pain, none at all. His wife, Hilda, came to him with open arms and they embraced. It was not quite a firm embrace: flesh did not quite meet flesh. The fourth to arrive was Jane Sutton, thirty-nine years old, showing the same deathly symptoms as Mr Bainbridge. She had died yesterday. Like all the other visitors, her body was a nebulous, drifting shape. Again, there was no evident pain, but Gerald Sutton watched his wife from a few steps away, his face wet with tears that flowed slowly, as from a dream. In Lower Hoxley they had only one new arrival, for only a single person had died in the ten months since Saint Yorick had last been chosen. But this person was seven years old, a boy taken by measles, and the cries of his parents and his two sisters rang out across the village square. The family dog, a terrier called Nelson, bounded to meet his lost playmate.

  Nyquist walked through the crowd. Like many others gathered there, he could not see the dead clearly. Only their families and close friends could do that. But he saw enough to know that scenes of great tenderness and love were being enacted. He kept his distance, for the moments between the returned and the living were too personal. But he took joy from it, and hope. An hour went by in this way. The church clock sounded eight o’clock and the dead returned to their own world, disappearing from ours as smoke from an extinguished fire, drifting away into the air. The ghosts of Jane Sutton and Ian Bainbridge seemed to mingle as they vanished, their bodies of dust and moonlight entwined.

  They might have been real, these spirits, or the products of a shared vision, but either way the villagers felt no grief at their passing. The green was hushed for a moment, nobody spoke, for a single word would break the spell. And then the people made their way back to their homes, to their beds, Nyquist included. He was quickly asleep and remained so until the morning, when he awoke with the traces of a dream in his mind. This was true of all the villagers, Upper and Lower; to all intents and purposes they had slept for the last thirty hours or more. It was the same every year on the morning after Saint Yorick’s Day. Strangely, both Gerald Sutton and Hilda Bainbridge woke up with the exact same phrase on their lips: I’m sorry. Their loved ones had spoken to them.

  OBJECT NO. 5

  Nyquist was still half awake when he woke up half asleep, half dressed in last night’s clothes, with his bed half in disarray and half tidy. He got up and washed his face in tepid water and shaved but left a few bristles showing, he didn’t know why. Carelessness. On the shelf the new day’s icon was wai
ting for his inspection, Saint Hetta from her label. She was made from the pieces of a child’s doll, matchsticks and balsawood, string and glue, the tiny bones of a bird, or a combination of birds, of sparrow and rook: the mathematics of flight reaching zero. All these various components were only partially assembled, as though her body might fall to pieces at any moment. Her hair was tufts of fur and wool: a bizarre concoction, three quarters ragged, one quarter neatly styled.

  At breakfast Nyquist’s streaky bacon wasn’t quite cooked and his eggs were runny. He had words with the waitress about it. The conversation went like this.

  “Mavis, my eggs are–”

  “I know…”

  “Do you think I can eat…”

  “No. Probably…”

  “Probably? What do you…”

  “Probably…”

  “Not?”

  “Yes!”

  He gave up, pushed his plate aside and drank his lukewarm tea. He could hear Nigel in the lounge bar and he went through to speak with him. The publican was talking to himself in broken sentences, muttering about the troublesome wholesalers and the clogging of the beer pumps and how he had no one to help him change the barrels. Nyquist interrupted the flow.

  “What’s the story with Saint…”

  “Oh, it’s you…”

  “With Saint Hetta? What’s the…”

  “The story?”

  “Yes.”

  “You will never understand…”

  His words drifted away, unfinished. Coombes looked worried. He was a strong man, bred for hard work – but right now he wouldn’t even look Nyquist in the eye. He took out a handkerchief and wiped his brow.

  Nyquist said to him, “I know what’s going on, here in…”

  But the sentence would not complete itself. The name of the village lingered, unsaid. He frowned and held his concentration to the one task, and one only, to speak. To speak!

  “I know… I know… I know what’s going on…”

  But still the words would not fall freely.

  Coombes took courage from this. He said, or nearly said, “You can still get… you can still get away… from… from here, if you…”

  “I’m not… not going…”

  “Then there’s nothing to…”

  “Nothing to…”

  “Nothing to say!”

  Nyquist faced the other man down. He spoke as best he could and he kept on speaking even though the words were stuttered. “I think… you’re in… you’re in trouble, Coombes. And you… you know you’ve… you’ve taken a… a bad step.”

  His mouth felt like a knife had been at it.

  “Christ…”

  A smile came to the face of Coombes, and he leaned in very close and whispered, “I have taken your precious objects from you. One, two, three… and four.”

  Every hushed word was clear now, finely spoken.

  “I have hidden them away for safekeeping. Because you… Nyquist, you’re not worthy of their possession.”

  Nyquist matched the tone, speaking low and close, and found that he could speak more freely in this way.

  “Where is Thomas Dunne?”

  The two men were less than an inch apart: on any other day of the liturgical year this would have been unthinkable… but needs must.

  “How the hell would I know? Now piss off.”

  Even the swearword was said in a whisper. Nyquist moved back slightly.

  Coombes sneered at this. He picked up a clutch of receipts from a table and headed for a doorway behind the bar. But then he stopped. And he stood there with his back to Nyquist, his hands at his sides, the fingers curling into fists. His whole body was tense, every muscle. Nyquist found himself responding in kind. But the landlord didn’t turn around. His hands tightened further until the knuckles were red. He was speaking quietly to himself. Nyquist had to step closer to hear.

  “Last night, I saw her… on the green… I saw her… I saw my Gladys… she was alive!”

  “You were… you were dreaming…”

  This was dismissed with a shake. Nyquist felt compassion, for he knew what Coombes had been through this last year. He moved closer still and said in a voice low enough to allow the words to flow, “Nigel, do you honestly think you’ll get her back?”

  The landlord didn’t respond at first. And then he turned to face Nyquist, close up. He spoke softly: “I’ll take any chance that’s given to me. And if this works, then I’ll worship Creeping Jenny until the day I die.”

  “And if it doesn’t work?”

  Coombes screwed shut his eyes. He groaned to himself and then whispered, the words hardly more than a collection of sighs. And this time he said something strange:

  “The person to blame is working the spell. How can it fail?”

  “To blame…”

  “To blame for my Gladys passing away.”

  And with that, he turned and marched off through the doorway.

  Nyquist went outside. Everything looked normal, just another day in the village. People went about their ways, and quite a few wore black scarves, and black armbands: in mourning for Sutton and Bainbridge, one or the other or both. Not one person spoke to him, not even by a gesture.

  The door of the corner shop was only partially open, and a sign in the window said, “Everything today – half price!”

  One man wore half a trench coat, the left side portion only.

  A young woman sang one half of a line from a popular song. A passing friend finished the line for her, and they smiled at each other.

  A car drove along the high street, its engine stalling.

  Nyquist banged on the door of the doctor’s house. There was no answer. He tried again, even louder, and eventually it was pulled open a little way by the maid.

  “I want to see…”

  “The doctor, sir?”

  “Yes.”

  “Cannot.”

  “Why?”

  “Not…

  “Not in?”

  “Yes.”

  He concentrated on his words: “Where is she?”

  “Gone?”

  “Where?”

  “Don’t… I don’t…

  “Don’t know?”

  “No.”

  And so it went on. The maid set her brows into a frown and held the door firm, her feet braced. For a good second he thought of pushing past her, and searching the place top to bottom. But in the end, he backed down, and instead he forced his lips to work: “Tell her… tell Doctor Higgs that I’ll be… I’ll be…” He lowered his voice even further, understanding by now that to finish a sentence he needed to whisper. “Tell her I’ll be finding out where my father is. Today! With her help, or not!”

  That was enough. He made his way to Pyke Road. A car was badly parked, half inside a garage, half out. A dog barked once and fell silent. In one window after another, the curtains were almost closed, or almost open. And Nyquist himself felt that his mind was only partially working. One step, another, concentrating, moving on. He had to put his thoughts together carefully, to keep himself in key with an out of tune world. I am, I am, I am. On and on. Complete. Whole. One thing only!

  At least Maude Bryars had a welcome for him. The professor invited him into her kitchen and offered him tea. He turned down the offer, or tried to, but his words were choked off. “Whisper close,” she said, drawing him to her. “That way… Saint Hetta cannot hear you. We will fool her! For a time at least. Come on.” She closed the gap further. “Don’t be shy.” He could smell alcohol on her breath, and this close up the look in her eyes – red-lined, fluttery – told him that she was troubled in some way, badly troubled. Her hand was shaking on his arm.

  They sat side by side at the table, their chairs pushed up against each other, their upper legs touching, their forearms pressed together.

  “There you are. Not too bad, is it?” It was gently spoken.

  “No. It’s alright. I can speak.”

  “John, you can say anything you like to me now. And no
one will hear.”

  There was a pamphlet on the tabletop, a few sheets of paper held together with staples. The author was Professor Maude Bryars, and the title was Creeping Jenny and Other Folk Demons. The cover showed a woman’s face made of tangled vines and flowers. Nyquist’s head bowed a little seeing this, and his eyes closed, knowing that his fears might well be confirmed. His mind settled in the darkness.

  Bryars sang a little wordless song to him.

  He looked up and asked, “That bowl of water that you used, with the insects in it, when you removed my mask…”

  “Yes, what of it?”

  “It was taken from Birdbeck tarn?”

  “Yes, it was. And the beetles as well. That is their natural habitat.”

  He picked up the pamphlet and leafed through it. “How much do you know of what goes on out there, every Saint Algreave’s Day, with the four members of the committee, and with the Tolly Man?”

  “A little.”

  Nyquist nodded. He said, “I spoke with someone last night, who told me that a fifth elder was involved, but not present. It was implied that this fifth person might be the leader of the group. Do you know anything about that?”

  Now she looked at him. Bryars was shaking badly, but he couldn’t tell if this was from anxiety or from drinking too much; perhaps both?

  “You’re saying this is me?”

  He waved the pamphlet in her face. “I’m saying… Maude, it would have to be someone with knowledge of the village’s past, and the rituals associated with the past. An expert’s knowledge.”

  “Yes. I agree.”

  “You seem like the best candidate.”

  “You surprise me, John. That you would think of me in this way.”

  He leaned back in his chair. Bryars watched him do it, and smiled. “You are moving… moving away… I will not be able…” Her smile turned crooked.