by Guy N Smith
The thought made her even sleepier; she went indoors and upstairs. What she needed was a good long sleep. She’d feel better then and the future wouldn’t seem quite so bleak.
Peter gave up trying to catch Rabbit, squealed his rage at the creature which evaded him at every turn. He stamped his foot, kicked at the tufty lawn. It wasn’t fair, he only wanted to play with Rabbit.
“Bad Rabbit!” He screeched. “Mommy will soon catch you, and when she does, you’ll go right back in your hutch and you’ll never be allowed out again!”
He glanced back towards the red-bricked house, saw that the curtains of an upstairs window were closed. His mother was asleep. He thought about going up to wake her, changed his mind. He was bored, he wanted something to do and it was too warm and sunny to go indoors and build with Lego or play with his box of cars. Something outside …
He wandered up the hedgeside, pulling at browning leaves, snapping off twigs. He looked for a gap through which it might be possible to wriggle; on the other side were the filter beds, huge ponds with fountains squirting water all the time. They weren’t very deep, he could paddle in them and the water only came up to his knees. Water held a strange fascination for him.
But there was no way through, the privet grew close and thick.
The opposite side was all fence, so high that all he could see were the silver birch trees which the neighbours grew in their garden. But the straggling hedge bordering the pine forest was much more interesting …
A grey squirrel ran along the topmost bough of a nut tree, leaped for an overhanging pine branch, secured a hold. When Peter peered, the creature had gone. Or else it was lying so till in the dense foliage that he was unable to see it.
There were gaps between the hazel trees, Daddy couldn’t have squeezed through but he knew that he could. Hesitating, looking back down the garden in case his mother had come out to look for him. There was no sign of her. He wouldn’t be long, just a quick look the other side, he wouldn’t go far.
From the dense forest thicket a jay screeched a warning.
It was cool and shady in the forest, like he’d stepped into a different world. He had to wait while his eyesight adjusted to the gloom. Beyond, to his left, he saw a wide track, could just make out tyre marks that had churned up he pine needles. He knew that the ruts had been made by Mister Dalgety’s Land Rover a short time ago when the inspector and his father had gone up to the reservoir. The thought of water was inviting.
He began to follow the tracks.
Up ahead he could see bright sunlight where the trees ended, that had to be where the reservoir was. He walked faster.
A gate with a notice by it, he didn’t know what the words said, it was probably something boring, anyway. Steep grassy banks, a building to his right, half buried in the sloping ground; that would be the place where Daddy and Mister Dalgety had gone. Peter couldn’t understand why his father hated coming up here, it was secluded and sunny, so peaceful. The water had to be beyond the banks where they fell away on the other side, a shimmering blue lake like the brightly coloured picture in one of his reading books. Maybe boats even sailed on it.
He crawled beneath the barbed wire, scrambled up the slippery bank. And then he stared in amazement and disappointment. There was no expanse of blue water sparkling in the bright sunlight, just rough grass with concrete squares sticking up out of it at intervals.
He groaned his dismay aloud, stamped his frustration. And then he noticed that there was somebody sitting over by one of the hatches.
It had to be that lady that he’d heard Daddy telling Mommy about the other day at the tea table. Some woman who went up there painting every day, lived in a big posh house down the road from the waterworks.
She turned her head and he knew that she had heard him approach. Long fair hair fell about her shoulders, her face was young and beautiful, it reminded him of his mother.
Then he started, caught his breath. She wasn’t wearing any clothes, at least not on the top half of her body. Below her waist she wore some kind of green costume, or it might have been a towel wrapped around her like people on the beach wore when they’d just been for a swim in the sea. Except that there wasn’t any water here to swim in.
She looked at him, smiled. Suddenly, he became embarrassed; he hadn’t used to get that way, up until a short time ago he had always gone in the bath with Mommy. He hadn’t taken much notice of her body, he only knew that girls were different from boys. Then Daddy had said that he was too big now to get in with Mommy and he’d have to learn to have a bath on his own. So he had to play with his plastic duck and his rubber shark all on his own, and when his mother came in to dry him off she was always fully clothed.
It certainly wasn’t the woman whom Daddy had spoke of, Peter averted his eyes. If he wasn’t allowed to look upon his own mother unclothed then this lady might be cross because he had seen her. She wasn’t, though, because she had smiled at him. He decided to risk one more look.
But when he lifted his head back up, there was no sign of her. She had disappeared.
She couldn’t have gone far, there wasn’t time. He stared, perhaps she was hiding behind that concrete square, as embarrassed as he was.
His curiosity got the better of him, he walked a few paces sideways until he was beyond the line of hatches, looked again. She certainly wasn’t hiding. Then where had she gone?
He made his way over to where he had last seen her, looked around in bewilderment. And that was when he noticed the sheen on the rough grass. It glinted silvery in the bright sunlight, reminded him of the trails that nocturnal snails left on the outside patio at home where they had been crawling about in the night hours.
Except that this was much bigger, the width of a human body, and it headed towards that square building that was forbidding even on a sunlit afternoon.
He followed it apprehensively, saw how it snaked around thick tufts of grass, in places the sun was already drying it out. He came to the slabs that formed steps along the side of the blockhouse, saw how the trail had gone beneath the handrail, right up to the wall.
Where it ended, right outside a jagged hole in the concrete, the silvery slime already beginning to dry out on the scatterings of powdered mortar.
Well, there was no way she could have gone through there, he ran his fingers through his hair, checked the steps up and down. She hadn’t gone either way Rabbit might have squeezed through that hole and he was big as pet rabbits went.
That trail couldn’t have been left by that lady. No way. Something else had made it, he glanced behind him nervously, conjured up visions of giant snails or slimy black slugs. There was nothing in sight.
She must have ducked and ran while he wasn’t looking, maybe hid behind another of those hatches until he was out of sight, then slipped away into the woods.
It was a pity, she had smiled at him so sweetly that he was sure that she wasn’t cross with him because he had seen her without clothes on the top half of her body. Maybe, like himself, she was just embarrassed.
A nagging thought, he’d been gone a long time. Maybe Mommy had woken up and was looking for him in the garden, starting to panic the way she had that time when he’d got lost at the fairground. He broke into a run, slithered down the bank, snagged his jeans on the barbed wire as he wriggled beneath it.
He ran all the way back to the nut tree hedge, squeezed through; gasped his relief aloud because Mommy wasn’t out in the garden. The curtains on the upstairs window were still closed.
Kate awoke with a start, jumped up off the bed and reeled with a sudden spell of dizziness. God, it was after four-thirty and Peter was still out in the garden on his own! Barefooted, scarcely aware that her headache still lingered, she ran for the stairs.
Thank God, he was on the lawn, still chasing rabbit around, Phil would never forgive her for leaving him on his own that long.
“Are you all right, Peter?” She moved to intercept the bounding creature, luck was on her side and she grabbed
a handful of fur, lifted the struggling rabbit aloft.
“Fine,” he was breathless, the rabbit had led him on a hard chase.
“Look, you’ve torn your jeans. Never mind, I’ll patch them, it’s time you had another pair, anyway.”
It wasn’t until teatime that Peter spilled out his story. He hadn’t meant to tell his parents, they might be angry with him for going into the wood on his own, but somehow it just came out in a rush.
Kate glanced across the table at Phil, raised her eyebrows, tried to hide a half smile. But her husband wasn’t smiling, his expression was one of concern.
“What on earth do you mean by going off into the wood alone?” He frowned at his son, incorporated his wife in his expression of disapproval. “I’ve told you before …”
“He hasn’t been in the wood,” Kate said, “goodness, Phil, surely you know that children have fantasies, don’t spoil it for him. He’s been really good all afternoon.”
“Mommy’s been to bed with a headache, she wouldn’t know whether I’d been in the wood or not!” Peter was indignant. “I tell you, I saw a lady who’d got nothing on except something wrapped around her middle and she left a trail like a snail on the grass, right up to a hole in the wall …”
“What hole?” Phil shouted, half rose from his chair.
“Th … the … one … one … in the wall,” Peter always stammered when he was nervous.
“Phil!” Kate snapped angrily. “Don’t talk to him like that, he hasn’t done anything wrong.”
“He’s been in the wood on his own,” Phil’s cheeks were white with anger. “If he hadn’t, he wouldn’t know about the hole. And you’re as much to blame as him, I find it absolutely irresponsible of you to go off to bed for the afternoon and leave a six-year-old unsupervised! Don’t you ever do that again, either of you. And,” his voice dropped almost to a whisper, “don’t you ever go in the wood again without I’m with you. Understand?”
Peter was sobbing, Kate pulled him across on to her knee, comforted him. “Now look what you’ve done to him. He was fine before you started.”
“You … don’t realize” Phil sat down again, buried his face in his hands.
“Realize what?” Kate retorted.
“I can’t tell you,” he sounded as if he was close to tears, too.
“This is all from Dalgety’s visit. It’s time you packed the job in, we’d manage. I’ll go out to work, if necessary, there’s a couple of cleaning jobs being advertised in the village. That Mrs Jackson you’ve been on about, she wants somebody to clean three mornings a week.”
“We’ll be all right,” he looked up, “just don’t go in the wood, especially near the reservoir.”
“Why?” She looked him in the eye. “Come on, it seems that you can have your fantasies but Peter can’t have his!”
“I tell you there was a lady up there,” Peter rubbed at his eyes. “She didn’t have any clothes on except for something wrapped round her middle. She was only a bit rude.”
“What … what kind of thing did she have wrapped round her, Peter?”
“Like … like a fish,” he snuggled back against his mother, fearful of another reprimand.
“Jesus God!” Phil was shaking, stared at the remains of his pizza.
Then he got up, went over to the dresser, came back with something in his hand. He held it out for the boy to see, the ring with the mermaid emblem which Jocelyn Jackson had found amidst the naked footprints on the blockhouse floor. “Was she like that?”
“Yes,” Peter nodded, his anguish momentarily forgotten. He leaned closer, “just like that. Even her face was the same, smiling just like that.”
“I see,” Phil pocketed the ring, made an effort to finish his pizza. His knife and fork rattled on the plate because he was trembling.
“I think it’s time for bed, Peter,” Kate lifted up her son, carried him towards the doorway. “You just forget all about this but don’t ever go in the wood unless either Daddy or I are with you.”
“I won’t,” he buried his face against her bosom.
“Well, I just hope Peter doesn’t wake us up in the middle of the night screaming because he’s had a nightmare,” Kate came back into the room, pulled the curtains closed. Never before had she wanted so much to shut the night out. “I think you owe me an explanation, at the very least, Phil.”
He told her, kept his voice low in case Peter was still awake in the room immediately above. He told her about the light that flickered for no apparent reason, the ripples in the water; the foul stench, the naked footprints and how the ring had been found. About how something burrowed through concrete block walls from the inside. And that there was an evil in the blockhouse which he did not understand.
This time she didn’t ridicule him, her features were pale and drawn. She let him finish and only then did she ask, “what do you think Peter saw, then, Phil?”
“I think he saw Mukasa,” his whisper shook, he glanced across at the curtained window. “According to Mrs Jackson, Mukasa was some kind of water god. A mermaid, maybe. Natives used to sacrifice humans to their deity. Legend, of course. But we’ve found the ring, Peter’s seen something which resembled the emblem on it. What more can you say?”
“Just that it’s too incredible, too frightening,” Kate wrung her hands together. “Oh, Phil, whatever are we going to do?”
“Nothing much we can do,” he shrugged his shoulders, “except keep away from that place.”
“I don’t want you going up there any more to check the instruments,” there was pleading in her voice.
“I have to, unfortunately. Despite what you say, we have to keep the job and the house. For Peter’s sake, we don’t want him growing up in a council-flat ghetto, do we?”
“Maybe,” a sudden idea, put into words it sounded stupid, but if Phil believed Peter then surely he would take note of her. “Maybe this … this mermaid, whatever her name is, has got outside the reservoir because she’s lost her ring and is looking for it.”
He nodded, he didn’t laugh. “Could be.”
“Suppose … suppose you returned it, put it back in the blockhouse where she would find it. Maybe then she wouldn’t be seen again.”
“It’s an idea. Yes, we’ll give it a try. Tomorrow.” Because no way am I going up there in the dark.
It might work. But even if it did, and Mukasa no longer travelled outside the blockhouse in search of her lost ring, there was no disputing the fact that she would still be down there in the deep, dark water of that underground reservoir. Waiting.
Fourteen
The disciples of the People of the Water had their own quarters at the rear of Packington Hall, dowdy rooms that were in stark contrast to the luxurious lifestyle enjoyed by Royston Shannon.
Basic furnishings, second-hand tables and chairs, mattresses on the bare littered floors, heaps of unwashed blankets that stank of body odours; an old cooker, canned food on a shelf with brackets coming loose in the wall. The windows were kept shuttered, the only light, day and night, came from unshaded bulbs, dimmed by the dust that had gathered there.
Lately, Janice rested most of the time, slept or dozed on a mattress in a corner that smelled faintly of urine. She wore a crumpled nightdress, she didn’t possess a maternity dress and it was impossible to fasten her jeans any longer.
Her time was very close. Yesterday she was sure she was having a contraction but it had turned out to be a false alarm. Elaine had instructions to go and find Shannon if Janice went into labour; she presumed that he would phone for a doctor or a midwife. None of them were allowed to use the phone. She was looking forward to the cleanliness and comfort of a hospital maternity ward.
Her husband had tried to make her lose the baby before he finally walked out. She hadn’t altogether been against an abortion in the very early stages but at a counselling she’d been talked out of it. Subconsciously, she was only agreeing to please Alan.
It was probably the counsellor’s job to try to save the
health service money; abortions were costly. Passing the buck, in fact, if you really thought about it. You saved them the cost of the termination but you became a single parent in a council flat if your husband left you. She’d warned them that he might. Maybe the System hoped that some other guy would come on the scene and relieve them of the responsibility of paying for mother and child.
Alan had flown into a rage and pushed her down the stairs. She’d only fallen six steps, thankfully. Then he’d left; she hadn’t heard from him since. He’d tried to exonerate himself by claiming that it had to be some other guy’s baby because he’d always taken precautions.
She had had an affair. With Brian. He’d given her that which, now, she most wanted in life but he hadn’t wanted to know, either. Her husband and her lover had left her but she was happy in the knowledge that she would bring up her child in the only way which offered it security for life. And beyond. Shannon had convinced her of that, now all she awaited was the birth of her baby. That would be worth all the trials and tribulations of the past nine months.
She divorced the child from both Alan and Brian, as surely as she would divorce her husband one day. In her mind she hadn’t conceived by Brian. Nor Shannon. Nor Stogie. Hers was a divine birth; not a ridiculous virgin birth but one that was blessed by the People of the Water who would safeguard her offspring throughout its life. NMI, she laughed to herself at her own terminology—No Male Involvement. Like AI. It was a great consolation to her that her son, she knew it would be a boy, would not be cast into today’s decadent society, this sect was a kind of cocoon that protected one from the evils of the world outside Packington Hall and its inner temple.
Her baby would be a privileged Child of the Water. Shannon had promised her that he would provide for it until such time as the floods came and covered the Earth.
Elaine, Lisa, Sheila and Debbie would all become pregnant in due course, Shannon and Stogie between them would see to that. The Queen demanded a new generation, children born of the water. Which was why the coven always copulated in the water.
