Baba Lenka

by S E England

  “Right, I’m getting rid of this, and it’s got to be done before your dad gets home. Pray to God it’s not too late. Now where are those bloody books…it’ll be in there…what to do to reverse what you’ve done and banish this thing to high hell.”

  Books? The ones she took from Baba Lenka’s house? She’d told me not to take anything, yet she had!

  The tears dried on my cheeks. Why would she have books that would banish things to hell? What did she mean? And how come she knew so much about a witch’s poppet? Everyone had been telling me it was all in my imagination – the illness, the wardrobe door, the visions. Yet now Mum was going to do some kind of spell. Fear gripped my stomach. This was all real, wasn’t it? Not my imagination, not mental illness, not brought on by trauma or tablets – but real, and that was why my mother was so frightened. Deep inside, I think I knew that all along.

  My voice caught in my throat. “Please give it back to me. You can’t hurt it or bad things will happen—”

  Alas, she was already pulling down the loft ladder, fully intent on locating Baba Lenka’s books.

  ***

  Chapter Seven

  I couldn’t even watch from the window. Instead, I lay on the bed as flames crackled and rose from the garden below. Dirty smoke and cinders billowed in on the breeze, along with my mother’s alien chants. It coiled down my throat and infused my lungs, the very essence of the alraun transferring the spirit of another on the current of a burning wind.

  Swallowing and coughing, a cage of incineration now surrounded me, the sizzle and spit of melting flesh and muscles became mine, and scorching pain roared down my throat, the ferocious ignition of hair and clothing an enveloping inferno… Gulping down the smoke, my mind blanked into a tunnel of darkness as consciousness slipped away amid loud cries of ‘Burn Witch!’ and ‘Go to hell!’ Thrashing around, clutching my head, kicking and lunging for air, I was burning to death.

  When I woke up, it was to find both parents sitting on the bed, their faces ashen. By the look of it, they could hardly bear to be in the same room as each other.

  There’s been a row.

  “You’re going to Grandma Hart’s for a bit, love,” said my mother, thumping pillows into shape. “Here, come on, sit up and drink this tea or it’ll get cold.”

  I swallowed a tepid mouthful. “Why?”

  “Never mind that now,” my dad said. “It’s just for a few weeks until your mum and I can get the house fixed up. It were stupid to leave that plastic sheeting as it was and you here alone.”

  My mother was glaring at him. Yes, they’d had a right old humdinger.

  “It’s for the best, Eva,” she said. “It won’t be for long. And maybe you won’t get nightmares there about the house being haunted. It’ll do us all the power of good, you’ll see. Give us a bit of breathing space, bit of a rest.”

  “By Christmas we’ll be in better shape,” Dad said in a false chirpy voice. “We’ll have this hole in the wall bricked up, and then with your mum working and you back at school, we can crack on with carpets, maybe even have a new bathroom. What colour wallpaper would you like in your room?”

  “Purple.”

  My mother’s smile faltered.

  Dad grinned. “Purple it is, then.”

  “And pink.”

  “You’re to be good at Grandma Hart’s, mind,” said Mum. “No going on about dead people in the wardrobes and stuff like that. I don’t want them upset. They’re old, and they’ve been very good about this.”

  “I want to stay with you and Dad.”

  She sighed. “I know, love, and believe me, this is a last resort, but we’re in a bit of a pickle at the minute. We’ll both have to work all hours, and you’re not well enough to be left on your own. It won’t be for long.”

  “We have to have you safe,” Dad said.

  It made sense. At that time they really did think they were doing the right thing.

  “Oh, and like I told you before,” Mum said, “don’t tell your grandparents you went to Germany, all right? Do not mention Baba Lenka, and do not tell them you went to the funeral. You know how Grandad Hart feels about Germany, and we don’t want him upset. He fought in the War and lost a lot of his friends and family, so it’s very hurtful.”

  “His brother,” said Dad. “My Uncle Seth died.”

  My mother nodded. “I mean it, Eva. Don’t say a bloody word or there’ll be no Christmas presents, do you hear? It’s extremely important. Promise me!”

  “Yes, I promise.”

  “Good, right, then. We wouldn’t do this if we weren’t forced to, so I’m going to have to trust you.”

  “All right,” I said, watching their anxiety drain away…please don’t make this any harder for us…like water down a plughole. “I’ll go.”

  “You won’t have to go back to that school, neither,” Dad assured me, warming to their success. “And me dad’s a great one for ’aving your back. No one will mess with Earl Hart’s granddaughter, believe me.”

  “Aye, there’ll be no name-calling, that’s for sure. If anyone calls Earl’s granddaughter a Nazi, he’ll knock them into the middle of next week.”

  “He were a boxer, me dad – used to have bare-knuckle fights. He earned a fair bit of money back in the day.”

  I looked from one to the other. “And I’m definitely not going back to that school? Definitely? Not ever?”

  “No, you’re doing schoolwork at home, where your gran can keep an eye on you. Then you’ll come back here after Christmas and go to the girls’ school at the end of the road. Like we said, it’s not for long, love.”

  There was no point arguing. Besides, they were desperate, and it was all my fault. I was the one who’d brought the poppet home and with it the ghost of Baba Lenka. And that ghost was mine to deal with, no matter where I went. Moving me from one place to another was not going to ‘make me better’, I saw that now. So it was best for all concerned if they were left to mend the house and make it safe and get on their feet financially.

  But after they left me at my grandparents in Eldersgate, said their goodbyes and drove off, the sense of abandonment was overwhelming.

  Gran and Grandad Hart lived on the row of terraces closest to the pit, and, believe me, it looked its grimy worst on that miserable, foggy morning in late November. Earl, my grandad, had worked as a miner all his life until the pit had closed last year. Now he headed up the local union. It was Arthur Scargill this and Arthur Scargill that. Whenever we went to visit, he and Dad would get pretty het up about pit closures and trade union dictates. Either that or it would be the War. Earl had fought in the Second World War and wanted to go over and over it, often with the same stories and always ending with how much he hated the Jerries or the Krauts, as he called them. Odd he didn’t seem to notice my mother was German.

  “Mum was one,” I said once.

  He turned and fixed me with a cold blue stare. “She were only a lass; she knows nowt about it.”

  There was an air of severity in their house. It was dark and narrow with a downstairs bathroom reached by walking through the galley kitchen at the back. Only a frosted glass door separated this bathroom from the corridor, which had a corrugated iron roof and adjoined the coalhouse. Unheated, this was where Grandad Hart had washed when he’d come in through the yard from the mine. You could still see ingrained soot in the paint.

  The house was a miasma of brown and green, the staircase as steep as a roof ladder and so narrow my gran’s shoulders touched both walls as she led the way up to my new room. Tears filled my eyes. Everyone else had trendy parents who wore flares and platform boots and drove Capris. Grandad Hart had a bottle-green Škoda and wore a flat cap. The place smelled of soot and boiled vegetables. It was out of another age.

  “You’re going to be with us for a bit, Eva, love,” said Grandma Hart. We were gazing out at the colliery through my bedroom window. It was so close you could see the rust on the railings. She was smoking a Senior Service and wore a hairnet with cu
rlers underneath. “It’s just while your mum and dad get back on their feet,” she said, flicking ash out of the open window. “Then when the ’ouse is done up and you’re well enough to go to school, you can go back.”

  It was coming into winter, and I’d been off school for nearly a year. Various officials had been here and left textbooks ‘to be getting on with’, but it was expected I’d go to the all-girls’ school in Leeds after Christmas. The one with the lovely navy uniforms.

  “You’re to get on with your reading and sums, love. Now, if there’s nowt else you need, I’ll get tea on. You can put your clothes in them drawers over there and come down when you’ve unpacked.”

  After she shut the door behind her, I sat on the bed and cried.

  This was all my fault.

  If only I hadn’t picked up the poppet – that’s what had brought the evil witch, Baba Lenka, home with us. At least that was clear now; I wasn’t imagining things like everyone had said. She had followed us home and she’d come out of that wardrobe and she’d spoken to me – my mother knew it, too. Why else would she have brought Baba Lenka’s old spell books back with her? She knew things, believed in them, and was terrified of admitting it. Why? Was she ashamed? Hiding something?

  I begged her to tell me more about the alraun and the books, but all she would say was “No, Eva. Because once you know, you can never un-know. Trust me.”

  Know what, though? Dad said it was all hocus-pocus. The vicar said there were no ghosts. The doctors said it was hallucinations. So what was it she knew that everyone else did not? Why wouldn’t she tell me? Was it preferable to have her daughter branded insane?

  The closest she ever got to disclosing anything had been on the plane over to Bavaria, when Dad had been talking about the Sudetens fleeing Bohemia after the Second World War. She’d said the reason for the rising unrest was something about roots being ripped out, about more witches being murdered in Germany and Eastern Europe than anywhere else in the world, that fury with the church would be eternal. I think she regretted the outburst instantly – the sinews of her face had tightened, and the words had been terse, almost spat out. I didn’t understand any of it, really. But the term witch had been synonymous with Baba Lenka in one too many sentences.

  One more thing I didn’t understand – if the poppet had brought the curse home as my mother had said, then how come it had only ever felt good? Amid all the night terrors and visions, the only thing that had softened the edges of my fear and provided something to hold on to was that doll.

  And now she’d burned it.

  After a while my tears dried. It seemed time to pick a side. My mother had both deceived and rejected me. But Baba Lenka had not. In fact, she was only too keen to reveal her journey, promised it would help ‘when the time came’. I could not have known, of course, how dark that journey would be, how unutterably black…not then…and by the time I did, it would be too late.

  You must take the gift, Eva…accept it or it will kill you…

  Miserably, I nodded to the voice in my head. Okay, then. If I didn’t, I would be destroyed like she said. And if I did, the night terrors would stop.

  The conclusion gained strength. By day I could be Eva Hart, a normal little girl who went to school and had friends. And at night Lenka would show me her world. I would not go mad; my life would not be ruined. All I had to do was listen to her story. Isn’t that what most ghosts want – just to be heard?

  So I dried my face with the back of my hand and lifted up the small pink valise my mother had packed. As I did so, a cold wind whipped up outside, smattering sleet against the windowpane, and the shadow of the pit wheel fell across the bedroom wall.

  I clicked the case open.

  On top of the neatly folded layers of cardigans and pinafores was the crow poppet. Not burned. Not even singed.

  To you…

  ***

  Chapter Eight

  Every detail of the poppet was intact – from the soft feather wings and the little beaked head to the cleanly bound hemp.

  How the hell…? This could not be possible. No way! And yet there it was.

  Wave after wave of shock hit me in the gut. Backing away from the open case, I sank into the furthest corner of the room, crumpled onto the floorboards where the carpet didn’t meet the skirting, and shoved my fist into my mouth to stop the screams. Every beat of my heart was such a thump, it nearly blacked my mind. How could this be? How, how?

  Eva, it exists…it exists…look…accept…

  Eventually, I’m not sure how long it took, my breathing calmed and the initial panic subsided. My mother had definitely burned the poppet! I’d seen her snap its neck as she’d left the room, heard her strange incantations as the fire had crackled outside, and the heat of the flames had seared my own flesh, dripping off bones like candlewax as the witch was burned to death. On top of that, she’d been determined, furious, and even taken the risk of being caught doing it. Oh, she had absolutely annihilated the doll.

  Magic…magic…believe…believe…

  A child’s laughter reverberated around my head, a tinkling delight all the more sinister for its innocence.

  If you don’t accept it…you will go mad…completely insane…

  Magic or insanity? I chose a side.

  With dried tears and a sickly thudding heart, I stood and walked over to the open case. Picked up the poppet. It had a whiff of bonfire about it. Closer examination revealed the markings were unchanged, too, with nothing charred or smudged. Later, these somewhat indecipherable glyphs would mean more, but the only one that always jumped out was the somewhat childish drawing of a shining sun. This was etched into the forehead and resembled a circle with rays sticking out like pins, the middle filled in with black ink. Funny, I’d never really noticed that before despite endless scrutiny. Why black for the sun?

  The poppet felt very warm to the touch and seemed to smoke like incense, but there was no doubt it was exactly the same one.

  Cutting into my thoughts, Grandma Hart’s voice trilled up the stairs. “Eva? Eva, love, your tea’s ready.”

  How long had I been standing there? That was another thing – time just vanished. The light had dimmed, and evening was closing in rapidly. So fast. What happened to all that time? Yanking open the chest of drawers in the corner, I fudged my clothes in, then slipped the poppet inside the pillowcase and ran downstairs.

  “Coming!”

  “Wash your hands and face in the scullery, love, then come to the table.”

  Grandma Hart, still in hairnet and rollers, was draining cabbage when I hurried to the sink. The omens weren’t good regarding the evening meal. I was not going to like this. The room stank of school dinners and something that hit the back of my throat like an emetic.

  “What are we having?”

  “Liver and bacon with cabbage and mash. That all right for you, love?”

  I almost cried. Oh no, what fresh batch of misery was this? I bloody hated liver and cabbage. She’d put horseradish into something, too, hadn’t she? Oh God… If it was in the potato, I couldn’t eat that either. But how to tell her I couldn’t eat offal and I’d be sick from horseradish? The tablets made me nauseous, and I hardly ate a thing as it was – my body, as it had been pointed out many times, was emaciated, with a stomach the size of a walnut. My mother had only managed to ‘get one thing down ’er all day’ as she’d said to my grandma earlier, and that had been a Rich Tea biscuit smeared with jam. But how to get out of this? What would happen if my grandparents didn’t want me either?

  “Sit down at t’ table, there’s a good lass.”

  She placed a steaming plate of liver in front of Grandad, who put aside his paper and rubbed his hands together with glee.

  “For what we are about to receive, may the Lord make us truly thankful. Amen.”

  “Tuck in, lass. Tha’s got no meat on thee,” he said, smearing a wedge of bread with gravy.

  Perched on the edge of a chair, I picked up a fork and pushed at a
bit of greying liver lumpy with tubes. Even the bacon was ribbed with fat. The smell of it cloyed the sooty air. The clock ticktocked on the mantelpiece, its metronome clicking, winding up each and every nerve along with the sound of steel knives on china plates, the cutting, scraping and chopping greedy and fast. Food slopped and churned in cement-mixer mouths, lips smacked, gravy dripped down chins. One by one, each bundle of nerve fibres began to pop and snap inside my head. Electric tingles travelled the length of both arms, my jaw had clenched, and my fists balled around the knife and fork. And then my grandad did this monstrous thing of plopping potato into the dregs of his teacup, mixing it up and then gulping down the gloop.

  That was it.

  The room was suddenly too small, too confined, and too hot. Leaping back from the table, I turned and fled.

  “What the heck?”

  The gravy boat had been knocked over and a plate crashed in my wake. I flew up the stairs with my grandma right behind me, and into the bedroom, backing into the furthest corner to await punishment.

  She slammed back the door, beetroot in the face. “What the bleedin’ ’ell’s the matter with you?” Grandma Hart now looked at me like all the other adults did – with pursed lips and narrowed eyes. “Are you not well or summat?”

  “No, I can’t eat…I can’t—”

  “Well that’s as maybe, but you can ’ave manners, young lady. You can sit there and ruddy well wait ’til others have finished, do you ’ear me? And you don’t leave the table until you’re told. Not in my ’ouse, any road.”

  “I can’t eat. I can’t eat anything. I’m not well. I’m too hot.”

  “Aye, well, you will when you’re ’ungry enough. I’m going back down or me tea’ll get cold. You can get ready for bed, miss. I’ll fetch you a glass of water when I’ve washed up.”

  Snivelling, I wiped my nose with the back of my hand.