Wakenhyrst

by Michelle Paver

  That’s not such an uncommon feeling when one is outside, so I shrugged it off and strolled to the kitchen garden for a word with Cole. The old fellow is growing very bent, and complains frequently of his ‘rheumatics’. He gave me to understand that he wouldn’t object to being put out to pasture, as he has a daughter in Bury who is willing to take him in. He thinks highly of young Walker, and believes the lad quite capable of assuming the rôle of head gardener.

  It’s not such a bad idea. I like Walker. He’s quiet and respectful, with an agreeable demeanour. It strikes me that he might be able to help me in that other matter.

  16th August

  I’m still conscious of that staring from the fen. I can’t shake off the feeling that something has been let loose – and that it’s out there now, biding its time. Waiting to come in.

  What do I mean by ‘something’? I haven’t the least idea. Nor do I know where ‘it’ has been released from; or why ‘it’ should wish to enter the house. It’s merely one of those unpleasantly vague feelings that one has sometimes and which can be so difficult to dislodge, precisely because they are so vague. It’s rather like the experience of worrying about something when one is half-awake: no matter how often one reasons away one’s disquiet, it always seeps back.

  25th August

  Has Ivy been lying about her news, or is she telling the truth? She has definitely put on more flesh. If by some ill chance she is indeed gravid, it would be the most confounded nuisance. No, I must face facts, it would be worse than that. The servants would learn of it, then the whole parish. I can’t have a scandal. I won’t have it. I won’t have it.

  But there is no need for concern. If the worst turns out to be true, then she must apply to her aunt Biddy Thrussel and they must take measures to get rid of it. Should that fail, I shall put into effect the idea I had after my talk with Cole. Yes. One way or another, there is no need for concern.

  5th September

  Still very conscious of that staring from the fen. It’s strongest when I return from church. It makes me almost dread walking home.

  Tonight after evensong I decided that enough was enough, so I told Maud that I wished to take a turn about the grounds alone, then marched through the orchard to the Lode. What a ridiculous sight I must have presented, standing on the bank with my hands on my hips, defying – what, precisely? The shadowy willows and the reeds tossing in the wind?

  On turning to go inside, I was struck by the contorted forms of the apple trees. They looked for all the world as if they’d been playing some trick behind my back, and had only just fallen still.

  Unaccountably, I also experienced a profound reluctance to pass near the well. I used to feel the same thing when I was a boy. I used to avoid peering into it, for I dreaded seeing my reflection in the water. For the same reason, I used to go to great lengths to avoid catching sight of myself in looking-glasses, particularly at night. Although that wasn’t quite for the same reason. In the case of looking-glasses, I had the usual childish fear that I might glimpse some monster behind me.

  In the case of the well, what I dreaded was something reaching up from that filthy black water and dragging me down.

  13th September

  The nights are beginning to draw in. Pyett is yielding more riches than I ever dared hope, and each day I’m impatient to reach my desk – although annoyingly, ideas for my exegesis remain elusive. I daresay I am too distracted to marshal my thoughts. It is vexing that I should be afflicted with this – what shall I call it? Oppression? Malaise?

  For days I’ve told myself that it’s simply the onset of autumn. I have suffered similar attacks in the past, but this year it’s different. I no longer feel watched when I’m in the grounds or walking to and from church; now I feel it when I’m inside the house. I’m plagued by the irrational conviction that there is something outside, peering in at me through the windows. It’s particularly strong in my study. When I’m at my desk I can’t refrain from glancing to my left, at the carriage-drive; or over my shoulder at the lawn and the Lode beyond. I rarely feel it in the other rooms except in my bedroom, where it’s strongest of all. I have the oddest feeling that I need to keep an eye on one particular window, the left-hand of the pair that overlooks the fen. There’s never anything to be seen, only dreary willows overhanging the Lode and in the distance the reedy blur of the Mere. Yet I feel compelled to keep watch.

  Though it shames me to confess, I probably glance out of that window a dozen times a day. It’s the first thing I do when I wake and the last before I retire. I keep myself in check when I’m with Ivy, otherwise Heaven knows how she’d use it against me; but I allow myself more latitude with Steers. The other evening as he was helping me dress I found myself inventing pretexts to keep him with me. I mustn’t do that again. I can’t let the servants suspect anything amiss.

  Brandy helps, as does old G’s tonic. I daresay he’s right and I’ve been over-doing my work on Pyett. This is nothing that a few days’ rest won’t set right.

  But that’s just it, I’m not sleeping well. I keep waking and lighting my candle to check the window – although I’ve no idea what it is that I think I might see. It’s the waiting I don’t like. This dreadful sense of anticipation focused on that window. This fear of what will happen next.

  16th September

  This unrelenting rain is playing havoc with my nerves. For days the house has echoed with trickling, dripping and gurgling. Draperies feel damp, my books are soft to the touch. Everything smells of mould. The windows admit a dim green subaqueous glimmer that sets my teeth on edge.

  I insist on fires in every room, although it’s not nearly cold enough to warrant them; and yet nothing dispels this infernal damp. Small wonder that I’m sleeping badly. I shall double my usual dose of laudanum until the weather improves.

  Later

  Woken by a high thin cry on the fen. It sounded like something hunting. No otter or stoat makes such a sound. The only birds that scream like that are swifts, but they’ve long since flown south. Besides, whatever made that cry was hunting at night.

  17th September

  I can’t rid myself of the feeling that it’s coming closer. But what do I mean by ‘it’?

  Again I was woken in the night, although whether by that cry or something else I couldn’t tell. Half-asleep, I lay watching the curtains blowing in the breeze. Then I started awake, for the window was open. It couldn’t be, I’d checked it ten times before retiring. And yet I heard the rustle of plush curtains, and despite the darkness I saw how they billowed. Then as I fumbled to light my candle, the rustling abruptly ceased. In the flare of my match I saw the curtains hanging motionless. They’d stopped moving so very suddenly, as if hands had grasped them and yanked them still.

  Once my candle was lit, I cast about but found nothing out of place. I felt the night breeze on my face, and turning, I saw the curtains stir a little, sucking faintly in and out – almost mockingly, in a manner I found rather hard to bear. Getting out of bed, I crossed to the window with my candle. I opened the curtains and raised the blind. And of course there was nothing there. No malevolent web-footed creature peering in.

  With a shrug I drew down the sash and made to draw the blind – and that was when I saw something lying on the sill. My first horrified thought was that it was a lock of hair, for it was long and thin and glistened in the candlelight. Intending to fling it out into the garden, I picked it up – and nearly shouted in disgust. It was a strand of waterweed: slimy and soft, like drowned skin. In my revulsion, I had let the thing fall, but now, with a grimace, I picked it off the sill between finger and thumb and flung it into the darkness. My fingers smelled of rotting vegetation. When I wiped them on my nightshirt, they left a greenish-black smear.

  I wish I hadn’t touched that thing. But I couldn’t leave it on the sill. I could not have endured that.

  18th September

  Edmund, Edmund, this foolishness must stop! ‘Drowned skin’, indeed! Someone has been playing
tricks on you – and that someone shall be punished.

  This evening I returned from my bath to a distinct awareness of something amiss in my room. One glance established that my limmell stone wasn’t hanging in its place on the bedpost, but had been laid on the rug in front of the window.

  After the initial jolt, I was merely irked. Who would have played such a prank? Certainly none of the servants; and Maud wouldn’t have dared, not after that episode when she was a child. Who else is left? Answer: Ivy.

  I’ve decided not to have it out with her. I shall pretend it never happened. If she thinks she can unsettle me by such ploys and thereby become mistress of Wake’s End, she is sadly mistaken.

  First she said she was gravid. Then, when she saw that that wouldn’t work, she told me she’d got rid of it by means of the wisewoman’s potion. I suspect she was lying about the whole thing, for her belly never mounded. She concocted this farrago in order to threaten me with scandal and thereby coerce me into marriage.

  Whether I am right, or whether she did indeed succeed in ridding herself of a genuine inconvenience, I intend to ensure that I can never again be exposed to such a threat. I shall see to it that the chit is married off. Then, were she ever to fall pregnant, there could be no breath of scandal.

  19th September

  The awful thing is that I’m not entirely convinced that what just happened was a dream.

  I was woken in the middle of the night. This time it wasn’t a cry from the fen. It was the certain knowledge that there was something in the house.

  I lay on my back in the darkness, striving to calm my racing heart. For an age I lay listening. I heard rain gurgling in the gutters and pattering against the windowpanes. The room smelled musty, with an odd, sulphurous tang that reminded me of marsh gas.

  At last the noise came again. It was outside in the passage: the click of claws. My door wasn’t locked, and I knew that its old-fashioned iron latch would prove no obstacle. I longed to grasp my limmell stone for protection but I couldn’t move, my body would not obey my brain. I could only lie rigid, listening to the thing coming closer. It moved awkwardly, lurching and brushing against the wall, very low to the ground. Nearer and nearer it came, with a stealthy yet unhurried purpose that I found indescribably horrifying.

  Suddenly, the noises stopped. It was outside my door. In the stillness I heard the drip, drip of water. The sound wasn’t coming from the gutters, it was inside, in the passage.

  Something touched my door: a soft, furtive pressure that made it creak. Then I heard a single harsh breath, violently expelled.

  I don’t know what happened next. I only know that I woke long after my usual hour in a sweaty tangle of bedclothes.

  I must stop the laudanum for the next few days. I can’t endure another dream like that. I’ve also arranged for sturdy locks to be fitted on the doors. That ought to help.

  24th September

  What happened the other night was no dream. I know that now. It comes out of the fen at night and it has found its way in.

  This evening shortly after I’d retired to bed, I heard a noise downstairs. This time I wasn’t alarmed, I was outraged. This is my house, I wanted to shout. In the name of Christ, be gone!

  With my lamp in one hand and my crucifix and limmell stone in the other, I went out into the passage and strode to the top of the stairs. I halted. Something was on the bottom step. I didn’t see it so much as perceive it with the perception one has in a dream, when one is aware of something without the aid of sight. But I did perceive it, and I knew that I was fully awake. I smelled the oil in my lamp and the sulphurous odour of marsh gas. I felt a chill draught around my naked ankles. I saw the shadowy form at the foot of the stairs begin to crawl towards me. Two eyes stared up at me. They blinked out. My knees buckled. My lamplight rocked wildly. By the time I’d steadied myself on the banister, the thing was gone.

  I can’t write any more. I shall take whatever I need to put me to sleep and pray God that I have no more dreams.

  25th September

  How differently things appear in the morning after a hot bath and an excellent breakfast! I have enjoyed a highly productive day and achieved a very great deal. There’s nothing like analysing the situation and taking control to improve one’s spirits. I feel completely restored.

  To put the matter plainly, the question before me is this: Am I to be a target in my own house? Answer: No, a thousand times no. There is no need to endure this outrage, it must and it shall be brought to an end forthwith. I have the power and the means to make whatever changes I desire to my own property, and today I took the first step. I have always disliked the fen. It is unsightly, unpleasant and unhygienic, nothing more than a source of damp and disease.

  Why should I cower in my bedroom because some water rat has taken to frequenting the house by night, no doubt seeking scraps left lying about by negligent servants? Well, the creature shall frequent my house no more. I’ve had Walker set traps in every room, and he is outside now, doing the same in the grounds.

  But that’s only the start. I need a more lasting solution, and this morning I embarked on precisely that. Directly after breakfast I called on Lord Clevedon, from whom I obtained the name of the engineer who recently drained one of his pastures. Providentially, the fellow was still in the neighbourhood and I interviewed him this very afternoon. His name is Davies and I found him greatly to my liking: pragmatic, plain-spoken, and with thirty years’ experience of managing marshlands. He assured me that my plan is eminently feasible and I retained him on the spot. I’ve paid him a premium to implement my orders as a matter of urgency, and tomorrow he begins his survey, with a view to drawing up plans to drain the fen.

  ‘BUT Father, you can’t drain the fen!’

  ‘Kindly moderate your tone, Maud, I won’t have you screeching like a fish-wife. Nor will I have you telling me what I can and cannot do. When I last inspected the title deeds, the fen was mine. I rather think I may do with it as I please.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Father.’ Maud set the teapot on the tray and clasped her hands in her lap.

  She had learned of his plans by reading his notebook the previous night, while he was taking his bath. All through dinner she’d been forced to pretend that she didn’t know. She’d hardly slept. The day had passed in a daze. Father had only mentioned his plans now over tea: casually, as she handed him his cup.

  ‘Please, please don’t do this,’ she said.

  He stared at her. ‘Why should I change my mind?’

  Because I love the fen! she wanted to shout. Because it’s the only place where I’ve ever felt happy and free. But he would look at her with those glacial blue eyes and ignore her objections as over-emotional and female.

  She tried another tack. ‘This house was built on the fen. Without the fen its whole character would be ruined—’

  ‘I hadn’t appreciated that you were interested in aesthetics,’ he said drily.

  ‘It would also cause great hardship in the village. They depend on the fen for waterfowl and fish—’

  ‘Nonsense, they prefer North Fen as you well know.’

  ‘Not Jubal. The fen is his home!’

  ‘Then he must find another. Jubal Rede is a drunken wastrel who’s never done an honest day’s work in his life. He should be thankful I’ve tolerated him as long as I have.’

  Maud watched him stir his tea. He gave his spoon a little shake, then laid it noiselessly in his saucer. ‘What about the Mere?’ she said quietly. ‘Do you intend to drain that too?’

  His lips tightened. ‘I gather that will be harder, but by no means impossible.’

  Yes, that’s what you really want, she thought savagely. The Mere reminds you of your sin. You want it to disappear. Then you can pretend that what you did never happened.

  This is my fault, thought Maud as she stood in her bedroom gazing out at the fen. I started it by putting that eel in his washbasin. Stupid, stupid. Everything you do goes wrong.

  Rain beat agains
t the panes, and below her on the path Clem ran to the back door with his jacket over his head. It was three months since Midsummer’s Night and he’d hardly said two words to her – apart from the next day when she’d found him in the glass-house. He’d pretended he hadn’t seen her and slipped away. When she’d tracked him down he’d gone scarlet and stammered an apology.

  ‘Sorry?’ she’d cried. ‘What have you got to be sorry for?’ It had taken her days to realise that he was frightened of losing his place and wanted nothing more to do with her.

  And now he was going to marry Ivy. Well of course he was. What man could resist those dimples and that figure?

  He and Ivy were keeping it secret from the other servants for now, but Ivy had made sure that Maud knew. She had found Maud in the library and ‘let slip’ her news.

  Somehow Maud had maintained her composure. Ivy had caught that lip of hers between her teeth and looked at her. ‘You’ll never get him now,’ she’d said in a low voice.

  Maud didn’t reply.

  With her hands on her hips Ivy glanced about her and tossed her head. ‘All these books. Where’d they get you, eh? You can wait till Doomsday in the arternoon, you’ll never get Clem.’

  ‘And you don’t even want him,’ said Maud, her heart fluttering in her chest. ‘You don’t want Father either. What you want is this house.’ It gave her a sick satisfaction to see Ivy’s eyes widen.

  ‘But Wake’s End doesn’t want you,’ Maud went on. ‘Do you have any idea how old it is? It was a priory in Saxon times. Then in Tudor times one of my ancestors rebuilt it. But you don’t know what I’m talking about – because you’re nothing. You come from the gutter. That’s where you’ll end up.’

  ‘You can’t get rid of me,’ muttered Ivy.

  ‘Go about your work,’ Maud said shakily.

  She managed to keep her countenance until the housemaid had gone. Then she fled to her room.