by David Almond
“Oh, Grampa!”
He stood still and watched her.
“They are nothing to you,” he said.
“Grampa. Mebbe true these is my treasures come at last.”
He clawed mud from his face, threw it back down onto the Middens. The fog rolled back across him.
“Bring them to me,” he said. “And we will see what we will see.”
We heard him turn and his feet sucked and slopped as he stepped away.
“I will bring them to you, Grampa,” she said. “Go and clean yourself and I will bring them to you.”
She held out her hands to us.
“Come,” she said.
We didn’t move.
“There is warmness and comfort and food,” she said.
“He’ll bloody kill us,” said Jan.
“No,” she said. “He will love you and look after you like he loves Heaven Eyes and looks after Heaven Eyes.”
“You are Heaven Eyes?” I said.
“I is Heaven Eyes, my sister.”
She beamed.
“You must come,” she said. “There is danger on these Middens. You must come before the runny water comes again and washes us away.”
I looked at January, at Mouse. There was nothing we could do.
“Come, come,” she sang.
She led us across the dry land. We dragged the raft behind us. We tied it to an ancient tethering ring. We followed her up an ancient ladder to the ancient quay. As she climbed, I saw that there were webs between her toes. At the top, she took our hands and helped us up. She reached out to our faces. Each of us recoiled. She smiled.
“Do not be feared, my sister and brothers,” she said. “There is nothing here to make you feared.”
She reached out again to January and Mouse.
“And who is you?” she said. “And who is you?”
“This is January Carr,” I said. “This is Mouse Gullane. I am Erin Law.”
“Oh,” she sang. “Such lovely lovelies. Come. Come and follow Heaven Eyes!”
AS WE STEPPED UP ONTO THE QUAY, we stepped out of the mist. There were teetering warehouses, collapsed walls, dark alleyways. Rafters and smashed rooftops were outlined against the sky. There were great cracks and potholes in the ground. Mud and water drained from us, splashed from us.
Heaven Eyes beckoned us. She turned into an alleyway, plunged into the deep shadow there.
“Follow,” she said. “Follow. Follow.”
She led us through a tangle of alleyways and lanes. Her pale hair bobbed and streamed before us. Often she turned and her eyes shone as she waited for us to catch up. Her voice sang out the single word: Follow, follow, follow. We bumped into walls and trod in potholes. We skinned our knuckles on the stone. We twisted and turned, ducked through low entrances. We walked across the crumbling floors of dilapidated buildings. By the light of the moon we saw the red signs telling of danger. There were drawings of guards and snarling guard dogs. Everywhere the signs said,
We followed Heaven Eyes, her thin legs, her pale hair, her shining eyes, her songlike voice. Follow, follow, follow, follow.
We entered a huge building. Moonlight poured in wedges through the shattered skylights. There were great dark machines with statues of eagles and angels squatting above them. The floor was a litter of rubble, paper, broken glass. There were great toppling heaps of books, newspapers, magazines.
She stopped beneath a huge black pair of outspread wings.
“This is where books was made,” she said. “See?”
She stooped down and picked a handful of metal letters from among the litter at her feet.
“See?” she said.
She opened her hand and they rattled back onto the floor.
“But way way time back,” she said.
She smiled and her eyes gleamed.
“Grampa is the caretaker,” she said. “Is in there, look.”
She turned her head toward a boarded-up window. Tiny chinks of light shone between the boards. On the door beside the window was a white sign:
“He is waiting,” she said. “He will be ready for you now.”
January and I stared at each other. January gripped his knife again.
“Come now,” she said. “Come, all of you.”
She turned the door handle and stepped inside.
“Here they is, Grampa,” she sang. “And oh they is so wet and cold and oh so feared.”
Grampa sat hunched forward at a table in the middle of the office. He was writing in a huge thick book. Candles burned on the table and on the shelves that lined the walls. A little fire glowed in a tiny grate. He turned his face to us as we stood on the threshold behind Heaven Eyes. Long straggling black hair, a black beard, black sediment in the creases that filled his face. His watery eyes sparkled in the candlelight as he gazed at us in turn. He now wore a black jacket, with epaulettes. The word SECURITY was written on his chest pocket. There was a black peaked helmet on the table beside him.
“This is Grampa,” said Heaven Eyes. “And Grampa, this is Erin Law, Janry Carr and Mouse Gullane. These is lovely names for a lovely sister and lovely brothers.”
He turned his eyes to Heaven, but said nothing.
“Come in,” she said. She rested her webbed fingers on my arm. “Come in and close the night away.”
She leaned past me and closed the door behind us.
“Here is comfort, and food to eat and drink to drink.”
She held out a stone jar filled with water.
“Drink,” she said. “Wash out the Middens from your mouths. Then eat. We has raisins and corned beef and many chocolates.”
She drew me toward the fire. She knelt and showed me the bucket there. She dipped her hands in and washed them. The webs were pale and the light of the fire glowed through them.
She giggled.
“You is all filthy as filthy, Erin Law.”
She stroked my hands with her wet fingers.
“Wash like me,” she said. “Wash away the Middens, Erin Law.”
She bit her lips as I knelt beside her and my shoulder touched hers.
“Oh, Erin,” she whispered. “Oh, Erin my sister.”
Behind us, January and Mouse were stock-still, their eyes fixed on Grampa. He stared back, then began scribbling again in his great book.
“Children, three,” he muttered as he wrote. “Brought out from the Middens. Boys, two. Girls, one. Cold, filthy, dirty and afraid. Mebbe they’re ghosts. Mebbe they’re devils sent from Hell or angels sent from Heaven.
More likely something in between, come to do shenanigans. Push them back, Grampa. Dig them back in. Do it.” He stabbed the page with his pencil point, then paused, with his pencil poised above the page. He jutted his face toward us all. He inspected us. “You are not the brothers,” he said. “You are not the sister.”
I shook my head. I met his gaze.
“We never said we were,” I told him.
His face hardened as he stared, then softened as he smiled at Heaven Eyes.
“It is a wrongness in you, little one,” he said.
“A wrongness?”
“These are not your brothers. This is not your sister.”
“No?”
“No, my lovely. You were wrong. So mebbe we must put them back into the Black Middens where you found them.”
“We came from the river on a raft,” I said. “We didn’t come out of the Black Middens.”
“And you is not my sister?” said Heaven Eyes.
Her eyes beseeched me. I gazed at her. Did she look like me? Was there anything in her that looked like me? Could she be my sister? Could we share a father? I lowered my eyes. I knew that if I had ever written my Life Story book, I would have imagined sisters and brothers for myself. I would have found them in my dreams. But this was all wrong, as Grampa had said. I shook my head and put my thoughts aside.
“No,” I said. “I am not your sister. These are not your brothers. Each of us is all alone.”
&nbs
p; She closed her eyes.
“It was a wrongness, then,” she whispered. “It was all just wanting and imagining.”
She stared at us.
“You is ghosts?”
“No. We’re not ghosts,” I answered.
“Good,” she said. “For there is many ghosts sometimes.”
Then she smiled again.
“You might not be my sister,” she said. “But Erin Law, you could be my bestest friend.”
She watched me.
“Yes?” she whispered.
I touched her cool smooth cheek. I looked deep into her eyes. Yes, I thought. Yes, a friend who is almost a sister.
“Yes,” I said. “Yes.”
“My grampa,” she said.
“Yes, my little one.”
Her eyes filled with tears as she spoke to him.
“Do not push them back into the runny water. Do not dig them back into the Middens. Let them stay with you and me.”
“This will make you happy?” said Grampa.
“Yes. Yes. For I has never had a friend like Erin Law.”
Grampa sighed and groaned and gazed darkly at us as he nodded in reply.
“Yes,” he murmured.
Heaven squeezed me. She beamed at January and Mouse.
“See,” she said. “He is a good grampa. He will take care of you as he has taken care of Heaven Eyes.”
He turned his eyes to the page again.
“Names. They have names, so fast forgotten.”
He scratched his beard and black dust fell from it to his page.
“Come on, Grampa,” he said. “Names, three.”
“Erin Law, Janry Carr and Mouse Gullane,” said Heaven Eyes. “He is old and does not memory much. He writes all down.”
“Erin, Janry and Mouse,” he whispered as he wrote.
“This is good,” said Heaven. “He is putting you inside his book and in the tale of Heaven Eyes and Grampa and the black Black Middens.”
“What is the tale?” I said.
“Oh, is a dark and wet and filthy tale.”
“You’ll tell me it?”
“Mebbe, Erin. But even Heaven Eyes does not know a way to tell it true.”
She held my face.
“Erin Law. Heaven Eyes has never had a bestest friend.”
She swayed her shoulders and head and hummed a tune. I sighed and smiled and looked at January. He curled his lip and cursed. His eyes were cold.
“What’s wrong?” I hissed.
He just turned his face away.
Heaven Eyes touched his shoulder.
“Come,” she said. “Come and wash away the black Black Middens.”
He shrugged her off, but he knelt with Mouse at the bucket and they washed their hands and faces there.
Heaven Eyes went to Grampa and kissed his cheek.
“These is nice children,” she told him. “Mebbe it was wrong to say these is my sister and my brothers. But they is certainly not ghosts. And now Heaven will look after them and make them not so feared.”
She picked a box up from the floor.
“There is raisins and beef,” she said. “And there is many of the sweetest chocolates.”
She opened the lid of the box and held it out to us. We took chocolates. We took more chocolates. She held out an opened tin of corned beef.
“Take more,” she said. “Take more. Be not feared. Take the thing that looks the nicest thing of all.”
“THERE MUST BE PLACES FOR THE NIGHT,” said Heaven Eyes. “There must be places for the sleeping and the sleep thoughts.”
She laid blankets in a row against the wall.
“For you all,” she whispered. “For you to be fast asleep and safe and sound in Grampa’s office.”
Mouse crouched beside her as she worked. He picked up metal letters from the floor and laid out our names beside our blankets.
“What is these letters?” said Heaven Eyes.
“Our names,” he said.
He spoke the letters, spelling out the words.
“See?” he said. “The letters make words and words make us.”
She pondered.
“Is there letters that make Heaven Eyes?”
Mouse smiled, and laid her name there beside her blankets.
She smiled, and gently touched her letters.
“Is me?” she said.
“It’s you,” said Mouse.
“Lovely. Lovely.”
She wriggled down onto her blankets with her hand stretched out to touch her name.
January kicked his own letters away.
“Like a name on a bloody gravestone,” he said.
I clicked my tongue.
Heaven Eyes lay beside me beneath her own blankets.
“My bestest friend,” she said.
She rested her head on my arm and slept.
Mouse went off to sleep quickly and peacefully, as if nothing here troubled him.
January and I lay on our blankets, rested our heads on our hands and looked at each other. Jan’s eyes were harsh and red-rimmed and shining with tiredness. I saw how he was ready to quarrel with me, even to fight with me. I tasted the sweetness of the chocolates in my mouth, the juice of the raisins, felt the heaviness of the cold meat in my stomach. Heaven’s voice echoed deep inside my mind. I felt the touch of her webbed fingers on my cheek. The little fire’s gentle heat drifted over us. I felt the Middens mud drying on me, encasing me.
“It’s warm,” I said. “We’re tired, Jan. We have to stay, at least for tonight.”
He glanced at Grampa, who stayed sitting at the table, taking no notice of us. He kept on writing, writing. He muttered and whispered as he wrote. Black dust fell from his hair and beard to the page.
“They’re mad,” said January. “They’re bloody freaks.”
“They won’t harm us.”
“Like something from a bloody nightmare. Look at him. No knowing what he’ll do …”
“But she’s lovely.”
“Lovely!”
“Yes, lovely. Old as us, but like a little girl. And so strange, Jan …”
He shook his head and ground his teeth.
“A freak, you mean. A mutant. Like something from a stupid zoo.”
“Stop it!”
He narrowed his eyes.
“You’re under a spell, Erin. All that stuff about brothers and sisters and bestest friends!”
“A spell! Ha!”
Grampa grunted. He looked down at us.
“Not brother,” he said. “Not sister.”
I shook my head at him.
“No,” I said. “We know that, Grampa.”
“We know that, Grampa,” echoed January in a little mocking voice; then he lowered his head, turned his back to me. Soon his breathing slowed and deepened. Grampa turned back to his book.
BEHIND GRAMPA, THE SHELVES ON THE WALL were packed. I could make out broken bits of pottery, heaps of coins, rusted knives and tools. There were rows of bottles and metal boxes. There was a small boat’s propeller and a little anchor. There was a little stack of bleached bones. On the highest shelves, right up against the ceiling, there were boxes lashed tight with belts and ropes. Three spades leaned on the wall beside the door. There were several buckets, one inside the other. Grampa murmured and wrote. Heaven Eyes slept on my arm. Sometimes she hummed as she slept and it was like music that came from a thousand miles away. I rubbed my eyes to keep myself from sleep and dreams.
Grampa’s hands were like ours, grainy and black.
Black dust as well as scribbled words fell from his fingers. He kept staring into the darkness, pondering, tapping on his table.
“Tuesday,” he said. “Unless I’ve lost me blinking brain again and I’m all befuddled again an it’s another day. But call it Tuesday. Discoveries, several. Three plates, broken. One cup, broken. One pan, no handle. Two coins amounting to two new pence and one old penny. A bag of bread, sodden. Umpteen pop bottles, plastic. One boot, one sock, one pair underpants,
extra large. One wing, kittiwake. One dog, black, dead. One large thigh bone, source unknown. Jewelry, none. Riches, none. Treasure, none. Mysteries, one.”
He chewed his pencil and stared down at us, lying in a row on his floor. I narrowed my eyes. I saw the bulge of his nose, the long hair hanging down, the outline of his ragged beard, the word SECURITY on his chest. He turned his face to the page again.
“Mysteries, one. Creatures, three, crawling on the Middens in the dead of night. One craft, timber. Three creatures carried here by water and the moon. Three creatures crawling from the depths of the Middens’ mud. Three creatures, rescued by my Heaven.”
He lifted a piece of corned beef and started to chew it.
“There’s visitors come, Grampa. Devils or angels or something in between? Who can say.”
He looked down at us, lying there on his floor. He wiped his sleeve across his mouth. He scribbled again.
“No doubt tomorrow will shed light.”
He leaned back in his creaking chair.
“Tuesday over,” he sighed. “Wednesday still to come.”
He started to sing about the sea, about someone who had gone too far out and couldn’t find the way home again. He sat there with his head lowered into the pool of candlelight. He glanced at us again.
“And if these is come for shenanigans,” he said. “Then mebbe there’ll just be fettling to do.”
He smiled and sighed.
“Aye,” he said. “A little bit of fettling.”
“It’s Friday,” I whispered.
He stared.
“It’s not Tuesday that’s over. It’s Friday,” I said.
He scratched his head. Black dust fell from it.
“Sorry,” I said.
He turned back the pages in his book.
“Friday,” he whispered. “Friday over, Saturday to come. You’re befuddled, Grampa.”
He stroked his beard.
“Ah, well. Ah, well.”
“Who are you?” I said.
“Who?”
“Where you from? Why are you here?”
His face twisted. He tilted his head and looked at me from the corner of his eye, as if he couldn’t focus on me properly, as if I was a figment of his imagination.
“I remember many things,” he whispered. “I remember I was all alone. I remember I did dig out Heaven Eyes one starry night from the mud of the Black Middens. Long long time ago. Long ago as she has been alive. I remember I am caretaker and always been the caretaker. But I do not remember many other things.”
