When I first woke up the next morning, I felt like it must have all been a dream. But upon opening my eyes, I could see very clearly it wasn’t. I was on the floor. I must have fallen asleep down here, curled up by the door. It wasn’t a dream. Or a nightmare. Everything was real.
My cheek was pressed against the rough wood of the floor, and from my position I could see under the bed. It was mostly just a big dark space, with scuff marks across the wood, probably from where the bed had been moved around the room a few times. There was something there though; right at the back, towards the wall.
I got myself into a long, thin position, like a worm, and stretched out, edging my hands forward, trying to reach whatever it was; but it was too far away. So I crawled on my front until I was halfway under the bed. That’s when I got a hold of it. And as I touched it, I realised what it was. It was a magazine. Its pages were thin and glossy to touch, the pictures a mass of colour. But it wasn’t the kind of magazine I normally liked to get – ones with zoo animals or wildlife that came with free little plastic pots taped to the front to put little creatures in. It was full of naked ladies. Lots of them, on each page. Some of them were holding their very large – too large – breasts and poking their tongues out. I carried on flicking through and at the midway point there was an image so big it took up two pages, like the pull-out photos of pandas I got in my Wild Forests of the World magazine I saved up to buy at the newsagents, except that I couldn’t imagine ever putting this on the wall. It was of a woman sitting on a black stool. She was wearing nothing but a feather boa and had her legs wide open.
I knew all this had something to do with ‘sex’. Some of the boys talked about all that at school and, from remembering parts of their discussions, I realised what I was holding must be what they called a ‘dirty mag’. But even so, the whole thing seemed very, very odd, especially since the women were all sitting in very strange ways. It couldn’t have been comfortable for them at all. I decided this must be some very unusual kind of dirty mag that only people who liked very special, rare things would get, like the Creatures of the Deep magazine that Mum had to place a special order for at the newsagents because it wasn’t a title they regularly stocked.
I skipped past the rest to the back pages. These were divided into lots of little boxes, about eight on each page. They all had a different woman in them, all of different ages, some young, some a lot older – like Mum’s age – and they all said things like ‘CALL FOR A GOOD TIME’ or ‘PHONE STACEY NOW – SHE’S WAITING FOR YOUR CALL’ and then had what looked like a phone number next to them. I decided these were probably not aimed at people like me, so I closed the magazine and put it in one of the little drawers in the old bedside table, next to two of my Famous Five books and a figurine of an antelope.
I went down the stairs boldly and with purpose, trying to show I wasn’t afraid of what I might find. The lounge was no longer dark and scary, but lit warmly from the main light and a lamp I hadn’t seen before on the windowsill. It was still dark outside and the place had a cosy feel. I noticed that the sofa, chair and coffee table had been moved back to their normal places facing the fire. On the sofa, though, there was a pile of blankets, all neatly folded, at one end. Although it was still quite early, I wasn’t the only one awake.
‘Hello Katherine,’ said a woman’s voice from the kitchen. I peered round in its direction and saw Amanda coming through the connecting doorway, smiling widely. ‘You’re up early for a Saturday.’
I eyed her suspiciously. ‘What are you still doing here?’ I asked.
She looked taken aback for a second or two, but recovered, smiling to show she wasn’t cross. ‘I stayed the night. Slept down here on the sofa.’
She gestured to the blankets. Now I knew she was a liar too.
‘And Mum?’ I asked, looking her in the eye. She seemed to find this a bit uncomfortable so walked away back into the kitchen as she said, ‘She slept upstairs with your dad, of course.’
She busied herself putting breakfast things on the table. Jam, butter, marmalade, knives and plates and, in the centre, stacks of toast. She must have been doing this for some time, I thought, since the toaster takes two slices and wasn’t exactly quick.
‘Do help yourself. You must be hungry after being sent to bed without any supper.’
We didn’t call it supper, we called it tea or dinner, but I didn’t bother correcting her. I just sat down, then jumped as I heard a whirring and clunking.
‘Looks like your dad’s having a shower. That old boiler does make an awful racket doesn’t it? Must be ancient, like everything else in this place. Aside from the things you brought with you. They’re all right, of course.’
She was still smiling a lot, but I didn’t offer a smile back. I just took a bit of toast and started to put more butter onto it than Dad would ever have allowed.
‘Where’s Father Tobias?’ I asked. Amanda had her back to me, washing something up in the sink, so I couldn’t properly see what she thought of this question.
‘He went home. He was getting tired. It happens, when you’re old. I stayed to have a chat with your dad.’
I crunched some toast. The butter was saltier than the one we normally got at home.
‘And what did you talk about?’ I asked.
‘Oh, just stuff. To do with your mum. Things to do with making her better.’
She set a clean but dripping plate down on the sideboard to dry and came over to the table. ‘How is your toast?’
‘It’s fine. So what were you doing with my mum in the lounge? When she was in the middle.’
Her eyes widened slightly as I said this and her smile started to look a bit false. It took her a moment to talk again, but then she gathered up my hand in hers. Her hands were smooth and soft and her fingernails were painted a deep red. I had never painted my nails, but Mum used to do hers if she and Dad were going out somewhere nice, like the local pub for a meal with friends for a birthday or something. I would sometimes look at the bottles of nail polish in her bedroom, wondering if she’d like it if I painted her nails for her. I’d almost tried it out once, when she was sleeping, but I’d worried that if she woke up to find her nails a different colour she might start screaming.
‘You want your mum to get better, Kitty.’
The way she said the sentence didn’t make it sound like a question, but I decided to treat it as one.
‘Yes.’
‘So, the best thing you could do for your mum right now – the very best thing – would be to let me, your dad and Father Tobias carry on with what we’re doing and not make things difficult. You’re not a difficult person, are you Kitty?’
I crunched on the crust of toast and watched her for a bit. She waited patiently as I brushed crumbs from my hands and then said, ‘I don’t think I’m difficult.’
Her smile widened. ‘Good. I didn’t think you were. The moment I saw you I thought: there’s a girl who knows what’s best.’
She kept on saying ‘best’ slowly, making sure she was looking into my eyes as she said it. I decided to ask her about this.
‘So, how do I know what best is if I don’t know what you’re doing?’
She looked irritated for a second, then picked up a bit of toast from the stack on the table and started buttering it slowly. ‘When I was a girl, Kitty, there was a man in our village who didn’t quite fit in. Do you know what I mean? He was odd – a loner, and not in a good way. Being alone can be a wonderful thing; managing one’s time without the pressure of others can be a joyful way to live, if you do it right. But this man wasn’t doing it right. He used to watch people. Watch people in the street. Watch people in the park. Watch people … by the children’s school …’ Her eyes flicked up at me as she said this last bit, then returned to her toast. ‘Anyway, one day he went a bit too far. He tried to talk to a girl over the playground railings at the school. That in itself may have been harmless. Inadvisable, perhaps, but harmless all the same. But the man wasn’t properly dressed. And so it became inappropriate. And the man had to go away somewhere. He no longer watched people around the village. No longer spoke to children over the playground railings.’
I stared at her, puzzled by what she was telling me. ‘So, are you saying my mum will be taken away somewhere?’
She put out a hand onto my arm and rubbed it firmly. ‘No, no, no, Kitty. Let me finish what I was going to say. What I meant was that it is my belief that that man didn’t need to go away somewhere. I think, if he’d had some support he wouldn’t have needed to be taken away at all – he could have been helped if people had just stepped forward and steered him towards a healthier, easier way of life.’
I stared at the table, trying to work out what she meant. ‘So, you’re saying you’re doing that with my mum?’
Amanda beamed. ‘Exactly. We are an intervention. Do you know what that means? We’re intervening before things get so bad more serious steps have to be taken. OK?’
I paused, thinking. Then nodded.
‘Wonderful.’ She was about to start eating her thoroughly buttered toast when I asked:
‘So, will you make the demons go away?’
Her hand stopped halfway to her mouth, the toast wavering slightly in the air.
‘How much has your mum mentioned about the, er, demons?’
I looked at her as if she was silly – because it really was a silly question. ‘All the time,’ I said. ‘And she says “Him” a lot. As if there’s one of them. She says “He” won’t like it or “He” will hear. Is it a demon she’s talking about when she says that?’
Amanda kept her hand in the air for a few seconds more, then set the toast back down on her plate without eating it. ‘I suppose you could say that, yes. After a fashion.’
I didn’t know what to say to this. So I said nothing.
Amanda and I ate our toast in silence, then a clomping down the stairs told us Dad had finished in the shower and was fast approaching. He arrived looking happier and younger than I had seen him look in weeks, like he’d been traded in for a calm, sprightly dad and the stressed, tired-looking dad had been thrown away.
‘Morning, you two,’ he said. ‘You been having a natter?’
‘Yes, we’ve been having a very nice time.’ Amanda beamed at him, ignoring the fact we hadn’t been speaking for a good five minutes. And ‘very nice’ seemed like a strange way to describe the conversation we did have. I didn’t mention this. I didn’t want to seem difficult.
‘Good, good,’ he said, sitting down. ‘It’s so nice not being the first one down and already having the kitchen all warmed up. And look at all this toast!’
He greedily took up two of the chunky slices and reached for the butter. ‘You’re spoiling us, Amanda.’
‘Oh I do try,’ she said, and laughed. I didn’t laugh, because nothing was funny.
‘So, Kitty,’ Dad said, ‘today it’s very important we don’t have any interruptions. OK?’
I didn’t respond.
‘Do you hear me? It’s very important, for your mother’s sake, that we’re allowed to carry on helping her without any disturbances.’
He sounded a bit stern now, and to stop him doing his properly-angry voice, I looked at him and nodded.
‘OK, then. Well, maybe you could start the day off with a little walk, like you did yesterday. Did you have a nice time exploring?’
I thought about ignoring this question to punish him for sending me to bed with no tea, but it was easier just to answer. ‘No.’
He rolled his eyes and chewed on his toast for a bit. ‘Where did you go? Find any nice bugs and insects to befriend?’
‘No,’ I said again. ‘And it’s usually them that befriend me.’
Dad said nothing to this, so I continued.
‘But I did meet a girl. And I think I befriended her.’
He looked more interested now. ‘Oh really? That’s interesting.’
‘Why is that interesting?’
He shrugged. ‘I didn’t realise there were other children out here. I thought we were alone.’
I reached for another slice of toast and pulled towards me three of the four different types of jam Amanda had laid out for us. ‘You’d prefer it if I was the only child in the woods all alone?’ I didn’t look up as I said this, but I suspected Dad had rolled his eyes again.
‘Christ, Kitty,’ he said. ‘Do you have to always make out like you’re some poor, lost neglected soul? I thought you liked being by yourself. All your teachers say so.’
‘The teachers I may never see again,’ I mumbled, unscrewing the jam lids.
‘You don’t need that many jars of jam, Kitty,’ Dad said, reaching to take two of the three jars away.
‘I was going to create a mixture.’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘Why not?’ I set my knife down with a clatter to show I was annoyed. He was doing that thing where he avoided my gaze again.
‘Because it’s impolite.’
I was about to leave the kitchen in a silent huff, but then something popped into my head. ‘Are you just saying that because she’s here?’ I jabbed my finger towards Amanda, who was now sipping from a mug and trying her best to do an impression of a kind, pleasant woman at a tea party.
Dad looked enraged, so I got up from the table and walked out of the room before he could speak. I climbed the stairs, stomping all the way, then went into my room to get my favourite fluffy towel. I was going to run myself a bath, just like Mum used to do for me, and put all kinds of shampoo and soap things into the water. And I didn’t care if anyone else needed to use the bathroom.
The hot water only lasted long enough to fill the bath half-way, so it wasn’t quite the cosy activity I’d planned, but the warmth and comfort of it still made me happy, if only for a little while. I washed myself, and then my hair, having fun twisting it into different shapes. I was almost about to get out when a knock came on the bathroom door.
‘Is that you in there, Kitty?’
I didn’t reply.
‘Kitty!’ Dad shouted through the door so loudly it was as if he was in the room with me.
‘What?’ I shouted back.
‘I was worried,’ he said in a quieter voice.
‘What, in case I had drowned? Would you care?’
He muttered something which sounded a lot like ‘for fuck’s sake’, then I heard a strange whimpering sound. ‘Your mother needs to use the bathroom,’ he said.
I splashed about for a bit, considering this request. ‘Can’t she just wait a second?’
I heard him sigh. He could be very impatient sometimes. ‘This is testing my patience, Kitty. I’ve barely been able to encourage her up the stairs because there’s a spider on the landing.’
Although I was well aware how she felt about spiders I was still rather cross he wanted to spoil my nice early-morning bath time.
‘Couldn’t you just move the spider?’ I called back. ‘If you do, could you take one of the little plastic pots I put on the shelf in the kitchen, the ones with the coloured lids, and keep it safe for me so—’
‘I haven’t got time for your fucking pots. Open the bloody door, Kitty.’
I heard Mum let out a little cry and start saying something about Satan’s spies.
‘Yes, yes, all right,’ Dad said to her. ‘Kitty, for the last time, open the goddamn door.’
I heard Mum make a whimper at ‘goddamn’, but I had finished my objections. I got out of the bath and pulled my favourite soft-blue towel over me and opened the door.
‘You do bloody rile me sometimes, Kitty,’ Dad said as he pushed past me, pulling Mum in by the hand. She sat down on the loo immediately and I heard the tinkle of her weeing. ‘Come on, let’s give your mum some privacy,’ he said, putting his hand on my shoulder.
‘Wait,’ I said, and moved past him. ‘I need to let out my bathwater.’
Mum’s reaction happened so fast, it scared me. She lurched forward off the toilet seat and grabbed me, shaking me, her face looking both terrified and sad at the same time. ‘You mustn’t!’ she shrieked, her eyes looking straight into mine. ‘You mustn’t go near the water. You mustn’t touch the surface of the river. He’s been punishing me since … I tried … but I’ve been punished …’
‘Kitty, come away,’ Dad said, taking my hand, but I was fixed to the spot. ‘Kitty, I said come on. Marjory, please, sit back down!’ I saw him looking down and I followed his gaze and saw a trickle making its way down Mum’s legs from under her dressing gown.
‘Terrible things,’ Mum sobbed. ‘Never touch it. Terrible things. He’ll know. He always knows.’
‘Who always knows?’ I asked Mum, but Dad wasn’t going to let me say any more.
‘Enough! Kitty, go and get dry and dressed in your room. I’ll sort your mum out.’
I padded back to my room and closed the door. I could still hear Mum moaning from the bathroom and Dad trying to calm her down. I got dressed in warm clothes, as I expected I’d probably be sent out again soon. When Dad and Mum finally went downstairs, I followed them.
Mum was settled on the sofa by the time I walked in. She was dressed in one of her big jumpers, fiddling with a stray thread on one of the sleeves. Amanda, meanwhile, was in the armchair, knitting, as if she were in her own sitting room. I watched her hands go in and out, moving the wool and the needles together.
‘Father Tobias should be here within the next ten minutes,’ she said, without looking up. ‘So you may not want to get too comfortable, Kitty.’
‘Comfortable?’ I said the last word as if I’d never heard it before; it was a very strange word to use. She kept doing this, Amanda. Using bad choices of words to get her meaning across. I wondered if it was a plan to make me feel even more uncomfortable.
‘What Amanda means,’ said Dad, as he shifted some of the furniture around, making more space in the centre, ‘is that it probably isn’t worth you getting settled. This will all be boring adult talk from now on.’
‘It didn’t look boring from what I saw.’
‘So,’ he continued, ignoring me, ‘perhaps you should go out and explore again.’
I thought about what he’d said. ‘Perhaps? Do you mean I don’t have to?’
He set down the old coffee table with a thud and looked at me like an angry man. ‘I’ve had it up to here with your cheek today, Kitty, and it’s not even ten o’clock. I think you should go out and play. Right now.’
I stared at him, then marched over to the windowsill where he’d stacked a mixture of books untidily, grabbed three of them and hurled one at him.
‘Right!’ he shouted, running towards me, but tripping on the coffee table he had stupidly put in his own way.
I ran, out of the lounge, through the hallway, out the front door, and then collided with something big and solid but also rather squashy.
‘Well, well, well, what’s all this?’
It was Father Tobias. I took my face out of his clothes and stepped away. He smelled of smoke and spicy things – a surprisingly homely sent, like mince pies at Christmas.
‘Kitty, come back here and apologise!’ Dad shouted.
‘Why?’ I turned back to him. ‘It’s you who I threw the book at.’
‘Well then come back and apologise to me!’ he screeched.
‘You threw a book?’ Father Tobias straightened up and looked at me, as if he were appalled. As if he’d never heard of anything so shocking in his life. ‘This is a very sad state of affairs, young lady. Very sad indeed.’
I realised now he was carrying a briefcase. He set it down into the leaves and twigs on the damp ground, and lowered himself so we were face to face.
‘So then, Katherine. Tell me, which tome caused you such unimaginable distress that you decided to cast it away from you with such violence?’
I frowned at him. ‘I didn’t see the cover.’
‘It was Watership fucking Down and it bloody hurt,’ shouted Dad from the doorway, looking murderous; then he seemed to notice how silly he sounded and changed his voice a bit. ‘I’m sorry, er … Father Tobias – do come inside into the warm.’
I watched Dad as he tried to tidy his hair with his hand. ‘Why do you keep going all posh?’ I called over to him.
‘Kitty, if I hear one more word from you this side of teatime, I swear—’
Father Tobias held up a hand and Dad stopped talking instantly. ‘I think Kitty and I understand each other. She knows, in her heart of hearts, that God doesn’t like little girls who use bad words and throw books at their fathers. Especially ones as remarkable and profound as Richard Adams’s leporine classic.’
He must have seen me frown at the word ‘leporine’, as he went on to clarify, ‘That means relating to rabbits or hares.’
I ignored this, unwilling to let him think I was impressed or grateful by the explanation. Instead I hissed ‘I didn’t use a bad word.’
‘Ah, but the book throwing is a sin, one that I don’t think even you can deny. Come, my child, which other books do you have about your person?’ He gestured down at the three remaining paperbacks in my hands. I held them up and he took them in his hands.
‘Goodness, this is quite a mixture. The Pale Horse by Agatha Christie. Are you familiar with the works of Mrs Christie, Katherine?’
I shook my head. ‘Well, her books might be a little grown up for you, but the language is simple and she spins a jolly good yarn. I haven’t read this one myself, but it probably features a Belgian detective or an old spinster going to a big manor house to solve a crime.’
I just stared at him. He paused for a moment and I heard a huff from the doorway. Dad was getting impatient. But Father Tobias didn’t seem in the mood to rush. He turned over the second book in my pile. ‘The Mysteries of Udolpho. My my, Katherine. This is some heavy reading material. And the last one …’ He examined the final volume. ‘The Scars of Dracula by Agnes Hall.’ His mouth twisted a little. ‘Have you read Bram Stoker’s original Dracula, Katherine?’
I shook my head.
‘No. I should think not. You’re far too young for things like that. And besides, this one looks to be mass-produced fluff, using Stoker’s character just to turn a profit. It wouldn’t be of interest to you. I suppose it’s one of your father’s books?’
‘It’s not his,’ I said, glancing at my dad, who was still looking like he’d like to start shouting again. ‘It’s mine. Someone from where we live gave them to me. Before we came here.’
Father Tobias looked troubled. ‘Well, I think your father should perhaps look after these two,’ he paired The Mysteries of Udolpho and The Scars of Dracula together and put them under his arm, ‘and you can maybe read them when you’re older. The Agatha Christie, meanwhile, I’m sure is harmless enough. Miss Marple never comes across anything too shocking.’
I took the book from him and ran off into the woods.
‘Kitty, come back here!’ Dad shouted.
‘Let her be,’ I heard Father Tobias say.
I was soon out of earshot. I only stopped running once I was safely behind a large tree and I heard the sound of the front door closing.
I got cold quite quickly in the woods. When I’d run off, I was only wearing one of my cardigans. Though it was a rather snuggly, large cardigan, it still wasn’t sturdy enough to keep me from shivering. Part of me wished we’d come to the forest in summer, not autumn, although I’d always preferred the colder, darker times of year. I liked the falling leaves and the conkers and walking past the shops with all their lights on as it got dark earlier and earlier.
I stayed out hours – hours longer than I planned – but I blamed my book. Once I’d found a relatively dry spot to sit, under an old oak tree, I settled back to read The Pale Horse. I quickly became immersed, although part of me was a little confused. Father Tobias’s descriptions of what the book might be about didn’t really match its contents. There weren’t any old ladies called Miss Marple and as far as I could discover, nobody was Belgian. Instead, it was a strange and slightly frightening story about three women who, one of them claimed, may have the power to kill from afar. These weren’t ordinary women. These were witches.
The thought scared me a little, as did other parts of the story, especially the list of names of people who were dead, or destined to die very soon. I got to about halfway in when I realised I could no longer feel my fingers and decided it was time to go and get a proper coat. I walked back to the house. It wasn’t far; I’d only run a little way along, stopping before it sloped down towards the stream. The front door was on the latch so I walked into the dark hallway quietly, hoping I wouldn’t be heard or discovered. Part of me expected to find something strange, but there was no sign of the weird burning scent that filled the hallway yesterday. The door to the lounge was closed and I could hear voices, but I couldn’t quite catch what they were saying. I decided not to linger, and reached for my coat on the peg by the boots, next to an umbrella I hadn’t seen before.
That was when I heard it.
‘YOU VICIOUS LITTLE CUNT.’
It wasn’t a normal voice. It was a roar. A roar of fury, hatred and terrible, terrible things. And it was coming from inside the lounge.
I stayed completely still. I didn’t move a single finger. The coat swayed as it hung from my hand, the yellow, waterproof fabric making a slight sweeping sound. Then I heard another voice – Father Tobias’s.
‘Come back to me, Marjory. Step out of his vile bonds. Step away from his evil stare.’
His voice was commanding and strong, but the other voice was stronger, harsher. And it frightened me like nothing else had in my entire life.
‘MARJORY WILL BURN FOR HER SINS. WE WILL TEAR OPEN HER HOLES AND FILL THEM WITH NEEDLES. HER EYES WILL BE GOUGED OUT BY MY FOLLOWERS. THEY WILL FUCK HER BRAINS AND SPILL THEIR SEEDS INTO HER BROKEN SKULL. THE EDGES OF HER SMASHED JAW WILL DRIP WITH THE SEEPING WHITENESS OF THEIR JUICES.’
I felt my hand start to tremble and I slowly lowered the coat and pressed it towards me. I dared not move any more, but I wasn’t sure if this was from the fear of being caught, or fear of that voice and the things it was saying.
‘I order you to leave this pure, innocent woman,’ Father Tobias said, his voice shaking a little.
‘SHE IS NOT AN INNOCENT. SHE HAS DONE EVIL THINGS IN HERE. AND SHE HAS ENJOYED THEM. AND SHE WANTS TO DO THEM AGAIN. AND AGAIN. AND AGAIN. UNTIL SHE SPLITS IN TWO.’
I ran. I could not stay. It was impossible. The voice had made me want to scream and cry at the same time. I didn’t close the door – I just left it open, swaying in the breeze.