Chine

1

 

June 18 1983

 

The mist had followed the boy and his sister for over half a mile. It lingered a hundred yards behind them, a foot above the ground, and kept pace. White tongues curled down to lick the night-cooled road and stripe the ground with moisture. Each tongue scented like a snake on the search for food; for prey. Steamy fingers curled beneath the wheels of cars, felt their way, stroked locked doors and dark glass, moving on only when nothing and no one succumbed to their sinister tease.

The boy held his sister’s hand, as he had done since they had crept out of their bedroom, past the closed eye of their parent’s bedroom door, the silence louder than the boards that cracked beneath their feet, onto the black waterfall of stairs that fell to the distant front door.

They had lay in their beds since seven o’clock that evening, their bath times unusually quiet, their thoughts on midnight, an hour neither of them had seen, an hour that their short histories had taught them belonged to goblins and ghosts and the lonely undead.

Both of them were ready to be lifted out of the bath by their father’s large safe hands long before their usual time; no wet floors, no splashed trousers, no hurriedly invented games that would delay bedtime.

They had both surrendered willingly to the sheets.

‘Are you both alright?’ A map of concern crossed their father’s forehead, a sign, they had grown to learn, of serious concern.

They nodded in unison.

‘Are you sure? Don’t want any medicine? Don’t feel too hot?’ He felt at their brows as they shook their heads, nodded silent acceptance and stroked each of their heads in turn, as full of love as always when he had to say goodnight. Their small skulls nestled in the palms of his hands as they looked up at him, unaware of the swell of protective pride that surged through their father.

Satisfied, he went to the door. Somehow he knew that, for the first time in their short lives, the children would not call for the chink of light from the landing, the light that saved them from their dark-fed fears. Deep in his heart he knew that change was afoot, that his children were growing and that, if he was to hold onto them, he would have to accept that change, evolve with them, no matter how hard it might be.

David Walters had no fear in his life save the fear that he might lose his kids or his wife. Sometimes, when he least expected it, the thought would crash into his mind like an aeroplane out of control and cause his breath to stutter, his eyes to bulge with unseen tears, his heart to gallop loudly in his chest like a runaway horse. As the kids got older, so the thoughts seemed to come more and more, until lately, for some reason, they had become maddeningly and painfully regular.

Often he had to simply stop what he was doing, put his head in his hands and wait for the feeling to pass, for the crashing in his chest to subside, for the incessant thump-thump in the artery that circled his brain to slow and dissipate until he could feel and hear it no more.

Sometimes he wondered if he was going mad. Mad with love. Mad with fear.

With a last look at the children he backed out of the bedroom onto the landing. He pulled the door to until he heard the soft sound of wood upon wood.

‘I love you,’ he whispered. He knew that Rachel and Tommy couldn’t hear him, but he felt it was good to say it. Some things had to be said, somehow. At the end of the day, it was only the good that mattered.

He crept down the stairs, one soft step at a time, his new slippers still managing to find every creak and groan, and he smiled at the silliness of it all, how he cringed with each noise, when he knew that by the time he was at the bottom stairs, torches would be lit and secrets formed under cover of the night.

 

Tommy clung to Rachel’s moist hand, scared of the night, of the absolute stillness and the dark. He slapped his feet against the ground so that the hollow ring that came back would cover the noises that did not belong to his world. The screech of an owl tore through the silence and his eyes widened, his heartbeat palpable from his chest to his thin wrists.

Rachel’s grip tightened a split second after the screech. ‘Tommy?’

Her voice was a panicked whisper and Tommy jumped, the scream of the owl and her voice momentarily inseparable, all noise something to fear in the uncharted wilderness of night. ‘What, Rachel?’

‘They were asleep, weren’t they?’

‘Course they were. I checked. You saw me listen at the door. They’re always asleep by now. They have to be at their age otherwise they start to fall over and all that stuff. Remember Granddad, how he was always falling over?’

Rachel nodded her head, but her lower lip still rose as if she wasn’t sure. She had kind of hoped they had been awake all the time and were following them at this very moment, to come to the rescue when...whatever. ‘What time is it, Tommy?’

Tommy sighed impatiently. He held his wrist up to the moon and stared hard at the Swatch he had got last birthday. ‘It’s gone midnight.’   Rachel nodded again. ‘It’s very late.’

Tommy pulled up short and stared at his sister. He wasn’t angry, he just wanted to seem that way. Better that seeming scared, he thought. ‘Yeah, it’s late. It’s meant to be. Do you want to change your mind? I mean, we can go back, if you’re too chicken. It doesn’t matter to me.’

‘Don’t say that, Tommy,’ implored Rachel. She felt like crying. ‘I’m only nine years old. I’ll go with you. I’m just...you know.’

‘Yeah, I know. But stop whining, okay!’

‘Okay, Tommy.’

They walked on again. Rachel’s fingers curled tighter around Tommy’s hand. He responded, glad to feel her there.

They didn’t look back.

If they had, they would have seen there was no way home. There was no home left. No village.

Just mist.

The road ahead, dimly lit by mock-Victorian street lamps, turned into a sharp right hand bend. Tommy and Rachel turned off left before it and descended into shadows; now they were invisible from the main street. They stopped at some bollards and peered ahead of them, through a tunnel of trees that eclipsed the starlit sky and let through only steel slivers of moonlight that brushed the ground like peeled silver.

Tommy stepped forward, his heart high in his throat, his head swimming and rushing with every pulse of blood. Rachel’s feet held firm. She leaned back against her brother’s pull like a reluctant puppy and wrapped her free hand around his wrist.

She could feel the moist sting of tears as they began to well up in her eyes. Her throat felt constricted as if her windpipe had been crushed by the fear that ran rampant in her mind. She felt sick, tired and confused. She felt scared. ‘Tommy please, let’s go home. I don’t want to go down there. It’s scary.’

Tommy’s own fear grew into impatience. He jerked his arm away from Rachel’s grasp and gave her a shove in the shoulder. He knew she would do this! He knew it! She always did! She was a girl and she was a coward. She was the one who had to have the bedroom door open at night, so that the light fell on his eyes and kept him awake until he had to hide his head under the stuffy covers. He wished he’d never had a sister. He wished he’d had a brother instead. All the boys who had brothers (those who had coaxed him thus far with their taunts) seemed to have so much more fun, so many more adventures. And their brothers never chickened out when it came to the big things. Not like sisters always did. Not like his sister.

‘What’s the matter with you?’ His voice was a harsh whisper, born through fear. ‘What’s there to be scared of? We’re only taking a walk, that’s all.’ He put his hands on her shoulders and looked her in the eyes. ‘That’s all.’

Rachel brushed his hands away, her eyes flitting between Tommy and the gloom ahead, the frosted tunnel that at any other time might have been an Ice Queen’s palace, but now was a cold labyrinth of dread. ‘That’s not all, Tommy, and you know it! That’s not all! You know what’s down there! You know!’ She stamped her foot emphatically, closer to tears, her lips tight.

Tommy let out a harsh laugh. ‘Ghosts? Is that what you’re afraid of? Is that it? There’s no such thing!’

‘Then why are we going there?’ A tear fell and rolled down Rachel’s right cheek. Her voice cracked as she tried to find the strength to talk. ‘If there’s no ghost, why are we going there, Tommy? Why?’

‘Just for fun. Besides, we can’t go back now. Look.’

Tommy pointed over his sister’s shoulder and she turned slowly.

The mist lay at the top of the road. It hung like a block of rogue cloud, a sentinel, formless and heavy. Within it were shapes that, although indefinable, were somehow familiar, that screamed silently as they battered at the silver cage for release. It sealed the two children’s way like a stone across the face of a tomb, no infinitesimal gap through which the living may squeeze and save themselves from suffocation.

Rachel screamed and clung to Tommy’s arm. She wanted to run, she didn’t care where, just away from the living mist that had them trapped.

Tommy squinted at the glowing cloud, unsure if there was a fire within, a black-hearted fire that flickered and jumped. Was there life within it? Had it followed them this far? Was it just waiting for him and Rachel to move on, matching each step as they made their way, to ensure that they got to the chine and nowhere else?

He felt a wetness around his eyes, the kind that came when he was embarrassed or when unwelcome tears were about to fall, the kind of fullness that said nothing was in his control anymore.

He looked at the gliding mass and then back down the silver-lined pathway, back at his sister, whose face was  distorted by her fear and her tears. ‘We’ll have to go down there now.’  The words fell from his mouth automatically, as if thoughts had rolled down from his brain and simply fallen into space. ‘We can’t go that way. We’d get lost for sure.’

He tugged at Rachel sharply and took him with her, no arguments, as she stared blindly at the mist behind them.

As they moved, so the mist started to roll, to slide, to slither, to leave its saliva on the road beneath as its tendrils reached out and sensed the ground.

Tommy and Rachel ran under the umbrella of trees. Tommy’s mind raced with his legs, thoughts of the mist, of the shapes within it, shadows that thumped against its belly as it followed them, which, if it caught them, would envelop them and lose them until the sun came up (it never would again) with the next dawn. And he could smell salt, could taste it, like the sea, and it smelled of something from a different age, something that scratched at the back of his throat and burned its way into his lungs.

He thought of Rachel, of her fear, which had stunned her into silence, the silence of real fear, when the mind folded in upon itself and receded to escape the harsh and harmful  reality of another world.

‘Through here!’ Tommy suddenly yanked his sister to one side. They fell into some bushes that lined the dusty track. Small branches whipped at their faces and arms and pulled at their hair as they fought their way through. They rested breathlessly against a hidden fence inside the bush, its two bars enough for Rachel and Tommy to lean their tired bodies and heads upon. Each of them tried to breathe noiselessly, afraid that if heard it would lead to their discovery, to their undoing. Their chests shuddered as they tried to control their breathing, as they tried to moisten their dry mouths with non-existent saliva.

Tommy tugged at Rachel’s T-shirt and cocked a thumb behind him, indicating that they were to go through the fence. Rachel looked at him quizzically, then understood and nodded. She licked her dry lips and stifled a frightened sob, afraid that her sounds of fear would betray their hiding place.

She crouched, her hands up to protect her eyes, and put her head in between the bars of the fence. Tommy tried to part the stiff twigs and branches, to make a space for her to go through. She kicked up with her back legs, her abdomen against the bar, and fell through. She landed on the other side of the fence on her back, a whoosh of air rushing from her as she hit the soft cool grass. A moment later Tommy did the same.

They lay motionless, their bodies soaking in the coolness of the soft green carpet that moulded to them. Above them the stars blinked welcomingly upon the dark canvas, fighting with the moon for supremacy of the sky. Tommy smiled up at them and felt safe for the first time since he and Rachel had crawled from their beds.

The mist reeled away from the other side of the hedge, back up the hill through the trees, to the road and rested on the main street that ran through the village of Seacoomb.

There it stopped. It’s innards swirled like a silently revving engine, on guard, prepared to move, content to stay where it was, to discourage further trips down the track by the curious residents of Seacoomb, guarding the paths in and out of the village.

Now no one could get out.

And no one could come back in.

           The ghostly shepherd had finished for this time, had done its job.