Crik (53 page)

Lower, beneath the roots of the aged tree that rested on two stone horns of land, stood two groups. Immediately Jack regarded the two clusters as them and us. The “them" group, comprised of ten Myrms. At their centre issued roping strands of colour from three Ghost Walkers. Ignoring the Myrms, awash in amber, he instead focused on the three tall figures. Justice serenely stood before her sisters. Amber light wrapped her frame. She appeared to be talking. Kyla stood there too, her green eyes staring from a skull she no longer hid. Aged bone no longer had the power to overwhelm him. It still unnerved him, made his stomach flop like a caught fish on the deck of a boat, but he no longer wanted to reel back and hide. A third Ghost Walker drifted through the pack of Myrms, letting her diaphanous hands caress the beasts’ armour in twisted affection.

Bill ran up, his wide horrified eyes travelling over the executed villagers. He kept mumbling incoherently while touching his bruised neck. Jack gripped him, pulling him close.

‘Look,’ Jack said, pointing to the group facing the Ghost Walkers. ‘Bill,’ he shouted when Bill refused to lower his eyes from the tree. ‘There they are.’

Bill’s gaze fell at slow increments down the huge tree, his iris darkened eyes counting each of the bodies hanging from a rope. Jack realised his friend’s mumbles were the names of those hung. He shook him, knowing the approaching Myrms were almost on top of them. ‘Damnit, there’s your grandpa.’

Bill’s face broke into a smile.

Grandpa Poulis stood at the front of the large group of villagers, leaning on his wolf-headed cane. Wolf was at heel, barking at the Myrms. Striking a resolute figure, Mr Gasthem stood with Grandpa Poulis. Jack noted the swarm of flies and moths circling the Village Elder’s head with an aching familiarity. Most of the adults stayed with the children. Liza Manfry touched a piece of her torn nightgown to a bleeding gash across Dwayne’s temple. Via and Cassie stayed close beside Liza, crying in each other’s arms.

Jack saw all this with absent interest. There were two points of particular importance that drew his eyes. The first stood before the group. Wreathed in blue fire, her hair caught in an updraft of hot air, stood Grandma Poulis, just as he had once seen her when he had entered her house. Her beauty struck him anew, and in that moment, he loved her. She possessed so much life; he wondered how he could have ever feared her. Unlike the other Ghost Walkers, her light emitted warmth that drove away the chill of the night. Villagers crowded within her light, and cringed from Justice’s amber glow with fearful urgency. Compelling his attention away from Grandma Poulis was the lone figure of Dr Threshum stepping amongst two rows of bodies. Holding a black bag in one hand, in the other he held aloft a roll of bandages as though it were a talisman. Men and women groaned at his feet, most had blood on some body part or held their heads in great pain. All called out for the doctor’s attention. A few lay still. His mother was one of those who lay without moving.

If Jack saw th
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snarling face of the boar bearing down on him, he could have prepared himself for the imprisoning fingers. Instead, the hand locking around his bicep tore a scream from his already sore throat. So high and shrill was his scream that the Myrm flinched, and those down at the bottom of the descent turned in shocked dismay. Jack could not stop the horror erupting from his throat. The sight of his mother; dead, even the possibility of her death was more than he could bear; sent waves of despair through him. His voice rose higher, as though a great bellows blew into a toy whistle. Letting go of his arm the Myrm shrank back, startled by his grief stricken outcry. Bill too took a stumbling backward step, his own relief at finding both his grandparents alive, dissolved, allowing the horror to come crashing back.

Each intimately known face watched Jack from down the slope. How he had longed to see them. Tommen Guild sat close to Jack’s mother, his eyes huge with the same terror that stamped every face. Jack knew the fears that trampled through their minds. When he had gone to the Wold, it had felt like a dream world, disconnected from his reality. Seeing the Myrms there, where creatures lived in a hedge as tall as a mountain and metal swans swam across muddy lakes, though shocking, was not the terrifying encounter they had now become. Lost in that world had kept him from his mother; in turn that meant his mother was safe from the creatures he encountered. Only there she now laid, just another body amongst rows of bodies. Her plants, his inner voice cried out, won’t grow without her! The prospect of having a seed, without his mother’s ability to grow in seconds, what nature would take weeks, months, even longer to accomplish, smacked him as an awful damnation of his world’s order. Without her, he had nothing.

Exhaustion, not acceptance of the scene, stopped Jack’s scream; like a leaking tap, a few last strangled cries escaped his sore throat in a stuttering falsetto. Yang had his arms around him. Wrapped in despair, Jack had missed the shadow, now, his emotions still raw, but for the moment spent, he collapsed gratefully into Yang’s arms, sobbing into his shoulder. Remaining solid, Yang allowed Jack to hold him and for him to hold the boy.

‘Yin,’ said Bill, moving up on urgent feet. ‘Your scream spooked the Myrms.’ He looked fearfully back a few feet to where the Myrms stood in a ring. ‘They won’t stay back for long. If they grab us now they will take us to the Ghost Walkers. I prefer to stand behind my grandma. Eagle face is looking as though he’s about to charge us. We can escape them, if we run now, and be amongst our friends.’ He almost said family; he slung that word to the back of his throat, to speak it now would be blasphemous. Jack’s grief was too raw. ‘What do you say, are you ready to run?’

‘I don’t think I can,’ said Jack. He felt so tired. Every limb carried extra weight.

‘I won’t do this without you. I need you to try.’

Bill had always been there for him. When he had built a den on the wooded outskirts, only Bill and Yang knew of it. Unlike everyone else, who kept a wary distance from his troublesome shadow, Bill always wanted to play; he accepted Yang more than had any other kid in the village. After discovering his Talent Bill’s first impulse was to go to him, and since that day, they had grown closer. He had never had a brother, but in Bill, he knew that love.

‘Take my hand.’ Jack’s hand passed through Yang, the shadow becoming incorporeal to allow the connection to take place. ‘If I falter, or stumble, carry on, don’t dare stop until you’re standing with your grandpa.’

‘Not on your life. You would never leave me behind, and I won’t let them get you either.’

It felt as though wood splinters, not legs, supported Jack as he struggled to match Bill’s pace. With help from the downward gradient, he managed to hold onto his friend’s hand; he feared that if they had to run across more treacherous, or strenuous, ground, he would trip. Yang ran with him, the shadow finding the going far easier. Howling for their blood the Myrms took up the chase. For the moment, Jack did not fear them, with his head start, together with the creatures’ awkward stance; he knew the beasts had little chance of recapturing them. Ahead, once the rolling slope flattened out, it stretched toward the ribbon of road and the Hanging Tree, where the two companies, frozen in their observation of the chase, stood. Bill headed east toward the line of blackberry hedges, and then cut back in a long arc. Immediately Jack saw how Bill had cleverly placed Grandma Poulis and the people of Crik between them and Justice.

Drawing them on were the recognisable voices of the villagers. Loudest of all was Grandpa Poulis, who in his excitement had turned into his accustomed youthful guise. He waved for them to hurry, his arms flapping over his head as though they were flags caught in a gale. Every one of the faces, save Grandma Poulis, who never let her gaze stray from the other group, beckoned them with surprised cries and broad, however tired, smiles. Wolf joined in the excitement, howling like his namesake.

The hand enclosing Jack’s own grew tighter, pulling him along with irresistible force. He wondered why the Myrms gathered about the Ghost Walkers had not intercepted them. Although it would take little effort, they remained beside the three Ghost Walkers, at heel like a master’s hounds. Not daring to meet Justice’s dark gaze, he kept his focus on the back of Grandma Poulis. His love for her overrode all other thought, even his emotions for his mother began to dwindle as he reached the warm blue haze. The power of his emotion unsettled him. At the first touch of the blue light any attempt to focus on anything other than Grandma Poulis faltered, and died. Her allure only grew the closer he got to the group. A shameful undercurrent ran through him when he realised his mother’s death had diminished to no more than a spluttering candle next to Grandma Poulis’s blazing light. Chancing a look behind he saw, without surprise, that the group of Myrms had broken off their pursuit. The brutes had veered toward the road to join the rest of their vicious company.

‘Grandpa!’ Bill, having let go of Jack’s hand, rushed his grandfather, sweeping him up in a titanic hug. He spun him around as their old dog wagged his tail.

Grandpa Poulis laughed, smacking his grandson’s back. ‘I thought wolves had eaten you two.’ He gave Jack a warm smile over Bill’s shoulder.

‘We escaped,’ said Jack as other hands clapped him on the back or ruffled his hair. His eyes still lingered on Grandma Poulis. She was so beautiful; it was hard to correlate her with the old woman with the razor sharp tongue.

‘It is great to see you two,’ said Mr Gasthem. Even the moths circling his head flew faster, caught up in the moment. ‘I only wish you had returned at a better time. This night it is safer in the woods.’

‘Put me down lad,’ Bill’s grandfather told Bill. Back on his feet, the old man grew back to full size. ‘The Village Elder speaks the truth. It seems my stories have come back to haunt me. These beasts are...’

‘Myrms,’ interrupted Bill, ‘from the Wold.’

‘We’ve seen them before,’ said Jack, disengaging from Beth Hulme’s suffocating hug. ‘They are here because of us.’

‘You want to explain yourself, boy,’ said Mr Dash. A blood soaked bandage bound his arm and he walked with a limp. His serious face looked graver than ever as he marched away from the injured. ‘What do you mean, this is your fault? What have you two done?’

A cold whispering laugh fell over the group, making the children shiver and hold onto one another. Mouths opened to form hollow circles. Their faces at once turned toward Grandma Poulis for protection.

Beyond Grandma Poulis, Justice had drifted closer, two Myrms trotted beside her; they both wore stag masks with barbed antlers. They stopped shy of the blue swathe of colour. Where Justice’s amber light touched this blue haze the air sizzled with energy.

‘I see your spies have returned,’ said Justice. ‘I had expected to find them when we emptied the village.’ Her appraisal of both Jack and Bill was cursory, she, like everyone else, waited for Grandma Poulis to speak.

Jack recognised the old woman’s authority, and knew their survival depended on her resolve. When she spoke, the familiar voice that had berated him on numerous occasions had mellowed. ‘My grandson and Jack are part of this community; as were you at one time.’

‘I ceased to be part of this community when they killed me,’ said Justice.

‘A sin no one here was part of. If you will share your full name I am sure you will find your descendants still live here.’

‘It was my family that gave me up to the others.’ Justice’s eyes grew distant as she lifted them to the overhead branches. ‘I watched as my husband gave me over to the hangman’s noose.’

‘So you in turn want to see others hang,’ said Grandma Poulis, a touch of her old self, roughening her softened tones. She also looked up, seeing the bodies swaying in the cold night winds.

‘As they would hang you, sister,’ said Kyla. Two Myrms accompanied her as she floated closer. ‘Everyone now knows what you are. If we left you, your dear husband will do the same as what Justice’s husband had done to her. In their mourning, they will say they released you from an evil spirit. Believing, as did those before them, how the woods crept into your house one night and took you away from them. You are a stranger to them. Each person here will mistrust you from this day until your last.’

‘My husband has known since before our wedding day, what I am. He did not care then, and he does not care now. Only you hold onto the past - sister.’

The filaments of amber light stirred around Justice, obscuring her ivory skin. ‘Then your husband is an exception,’ she said. ‘If you have no reason to fear, why then do you lock yourself up in your house each night? Your light is a gift, given to you to share with the woods.’

Grandma Poulis’s following hesitation gave the two approaching Ghost Walkers strength; they bore down on her, surrounding her warm light with their cold touch. Jack, feeling the chill, wrapped his arms across his chest. Others around him did the same, and even Mr Dash looked perturbed at the drop in temperature.

‘They love you now, but what will happen when the morning sun extinguishes your warm light? Will they still love you? Or will the harsh light of day bring mistrust?’ said Justice, solemnly. ‘Some will think you bewitched them, not trusting their adoration for you was real. Others, bereft of your love, will feel abandoned in the daytime when you are once again only an old woman.’

When important matters arose in the village, Mr Gasthem, being the Village Elder, spoke. In his absence Grandpa Poulis, or Dr Threshum, and now all three remained silent. Their unusual deferment to Grandma Poulis disquieted Jack. Looking around he saw Mr Gasthem captivated by Grandma Poulis; his eyes had a strange vacancy. Others shared this look, the children in particular watched the old woman with reverence; even Liza, he noted, and she always looked down her nose on the Poulis family. Only Bill and his grandfather were exempt, they watched with love, not with enrapture. Grandma Poulis had earned their love, what they feel is real, not forced upon them. Mr Dash watched him; his piercing eyes sparkled beneath a stormy brow. Jack recalled what the grave keeper had told the Giant when he had seen them in the tomb, “I liked Mr Hasseltope, he always kept me busy.” He had said this whilst holding the hangman’s noose. Would the grave keeper turn on Grandma Poulis? The thought was unsettling, even more so because he wondered how he would react if they lived beyond this night. He tried not to dwell on his misgivings; after all, he had known Bill’s grandmother all his life. Or had he; how much did he actually know about her? She had kept such a large part of herself hidden. Perhaps keeping her secret was justifiable in light of what had happened in the past. Although to keep her secret for so many years in the village, spoke volumes about her duplicity. What power did she have? Could he ever again fully trust her?

When Grandma Poulis spoke, her voice was heavier, carrying tension with each uttered syllable. ‘Everyone here knows me. Each cares for me in their own way. You murdered the only person who could claim to be older than me.’ Her eyes lifted to Miss Mistletoe. ‘When you have been part of a village, as long as I have, you earn people’s trust.’

‘Trust and duty are poor substitute for love,’ said Justice. She stood so close her amber light bled into the blue, creating currents of purples and browns. Although the air still crackled with energy, it no longer sparked, as though the two colliding colours were no longer at odds with one another.

‘Come back with us,’ said Kyla, seeing a chance to capitalise on their advantage. ‘We will take you away from those who wish you harm.’ A spreading patchwork of skin covered her skull like lichen growing over smooth stone. ‘Leave this world behind.’