Errantry: Strange Stories (11 page)

“Maybe the wind,” said Evelyn. “Though the whole reason we’d stayed there all day was that there was no wind—it was protected, and warm.”

“Maybe a bird took it? Don’t some birds like shiny things?”

“What would a bird do with a pencil? Or a plastic comb?”

Jeffrey made a face. “Probably you just didn’t see where they fell. You thought you did, in daylight, but everything looks different at night. Especially in moonlight.”

“I knew where they were.” Evelyn shook her head and reached for the bottle of Armagnac. “Especially my comb. I have that engineer’s eye, I can look at things and keep a very precise picture in my mind. The comb wasn’t where it should have been. And there was no reason for it to be gone, unless . . .”

“Unless some other kids had seen you and found everything after you left,” said Jeffrey.

“No.” Evelyn sipped her drink. “We started looking. The moon was coming up—it rose above the hill, and it was very bright. Because it was so cold there was hoarfrost on the grass, and ice in places where the rain had frozen. So all that reflected the moonlight. Everything glittered. It was beautiful, but it was no longer fun—it was scary. None of us was even talking; we just split up and crisscrossed the field, looking for our things.

“And then Moira said, ‘There’s someone there,’ and pointed. I thought it was someone on the track that led back to the farmhouse—it’s not a proper road, just a rutted path that runs alongside one edge of that old field system. I looked up and yes, there were three people there—three torches, anyway. Flashlights. You couldn’t see who was carrying them, but they were walking slowly along the path. I thought maybe it was my uncle and two of the men who worked with him, coming to tell us it was time to go home. They were walking from the wrong direction, across the moor, but I thought maybe they’d gone out to work on something. So I ran to the left edge of the field and climbed up on the wall.”

She stopped, glancing out the window at the black garden, and finally turned back. “I could see the three lights from there,” she said. “But the angle was all wrong. They weren’t on the road at all—they were in the next field, up above Ravenwood. And they weren’t flashlights. They were high up in the air, like this—”

She set down her glass and got to her feet, a bit unsteadily, extended both her arms and mimed holding something in her hands. “Like someone was carrying a pole eight or ten feet high, and there was a light on top of it. Not a flame. Like a ball of light . . .”

She cupped her hands around an invisible globe the size of a soccer ball. “Like that. White light, sort of foggy. The lights bobbed as they were walking.”

“Did you see who it was?”

“No. We couldn’t see anything. And, this is the part that I can’t explain—it just felt bad. Like, horrible. Terrifying.”

“You thought you’d summoned up whatever it was you’d been playing at.” Jeffrey nodded sympathetically and finished his drink. “It was just marsh gas, Ev. You know that. Will-o’-the-wisp, or whatever you call it here. They must get it all the time out there in the country. Or fog. Or someone just out walking in the moonlight.”

Evelyn settled back into her armchair. “It wasn’t,” she said. “I’ve seen marsh gas. There was no fog. The moon was so bright you could see every single rock in that field. Whatever it was, we all saw it. And you couldn’t hear anything—there were no voices, no footsteps, nothing. They were just there, moving closer to us—slowly,” she repeated, and moved her hand up and down, as though calming a cranky child. “That was the creepiest thing, how slowly they just kept coming.”

“Why didn’t you just run?”

“Because we couldn’t. You know how kids will all know about something horrible, but they’ll never tell a grown-up? It was like that. We knew we had to find our things before we could go.

“I found my comb first. It was way over—maybe twenty feet from where I’d seen it fall. I grabbed it and began to run across the turf, looking for the locket and Moira’s pencil. The whole time the moon was rising, and that was horrible too—it was a beautiful clear night, no clouds at all. And the moon was so beautiful, but it just terrified me. I can’t explain it.”

Jeffrey smiled wryly. “Yeah? How about this: three thirteen-year-old girls in the dark under a full moon, with a very active imagination?”

“Hush. A few minutes later Moira yelled: she’d found her pencil. She turned and started running back toward the wall, I screamed after her that she had to help us find the locket. She wouldn’t come back. She didn’t go over the wall without us, but she wouldn’t help. I ran over to Ant but she yelled at me to keep searching where I was. I did, I even started heading for the far end of the field, toward the other wall—where the lights were.

“They were very close now, close to the far wall, I mean. You could see how high up they were, taller than a person. I could hear Moira crying, I looked back and suddenly I saw Ant dive to the ground. She screamed ‘I found it!’ and I could see the chain shining in her hand.

“And we just turned and hightailed it. I’ve never run so fast in my life. I grabbed Ant’s arm, by the time we got to the wall Moira was already on top and jumping down the other side. I fell and Ant had to help me up, Moira grabbed her and we ran all the way back to the farm and locked the door when we got inside.

“We looked out the window and the lights were still there. They were there for hours. My uncle had a border collie, we cracked the door to see if she’d hear something and bark but she didn’t. She wouldn’t go outside—we tried to get her to look and she wouldn’t budge.”

“Did you tell your aunt and uncle?”

Evelyn shook her head. “No. We stayed in the house that night, in my cousin’s room. It overlooked the moor, so we could watch the lights. After about two hours they began to move back the way they’d come—slowly, it was about another hour before they were gone completely. We went out next morning to see if there was anything there—we took the dog to protect us.”

“And?”

“There was nothing. The grass was all beat down, as though someone had been walking over it, but probably that was just us.”

She fell silent. “Well,” Jeffrey said after a long moment. “It’s certainly a good story.”

“It’s a true story. Here, wait.”

She stood and went into the other room, and Jeffrey heard her go upstairs. He crossed to the window and stared out into the night, the dark garden occluded by shadow and runnels of mist, blueish in the dim light cast from the solarium.

“Look. I still have it.”

He turned to see Evelyn holding a small round tin. She withdrew a small object and stared at it, placed it back inside and handed him the tin. “My comb. There’s some pictures here too.”

“That tin.” He stared at the lid, blue enamel with the words ST. AUSTELL SWEETS: FUDGE FROM REAL CORNISH CREAM stamped in gold above the silhouette of what looked like a lighthouse beacon. “It’s just like the one I found, with Anthea’s letters in it.”

Evelyn nodded. “That’s right. Becca gave one to each of us the day we arrived. The fudge was supposed to last the entire two weeks, and I think we ate it all that first night.”

He opened the tin and gazed at a bright-red plastic comb sitting atop several snapshots; dug into his pocket and pulled out Anthea’s locket.

“There it is,” said Evelyn wonderingly. She took the locket and dangled it in front of her, clicked it open and shut then returned it to Jeffrey. “She never had anything in it that I knew. Here, look at these.”

She took back the tin. He sat, waiting as she sorted through the snapshots then passed him six small black-and-white photos, each time-stamped OCTOBER 1971.

“That was my camera. A Brownie.” Evelyn sank back into the armchair. “I didn’t finish shooting the roll till we went back to school.”

There were two girls in most of the photos. One was Anthea, apple-cheeked, her face still rounded with puppy fat and her brown hair longer than he’d ever seen it; eyebrows unplucked, wearing baggy bell-bottom jeans and a white peasant shirt. The other girl was taller, sturdy but long-limbed, with long straight blonde hair and a broad smooth forehead, elongated eyes and a wide mouth bared in a grin.

“That’s Moira,” said Evelyn.

“She’s beautiful.”

“She was. We were the ugly ducklings, Ant and me. Fortunately I was taking most of the photos, so you don’t see me except in the ones Aunt Becca took.”

“You were adorable.” Jeffrey flipped to a photo of all three girls laughing and feeding each other something with their hands, Evelyn still in braces, her hair cut in a severe black bob. “You were all adorable. She’s just—”

He scrutinised a photo of Moira by herself, slightly out of focus so all you saw was a blurred wave of blonde hair and her smile, a flash of narrowed eyes. “She’s beautiful. Photogenic.”

Evelyn laughed. “Is that what you call it? No, Moira was very pretty, all the boys liked her. But she was a tomboy like us. Ant was the one who was boy-crazy. Me and Moira, not so much.”

“What about when you saw Robert Bennington? When was that?”

“The next day. Nothing happened—I mean, he was very nice, but there was nothing strange like that night. Nothing
untoward
,” she added, lips pursed. “My aunt knew who he was—she didn’t know him except to say hello to at the post office, and she’d never read his books. But she knew he was the children’s writer, and she knew which house was supposed to be his. We told her we were going to see him, she told us to be polite and not be a nuisance and not stay long.

“So we were polite and not nuisances, and we stayed for two hours. Maybe three. We trekked over to his house, and that took almost an hour. A big old stone house. There was a standing stone and an old barrow nearby, it looked like a hayrick. A fogou. He was very proud that there was a fogou on his land—like a cave, but man-made. He said it was three thousand years old. He took us out to see it, and then we walked back to his house and he made us Nutella sandwiches and tangerines and Orange Squash. We just walked up to his door and knocked—
I
knocked, Ant was too nervous and Moira was just embarrassed. Ant and I had our copies of
The Second Sun
, and he was very sweet and invited us in and said he’d sign them before we left.”

“Oh, sure—’Come up and see my fogou, girls’.”

“No—he wanted us to see it because it gave him an idea for his book. It was like a portal, he said. He wasn’t a dirty old man, Jeffrey! He wasn’t even that old—maybe forty? He had long hair, longish, anyway—to his shoulders—and he had cool clothes, an embroidered shirt and corduroy flares. And pointy-toed boots—blue boot, bright sky-blue, very pointy toes. That was the only thing about him I thought was odd. I wondered how his toes fit into them—if he had long pointy toes to go along with the shoes.” She laughed. “Really, he was very charming, talked to us about the books but wouldn’t reveal any secrets—he said there would be another in the series but it never appeared. He signed our books—well, he signed mine, Moira didn’t have one and for some reason he forgot Ant’s. And eventually we left.”

“Did you tell him about the lights?”

“We did. He said he’d heard of things like that happening before. That part of Cornwall is ancient, there are all kinds of stone circles and menhirs, cromlechs, things like that.”

“What’s a cromlech?”

“You know—a dolmen.” At Jeffrey’s frown she picked up several of the snapshots and arranged them on the side table, a simple house of cards: three photos supporting a fourth laid atop them. “Like that. It’s a kind of prehistoric grave, made of big flat stones. Stonehenge, only small. The fogou was a bit like that. They’re all over West Penwith—that’s where Zennor is. Alaister Crowley lived there, and D.H. Lawrence and his wife. That was years before Robert’s time, but he said there were always stories about odd things happening. I don’t know what kind of things—it was always pretty boring when I visited as a girl, except for that one time.”

Jeffrey made a face. “He was out there with a flashlight, Ev, leading you girls on.”

“He didn’t even know we were there!” protested Evelyn, so vehemently that the makeshift house of photos collapsed. “He looked genuinely startled when we knocked on his door—I was afraid he’d yell at us to leave. Or, I don’t know, have us arrested. He said that field had a name. It was a funny word, Cornish. It meant something, though of course I don’t remember what.”

She stopped and leaned toward Jeffrey. “Why do you care about this, Jeffrey?
Did
Anthea say something?”

“No. I just found those letters, and . . .”

He lay his hands atop his knees, turned to stare past Evelyn into the darkness, so that she wouldn’t see his eyes welling. “I just wanted to know. And I can’t ask her.”

Evelyn sighed. “Well, there’s nothing to know, except what I told you. We went back once more—we took torches this time, and walking sticks and the dog. We stayed out till 3:00 a.m. Nothing happened except we caught hell from my aunt and uncle because they heard the dog barking and looked in the barn and we were gone.

“And that was the end of it. I still have the book he signed for me. Ant must have kept her copy—she was always mad he didn’t sign it.”

“I don’t know. Maybe. I couldn’t find it. Your friend Moira, you’re not in touch with her?”

Evelyn shook her head. “I told you, she disappeared—she ran away that summer. There were problems at home, the father was a drunk and maybe the mother, too. We never went over there—it wasn’t a welcoming place. She had an older sister but I never knew her. Look, if you’re thinking Robert Bennington killed her, that’s ridiculous. I’m sure her name came up during the trial, if anything had happened we would have heard about it. An investigation.”

“Did you tell them about Moira?”

“Of course not. Look, Jeffrey—I think you should forget about all that. It’s nothing to do with you, and it was all a long time ago. Ant never cared about it—I told her about the trial, I’d read about it in
The
Guardian
, but she was even less curious about it than I was. I don’t even know if Robert Bennington is still alive. He’d be an old man now.”