Guilt Trip (3 page)

The beginning of our route that morning led
us back along the same road as the day before, between hills scarred by
horizontal beds of limestone and topped by jagged grey crags. And then we took
a different direction, and up onto even more rugged, mountainous terrain.

Angry and raw, the wind was raging up here,
hurling grey clouds across the sky, their dark shadows blotting the landscape,
constantly changing its hue through various shades of dark green to purple
black. Chill and cutting, it blasted at the windscreen as we drove higher,
spattering it with the occasional fistful of rain.

But, surprisingly, these harsh conditions
didn’t take away from the beauty of the place. Actually they intensified it. It
was as if nature was putting on a display of strength. Of power.

And maybe Dad was feeling the call of the
wild too. Switching from the radio to one of his CDs, he cranked up the volume
unusually loud, filling the car with the raw emotional turmoil that is
dad rock
. And so we sang together, as
loud as we could - like wolves howling at the moon.

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But soon enough we’d descended into the
more gentle landscape of the dales, the road now lined with hedgerows and moss-covered
dry-stone walls, with signposts pointing the way to tiny villages and
homesteads - and the Changing Well.

Parking, Dad bought two tickets at a small
kiosk and we went through the gate and followed the trail into the woods. Above
us, the wind roared as it buffeted the tops of the trees, but down on the
forest floor we were relatively sheltered. The path meandered through the
tangled green woodland, the smell of wild garlic and damp earth filling the air.

Eventually we came to a flight of steps cut
into the side of a cliff, at the bottom of which we reached our destination: the
Changing Well. Not your usual type of well, water pooling up from under the
ground with some kind of pulley and a bucket to collect it; this was more a
huge hollow basin of rock in which water collected as it came from
above,
from a natural spring rushing out
of the hillside next to the steps. But though the water came down from the
cliff top, it didn’t fall in a crashing cascade. Rather, it spread out in a
thin sheet over a strangely smooth, bulbous, undulating surface, as if over glass
or polished metal, before dripping as hundreds of tiny drops into the pool.

I looked at Dad for an explanation.

“Think of it as a giant stalactite,” he
said, getting out his camera. “The water originates in an underground lake
which passes through rock on its journey to the surface, picking up mineral
salts - like calcium carbonate - on the way. Then when the water eventually
flows over the cliff, the minerals get deposited as flowstone, building up into
this smooth, stone-like overhang. Just look at that vertical rippling. It
almost looks corrugated. Beautiful!”

And he was right: it
was
sort of beautiful. But it was eerie too.

Just below the overhang, about seven meters
up, a wire had been strung all the way across, like a washing line, though it
was placed exactly where it would get dripped on most. And on this washing line
was pegged a row of random items which appeared to have been carved out of
stone: a top hat, a kettle, a tennis racket… They looked to me like a weird
display of voodoo offerings - a sacrifice to the witch of the well.

“They’re not really stone,” Dad said. “They’re
just objects covered in deposits which, over time, build up and make them
look
like stone.”

He started fiddling with his camera but
then swore irritably as a big group of people appeared at the top of the steps.
He’d wanted the place to himself so that he could get the best shots without
interruption. I left him to it, opening a bag of crisps and wandering off to
look at the information board nearby.

And there I found a drawing and information
about the witch, supposed to have lived there centuries ago, turning her
enemies to stone, and leaving a trace of her magic in the waters when she left.
It was the usual kind of tale you would expect to hear in a mysterious place
like this. Our ancestors trying to understand the world around them; finding
supernatural explanations for nature’s bizarre ways.

I wondered how they’d have explained my
recent bouts of déjà vu…

By now, the other visitors had reached the
well and were milling about, getting in Dad’s way, even attempting to chat to
him, until he gave up, disappearing up the steps to try to get a better shot of
the overhang from up there, in relative peace.

I sat down on a bench and watched the
crowd. They seemed to be some kind of old folks’ club on a day out. All bobble
hats and hiking boots and passing round of boiled sweets. Then a rather self-important
man, a ridiculous red bow tie sticking out above his cagoule, stood up on a
rock, and raised his clipboard in the air, directing the others to assemble
round him.

They did as they were told, and he began to
lecture them in pompous, dramatic tones, like an old-fashioned actor. He began
by explaining about the petrifying effect of the water, and how people were
sometimes given permission to leave objects on the line to be ‘turned to
stone’. Then he gave the old explanation for this ‘magic’- that the well had
once been associated with a witch, giving a few dates and details which weren’t
on the noticeboard.

But then he went further, offering a second
story.

“Some sources suggest that originally the
well was not called the
Changing
Well
at all,” he said, emphasising the name
by making inverted commas in the air with his fingers, “but the
Changeling
Well, involving not a witch,
but a changeling.”

I sat up a bit straighter, listening to
him.

“A changeling was of course believed to be an
imperfect
and thus unwanted faery
baby who had been left to be raised by unsuspecting humans in exchange for the
theft of their own
perfect
son or
daughter. A secret, underhand swap by the faery world.

“There have been many examples of such
stories through history, used by communities to explain the presence of a child
with a disability or a mental disorder. In other words, if a child did not fit
in in some way, if he was ‘different’, then perhaps he was literally a reject
from another world. A changeling.”

There was a lot of muttering and discussion
in the crowd at this. I was shocked too. People in the past seemed so ignorant,
so cruel, so ready to label others as outsiders.

And then a wave of heat engulfed my cheeks
as I remembered how I’d treated the woman in the shop that morning: I’d
labelled her a ‘nutter’ and joked that she was descended from a witch.

So maybe being hideously judgemental about
anyone even slightly different from ‘the norm’ wasn’t just a historical thing. Maybe
it was just part of our nature. A nasty part; but a part. Human nature. Instinct.

It was an uncomfortable thought. But it
only got worse when the man finally shushed the crowd and continued: “According
to these sources, this place got its name when a young girl, described as ‘slow
of wit’, was drowned in the well by her family. But even though the act was
deliberate, the culprits were never brought to justice as they swore that they
had believed her to be not a human being, but a changeling. And thus this
became the Changeling Well.”

I sat there on the bench, horrified. A
child drowned by her own family? My mind filled with disturbing images which I
struggled hard to suppress. But had they really thought that she was a
changeling?
Really
? Or had they just
used that as an excuse to get rid of her? Was she, as ‘slow of wit’, a burden
to them? An extra mouth to feed? And so they’d simply murdered her and used an
old superstition to get away with the crime.

And then a sudden memory hit me of a poem
we’d studied at school about a boy on a farm watching some unwanted kittens
being drowned in a bucket of water. And in the poem he’d finally accepted that
this was the way it had to be.

The class had been in an uproar at that,
finding it all disgusting. But then the teacher had basically told us to get
real, giving us various examples of animals themselves who killed their
unwanted young, for example in rejecting the runt of the litter - the small,
weak, or injured one - the mother refusing to feed it, just letting it starve
to death. Like it or not, as the poem said, it was just a hard fact of life. Nature
could be cruel.

I looked back at the well. The voodoo-like
items hanging there seemed even more disturbing now. Especially those with a
vaguely human shape like dolls and puppets. And other, less-obviously-recognisable
objects seemed to me now like a frightening array of body parts: small bones,
shrunken heads, broken carcases. A line of unwanted children.

As the pensioners moved off, I took a big
swig of Coke, letting the liquid swill around my mouth to wash away the bitter taste
which had risen up from my throat.

What was wrong with me? I was being
ridiculous. It was just an old story. And probably only a myth anyway.

But now the wind picked up, crashing
through the trees above and sending odd gusts to the well below, making the
washing line jiggle, the stone-like objects swinging and swaying in a strange,
ritual dance.

I looked away, screwing the lid onto my bottle.
I had to get a grip on myself. But as I was shoving the bottle into my rucksack,
I heard it again. A sound on the wind. A distant cry. A voice calling out as it
had done at the Falls.

I looked up, but no one was there. I was
alone.

I busied myself again, fastening the buckle
on my bag, zipping up my jacket, trying to tell myself not to be so stupid. There
had been no cry. Of course not. How could there have been?

And yet I
had
heard it.

“Help me…!”

I shivered. It was the story of the changeling
that had done this. It must have been. The gushing of the well and the talk of
the girl’s drowning had brought my mother’s death back to me. The memories
rushing in, unbidden - like the cold, black water.

And I heard it again, a high-pitched cry on
the wind as it wailed above me, reaching down to pluck at the line so that the
objects rattled and danced. I stood up, moving closer to the well, my eyes drawn
back again to the performance. Pulled there, as if by some kind of hypnotic
force. Unable to look away, they swept over the line now, scanning the objects
in turn. A lobster, a boot, a handbag, a spade-

And then something stopped them in their
tracks.

A teddy bear.

And I
knew
it.

I
knew
what it looked like beneath the thick layer of stony deposits. I
knew
it was pink. I was sure of it. Candy
pink. The inside of its ears white. A tiny strawberry on one paw.

And its place up on the wire had been an
act of rebellion. Of liberation. I felt it within me, as surely as if I had
been there myself, experiencing it. In my mind’s eye, I saw the teddy bear
being hoisted up on a long pole, and the thin metal hook being looped over the
wire.

And I felt within me an overpowering surge
of triumph, of victory, to see it hanging there, being marred by the dripping
water.

But these hugely powerful feelings were,
like lightning, extinguished in an instant. And then my whole body began to
tremble as my mind was plunged into a much deeper, darker emotion: terror.

 
“Melissa?” Dad’s arms were suddenly round
me, supporting me. “Are you okay? Your teeth are chattering!”

I burrowed my face into the folds of his
coat, my eyes screwed shut, trying to force the dark feeling from me by sheer
willpower, until eventually it released its hold on me, and the spell was
broken.

“Melissa?” Dad looked at me, his expression
serious, concerned.

But how could I tell him what had happened?
How could I worry him like that? It would only remind him of Mum.

So, again, with a huge effort, I slapped on
a smile. Pretended it was nothing.

“Just a bit cold, that’s all,” I said.

But Dad wasn’t fooled. “No - it’s more than
that.” He looked at me, frowning.

“Then it’s just this place,” I said,
sighing, as if he’d forced the information out of me. “All this voodoo stuff. It’s
a bit creepy.”

I had said the right thing this time. His
face cleared instantly, the clouds vanishing, and he started to laugh, patting
me on the head in a deliberately patronising manner. “Is my sweet, little baby
scared of the wicked witch of the well, then?” he said in a stupid voice as if
I were two years old.

I hit out at him, and he began chasing me
around, pretending to be some kind of ridiculous pantomime hag coming to get
me, while I screamed and laughed, my worries momentarily shelved.

But all too soon he became grown up and
sensible again, eager to get on with his photos. He suggested I go off and
explore, but I offered to stand right next to him, holding the equipment. I
didn’t want to be alone.