The Year's Best Dark Fantasy and Horror (49 page)

“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 blond 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 scrutinized 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. Aleister 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.”

She leaned over to take his hand. “I can see you’re tired, Jeffrey. This has all been so awful for you, you must be totally exhausted. Do you want to just stay here for a few days? Or come back after your meeting in London?”

“No—I mean, probably not. Probably I need to get back to Brooklyn. I have some projects I backburnered, I need to get to them in the next few weeks. I’m sorry, Ev.”

He rubbed his eyes and stood. “I didn’t mean to hammer you about this stuff. You’re right—I’m just beat. All this—” He sorted the snapshots into a small stack, and asked, “Could I have one of these? It doesn’t matter which one.”

“Of course. Whichever, take your pick.”

He chose a photo of the three girls, Moira and Evelyn doubled over laughing as Anthea stared at them, smiling and slightly puzzled.

“Thank you, Ev,” he said. He replaced each of Anthea’s letters into its envelope, slid the photo into the last one, then stared at the sheaf in his hand, as though wondering how it got there. “It’s just, I dunno. Meaningless, I guess; but I want it to mean something. I want
something
to mean something.”

“Anthea meant something.” Evelyn stood and put her arms around him. “Your life together meant something. And your life now means something.”

“I know.” He kissed the top of her head. “I keep telling myself that.”

Evelyn dropped him off at the station next morning. He felt guilty, lying that he had meetings back in London, but he sensed both her relief and regret that he was leaving.

“I’m sorry about last night,” he said as Evelyn turned into the parking lot. “I feel like the Bad Fairy at the christening, bringing up all that stuff.”

“No, it was interesting.” Evelyn squinted into the sun. “I hadn’t thought about any of that for awhile. Not since Ant called me last March.”

Jeffrey hesitated, then asked, “What do you think happened? I mean, you’re the one with the advanced degree in structural engineering.”

Evelyn laughed. “Yeah. And see where it’s got me. I have no idea, Jeffrey. If you ask me, logically, what do I think? Well, I think it’s just one of those things that we’ll never know what happened. Maybe two different dimensions overlapped—in superstring theory, something like that is theoretically possible, a sort of duality.”

She shook her head. “I know it’s crazy. Probably it’s just one of those things that don’t make any sense and never will. Like how did Bush stay in office for so long?”

“That I could explain.” Jeffrey smiled. “But it’s depressing and would take too long. Thanks again, Ev.”

They hopped out of the car and hugged on the curb. “You should come back soon,” said Ev, wiping her eyes. “This is stupid, that it took so long for us all to get together again.”

“I know. I will—soon, I promise. And you and Chris, come to New York. Once I have a place, it would be great.”

He watched her drive off, waving as she turned back onto the main road; went into the station and walked to a ticket window.

“Can I get to Penzance from here?”

“What time?”

“Now.”

The station agent looked at her computer. “There’s a train in about half-an-hour. Change trains in Plymouth, arrive at Penzance a little before four.”

He bought a first-class, one-way ticket to Penzance, found a seat in the waiting area, took out his phone and looked online for a place to stay near Zennor. There wasn’t much—a few farmhouses designed for summer rentals, all still closed for the winter. An inn that had in recent years been turned into a popular gastropub was open; but even now, the first week of March, they were fully booked. Finally he came upon a B&B called Cliff Cottage. There were only two rooms, and the official opening date was not until the following weekend, but he called anyway.