House of the Lost (27 page)

From a long long way off, she could hear a voice telling her to come away, to let go of the belt. Then someone prised her hands free and she saw they were bloodied and bruised and that some of the nails were broken and bent back from where she had forced the belt tight. But the thing on the bed had stopped struggling. Its eyes were fixed and staring, the coloured parts rolled up leaving only round white globes.

Someone was crying very hard. Zoia looked round to see who this might be and realized it was her mother. It struck her as extremely silly that her mother should cry, because there was no longer anything to cry about. There would never be anything to cry about again. It seemed a long time before the crying finally stopped, and Zoia’s mother wiped her eyes and face, and took Zoia’s hand. Best they should go downstairs now, she said. Her face was creased and still tear-stained, and her voice shook, but she asked if Zoia knew what had just happened.

‘Of course I know,’ said Zoia. ‘I’ve killed him. I did it for us all. For you and for the others.’ She saw, then, that her brothers and sisters were huddled together at the top of the stairs, their eyes huge and frightened. ‘I know it was wrong,’ she said. ‘You aren’t supposed to kill people, so I ’spect I’ll have to be punished. I’ll confess next Saturday though, and if I explain why I did it, it’ll probably be all right.’

‘You mustn’t confess,’ said her mother at once. ‘Zoia, you must promise never to tell anyone what you’ve just done.’

‘Oh yes, I have to tell the truth.’ The nuns at school said you should always tell the truth; if not, God would be very cross and Jesus would weep. ‘I’ll be given a penance,’ she said.

Mother seemed not to be listening; she reached for a thick woollen scarf, said they were going on a small trip, just a very little walk.

‘Why? Have I got to confess it now? Is next Saturday too late?’ Killing somebody would be a mortal sin, and mortal sins were very bad indeed. Perhaps you had to confess them right away.

Her mother said, ‘Yes, Zoia, it’s because you’re going to confess.’ She looked down at her. ‘You have to keep silent,’ she said. ‘And if you won’t promise to keep silent, then you’ll have to be silenced.’

Silenced. The word and the way her mother said it, frightened Zoia. People in stories were sometimes silenced. If it was a fairy-story the silencing might be done by throwing them into a dungeon or imprisoning them in a windowless castle where they would be forgotten for ever. She knew those stories were not real, of course, but she knew other stories about people being silenced – stories that the grown-ups whispered and that were very real indeed. In the grown-up world ‘silencing’ could mean far worse than dungeons. It could mean your tongue might be cut out of your mouth so you could never speak again. It could even mean you might be killed.

Zoia knew Mother would not do anything like that, but still . . . She glanced up at her and began to feel far more frightened than when she crept up the creaky cottage stairs to strangle her father.

They did not walk through their village and onto the road as she had expected. Instead, they walked out of what people called the back of it, onto the fields, with the forest in the distance, and the mountains beyond. It was nice here in summer, with sunlight pouring down over the mountains and glinting on the trees, but there was no sunlight this afternoon. Everywhere was grey and cold, the trees had swirls of pale mist clinging to them and the mist lay thickly on the fields, so it was like walking through damp grey wool. Zoia shivered as the mist curled around her ankles and wished she had brought a coat, but her mother had not given her time.

They walked fast and every few paces her mother looked over her shoulder as if afraid they were being followed. With her scragged-back hair and frightened eyes she looked like a bolting hare. When they were across the field and at the edge of the forest, she stopped and pointed and said, ‘I’m sorry, Zoia, but you’ll have to go in there. It’s the best hiding place there is.’

Zoia looked about her, puzzled, not seeing anything except the fields behind them and the trees in front. Then her mother pointed again, and this time she did see and it was absolutely the worst thing she had ever seen in her life.

On the edge of the forest was a small building, low and ugly, made of pale old stones, crumbly and pitted and covered with moss and lichen. It was not very high – a tall grown-up, standing on tiptoe, might just touch the lower edge of the roof with their fingertips, and the roof itself was domed like the hairless skull of an old, old man. At the centre was a wooden door, and on each side of this door, just under the roof, were two windows exactly in line with each other, oval-shaped and framed by lichen-encrusted bricks. There was a terrible thick blackness about these narrow windows; they were like sightless eyes with the lichen for the eyelashes. They were dead, empty eyes, and yet if you looked at them for too long they might blink. It looked exactly like a stone face to Zoia, as she stood there staring at it. A massive stone face jutting up out of the ground, watching everyone with its blank staring eyes.

‘It’s the old well-house,’ said Zoia’s mother. ‘It used to serve several of the villages until everyone was given water in pipes and taps in the houses. But we used to hide here as children – it was our secret hiding place. No one ever found us and no one will find you. You’ll be quite safe.’

But Zoia did not think she would be safe at all. She was dreadfully afraid that this stone face had once belonged to a real person – a monster or even a giant – and that the empty eyes might suddenly blink into life.

When her mother pulled her forward Zoia resisted, but her mother was surprisingly strong and Zoia found herself being half carried towards the building. She thought she would make sure not to look up, but at the last minute she could not help it and in that moment, something flew out of the trees, disturbing the branches so that shadows shivered across the stone face.

She hoped the door would be locked and they would have to go back home and forget about hiding, but it was not. There was a black hook latch across it, and when her mother lifted this the door swung open with a groaning creak, like an extremely old man trying to move after a long time or like something dead trying to come back to life. A dreadful sour dankness breathed outwards; it was a smell that made you think of dishcloths that needed boiling in soda crystals or old drains that had been clogged for years. As her mother half pushed her inside, this bad-drains smell closed over Zoia and she began to shiver uncontrollably. The well-house was not much bigger than the main room of their cottage, and although it was dark some light came in through the open door and the two eye-windows.

In the centre, taking up at least half the floor, was what looked like a square black iron box, a few inches deep. Squitch-grass grew round its edges and a handle was set into it on one side. Dozens of scuttly black-beetles, disturbed by the light from the open door, ran about, and Zoia turned to look pleadingly at her mother, because she could not possibly stay in here. Her mother could not mean to leave her here.

But it seemed she did. She pointed to the shallow iron box, and said, ‘That’s the lid over the shaft of the well. There used to be a winch mechanism and the villagers would come along the lane to fill their buckets with water, then carry them back to their houses. I don’t remember that, but my mother told me how people used to meet at the well each morning to get their water. I don’t know if the well is dry or not, but the cover’s always in place so no one can fall in. The cover will be too heavy for you to move, but even so you mustn’t go near it.’

Zoia gulped and said, ‘How long will I be here?’

‘Not long.’

‘I won’t be here in the dark, will I?’

‘No.’ Her mother suddenly bent down and gathered Zoia to her in a hug. This was so unusual that Zoia was not sure what to do. Her mother never hugged any of them; she was always too busy and too fearful of Zoia’s father. She put her arms round her mother’s neck and hugged her back. It made her feel a lot better, but after a moment her mother stepped back, and said in a trembly voice, ‘One of your brothers will come for you later today.’

‘Not you?’ The memory of that sudden hug was still warm round Zoia’s heart.

‘I may not be able to. But you won’t be here long, I promise.’ She paused, then said, ‘Goodbye, Zoia. Always be a good girl,’ and then she was gone, and there was the sound of the door creaking back into place and the hook latch being fastened across the outside.

Zoia sank miserably on the floor, trying not to cry, remembering her mother’s promise that she would not be here when it was dark. Light came in through the windows and fell across the floor in the same oval shapes so it was as if a second pair of eyes were watching her in here. She tried not to look at the floor-eyes and sat with her back against the door so the eyes could not see her.

She had learned to tell the time at school, and she thought it might now be about three o’clock. How long away was the dark? Six o’clock? Then she would only be here for about three hours, she could pass the time by saying the poetry she had learnt. Between poems she rattled the door as hard as she could, but the latch stayed firmly in place and the door did not move.

The hours went on and on, the light coming through the eye-windows began to fade, and there was no sound of anyone coming to let her out. Zoia waited and waited. She tried not to look at the well cover or think about the deep shaft under it. Most of all she tried not to think about the stone head coming back to life.

The bad-drains smell was making her feel very sick. This was worrying, because it would be terrible to be sick here where she could not see anything. She tried to open the door again so she could at least be sick outside on the grass but it still did not yield, so she swallowed as hard as she could to keep the vomit down. In the end she could not hold it in any longer and she ran blindly into a corner and was sick as tidily as she could manage. It made her feel cold and shivery, and it added to the bad smells already in here. She walked to the corner farthest from the pool of sick and sat down.

The threads of light had almost completely vanished when, finally, she heard the wedge on the door being removed. Zoia hoped it would be her mother, but it was one of her brothers, the second eldest. She shot out of the terrible, sick-smelling darkness as fast as she could, and drew in deep gulps of the cold evening air. She wanted to be back in her home – she was thirsty and hungry – but she also wanted to be a long way away from the stone face.

Her brother would not look at her as they walked back across the field, and so Zoia, in a voice that was dry and cracked from crying and from being sick, asked what was happening. Remembering what she had done earlier in the day and how her mother had cried before making her hide in the well-house, she said, ‘Is Mother all right?’

But her brother did not reply. He hunched his shoulders, and walked faster so she had to run to keep up with him.

*

She never saw her mother again and no one mentioned her. Zoia did not dare ask anyone what had happened to her. Life in the cottage went on. The meals were cooked mostly by her eldest sister, who was fourteen and whom Mother had always said was a good little housewife and would make any man a fine wife. The others helped.

Zoia’s father’s body had been taken away. Zoia thought there would be a funeral, but no one told her when it was, and none of her brothers and sisters attended any kind of service. Once or twice the neighbours murmured something about ‘Pity’, and pursed their lips if Zoia’s family walked through the village.

It was not until she was fifteen and her eldest sister was leaving the cottage to marry one of the farm workers in the next village, that she told Zoia what had happened. Their mother had strangled their father, she said, her face serious and sad. Zoia was old enough to know the truth now – she was passing it on to her. After the years of beatings and drunkenness, their mother had finally turned on their father and strangled him with his own belt. Then she had run to the village priest to confess and ask him to tell the Poli
ia Comunitar
what she had done.