Long Lankin (17 page)

“Come and help me.”

I tried to push my teeth apart from the back with my tongue. I wanted to explain that I was in a hurry and Mum needed the soap powder, but all that came out was a mumble.

She beckoned to me with her bony white finger. The last thing in the world I wanted to do was go down that weedy path and in through that door. I wondered if I’d come out the same boy who went in, or if I’d come out at all. Dad had always said that if I didn’t eat my rhubarb, the witches would get me.

My feet itched to run away, but I looked at Gussie’s dried-up, wrinkled old face, the dirty grey cardigan with half the buttons missing, the big checked slippers that were getting wetter and wetter, and was surprised to find myself feeling sorry for her.

So I followed the finger, and went down the path and through the front door.

The hall smelled of rotten meat, rancid fat, and cat wee. There should have been green smoke curling up from the lino. I put my hand over my mouth and held my breath, swallowing my chew in one huge gulp and feeling it stick in a hard lump halfway down to my stomach. What a waste.

Gussie led me in past the stairs. I dripped water over the hall floor. It was quite dark, and I was worried I was going to tread in something nasty. There were filthy saucers of half-eaten cat food everywhere — on the floor and even on the stairs. Lying around the saucers were little hard brown sausages. When I kicked one by mistake and it shot across the floor, I saw it definitely wasn’t the kind of sausage you’d want to eat.

Gussie didn’t take me far, thank goodness — just through to the grubby little kitchen at the back. Cats shook their tails at me or stood in my way, spitting, the sparse fur in front of their ears riddled with ticks whose metallic-green bodies had grown fat with blood.

“Out there,” said Gussie. In the light from the grimy back-door window I could see her bleary eyes rimmed with red. “Pluto’s stuck in the coal bunker. I can’t get him out. He’ll die in there, and I can’t get the coal for the fire.”

It had never occurred to me that Gussie would be able to talk in sentences like other people did. She was just a weird old woman who came out into the road shouting nonsense. I would run past as quickly as possible, and if I was with Pete, we’d laugh all the way home.

Two of the frosted panes in the back door were cracked. I knew Tooboy had gone into her back garden once for a dare with his brother Figsy, and he’d told us they’d thrown stones at the house. Pete and I’d thought that was really funny at the time.

The rain was coming down in buckets.

The coal bunker had a small hatch at the bottom with coal half falling out of it, and then a big square hole on the top for the coal man to empty his sack into. A wooden lid half covered the hole.

I knew exactly what she wanted — for me to climb into the blinking thing. What could I do?

I put the packet of Fairy Snow down on the kitchen stove, the only spare bit of space I could find. Then I went back out and lifted myself up onto the bunker roof.

It was covered in wet soot and leaves. I pushed back the lid fully and lowered myself through the hole into blackness. Even with the light coming through the opening in the roof, I could hardly see anything except the square of sky above me, dark with rain clouds. I wobbled in my wellingtons, sliding about on the piled-up coal, scraping my back on the roof as I went.

For one odd moment, I thought Gussie was going to put the lid back on with a mad cackle and trap me in there, but then I heard a little mewing sound.

Something jumped on me. Taken off guard, I fell back against the pile of coal and slid down till my bottom hit the concrete floor. Two yellow eyes shone out of the darkness.

As I held on to the cat, it rubbed its face against my cheek. I quickly pushed it up through the hole.

“Pluto, oh, Pluto,” I heard Gussie say. “You bad boy.”

Getting out was much more difficult than getting in. I couldn’t find a foothold on the slippery coal. Eventually I managed to scramble back onto the roof, then jump down to the ground, pulling the wooden lid completely over so that the coal wouldn’t get any wetter than it already was and to prevent any more cats finding their way in.

I’d never ever seen Gussie smile before. I can’t say it was pleasant to watch, because her teeth were actually just brown stumps, but I did feel the nice warm glow that comes with a good deed.

I picked up the washing powder from the stove. As Pluto jumped out of her arms, Gussie thanked me over and over, but I backed off down the hall, careful where my feet went, desperate to get away from the smell.

Just as I turned to open the front door, the old woman suddenly grabbed my arm, so hard it hurt.
Uh-oh, here it comes,
I thought in a panic — she isn’t going to let me go. I turned towards her, and she leaned her face right into mine. Her breath was like old cheese. The smile had gone, and that wild look had come back into her eyes.

“He’s here again,” she whispered.

“Who — who’s here again?”

“I saw the little girl go to your house. You’ve got to watch her. I saw Ida Guerdon. . . .”

“Ida Guerdon? No, you mean Ida Eastfield —”

“The last of the Guerdons . . .”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’ve got to get home.”

“He will hunt her down, just like he’s done before —”

“I think I need to get back. Mum will wonder where I’ve got to —”

“Listen to me. I’ve seen it all before. He knows she’s here. He will hunt for her. He will smell her out.”

“Who will? I don’t know what you mean.”

“They won’t tell you anything. They all hope he’s gone away, but he never goes away. He just waits — waits until the next one comes. I have seen him. I ran away from him. The old priest saved me, many many years ago. Old Father Hillyard saved me, but I remember — I remember it, boy. Watch that little girl. She’s not safe down there. . . .”

“Who? Cora? Mimi? Who do you mean?”

“I warned that Will Eastfield. I told him what would happen, but he said I was crazy. He laughed in my face. He wouldn’t take any notice of his wife, either. Then they found him in the upper field with the gun in the grass. Don’t ever tell me it was an accident. He knew it was his fault. I warned him. Ida Guerdon warned him. He said I was mad, a crazy old woman, and his wife was a fool. You are listening to me, aren’t you, boy?”

“Yes, yes, I’m listening, but I want to go home.”

“He’ll be looking for her. Then he can rest again . . . until the next one comes. . . .”

“Who? Who are you talking about?”

“
Long Lankin, boy,
” she hissed, holding my collar in her dirty, veined old hands.
“Long Lankin . . .
”

I stumbled up Fieldpath Road, the rain pouring down around me, my head in a daze. I can’t even remember what Mum said when I came in through the back door, running black with coal dust from head to foot, clutching to my chest a wet packet of Fairy Snow.

Roger’s mum gave us money to get some ice lollies from Mrs. Wickerby’s. We had to go past Gussie’s house. The net curtains twitched as we went by.

“How old d’you reckon old Gussie, is, then?” I whispered.

“I don’t know,” said Roger. “Ninety or a hundred or something. Her house doesn’t half stink. I’ve most probably picked up fleas. Can you get fleas off a bald cat?”

“When d’you suppose she got away from this Long Lankin, then? It must have been when she was a little girl, unless she’s going funny and is making it all up.”

“You know,” said Roger, “if we found out when this priest, this Hillyard chap, was the rector down at the church, then we’d know roughly when it happened — if he
was
the rector here, of course.”

“Maybe he was the one before Father Mansell. How do you find out that sort of thing?”

“I don’t know,” said Roger. “Mum might know, I suppose. She’s lived here all her life.”

We went into the post office and bent over the big white refrigerator to choose lollies for everyone.

I didn’t tell Roger I had heard of Long Lankin already, in that woman’s song. I should have done, but I would have had to tell him so many other things as well, and telling him would have made it real. I wouldn’t be able to pretend to myself that it might not have happened anymore. I’d had to pretend so many things over the last couple of years — pretending to Mimi, to Dad, to our neighbours in Limehouse, pretending even to myself — that everything was normal and all right, as it seemed to be for everyone else.

Even though Roger told me about the odd little boy he’d seen in the graveyard, I’m not sure he would have believed me if I’d told him about Kittie.
I am Kittie
.

Keep it quiet, and they won’t look sideways at you.

“Oh, yes,” said Roger, when we were walking back up Fieldpath Road, “I almost forgot. Father Mansell told me what those words mean. We were right. They are in Latin.
‘Cave bestiam’
means ‘beware of the beast.’”

Cora, Pete, and I played in the garden for a while, then thought we’d go up to the woods. Mum said Mimi could stay at home with Terry.

“Only thing is,” she said, “I’d better tell you now that I’m not going to be able to have her tomorrow. I’ve got to take Pamela to the clinic over in Lokswood. Mrs. Harvey’s said Dennis and Terry can go to her house to play with Lynette and Philip, but I really didn’t think I could ask her to take a child she doesn’t know. Between you and me, she’s going to have her work cut out with our two. Her Lynette and Philip are so well behaved, it’s unnatural.”

I helped Mum put some biscuits in a bread bag to take up to the woods.

“Erm, Mum?” I asked, pushing chocolate bourbons in her direction. “Who was the last rector down at All Hallows before Father Mansell?”

“That’s an odd question, Roger,” she said, looking at me sideways. “What are you up to now?”

“I don’t know, just wondered — just something Gussie said.”

“What on earth did Gussie say to you?” she asked, looking at me long and hard. “I thought you just went in to get her cat out of the coal bunker.”

“I did — oh, forget it, it doesn’t matter,” I said, grabbing the bag and heading for the door before I got myself into bother.

“By the way,” she said, just as I’d got one foot on the veranda, “when you go out to play tomorrow with Mimi, please stay together and —”

“Don’t go down to the church!” I finished off for her. “We’ll get the bikes out. I’ve mended Pete’s puncture. Cora’s never been on a bike.”

“Don’t leave Mimi out. Do something she’d like — in the woods or down the Patches. I’ll leave the back door open, and you can make yourself some sandwiches at dinnertime. There’s a tin of corned beef in the cupboard.”

“All right, all right.”

I dashed down the steps and after Cora and Pete, who had already started walking down Ottery Lane.

“Blimey, you took your time for a few biscuits,” said Cora when I caught them up.

The path round the woods was really muddy, and a couple of our camps were washed out, specially the one near the wild-pig woman’s place. All the sticks had fallen in, so we had to put it back together. When it was finished, we really didn’t feel like spending any time in it. Come to think of it, I don’t think we ever spent any time in that camp. It only had one entrance, and if the wild-pig woman came out to get us, we’d be trapped.

We could hear some whooping coming from the rope-swing, so headed towards it through the thick trees at the back where people can’t see you unless they’re looking. If it was Figsy, then we’d run a mile. We told Cora she had to be really quiet as we crept up, but luckily it was only Tooboy and his friend Malcolm.

Mum said Malcolm was rough and we weren’t to play with him. He did get up to a few things actually, like letting off bangers in the middle of Ottery Lane before Bonfire Night, so we avoided Malcolm, to be on the safe side, in case he did something to us.

Tooboy was on the swing, and Malcolm was running alongside, shrieking and trying to reach up and pull him off. We came out from behind the trees. When the swing stopped, Tooboy jumped down and walked over. Malcolm came up swaggering, probably because Cora was there.

“Bloody hell!” he said, laughing and pointing at Cora’s eye. “Been in a fight? Who gave you that shiner?”