Long Lankin (48 page)

Auntie Ida turns slowly and faces Long Lankin. He rises up on his feet, stands at his full height, and fixes her with his spiteful eyes. Behind him the children stand watching.

I wrap my arms tightly around Mimi, folding her to me, and stare at the beast caught in a beam of sunlight, framed by the pillars and dark roof of the lychgate. I see the words:
CAVE BESTIAM
.

Lankin’s eyes move from Auntie Ida and fall on Mimi. The grey saliva trickles out of his mouth and down his chin.

“What shall we do?” I breathe.

“Pass Mimi to me,” Roger whispers. “I can run faster than you.”

I hear a hissing noise. It is Auntie Ida.

“Put Mimi down!” she is saying through her teeth. “Put her down and move away!”

“What?!”

“Put her down on your side of the gate.”

“No! I’m going to run —”

“Put her down — facing you! Hurry up!”

“I — I can’t do it, Auntie.”

Piers Hillyard appears to the left of the gate. He nods his head at me.

I let Roger take Mimi out of my arms. He moves forwards, stands her a couple of feet away from the broken gates, turns her to face the road, then steps back. She remains there, bewildered, wringing her hands.

“Stay there, Mimi,” he says quietly to her, moving back a little more.

She looks tiny, her fair hair like a golden halo around her dirty face, her pyjamas filthy and torn.

A hot stillness hangs over the churchyard.

Long Lankin gazes at Mimi’s back. He snarls and begins to move towards the gate. Auntie shifts her feet but remains where she is, standing between Lankin and Mimi.

Suddenly Mimi screws up her face and looks across from Roger to me, her eyes wide with terror. She takes a faltering step towards us.

Roger shoves his blood-smeared hand in his pocket, drags out Sid, and holds him up. “Mimi,” he says, “if you don’t stay where you are, I’ll — I’ll stamp on Sid till he’s dead.”

Mimi moans. Her eyes fill up.

Slowly Lankin places one foot in front of the other until he is face-to-face with Auntie Ida. Then she moves a step backwards, and another.

Lankin advances towards her, his eyes over her shoulder, taking in Mimi, the tip of his tongue running across his lips.

Auntie takes another step backwards, this time between the broken gates, under the shadow of the roof. Then she takes a small sidestep so there is nothing between Lankin and Mimi.

Lankin is about to move forward once more: one last step and he will be across the threshold of the lychgate.

All at once, he seems to see where he is standing. A savage, furious light comes into his eyes. He raises his chin, opens his gaping mouth, and rolling his head from side to side, utters a long, hellish roar.

Mimi cries out, darts towards me, scrambles into my arms, and hides her face against my cheek.

In an instant, Auntie Ida throws herself forward. Flinging her arms around Lankin’s waist, she locks her wrists behind his back. Howling with rage, he tears at her with the iron fingernails of his right hand. Her body pressed tightly against his mottled, festering skin, she drags herself backwards. He tries to reach her head with his teeth and pushes against her forehead with his remaining hand.

“I’ll help you!” cries Roger, moving forward.

“Get back!”
Auntie moans, sweat glistening on her forehead.
“Get back!”

Then, with a deep, pitiful groan, summoning the last remnants of her strength, Auntie Ida hauls Long Lankin’s broken body back through the lychgate.

Under the arch, Long Lankin drops to his knees, places his hand on the ground in front of him, and leaning on it for support, raises his chest and shoulders and turns to look at Mimi in Cora’s arms. Two spiteful pinpoints of light gleam in his eyes. I feel a cold tingling on the back of my neck.

Then something drops out of his mouth, something curved and yellow.

A tooth.

Curiously, he tilts his head and looks at it on the ground. Another tooth falls; then, after a moment, another and another. They drop from his shrunken gums one by one and settle among the broken pieces of the gate, the rusty chains, the weeds.

All at once, a tremendous shudder runs through his body. He raises his head upwards to the sky and screams a long, last dreadful scream that echoes again and again around the walls of the church.

Then Long Lankin crashes, his body jolting and twitching, full length across the ground. As his skull hits the earth, the neck twists and cracks and is still.

In the dark sockets of his eyes, the lights dim, then go out.

For a few long seconds, we stand in silence, numbed and exhausted, gazing at Long Lankin’s motionless form.

At first I barely notice it, but gradually, as it increases, I see that a fine powder of grey dust is flowing from Lankin’s mouth, nose, and ears. In wonder, we watch as it draws together and moves slowly down his body in one long smoky stream over the shrivelling skin and the crumpling limbs.

Then Piers Hillyard is there, on his knees. He lowers his head, draws in a smooth deep breath, and begins to blow the dust away. It rises into the air as a swirling mist, little by little gathering up into itself every particle of Lankin’s hideous body until it forms a snakelike, trailing vapour, which, after a while, leaves not a single trace of him on the ground where he fell.

The ribbon of cloud moves towards the church, towards the huddle of ghostly children standing against the wall. It encircles them, sweeping over their heads and around their bodies. Where the grey dust touches and then enfolds them, the shredded skin falls away, the deep dark eye hollows vanish, and the grizzled hair disappears. They appear as they were when they were first snatched away — dressed in the little handmade clothes of lost, faraway times.

The children are changed, yet gaze at one another in bewilderment, barely recognizing their companions. They study their own hands, then each other’s, touch their hair, their skin, their eyelids, blinking in the sunshine, as if they have no memory of how they once looked.

For most of them, their brief lives were lived many years ago, yet they have remained here, in this place, while all the people who ever cared for them are long buried.

The children turn and look at us across the gravestones, then gradually fade away into nothing.

The mist curls upwards, spreads lazily for a moment, and is gone.

Piers Hillyard stands quietly, closes his eyes, and sighs deeply. A light breeze begins to lift his hair. The sleeves of his black robe flutter. The hem starts to flap and twist. Leaves and dry grass rise into the air. Small twigs whirl and fly.

All at once, a great gust like a wall of wind blasts its way through the churchyard. Our own hair whips up behind us.

Suddenly, from the far boundary, there comes an immense tearing sound. We feel the ground begin to tremble under our feet.

“What is it?” I cry, pressing Mimi close into my shoulder.

“Look over there!” Roger calls against the gale.

I turn. The wind is hard on my back. I steady myself and gaze out through half-closed eyes.

The gypsy tree is tilting towards the water. One by one, the wind rips the thick gnarled roots out of the earth. Creaking and groaning, the great tree leans farther and farther forward, the massive trunk juddering. Inch by inch, the huge bald hook lowers itself until it is hovering over the pool. The few remaining roots, so stretched they can bear the strain no longer, begin to snap in rapid succession.

With a deafening roar, the mighty, ugly tree thunders down, crashing into the water in a monstrous pile of rustling leaves and cracking, splintering branches. The old toys, the rags, and the remnants of little shoes are drowned forever.

The wind gradually loses strength until it is nothing more than a gentle motion of the air. It spins the leaves for a while until they drop to the surface of the churning, bubbling pool, where they settle, bobbing over the muddy ripples.

I search the graveyard for Piers Hillyard, but he has gone.

The tower wall glows golden in the sunshine.

“Roger! Roger! Cora! Father Mansell’s coming! Father Mansell’s coming!”

In a daze, I realize it is Pete shouting. Father Mansell and Mr. Crawford are a little way behind him in the lane.

Mimi raises her head. “Where is Auntie Ida?”

I shield my eyes with my spare hand and see her, slumped across the grave in the plot beside the gate, her feet straddling the broken iron railing. Mimi climbs down from my arms, goes to her, and gently shakes her shoulder.

“Wake up, Auntie, wake up.”

One of Auntie Ida’s hands lies loosely across her chest; the other rests on the slab. The last remaining rose on the old worn-out bush above her drops its pink petals one by one over her fingers. I kneel beside her, gently brush the petals aside, and read the inscription:

Warmest thanks to Annie Eaton, Sophie Nelson, Sarah Dudman, Natalie Doherty, and the whole team at Random House. Thanks also to my husband and children, in particular Eleanor for her helpful comments over hot chocolate and cinnamon buns, and to Rosemary Leclercq.