The Mistletoe Bride and Other Haunting Tales (18 page)

These days there was a footbridge over the creek. Sometimes I stopped there a while, the wooden handrail greasy beneath my fingers, and told myself that, despite it all, things were better now. Pretended that time and the war had buried the past.

Wiped the slate clean.

For the last week of November, my stepfather’s health kept me indoors. I couldn’t go to work, couldn’t even get out to the shops. We were locked together, he and I. One of those things. I’d always been scared of him, and he’d never shown any affection for me, but now Mum was gone it fell to me to look after him. Duty, just the way it was. There was no one else. So it wasn’t until the following Thursday, December 1st, that I went back to the marshes.

I changed into my boots as I left the library, wrapped my indoor shoes in brown paper and put them in my handbag, then set off along the same path. It was a blustery day and the gulls were shrieking out at sea. Only as I got out onto the marshes did I realise I’d been half looking out for the girl I’d seen the week before. I suppose I’d been hoping we might talk. All the women my own age were married and had children or husbands to keep them occupied. The neighbours were nice enough, to pass the time of day with in the post office or the shop, but I had no friends. I kept hoping, but there was no sign of her and, as I climbed up to the flint sea wall, I had a knot of disappointment in my stomach.

Just someone to talk to.

That afternoon, I walked all the way to Oak Pond, where an old rowing boat lay abandoned in the silted water, and the trees hung low. I smoked a cigarette and thought about some domestic worry or another, before turning back. I’d been gone longer than usual and so I hurried, knowing Mrs Sadler would be ready with her lips pursed and her hat and coat at the door. Four o’clock. I remember glancing at my wristwatch.

Then, on the far side of the silent expanse of water, I saw something flash. At first, I thought it was the library, but realised it was too far over for that. A light, right out in the middle of the marshes where Cornmill House had been. In Victorian times there had been several mills on the eastern side of Fishbourne Creek, powered by wind or by the sea, though they were mostly gone now. The water cornmill and the house attached had all but burned down during the First World War and the high tides each spring had done the rest. Its black and rotting features had been a childhood landmark, a draw for brave or foolish boys to explore.

By the time we were back in Fishbourne, it had gone. Pulled down last year, Mrs Sadler had told me. After fifteen years, it still attracted too many gawpers, too many ghouls. A shrine, of sorts. And I remembered back to how newspaper reports at the time claimed Cornmill House was being used as a rendezvous long before it became notorious. Smugglers evading the excise men, ghosts, enemy spies. It was another occasion I’d taken refuge in the library, poring over a local history book and mugging up. Drawings, maps of underground passages, rumours, I knew the history of the house backwards though I’d never been inside. My brother Harry boasted he and his friends used to go in, dare each other to stay all night. Seen writing on the walls and blood on the stairs, he’d said, smears on the glass where smugglers had kept their prisoners in the old days.

At first, I thought he was making it up to scare me. I didn’t believe him. Later, when the police came, he denied he had ever been there. He’d only been home on leave for a few days, he said. A few pints in the Woolpack, sleeping in a proper bed, no time. But as I listened through the crack in the door and heard him wriggle like a fish on the line, I knew for certain he had been in the house at some time or another and knew the worst it had to tell. I told no one. No one asked me anyway. Harry rejoined his unit and was posted to France. His luck ran out. When he died a couple of weeks later, his secret died with him.

Another flash, bright, gone, then another. I pulled my coat tight around me. There should not have been a light there. Another flash. A signal of some kind? The sight of it, on that cold December dusk, and the past fifteen years fell away and I was back there again in our old kitchen, with the fug from the stove and the condensation on the inside of the windows. My mother’s worn, housewife’s red hands twisting at her pinny and the look of calculation in my stepfather’s eyes as the copper questioned Harry.

I took a deep breath, in, then out. No sense in raking it all up again. That house was gone. Harry was gone, Mum too. My stepfather no longer knew who he was. And if I had seen a light where Cornmill House used to be – and already I was no longer sure – odds on it was only someone carrying a lantern over the fields to Apuldram or to the church. Nothing iffy about it.

All the same, I looked for the book in the library the following Monday, but it had been taken out of circulation and there was nothing else in the Local History section that caught my fancy. Besides, it was ever so busy. I had no time to think about the light on the marshes or Cornmill House. We put up the Christmas decorations. Children from the village school came to sing carols around the tree. We made paper chains.

The nights were bad that week, though. My stepfather woke two or three times between midnight and six. A bad conscience, Mrs Sadler said, when I told her. So by the time the next Thursday came around, I was tired to my bones and tempted to go straight home from work. But, telling myself the fresh air would do me good, I set off once more along the path. A mist had come in from the sea and everything was muffled, suspended, though I could hear the suck of the tide and the call of black-headed gulls massing in the harbour. It was cold, proper December weather, and the chill seemed to soak through my woollen hat and mittens.

I’d barely gone a few steps when I noticed the smell again, the same as a fortnight ago, though far stronger. A foul stench of rotting seaweed and mud and rust. As if something in the earth had been turned inside out. I took a few more steps, then heard something moving in the reeds alongside the path. Not a noise quite, more a shifting of the air. Though I told myself not to be silly, the nerves twisted in my stomach.

I walked faster. The sound kept pace with me, a kind of rattling, shimmering, in the rushes to my left, then a loud crack of the reed stems underfoot, as if someone was pushing their way through towards the path. I felt a moment of blind panic, not sure where the sound was really coming from or whether it was just my imagination playing tricks on me.

I forced myself to stop. Stood still, completely still. Now, hearing nothing. The noise had stopped and yet, I knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that someone was close by. I could feel it in the pricking of my skin. Hands clenched inside my mittens, my palms greasy with fear, slowly I turned round. All the way round, 360 degrees, eyes staring into the white fog, but not able to make anything out. I was torn between turning back or going on. I took a few snatched steps more, the rustling in the reed mace again, the stench even stronger now. Looking around me, behind me, panic rising crawling over the surface of my skin. Was someone following me? Was there someone out here on the deserted marshes, just waiting for a girl like me to venture out on her own?

Then, then.

Suddenly, ahead of me on the path, was a figure, come out of nowhere. Indistinct in the mist, blocking my way. My hand flew to my mouth, stifling a scream, then a moment of relief. I gasped. It was her, it was the same woman, dressed just the same as before.

‘You didn’t half give me . . .’ I started to say, then I stopped. There was something not right in her silence and the way she was standing, her head down, hands hanging loose by her side.

‘You gave . . .’

Then, all at once, I realised why she looked familiar. She was the spit of the girl who’d gone missing fifteen years ago. They’d run her photograph on the front page of the
Observer
for weeks. And, more to the point, she was wearing the same WAAF uniform – blue jacket, shirt and tie, pleated skirt, cap. Women’s Auxiliary Air Force girls, they’d been billeted all over the village during the war.

I couldn’t help myself. My eyes slipped down to her hands. I saw her gloves were torn, fragments of pale material, all in tatters at the cuffs. A matching scarf around her neck, pale pink with a red lining, coming unravelled too. No, not gloves.

Not gloves, but skin. Torn, tattered skin.

A wave of nausea rose in my throat, threatening to choke me. It wasn’t possible. I took another step back, another, then turned and started to run. Stumbling, slipping, struggling to keep on my feet, running back along the path. I could feel her dead eyes on my back, felt the stench of seaweed and rotten eggs all around me, a palpable living thing, catching in my nose and my mouth. My legs moved faster, running through the reed mace, trying to outrun whatever was behind me.

Salt Mill House loomed suddenly up out of the mist. Was I safe? For a fleeting instant, I considered banging on the door and asking for help. But, then, what would I say? That I’d seen a girl on the path and got the wind up? And the foul smell hung about me, on my clothes, my hair, seeping through my skin, and I couldn’t stop. Didn’t dare stop.

I was out on the mudflats now, treacherous in the dusk. My boots sank lower at each step. The mud was like clawing hands around my ankles, trying to drag me down. Out here, pockets of swamp lay concealed amongst the reeds, sinking mud and false land where a person could be pulled down into the estuary. Flecks of grass, of seaweed, of sludge splattered up onto the back of my legs and skirt and hem of my coat. My throat was sore from running, burning like a slug of whisky in a child’s mouth, but panic kept me going, deeper into the marsh. On across the eel grass, where the savannah sparrows nested, over the samphire, faded at the tail of the year, past the creek, until finally Mill Lane was in sight and the solid, familiar outline of the library. My refuge then, a refuge now.

I stopped running, put my hand against the familiar bricks, to catch my breath. At last, I turned and looked behind me. Nothing was there, no one. I realised the smell had gone and the mist, too, was beginning to lift.

I don’t know how long I stood there, only that already embarrassment was replacing fear. How easily I’d let my imagination get the better of me. I’d been hoping to run into her, then, when I did, I turned tail like a rabbit. The girl herself, whoever she was, what must she think? She’d think I was off my rocker. So what if she was dressed in rather old-fashioned clothes? And as for the marks on her wrists, just a trick of the light in the fading afternoon. She’d hardly have been walking around otherwise, would she?

I hesitated a moment outside. I was late home already and I looked a sketch. Salt water splashed up the back of my raincoat, my gloves stiff with mud. Mrs Sadler would be sure to pass comment, she was the type who didn’t let anything go. But there was something I had to do, read, before I went home. I wouldn’t rest else. Mrs Sadler would have to wait.

I ran up the steps and into the library. To my relief, Albert was still on the front desk, his glasses perched on the tip of his red nose. Saying I’d forgotten something, and he wasn’t to worry, I headed through the stacks to the archive room at the back of the building, where back issues of local and parish newspapers were kept. Floor-to-ceiling hanging files and oversize drawers, nothing had been put onto film yet. In the middle there was a large central desk with drawers, large enough to accommodate ten people working at any one time. I scanned the years, months, weeks, until I found the box I wanted:

My heart going nineteen to the dozen, I flicked through until I found the edition I was after. Saw what I didn’t want to see. I stared at the black and white photograph in the newspaper, looking into the eyes of the murdered girl. Her hair curled out beneath the cap, the belted jacket and pleated skirt, shirt and tie. I caught my breath. And beneath, the description of the murder: her throat cut and marks on wrists suggesting she’d been kept captive for a while before her body was found in Cornmill House.

I slumped down on the chair, the photograph bringing it all back. The whispers, the pointed fingers, the speculation. Remembering when the police had gone, hearing Mum and my stepfather arguing in whispers, so the neighbours wouldn’t hear through the walls. She took Harry’s side, of course. Tried to defend him. Said they were talking to every man over sixteen, nothing sinister about it. Bound to be one of the soldiers billeted at Oakwood or Goodwood. Besides, what respectable girl would go on her own, to a place like that? Asking for trouble.

I put the newspaper back in the box and the box back in the stacks, then turned off the light. I waved to Bert on the way out and held up my bag, proof that I’d found what I was looking for, then I went out into the fading afternoon. Cold, dark, ice underfoot. Proper December weather. Back up Mill Lane, over the road to the row of terraced cottages where we lived. The back door was unlocked. I took off my boots and hung my coat, inside out, on the back of the door, before calling out.

‘It’s only me,’ I said, going through to the hall. ‘Sorry I’m late. I got held up.’