The Fetch

  From the landing window Susan watched him go. She had heard the sudden chaos, woken from a deep sleep in which her dream had been of walking on a high hill on a cold day, and come into Michael’s room in time to hear a part of Françoise’s garbled, almost incoherent desperation. She followed the other woman into the sitting room and watched as Françoise dressed more completely, murmuring the words ‘watching-man …’ all the time.

  Dazed and confused, Susan said, ‘Are you going to tell me too?’

  Françoise showed her the drawing that had finally resolved itself under her lingering, careful gaze. ‘Michael’s drawings of the Fisher King were of a foetus. When his spirit appeared in my office it was shape-shifting between Michael and this face, the face of a dead, unborn child.’

  ‘Chalk Boy?’

  Françoise stared at her, her face puzzled, then shook her head. ‘You might try ringing your Dr Wilson. I think Chalk Boy is Michael’s brother. Michael may have been his mother’s second attempt. The spirit of the dead boy has been adrift in time, in its strange Limbo, but has been haunting Michael. Carol said it this morning: Chalk Boy is hanging on to him, strangling him, making him unhappy. I think Chalk Boy is trying to get full possession of Michael’s body—’

  ‘Oh, Christ! How?’

  ‘Translocation of spirit. If the foetal remains can be brought out of Limbo – Carol carrying them, I imagine Michael’s body can’t – the link with time will have been broken and there might well be an instantaneous flow of spirit between the two bodies. Only Michael is hardly in control at all now. He’s almost buried and helpless in his own body. He’ll be banished into the foetus and die at once. Chalk Boy will have Michael’s body all to himself. Susan, I think Chalk Boy has been trying to achieve this for years, a desperate effort to return from Limbo. He has clung and clung to life by clinging to his living brother and using him. But I don’t understand how he managed to make the link. Unless …’

  She gazed hard at Susan, then seemed shocked.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Why don’t you try calling Dr Wilson? I think he’s probably expecting you. I think he might have an answer for you. And for me too. Or perhaps Michael’s mother does. Try calling him now …’

  The phone line was working again. Susan dialled the number for Dr Wilson. When he answered, after a few seconds, she almost sighed with relief. Without preliminaries, she said, ‘Michael’s mother rang us. But she hung up. You must let me speak to her. You must tell me her number.’

  The voice at the other end of the line was quiet, tense and charged with anger.

  ‘Is this Mrs Whitlock?’

  ‘Of course it is!’

  There was silence for a moment, then a breath was drawn. Wilson spoke in a furious whisper: ‘Do you know what she did? Did you know she came here? Destroyed everything! Did you know that? Are you aware of that? Are you?’

  Shocked by the sudden fury, Susan couldn’t think. She went ahead blindly: ‘What do you mean? What do you mean she was there?’

  He was shouting, now. ‘She stole the body of her other son. She came here and stole it. She destroyed my office in order to get the specimen. How dare she? How dare you!’

  Ice cold, eyes closed, harsh realization making her smile, Susan said, ‘That’s what you were hiding! What a bastard you are, Dr Wilson. What a bastard. I sat in your office, begging you to help me, and Michael’s dead brother was there, right by me, watching me from the glass jar. I couldn’t bear to look at those specimens. You knew that. Did that amuse you? Did you wink at the dead child when you walked behind me? You’re a sick man, Dr Wilson.’

  ‘Don’t be a fool. You only asked me about Michael, remember? Michael wasn’t harmed. I culled the twin—’

  ‘Culled the twin? Culled it?’

  ‘His mother insisted on it. And I told you truthfully: Michael wasn’t touched. I didn’t lie to you about that. There was and is nothing wrong with Michael. The injection was administered only through the amnion of the smaller child.’

  Almost too shocked, too sick to speak, Susan said, ‘Why did you keep the corpse?’

  ‘The chemicals had an odd effect. For a few hours after its death it transformed slightly, a form of structural regression. It was of interest to me.’

  ‘It was of interest to you …’

  ‘Yes. It was of interest to me. It had become a specimen. I don’t throw specimens away. It was worth preserving. The thing was dead. Why fuss about it now? I didn’t label the jar. No one but I would have known. Why do you interfere?’

  ‘Because Michael knew. Because Chalk Boy knew. The shade of the dead boy knew. That’s why he got Michael to fetch it. Eventually.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘The mother knew too. Michael’s mother. She must have been in agony. All these years. Poor woman. Poor lonely woman. But it was of interest to you. So glad. I’m so glad. Science has been served!’

  ‘She shouldn’t have taken it.’

  ‘She didn’t take it. Chalk Boy took it.’

  ‘Who the hell is Chalk Boy?’

  The product of your culling, Dr Wilson. My son’s shadow. A little boy who clung to life after Dr Wilson’s needle had thrust through the amnion and penetrated his heart, changing him from child to specimen. Perhaps if you hadn’t “preserved the specimen” … who knows … who knows what peace there might have been.’

  She drifted, gaze taking in the totems outside the window, skin registering the deathly cold. She put the receiver down, ignoring the bluster still coming down the line. She looked again at the sketch of the Fisher King that Michael had made and there were tears in her eyes as she focused on the wound, clearly shown not in the ‘thigh’, as in the story, but in the breast, above the heart.

  Where the cocktail had been administered …

  The death of the prince.

  ‘What a bastard you are to be sure, Dr Wilson. Dear God, strike the man down … strike him down now!’

  Richard stopped suddenly before the great chalk giant that partly blocked the entrance to the quarry, startled and terrified by the sight of the monstrous effigy. Cloud movement made the statue’s muscles flex. It seemed to be rising. He didn’t want to see the face that might be revealed. He tried to edge past it but his legs began to shake. Heart racing, he stood for a long while, indecisive.

  Then Françoise Jeury ran past him and passed the statue without hesitation. She glanced round and shouted sharply to him, ‘Come on! This is dead. It’s a joke. It has no power. It’s just Michael’s joke.’

  Her confidence broke the spell – he had been paralysed by his own apprehension, not by magic. He ran after the woman.

  Deeper in the pit, Françoise was more tense.

  She could feel the walls of the castle. She could feel the pain coming from the sacrificed dolls, torn out of time and slung on the blackthorn. They found the body of a man, and Richard went cold, imagining the inquest, and the years of difficulty that this particular act of murder would probably entail.

  Françoise was more interested in the castle itself. She had no time to worry about dead men. She had to stop Carol bringing back the corpse of Michael’s brother.

  ‘I can feel the walls. I can feel the way he has designed the place. But I can’t feel the entrance to his Limbo beach.’

  She unfolded the drawing Michael had given her years before, when she had first visited. There had been a smile on his face when he had waved goodbye from his window. She had realized, quickly, that he had given her the plan of the route that led to the deeper tunnels. She smiled at the irony. She had thought it had been part of the game he played with her, a little tease. In fact he had been showing her almost everything she needed to know. Desperately she tried to penetrate the images of the drawing, scanning the circles and spirals, following the paths. But she kept focusing on the picture of herself, outlined in heavy black pen, a bloated, red-haired figure … all bust and bustle.

  Richard was shouting for both his children. His
voice was loud and echoing in the quarry, and he thrashed about aimlessly, moving quickly to the place where Michael had had his camp.

  Françoise called him to her and quietened him.

  ‘Maybe he can hear us,’ the man said.

  ‘I’m sure he can. But I can’t hear myself think when you are bellowing in that way.’ Her hand on his face was brief, gentle and reassuring. She flicked at the tear stains on his cheeks.

  ‘You understand my concern? That somehow, by bringing back the little body, which is certainly what is in the Grail, the spirit of the dead boy will become Michael himself. The life that is Michael will remain behind, trapped in Limbo, trapped in the dead child.’

  ‘I don’t really understand at all,’ Richard whispered. ‘I just believe that you’re right about the Grail. And I know that it mustn’t come back to this world.’

  ‘Chalk Boy was very real. It was a terrible mistake of mine to think otherwise. We have been romancing with shadows, even the shadows of shadows, all of them aspects of a dead boy who has been hovering between here and the otherworld, clinging to his brother. But now the poor little clinging boy is ready to return, and his brother will pay the price.’

  Richard remembered a time in the woods, when Michael had run amok, holding the back of his neck as if stung. There was a birthmark there. It was small, but it was real, and it was one of two such marks upon him. It was Chalk Boy’s mark, and the place where the dead boy had clung to Michael, desperate for life. Half in the world, half in hell, he was caught in Limbo, grabbing for time and space, reaching desperately, holding on, holding on …

  In his despair, in his need for his children, Richard turned to the cliff wall and began to strike at it. The new sun cast his shadow shallowly and distortedly around him on the curving wall of chalk.

  Dark outline!

  Françoise looked again at Michael’s drawing, at the black outline around her figure. It was shown quite even.

  ‘Richard – move round the wall. Slowly …’

  The man did as he was told, stepping close to the chalk. The wide shadow to his right narrowed, that to his left came into view. In seconds, as Françoise watched him from the mound of the earthfall, he was blinking at her, staring against the bright sun to see what she was doing. She was watching him, observing the grey penumbra that outlined him against the white.

  He said, suddenly, ‘I can smell the sea!’

  ‘That’s it! That’s the beginning place. Come with me. Follow me!’

  Françoise stood with Richard and sensed the walls of Michael’s castle. Then, following the routes on the map, she ran away from the cliff, crawling through the underbrush, doubling back, curving in and out of the scrub wood as she traced the path of the spirals.

  ‘The entrance shifts with the rising sun, shifts around the curve of the wall, but he had shown me the way to find the start. Come on. Come on!’

  They came back to the chalk.

  ‘Here! Can you hear it? The sea?’

  She pushed violently past Richard, smashing against the cliff, then spreading her arms and straining, as if struggling to see. Her body doubled slightly, she groaned, she rubbed against the chalk …

  ‘I can’t get through,’ she shouted. ‘I can’t pass through. But I can see. They’re coming back. They’re walking over the beach. Carol!’ she screamed suddenly. ‘Put down the Grail! Put it down!’

  The girl stopped, tugging back as the naked boy dragged her across the beach. Waves surged. The girl was shrieking, but holding tightly to the glass jar …

  Françoise yelled again. Shadows fled like cloud patterns across the red cliffs. The naked boy looked furious through his blackened face. The waves crashed again, and flooded around their legs, surging, then sucking back into the shallow waters.

  The boy tugged at his sister, but Françoise’s voice had stunned the girl.

  Furious, the boy leapt across the soaking beach, came towards the woman who shouted. Anger was like a cloak around him, and he leapt to face her, ran up along the tunnel and leapt right out of the rock. Behind him the girl began to panic.

  Black-faced, naked, his eyes wild and angry, Michael stood before his father, screaming. Richard had stepped back, disorientated by the sudden appearance of his son from the sun-glare of the chalk cliff. He had heard the boy running, he had heard his cry of fury, but the moment of apparition had been dizzying as if Michael had been there all the time and had suddenly and aggressively stepped away from the white wall.

  Françoise had been knocked aside. She was slowly standing, shaking her head, holding her right shoulder.

  ‘Get away!’ Michael screamed. ‘Let her come through. It’s the Grail. She’s bringing home the Grail. Daddy… don’t interfere … please!’

  ‘It’s not Michael,’ Françoise gasped, as she struggled for breath after the winding collision with the boy. ‘Call Michael. He’s still there!’

  Richard watched the fiery eyes of the boy before him. He could smell sea, mingled with wet earth, a confusing, wafting aroma that was quite wrong for the pit.

  ‘Michael – I’ve brought something back for you.’

  And he held up the Mocking Cross, its brilliant golden mask turned towards the boy.

  ‘I fetched it back from the man who bought it from me. It was wrong of me to sell it, Mikey. It was wrong of Mummy. But we love you too much to give away something so precious, so we’ve got it back for you. The Cross is ours again, and we’ll always look after it.’

  Michael was silent, but his black-dyed face writhed, his whole body shook as if an electric current was passing through the muscles. He began to reach for the Cross, drawn back to life by this evil mockery of Christianity.

  Watching the turmoil in the boy, sensing the huge struggle that was occurring within the pitiful, ravaged body of his son, Richard was aware of the irony of what was happening: Michael was being tugged not by the Cross’s religious symbolism, its magic, but by its simple meaning, its family meaning. The ‘True Cross’, which was so often used to banish evil, had been warped into something, in its mocking form, that would banish good – but this Mocking Cross was summoning back the good in the boy! Human concerns had overwhelmed the dark religion of the carving, rendering mysticism impotent.

  To reach for the Mocking Cross was to reach for life again, and family, and comfort.

  But Chalk Boy was too strong. The shadow-face grimaced, a mocking smile.

  ‘I’m coming home,’ the boy whispered, and laughed—

  ‘Daddy …’ the boy breathed, the face melting for a second into an odd mask of confusion, the voice sad. Then:

  ‘I’m coming home, I want stories, Daddy. I want all the stories. I want to hear them all…’

  ‘Michael – come back. We love you. We need you, Mikey. We’ll never use you again.’

  ‘Mikey’s dead. Tell me the stories now.’

  But the hand of the boy rose, stretched, reached to the Cross, struggled for his father.

  Richard stepped closer. ‘Mikey … forgive me …’

  Michael’s eyes widened suddenly, and he turned and ran at the chalk, blurring, dissolving, decaying into white light, his terrified scream of ‘Don’t open it!’ echoing and resonating in the quarry, deafening his father, shattering the dawn.

  He was gone.

  Only Françoise’s sudden grip upon his arm stopped Richard smashing his own body against the hard chalk, and from damaging himself as he struggled to enter a place that was forbidden to him.

  He cried out for his son and for Carol. Françoise touched a firm finger to his mouth, then cocked her head, eyes half closed.

  ‘Let me listen. Let me listen …’

  But Richard would not be silenced.

  Carol stood alone on the strand. It was a cold and wet place, and each time the sea surged towards her the waves soaked her legs, splashing her dress and her face. As the waves pulled back she felt them tug at her, but although the sand sucked and drained around her feet she stood quite still, holdin
g the jar and its silent, staring creature.

  Lightning made her blink. The earth shook with thunder. A long way out across the sea a tall neck rose, its head snapping. The body that followed was broad and black, and it collapsed back into the waters like a whale dancing. A moment later the air was deadened with its cry, an eerie shriek that dissolved into a series of grunting calls.

  Michael had left her here. She was afraid. She was angry with him. He had abandoned her. The sea surged and pulled at her, but she held her ground, nostrils filled with the sea stench, eyes blinded suddenly by a splashing spray that drenched her spectacles.

  The baby in the jar looked like a fish again, and she cradled it.

  And heard her father’s voice calling to her—

  ‘Let the baby go. Leave him there, Carol!’

  He sounded like he was panicking. He sounded more frightened than even she was.

  She opened the jar, grimacing at the funny smell of chemicals that wafted from the liquid.

  Then she heard Michael shout. She turned to where the tunnel opened and saw his black-masked, pink body running towards her, arms outstretched. He was terrified. He was running towards her, heels kicking up sand, shadow flowing beside him.

  Her father called again, his voice like the voice of a creature in the sea, booming and echoing, oddly comforting, thrilling, demanding of her …

  ‘My little fish,’ she said to the blind thing in the jar. ‘Go and swim in the sea, my little baby fish … Go down into deep waters.’

  ‘NO!’

  She ignored Michael’s scream.

  She tipped the little fish into the sea, and it was sucked out into the deep tide, swirled down into the grey waters, lost, staring, drowning, dragged down to where the Fish Lizards waited for the shadows on the shore.

  Michael had collapsed suddenly. There was whiteness on his mouth and he lay, rigid yet trembling, caught in a fit that suddenly relaxed into limpness. Carol dropped the Grail jar and tugged at her brother’s arms, dragging him towards the tunnel. Even as she reached the place, and with a last glance at the silent, watching shadows in the caves, she knew that there would never be a Limbo again. With a final haul (which hurt something in her back) she heaved her brother into the chalk quarry, and struggled for a moment when strong arms grabbed her, hugged her, lifted her.