"He's not got the clap, has he?" The words raced ahead of common sense. From the stung look on his wife's face he wished he could reel them back in again. Too late.
"No, he has not got the clap. What the hell made you say a thing like that?"
"I don't know… well, yes I do. He was acting so bizarre I thought it had to be something out of the ordinary."
"It is out of the ordinary." Val folded her arms. "And keep your voice down. I'm not supposed to be telling you."
"But I'm his-"
"John-"
"After all, I-"
"John. Shh!" She glared at him. "It's all about a girl… Paul's girlfriend."
Again John felt a prickle of surprise. "I didn't even know he was seeing someone."
"He's not a little boy, John. It's only natural, you know?"
"I know… but…" He shrugged. "This thing with your kids growing up just sort of creeps up on you." In a calmer voice he said, "So what happened? She dumped him?"
"Don't ever become an ambassador, John. You don't score well in areas of tact or diplomacy."
He sighed, out of his depth. "So what did happen?"
The girlfriend's pregnant. This time he did manage to keep those three little words from slipping out.
Val sat down on the sofa. "Apparently, he's been seeing a girl called Miranda Bloom. They were close."
"He never mentioned anything about a Miranda Bloom."
"I imagine he was a little shy. It was his first real love."
"Oh."
"Well the long and short of it is, Paul went to call on her this lunch-time only to be told that she'd upped and gone."
"She's left home?"
"For good as far as Paul can make out."
"Why?"
"Paul didn't get all the details. It looks all very sudden. The girl's mother was too upset to talk about it much."
John let out a breath. "No wonder Paul was cranky."
"Cranky isn't a good word, John. He's shattered. He feels like the rug's been pulled from under his feet. That he's been rejected. Emotionally he's going to be pretty raw for a while."
John nodded in agreement.
"So," Val said firmly. "Go easy on him. It's not like he was ten when a hug and a chocolate bar could solve all his woes. OK?"
"OK." John rubbed his jaw. "I don't know," he said. "When you're five you're taught how to cross roads, how you're not to stick your finger in the electric socket or mess with matches. But there's not a lot of guidance about dating or relationships. You have to make it up as you go along."
"And sometimes you do get your fingers burnt."
"Perhaps there really should be a college for life skills." He brushed his hand across the air in front of him as if reading from a poster. "Curriculum: loving and dumping; how to make friends in high places; how to brown-nose when the time is right; how to give someone a verbal kick up the rear when they take you for granted."
Val gave a tired smile. "Add parenting skills to that. And while you're about it, why not put the patience of saints into easy to swallow capsules?"
"It could go on the same shelf as Mother's Love…"
"And we'll buy you a family pack of tact and diplomacy, dear."
"Ouch." He smiled at her. "I don't suppose we are truly awful parents, are we? "
"We don't do badly. But I could do with a shot of that Patience Of A Saint potion. Elizabeth's going through one of her untidy phases again. There's so many cake crumbs on her carpet it's like walking on gravel."
"Yuk."
"She leaves her tennis rackets on the lawn. I found her bike up by the pond this morning. And when I put that away I nearly fell over a piece of stone she'd been playing with on the patio."
"Oh?" The blood suddenly thudded in his ears. He sat up, alert. "Lizzie had left a stone there"
"Yes. Well, it must have been Lizzie. Who else would leave a slab of rock there, right in the middle of the patio?"
His throat tightened. "Why would she do a thing like that?"
"Some game, I suppose. She still plays that prince and princess thing with invitations to royal balls and whatnot. There was even a piece of paper folded up under the stone."
"Oh? Did you throw it away?"
"The paper? Why, what's so important about it?"
"Nothing. It's just she likes to keep everything she writes."
"More fool me, I should have thrown it away, but like a soft mumsie I put it in her box."
They talked for a few more minutes. The time was almost eleven when John made an excuse to go upstairs.
Seeing by the landing light alone, he crept into Elizabeth's bedroom. Despite her predictions otherwise she was now fast asleep. She lay on her side, her face pressed against a stuffed bear. From the next room came the sound of Paul's TV.
He allowed his eyes to adjust to the gloom, and then he saw the box in the corner on which Elizabeth had written Miss Lenny. For a long time he thought that had been the name of a character she'd invented. Suddenly it clicked. With a blend of smart vocabulary and a youthful inability to spell she'd attempted to use the word Miscellany; after all, the box contained a jumble of odds and ends. Silently he went on his hands and knees to look into the box. The first thing he saw was the scab she'd picked from her chin: it sat in the bottom of a glass jar like a black spider.
But there, right on top of oddments of toys, comics, pencils and notepads, lay a folded piece of paper.
For a moment he felt himself become detached from the world. The night was hot but where he found himself was suddenly cold.
Already an aura of unease formed around him like a dead hand. He didn't want to touch the paper with his naked fingertips. But here it was: letter number four. No doubt about it. The paper had that waxy antique texture. It wasn't white but had the creamy yellow of old bone.
Ok, what is it you want this time? A pound of nice ripe plums? A quart of rum? A pretty picture of a cat? Or a slice of cake crumbled over the grave of little Jess Bowen?
To the sound of his daughter's breathing he angled the paper to what little light fell through the doorway. Then he read the letter:
Dear Messr. John Newt'n,
No soul should exist alone. And I, like all people, desire companionship. Therefore, I will take little Elizabeth Newt'n away with me as a friend. Yew will leave her in the graveyard by the sepulchre of Posthumous Ellerby on Saturday night. If yew do not, yew will be very sory.
CHAPTER 30
The strip-light sizzled into life, filling the shed with light.
There on the workbench lay Herbert Kelly's briefcase-a boxy, dwarf coffin that held the secrets of people long dead. John Newton had come down here immediately after the meaning of the letter had sunk in, the paper still gripped in his fist.
It wants Elizabeth… it wants Elizabeth…
The words roared through his head.
No, he told himself, it wasn't supposed to be like this. Dianne Kelly maintained the demands were always trivial-beer, chocolate, a ball. Not this… this didn't make sense. The old woman insisted that the letters her father had received seventy years ago hadn't asked for anything more. Unless, that is, Kelly hadn't told his family everything.
John shoved the key in the briefcase lock. Or at least he tried, only his hands shook as anger and fear convulsed him.
Fuck you!
He tore the axe from the wall, knocking aside cans of paint as he did so. They rattled onto the concrete floor. From the house came barking as Sam reacted to the noise.
"Damn you!" he snarled, directing his hatred at the letter writer- whoever, whatever it was. "Damn you!"
He attacked the briefcase with the axe. The bastard lock wasn't going to keep him out any more. The big axe blade bit deep into the leather, opening great wounds in its sides. Another axe blow struck the lock a glancing blow, sparks spat across the benchtop. Another blow crushed the handle. Burning with rage, cursing, grunting, he rained down axe blows. The name KELLY exploded below the furious strikes.
br /> The bag slid off the bench onto the floor where John struck it with all the fury of a warrior beheading monsters.
At last the bag burst open, bleeding papers onto the floor. He stood, glaring down, panting, and sweating so hard droplets fell onto the paper, loosening the ink into a series of Rorschach patterns. The inkblots looked like naked skulls with gouged sockets.
Shit. He'd never felt anger like this. He wanted to find the old Kelly woman, grab her by her thin shoulders, shake her. Yell in her face: Why didn't you tell me! Why didn't you tell me!
"John, what the hell's going on?"
He looked up to see Val through sweat-blurred eyes. Still gripping the axe, he dragged his forearm across his face to wipe away the perspiration.
"What's going on," she said again. "Have you gone insane or what?"
"I needed to open the bag."
"At this time? It's nearly midnight for heavensakes."
Once more he found himself on the verge of telling Val everything. But as if Kelly's secretive nature had leaked into his own soul as he slept in the schoolteacher's old bedroom he knew he couldn't.
"I needed to get this bag open." He spoke woodenly- and admit it, he told himself sourly, not altogether rationally.
"Couldn't it wait until morning?"
"I've wasted enough time. I need to start work on the book."
She stared at him. He saw the searching look in her eyes, as if she was hunting for some early symptom of insanity.
"John, it's nearly midnight."
He attempted a smile. It felt like a crazed leer twitching across his face. "Well, hon… that's writers for you. We're a wild breed. Tearing up the rule books, acting on impulse, kicking out the nine to five."
"John," she laughed, but it was brim full of unease. "Stop doing this. I don't like it. And put the axe down… I don't want you chopping off my head or anything as impulsive as that."
He realized he held the axe like a weapon. He laid it down.
"Sorry," he said. "Not being able to open the bag was really pissing me off." He brushed back his perspiration-soaked fringe. "Maybe it's the heat."
"Come to bed, John. You can work on the book in the morning."
"OK." To his ears his voice sounded calm now. He attempted another smile. It came easier this time. "You go on up. I'll just tidy up here."
With another nervous laugh she nodded at the axe. "But leave your friend behind, won't you?"
"Sure. Now you get off to bed. It's late."
Looking a little more reassured, she smiled then walked across the patio to the house that rose darkly against a starry sky. He saw Paul's light still burned. His son wrestled with his own torments tonight as well.
When Val had closed the door he picked up the butchered remains of Kelly's case and put them on the bench. Then he scooped up the papers that had fallen out onto the floor. Wiping the sweat from his eyes, he pulled up a stool and sat down to read.
He saw straightaway these were carbon copies of typewritten documents. They'd been carefully bound into files backed with stiff card covers. One file was titled The Skelbrooke Mystery, another simply Five Letters. A third bore the word Cuttings. All the titles were in the neat hand, John surmised, of Herbert Kelly himself.
John glanced out through the open door. Moths danced like snow-flakes in the shed's hard white light. The house now lay in darkness. Val must have persuaded Paul to go to sleep. Maybe she, too, now lay on the bed, too hot to lie beneath the covers. He imagined her gazing up into the dark, puzzled by her husband's suddenly weird behavior. Maybe she even wondered if he would climb the stairs with the axe in his hands.
More moths swarmed over the window, drawn by some insectile passion to reach the light. Did the letter writer operate on that same instinctive level as the moths? Or was there intelligence there? Was the letter writer exquisitely conscious of the alarm and dread instilled into those men and women who were on the receiving end of the demands? Mouth dry, veins pulsing in his head, he pulled the file marked Five Letters toward him. He glanced at the letter he'd taken from Elizabeth's Miss Lenny box. He read it again. Once more he winced at the line that seemed to launch itself from the page right into his heart: Therefore, I will take little Elizabeth Newt'n away with me as a friend.
Dear God. His stomach muscles knotted. The meaning was all too clear. The letter writer expected John to deliver his daughter to the cemetery. Then to walk away, leaving her there.
He'd already gone through dozens of scenarios centering on the idea (even the hope!) that the letters were a hoax. But gut instinct yelled loudly that they were not. A few days ago he'd made a pact with himself to simply do what the letters demanded. To hand over the beer or chocolate or whatever as the other villagers had done. But that was all before this letter arrived. This piece of poison changed everything.
This letter demanded his daughter. No way would he do that.
He broke away from staring at the window that now seethed with a hundred or more moths. He shook his head. What was it with this village? The place became more otherworldly by the minute. Stars shone bright with witchfire in the night sky, brighter than he'd ever seen them before. A plague of moths had descended on his home. Bats whirled soundlessly round the shed, faster, faster, faster. Frogs croaked in the stream. An owl hooted three times. A meteor slashed through the constellation of Cancer.
These were omens of death. He found himself battening onto the notion with a strange and terrible ferocity. As if the truth had been dangled in front of him for days, only he'd been too blind to see.
Across the patio crawled three hedgehogs. Three bristling lumps in the darkness.
Another meteor flashed across Cancer like a knife cut, opening up a rent in heaven through which the god of all dark places, all bottomless pits, all poison wells, all open graves could look down on one John Newton. Sweating there in the same shed where the long dead Herbert Kelly sweated, too. Whatever bulbous eye stared down at John from the darkness of outer space must have seen Kelly reading the letters, gnawing his knuckles, wondering what to do… John sat on the stool, hardly breathing the hot night air, feeling himself cocooned in the aura of his own bleak fear. A fear that seemed to leak from his skin like perspiration. He knew he was following in Kelly's footsteps-history repeating itself.
He thought back. Dianne Kelly had described her father weeping against a tree in the orchard. The letters had eaten into him, too. He'd gotten unpredictable. Even to the point of packing his bags and slipping away with his daughter at the dead of night.
Now John sat up, the blood buzzing in his ears. Wait a minute, wait one damn minute… Kelly's sudden personality change, leading to the normally loving husband and father to suddenly skip the country with his daughter had puzzled him.
Quickly, John put his hand on the file in front of him. His heart bumped hard against his chest, his fingers tingled. When he opened this file would he see those sinister letters written in the same hand on the same waxy antique paper?
Moments ago he couldn't bring himself to open the files; now he couldn't move fast enough.
He snapped back the cover.
Hell…
He'd not anticipated this. Not one bit. Instead of letters written in a weird, spiky hand, he saw sheets of flimsy paper bearing a few blurry words. They weren't the original letters. They were carbon copies.
Overcoming the pang of disappointment. John quickly began to read.
Dear Messr. Kelly,
I should wish yew put me a pound of chock latt on the grief stowne of Jess Bowen by the Sabbath night. Yew will be sory if yew do not.
Yes, same style. Same archaic spellings. Same demand.
But would the handwriting have been the same? Once more his whole being strained to believe these letters were the work of a lunatic hoaxer. Some sadistic son of a bitch, who got his kicks watching the villagers of Skelbrooke make fools of themselves.
Yeah, well maybe a week ago, he might have believed the hoax premise. Not now. A few days
had left him a whole lot smarter, hadn't they?
With the pulse thudding in his neck with all the dark power of a funeral drum he turned the pages. Yeah, there was the pinte of porter one. The next letter demanded one red ball. The third a quarter of cake (oh, that one's a variation on my collection, John thought sourly. You wanted something different for a change, you filthy little bastard). The sourness threatened to become bitter rage again.
He closed his eyes, breathed deeply, steadied himself, then opened his eyes to read the fifth letter:
Dear Messr. Kelly,
No soul should exist alone. And I, like all people, desire companionship. Therefore, I will take little Mary Kelly away with me as a friend. You will leave her in the graveyard by the sepulchre of Posthumous Ellerby on Saturday night. If yew do not yew will be very sorry.
See, John? All your winning lottery numbers have come up at once. Herbert Kelly had kept the last letter secret from his family. Kelly had received a letter demanding that he leave his daughter in the Necropolis.
The mental strain had nearly broken Kelly. But he'd come up with a plan. Before the deadline in the letter expired he'd taken his youngest daughter, Mary, as far away from Skelbrooke as possible. But what about Keith Haslem? He'd tried to outrun the evil influence of the letters but he'd failed, winding up felled by a brain hemorrhage. Maybe you didn't run far enough, old buddy. Maybe if you put a whole ocean the size of the Atlantic between yourself and Skelbrooke you're beyond the reach of Baby Bones or whatever the malevolent little tumor full of pus called itself.
John imagined Kelly's dilemma as he struggled to find a solution. At times, it had gotten so bad he'd broken down. Dianne Kelly had seen her father weeping in the orchard. The man had truly gone to hell and back as he weighed the options: stay here, ignore the letter, hoping that ill luck wouldn't visit the Water Mill in spades. Or maybe he considered the unthinkable. Lead his daughter by the hand to the cemetery at midnight, and then leave her for whatever waited there. But no. Kelly had taken a tough option: he'd abandoned his wife and eldest daughter for a new life in Canada with Mary.