Part 25 (1/2)

John didn't interrupt. He sat back, allowing the old woman to tell her story as she needed to tell it. Outside it was warm, if overcast. Clouds piled layer upon layer until the sky wasn't just dark but had become a deep reptilian green. As it grew darker still, the floodwaters running along the channel to the house darkened with the sky. John Newton's mood mirrored the morbid weather. To him the stream had taken on the ugly aspect of fluid discharging from some vast necrotic ulcer. One that rotted in the once beautiful face of this little rural village.

As he listened to the calm voice he grew colder and colder. But it was nothing to do with the temperature. The story was taking him to a dark place-a place he was afraid to visita ”I was born in this house eighty-four years ago. My father, Herbert Kelly, was head-teacher at Skelbrooke School. He was tall, slim, had a sharply trimmed beard, and wherever he went he wore a Panama hat. You could see him walking across the fields from miles away. That white hat of his was a beacon. And he had a good heart, John. He believed every child had a spark of greatness in them and he loved the village where he lived. Many a night he would sit at the typewriter, working on his newspaper column, Aspects of Skelbrooke, where he wrote about local characters and trumpeted the achievements of ordinary people who lived here. And he loved his family. He made time to be with us, and to listen to what we had to say. He often said that his children taught him far more than he taught them. He adored my mother, Beatrice-you know, she was the first woman to graduate from Leeds University with a civil engineering degreea Oh. I'm making this sound so rosy, aren't I? Happy families 1930's style. When ice-cream tasted like ice-cream; when you got more bang for your buck.” She smiled. ”In retrospect it does seem like that. I remember playing in the lake. I'd paddle in the water with my little sister, Mary. We'd catch fish with a string and worm. The sun always seemed to s.h.i.+ne. b.u.t.terflies of every color you could think of flew through the orchard. We had a lovely big brown dog called Teddy. We ate well; we were so healthy we glowed. Then one morning in October my father told me he was going to pick mushrooms from the meadow. He put on his Panama hat, picked up the basket and left the house. He was back two minutes later. He didn't have any mushrooms but he was carrying a piece of paper. He was smiling and saying that it was a funny way to send a letter. That's the last time I can remember him smiling in such a genuine and carefree way.

”Anyway. He laid the paper down on the table.” Her eyes grew faraway. She was replaying the memory before her mind's eye. Every detail as clear as the day it happened. John pictured a scholarly looking man, smoothing down the letter with his hands. The big brown dog would be wagging its tail, wondering what all the excitement was about. The two girls would be cl.u.s.tering round to see the paper. A grandfather clock would tick in the corner while on the stove a stew would be simmering in a pan the size of a baby's bath.

She continued, ”First of all he asked us which one had been playing the joke. Of course Mary and I didn't have a clue what he was talking about. Then he read the letter to us.” The old woman closed her eyes, reciting from memory. ”Dear Mister 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 sorry if yew do not. Naturally he thought it was a prank. In fact he was amused by the inventiveness of what he guessed was one of his pupils trying to get their hands on a bar of chocolate. My father put the letter away. He ignored it. The Sabbath came and went. A few days later I climbed over the fence to the field. I was in a hurry, coming home from school. My cousins were coming from Leeds and I wanted to change into a new dress. Anyway, as I climbed the fence I swore someone caught hold of my foot and tipped me over it. I came down with such a b.u.mp. My head split open from my right eyebrow to my left temple.” She touched her forehead where a scar ran across the wrinkled skin. ”Good grief what a mess. My father was convinced I'd been hit by an axe. I finished the evening on the sofa looking like an Egyptian mummy with bandages swathed all around here.” She made a circling motion round her entire head.

John thought about Elizabeth. The fall from the bikea her throat's been cuta The words from his initial reaction swam round his head. After returning from the hospital Elizabeth sat on the observation gla.s.s, her head festooned in bandages.

Water in the millrace boomed, sending tremors up through the stone floor.

Dianne Kelly had fallen silent for a moment, too, her fingers once more going to the scar that must have once been a raw and agonizing slash. ”Poor Dad. He was beside himself with frighta” She took a breath before continuing matter-of-factly. ”My father commented on the letter in his Aspects Of Skelbrooke column, buta and he remarked about it to us at the time, no-one in the village mentioned the mystery letter, even though they chatted to my father about other incidents in his column. We didn't know then that an outbreak of such letters was one of those 'subjects' not to be discussed. Like madness in the family or if an uncle had died of syphilis. Local people clamed up tight about it. So, life went on in the Kelly family. Dad taught his students. Mother worked on her civil engineering papers. Mary and I went to school, and we played in the meadow in the evenings.” She paused as a rumble sounded through the house. It was one of those sounds that are so deep they are felt rather than heard. Straightaway John realized it wasn't thunder. It sounded as if a solid object was being dragged through the millrace tunnel, sc.r.a.ping against the stone walls, buffeting against joists and pillars. The sc.r.a.ping sound came again. Claws sc.r.a.ping against stoneworka John closed off the thought. He turned to Dianne. ”Then more letters came?”

”Yes. One that demanded porter-that's an old-fas.h.i.+oned name for-”

”Beer. Yes.” He nodded toward the letters on the coffee table. ”I got one of those, too.”

”And other people were receiving the letters. Although the rest of the village kept their mouths shut tight. But I found out from Stan Price that his father had received one, then a second.”

”Stan's father ignored them, too?”

”Yes. A week after receiving the second Mrs. Price fell from a train and was killed.”

”But it was an accident?”

”Let's say it appeared to be an accident. But with hindsighta” She didn't complete the sentence. From the tunnel beneath the house the scratching grew louder. Demanding attention. With an effort she drew her gaze from the observation window to look John in the eye. ”My father ignored the second letter as well. A week later the school governors summoned him to a meeting. They suspended him from his teaching dutiesa he never told us why. He was a proud man. What they did wounded him more than words can say.” Her eyes rolled down to the letters as if fingers had somehow gripped her eyeb.a.l.l.s and twisted them down to stare at the letters against her will. John saw she hated them.

”The mood in the house became terrible,” she said. ”From sunlight and happiness to a dark, depressing place. Hardly anyone spoke. But, like a disease, this gloom spread through the village. People started to leave. Oh, they never said they were leaving because of the lettersa only suddenly families were taking trips to the coast, or visiting friends. But they left in a hurry. Which of course was foolhardy, because you can't run from this thing. It follows you. Then when it finds you it cuts you down.”

”I don't understand. What followed them?”

”Not a person. Let's say that bad luck followed them. Very bad luck at that. The Markham family went all the way to France, but they were badly injured when the hotel elevator they were in suddenly plunged three floors into the bas.e.m.e.nt. Ill luck picked up their scent and followed thema it happened to others, too. Mr. Ventor's youngest boy drowned in a ditchwater just eight inches deep. No one knew how it happened. And although the Ventors might not have known the exact circ.u.mstances of the death, they knew full well what caused it.”

”You mean they ignored the letters that arrived just like these?”

”Yes. These came in the dead of night, didn't they? Weighted down with a piece of gravestone?”

John nodded as Dianne Kelly continued, ”Today I saw Mrs. Booth from the house at the end. She told me about Keith Haslem.”

”I saw him leaving in the village, too.” John gave a humorless smile. ”In fact he was in such a hurry he nearly ran me down.”

”He received the letters, I imagine?”

”I found burnt paper in the bird bath. He'd obviously set fire to them, then he'd run for it.”

”Foolish man.” She looked at John. ”You haven't heard what happened to him?”

”No, the last I saw of Keith he was tearing out of here like something was chasing him.”

”Something did.” She shook her head. ”From what I gather, Keith Haslem stayed in a motel a good way from here. He was taking a shower when he suffered a stroke. Apparently, he was also badly scalded.”

”He's alive?”

”But in something of a mess, I hear. He spent a long time in the hot water before he was discovered. He's going to need extensive skin grafts.”

”Dear G.o.d,” John whispered. The sc.r.a.ping noises grew louder, more frenzied beneath his feet. Something wanted out. He s.h.i.+vered.

”And it was no coincidence that poor Stan Price was struck down. And I use the phrase deliberately. Something sensed he was trying to warn me about its return. It directed that lightning bolt at the house as an a.s.sa.s.sin might direct a bullet from a gun.”

”What happened to your father?”

”Three weeks after the first letter arrived came the third one. Asking-no demanding would be a better word-demanding that a red ball be left at the grave of Jess Bowen.”

”Your father still ignored the letter?”

”No. This time natural instinct over-rode his usual rational self. You must remember he was still in a state of depression after being suspended from his duties. As well as depression, perhaps, desperation came to the fore. He didn't show me the letter, John. I never saw it, but I overheard him talking to mother about it. He kept repeating that a red ball that must be left at the grave. One morning I saw him leave the house with a red ball. Later I visited the cemetery with Stan Price. Anda” The smile that twitched her mouth was grim. ”Red b.a.l.l.s. Dozens of red b.a.l.l.s all cl.u.s.tered round the headstone.” Her voice grew stronger, and she laid so much emphasis on every syllable it was as if she pushed rock solid words through her lips: ”John Newton, believe me. When the letters come with their demands do not ignore them. You obey. You obey them to the word.”

The sc.r.a.ping and scratching came again from the tunnel beneath the house. Talons rakingfurrows through the stone, clawing in fury. Something raging at the two for daring to speak about the lettersa John fought the image from his mind. No, that was to be sucked into a pit of superst.i.tiona what next? Slit the throat of a lamb? Daub its blood on the stupid, sobbing statue at the Bowen's grave?

KREEEEEE!.

The scream came up through the floor. A huge object must have been forced along the tunnel by the pressure of floodwater. John resisted the impulse to look through the observation gla.s.s to see what was pa.s.sing beneath the house. He gave Dianne a colorless smile. ”The stream's in flooda debris's being flushed through.”

She didn't give the impression of agreeing or disagreeing. Instead she merely said. ”I've heard the sound before, John.”

Now he knew he had to hear the end of Dianne's story. ”After the letter demanding the red balla that was the end of it?”

”That was the end of the letters. At least my father didn't admit that any more had arrived. He'd given what the letter writer had demanded. A day later the school governors announced he was re-instated. Buta” She shook her head. ”Life wasn't the same. I think something had broken in my father's heart. He became very quiet, very unhappy. Once I saw him in the orchard. He was weeping.”

”The letters had stopped arriving in the village?”

”I believe so. Everything returned to normal. But one morning I awoke to find my father and sister gone.”

”Gone?”

”Vanished. My father had packed a case with his and Mary's clothes without mother or I knowing. Then the pair of them crept out in the middle of the night anda” She shrugged. Her eyes were dull with pain, recalling that morning seven decades ago.

John said, ”I don't understand. The letters had stopped; why should your father leave like that?”

”I think the whole incident had poisoned my parents marriage. My father's orderly, twentieth century world had been turned upside down. I believe he decided to make a clean break.”

”It's not unusual for a husband to leave home. But isn't it unusual for the husband to take one of the children with him?”

Again Dianne gave a little shrug. ”Mary was his favorite. Perhaps leaving his youngest daughter behind was too much to bear.”

”Where did they go?”