Cursed Read online

  Edmond tugs his hair. “It was a long time ago,” he says. “Like, years and years ago.”

  “When you were a baby?”

  “Kind of,” Edmond says. Then he goes pale in the dim light. “I forgot to give them my letters.” He disappears. John shrugs and wanders away through the party. The music gets louder and light effects play across the white walls. Blue, pink, gold. It’s really nice. In fact, John feels better than he has done for months. The drinks don’t seem to slow him down, but make him more alert, light him up. There is another full glass in his hand. He can’t remember how it got there. Drew and Daisy are all right, he decides. Nicer than he expected. The strange smell that had hung about them seems to be gone, now.

  * * *

  When John gets home his mother is sitting at the kitchen table, as always. She stares at nothing.

  “Mum?” he says quietly. She doesn’t answer. Her fingers drum. There are little marks forming on the surface of the wood, where her fingernails hit the table all day long.

  He goes up to his room. The door is ajar, showing the streetlight shining in. He thinks of the other empty room next door, the one they never go into. He can almost feel her, Alice, in the dark, behind the wall. He thinks with burning envy of Drew and Daisy – their easy good looks, their cool mother who lets them have parties, their white house where no ghosts lurk behind closed doors.

  * * *

  The next day in school Drew is beside him, all smiles and perfect skin.

  “Do you want to come over for supper tonight?” he asks.

  “Will your parents mind?”

  “Hester won’t,” Drew says.

  John says yes. He is grateful that he doesn’t have to go home and get fish fingers out of the freezer. He usually overcooks them and they taste terrible. He has to wheedle his mother into eating a few, burned morsels.

  “What’s your address?” he asks Drew. “I’ve got football practice.”

  Drew looks blank. “Oh, don’t worry about that,” he says. “We’ll wait for you. We can all walk home together.”

  “That’s a hassle for you,” John says in surprise.

  “We don’t mind.”

  For a moment John wonders why Drew doesn’t know his own address. But the thought drifts off. It has been a long time since he was last happy.

  * * *

  Daisy cooks. She makes things John has only read about in old books; stuffed marrow followed by trifle. He didn’t even know you could get marrow anymore. He eats everything he is given.

  “Where are your parents?” he asks.

  “There’s only Hester,” Daisy says. “She sort of adopted us.”

  “Is Hester here?” John asks, nervous. He is not good with parents. He always says something weird.

  “Yes,” Drew says. “She’s asleep, just now. Right, Daisy?”

  Daisy nods. John feels a twinge of sympathy. He knows what it is like to have a parent who sleeps all the time. They have a lot in common, he and the twins.

  “How about you, John?” Daisy asks politely.

  “It’s only me and my mum,” John says. “My dad left.” Somehow it doesn’t hurt, talking about it here, with his stomach full of trifle.

  “How sad,” says Daisy. “Well, I’m so pleased that we met. Friends are important, I think.”

  “I’m sorry I was rude when I met you both,” John says in a rush. “I think maybe it reminded me of my sister, Alice. Seeing you together, I mean. We were close, like you. Before the accident.”

  Drew looks at Daisy. “Accident?” he asks.

  “Yes.” Tears touch John’s eyelids for the first time since it happened. “I feel like half a person, now. So stupid.”

  Daisy says quietly, “So your twin is dead, John?”

  “Yes,” he says.

  “I suppose I couldn’t tell,” Daisy says, “because you haven’t let her go.”

  There comes a thump from upstairs, and then a groan, as though someone has fallen out of bed onto bare boards.

  “What was that?” asks John.

  “I don’t know,” says Daisy. “Cats on the roof, I expect. Better go and see about it, Drew.”

  “In a minute,” Drew says.

  Something moves across the ceiling above their heads. A heavy thing drags itself towards the stairs. The groan comes again, muffled, filled with pain.

  “By Jove,” says Drew. “It’s late, John, you’d better be off.”

  John says goodbye and Daisy says goodbye too. She is polite, as always, but it’s as if she’s listening intently to something John can’t hear.

  As John goes through the hall, he quickly shuffles through some of the letters piled deep on the table. There must be two hundred, all addressed to different people in different parts of the country. He finds one addressed to an Edmond Booker in Halifax. It can’t be the same Edmond he met at the party; Halifax is hundreds of miles away. But even so it makes John feel weird. He quickly goes out of the front door.

  John goes down the sparkling granite path in the purple dusk. Sounds from inside the house are carried on the still night. The person who was moaning is now crying, perhaps pleading. Drew speaks to them. Or at least it sounds like Drew at first. Then John’s not sure. It’s an old, old voice.

  “Leave him be,” it says. “Get back in your hole.”

  * * *

  When John gets home his mum is sitting in the kitchen, streetlight playing on her still face. John goes upstairs. He pauses on the landing, before Alice’s door. After a moment he opens it and goes in. It is too warm, the air tastes stale and dusty.

  He turns on the light and goes to Alice’s bookshelf. He takes down a book with a bright, illustrated cover, showing five smiling children and a dog. These were Alice’s favourites; tales of nineteen fifties schoolchildren caught up in extraordinary adventures of smugglers and robbers and secret islands. He opens the book and reads. It doesn’t take long to find what he’s looking for.

  “By Jove,” said Harry. “There’s simply lashings and lashings of trifle.”

  * * *

  The next day, in history, the seat next to John is empty. When he cranes his neck, he sees that there is a gap in the back row like a missing tooth. Daisy isn’t at school either. John feels a moment of something – surely not disappointment? Then he feels electric. This proves that something is up. Where did those two come from anyway? He doesn’t drift off in class today. His mind is filled with thoughts of time travel, or maybe vampires.

  The moment the last bell sounds, John has his rucksack over his shoulder. He runs through the shady streets towards the new white houses. He doesn’t know what he will say, but he is filled with certainty. They are doing something bad, he knows it. He is almost sure that they are keeping someone prisoner upstairs in their house. Maybe their mother, Hester. John suspects that what he’s doing is dangerous, but it is a relief to feel something, even fear.

  He turns into the close where the first houses reach pale and tall against the summer sky. As he goes, he begins to falter. Was it the second left or the third after the house with the yew tree in the garden? Everything looks the same. He doesn’t see another living person. Most of the houses are empty – he can see wide expanses of pale bare boards through the windows. None of them have numbers on their gates. And he doesn’t know the number, anyway. By the time the first stars show at the edges of the sky John is lost, penned in by empty white houses.

  In the end he finds it by the noise. Pale pink and blue lights play on the windows, and the house seems to pulse with the beat. The twins are having another party. Well, he thinks, they can’t say they were off sick. Against his will, John feels his heart and his feet speed up in time with the music.

  He pushes the front door. It swings open. He quickly slips into the cupboard under the stairs. It is dark, which seems safer than the colourful lights. A damp mop tickles his arm, reassuring and real. He peers through the keyhole. The party seems to be well underway. Everyone swaying in the flashing air. But it see
ms less fun than the party John was at. In the warm glow cast by the drink, he hadn’t noticed certain things. A lot of the kids seem to be hurt, or have old scars. One is missing a hand. And they drink and mingle but no one says more than hello to one another. Not like they’re shy – as if they know each other too well to bother. Some of the children are dressed really weirdly. One girl wears a voluminous old-fashioned nightgown. A blond boy wears what looks like a three-piece suit. Another wears tights and there are large shiny buckles on his shoes.

  The music dies and the lights come up. John thinks, they know I’m here, and his breath stops. But their attention is on Drew who stands in the centre of the room.

  “It’s time,” he says.

  “How many?” says a small girl in a shimmering white shift.

  “Four, today.”

  The children bow their heads and someone sobs. But no one moves.

  “Decide,” Drew says, “or I’ll choose.” When no one moves he goes around the circle and pulls four into the centre. “You made me do it,” he snaps at the little girl in the white shift, who has begun to cry.

  The four make their way to the stairs in procession, heads lowered. They climb slowly and disappear out of sight, one by one, leaving silence behind them.

  “Well, come on,” Drew shouts. “Gracious, it’s a party!” The music rises, and despite what he has just seen, John’s heart begins to pound in time.

  “That’s how they first get us,” says Edmond. “With the parties.” He is standing in the cupboard next to John. “If you come once, you have to come back, no matter where or when it is. Time doesn’t mean anything to them. Past or future, you have to come. Got to fill the room. Sometimes I hide when it’s time to pick. Didn’t know you had thought of it, too.”

  “What will Drew do to them upstairs?” asks John. He feels sick. He has heard of this. Kids lured in by gangs. It’s called grooming. And then bad, bad things.

  “Her body is old now, it wears out fast,” says Edmond. “That’s why she needs twins. Matching spare parts. My brother volunteered. She used him first.”

  Edmond’s hair falls aside and John sees that his right eye is missing. Edmond’s fingers explore the place where it was.

  “Where’s Daisy?” whispers John. He couldn’t see her out in the party. He hopes she hasn’t been taken upstairs. He is afraid for her.

  “There isn’t much Daisy left,” Edmond says. “Not after all this time.”

  “Don’t be weird,” John says, frightened.

  “Bodies are like houses to Hester,” says Edmond. “She finds one she likes and keeps it, until it can no longer be fixed.”

  John wants Edmond to stop saying mad stuff so he shoves him hard. Edmond does not seem to notice. He is gazing past John at Drew who stands in the open cupboard doorway, golden hair slicked back on his head like an old film star. John sees that one of Drew’s ears is missing.

  “I hoped you wouldn’t return,” Drew says to John. “I persuaded her that she didn’t need you. I even gave her something, to help her forget.”

  “You tell me what’s going on, right now,” John says. He clings to desperate remnants of hope – that all this is a mistake, a misunderstanding, that he is drunk or mad or in a dream.

  “What has always gone on,” Drew says, patient. “They have always taken children. People used to think they swapped them. Changelings, you know. Maybe that was confusion about the twin thing. They used to keep the children inside hills though, that’s true enough. They’ve moved with the times since then.”

  All John’s anger slides into one channel, hot. He understands that he is being mocked. It’s that time outside the off-licence all over again. Everything that has been building since Alice died now fills the depths of him, licks up at the edges. “You think I believe that stuff?” He punches Drew hard in the face. He hears, but doesn’t feel, the sharp crack of his knuckles against cartilage. Drew’s nose explodes in a mist of red. He falls to the floor. John doesn’t see Daisy until her hands are around his neck. Stars bloom and cloud across his vision.

  “He’s the only one who stood up for you,” Daisy hisses in John’s ear. “He betrayed Hester, trying to help you get away. You should be on your knees thanking him. But instead you’ve ruined his nose.”

  “Now you’ve done it,” Edmond says. He tugs his hair over the gap where his eye should be and backs slowly into the shadows of the cupboard.

  Drew looks at John with his ancient blue eyes. John wonders how he ever thought the two of them were the same age. “I tried to keep you out of it, old chap,” Drew says. “You’re not a twin, anymore, so you aren’t useful. You could have lived a long life. But she’s out of her hole now.”

  There is a sound like stone grinding against stone. The lights and the music fade. The children huddle into corners. The room is lit with greenish light. The walls move as John watches. They creak with the pain of growth. New twigs and branches thrust out from their lengths, tender leaves push forth painfully, become dark and glossy, then curl up, brown. A spray of white hawthorn bursts into the air, showering blossom. Everything buds and grows and withers and dies before John’s eyes. Time churns at a sickening speed.

  “Run,” he turns to say to Daisy.

  But something has happened to Daisy. Her face has become a hole with children in it. She is made of layer upon layer of time. She is older than anything else in the world. She is made of wood, with a face like a woman trapped screaming in a tree trunk. Then she is John’s sister Alice, white and lovely in her grave clothes.

  Vines race along the floor like snakes and curl up around the furniture legs, encasing them in sticky green. They flow towards Daisy and she catches them in her hands, strokes them like puppies and croons to them in a high voice. Then they wind their slim fingers around Drew.

  “Don’t fight it,” whispers Daisy. But Drew does. He tears at the vines and shouts a word that sounds like moksha. She recoils, her green fingers loosen, only for a moment. Then she has him in her strangling grip once more. She takes his hand as the moss creeps green and living over his face.

  “I’m sorry,” the thing that was Daisy says.

  “No,” Drew says, “please!” Her fingers reach into his mouth, now, down his throat, and into him. It is over quickly.

  Hester stands. She wears Daisy’s body with animal grace. “Let that be a lesson to you all,” she says. “Not to test me. Now I am going back upstairs with my new friend John. He’s no good for repairs, but I think there is something to be done. He owes me a brother, after all. Come, John.”

  They go up, hand in hand. Hester drags Drew’s corpse behind her and his head hits each step with a crack.

  * * *

  John opens his front door. His mother sits at the table. Moonlight plays in her hair, which is dark again, piled high and bound by a silver coronet. The scent of the garden fills the kitchen, oleander and wisteria are heavy on the air. A pond ripples at her feet. Water lilies open slowly at his glance. A golden fish kisses the sleek surface of the water then sinks back into the deep. A firefly wanders past his nose. John can see it, now – where his mum has been, all this time.

  His mother turns to John and smiles. “Isn’t it lovely?” she asks.

  “Yes,” he says. “Lovely, Mum.” He squeezes her hand.

  The first thing Hester did was take his mother’s mind. That happened before he even met Daisy and Drew. There’s an order to it. She removes the parents first. He thinks about all the other mothers and fathers sitting alone in their night-gardens, arrested in time and place. Ever since there have been people, there has been Hester. He wonders what the real Daisy was like. He is sure that some of her still lingers in her body, just as there is some John left in this body. No Drew, though. Drew is dead. John does not want to die.

  John collects the letters and bills that have piled high on the table in the hall. He will take them to Hester, and they will all be answered and paid, and no one will disturb his mother as she sits in her night-garden. He
looks about him and bids the house farewell. He won’t be coming back here for some time.

  He takes a moment to smooth his shining blond hair in the hall mirror. Even in the moonlight he can see the deep and perfect blue of his eyes. Time to go. He has a big day ahead. He starts his new school tomorrow. John closes the front door behind him, softly.

  LISTEN

  JEN WILLIAMS

  They always knew when she was about to arrive. Erren didn’t understand how that worked, but then, she didn’t understand much about her life these days.

  Gods help them, they were even excited. As Erren reached the outskirts of this newest settlement, she saw a handful of children sitting on a long, meandering fence, their faces bright with interest. When she drew closer, the dust from the long road kicking up little orange clouds around her feet, they began to shout shrill questions at her. Where had she come from? What would she play? Could she play a song that they wanted, if they asked?

  Erren nodded at them politely and said very little. They would hear her song soon enough, unfortunately.

  She followed the children, who took her to a large mound of a building, built from stone and mud and pitted with small, square windows that were little more than holes. The very top of it was covered in bright green grass and flowers, and a thin stream of grey smoke rose steadily from a hole she couldn’t see. Erren was fairly sure she’d never seen anything like it, but once she was taken inside she realised it was just another tavern, at heart like every other drinking hole she’d ever been inside: the strong smell of beer, the smoky twinkle of a fire.

  “So you’re the player,” said the tavern keeper warmly. “Have you come far?”

  Erren chose to ignore this question. They could never understand the answer.

  “I’m the player,” she agreed. “You’ll listen to me?”

  Every time she asked, a tiny bit of her hoped they would say no, but no one had yet. Of course they hadn’t. The tavern keeper beamed all the wider, crossing her arms under her sizeable chest.

  “We’ll be glad to,” she said. “We don’t get much by way of entertainment around here. You’ll have most of the village watching I expect, darlin’. Should I make you a space by the fire? How much room do you need?”