The Fire Child (26 page)

I am upstairs.

Jamie holds my hand, and says, ‘Let’s go upstairs.’

Midnight

‘I’m frightened.’

‘OK, Jamie, OK.’

David walked to the window of his hotel room, the phone tucked under his chin. He could hear revellers pouring out of Truro pubs down there on the snowy, cobbled roads. Roaring drunk. Christmas Day.

He closed the window, even though his room was overheated: he wanted, he needed, to hear every word his son said.

‘So many things happened, Daddy, scary things and the car smashed and I went to the mine and Rachel is—’

‘The car smashed? Try and speak calmly, Jamie. Please try and calm down. Are you all right?’

‘Yes I am all right only frightened actually Rachel is frightened too I can see it and she is coming back, Mummy is back, like she promised, I can smell her perfume, Daddy, I saw her in the Old Hall, and she’s here in the house and—’

‘Jamie, slow down.’

‘I know I know but it’s difficult.’

‘Where are you now?’

A beer-bottle shattered on a wall outside; the revellers turning into hooligans. Thuggish cheers rose from the streets.

‘I’m in my bedroom but I am sleeping in your room, Mummy’s room, I mean Rachel’s room, tonight, but can you come over tomorrow? I don’t think Rachel is OK. Dad?’

His anger rose; David fought to stay sensible, to stay lucid. ‘Is she behaving strangely?’

‘She talks to people who aren’t here. She fell over in the Old Hall like she was pushed.’

‘What were you doing there?’

‘I thought I heard Mummy’s voice. I know there aren’t ghosts, Daddy, but I hugged Mummy at Levant and I’ve seen her everywhere and it isn’t her but it is. And now we’ve got the power cut and it’s dark. Everything is cold.’

‘All right. I will be there soon. I promise.’

This was it. Any alternatives had been stripped from him. He would have to drive to St Ives, then walk the coastal path through the snow and ice. Through the night. Whatever the risks.

‘Jamie, I’m coming over now.’

‘Promise?’

As he consoled his son, David searched for the weight of his car key in his pockets. This was the right and only decision: drive and walk and sort this out. And deal with Rachel, once and for all.

‘Dad, I’ve got to go I can hear Rachel coming, she’s coming now, she’s coming don’t want her to hear me talking to you she will be angry. Bye, Dad.’

The call went dead. David didn’t have a chance to say goodbye. Perhaps it didn’t matter.

He had to hurry. Time was shortening, horribly: his son was fizzling into madness in a house where the only other person was already psychotic. Jamie was in serious danger.

Lacing his boots, bagging a head-torch and gloves, David walked down the muted hotel corridor and out into the snowy hotel car park. Truro’s cheery Christmas lights romped and cartwheeled in the icy wind. His own thoughts churned like the snow devils whirring in the empty streets.

The only people in Carnhallow were both teetering on the edge. But were they the only people there?

The evidence mounted. Jamie insisted he could see her, time and again. His own mother now had doubts. The truth was emerging from the sea-mist.

Perhaps the impossible was coming true. Jamie’s mother had returned.

Midnight

Jamie is taking too long. I’ve made up the little bed in my room, but – checking the clock – it is now past midnight and he has still not come back. I told him to get changed into pyjamas. But that was half an hour ago.

Opening the door a few nervous inches, I call down the landing. His room is near enough for him to hear me.

‘Jamie.’

He does not respond. I can see shapes, dark figures, here on the landing. They are in my head. They scamper, like children, playing a game. Tiny feet thumping. Then silence, the sea, the sound of darkness. Then the sad and lonely laugh of one child left behind.
Come back, come back. Don’t leave me here
.

There is no safe place anywhere in this whispering house, or in my whispering mind. On the landing, down the landing, I run, ludicrous and hysterical, dressing gown flapping, phone torch aloft, then push at Jamie’s door without even knocking.

He’s sitting on his bed in pyjamas – and looks up, startled, illuminated by the dying light of his phone. So he was calling or texting someone. His father, is my guess.

They’re all coming for you now.

The boy looks exhausted, pale as snow.

‘Jamie, come on!’

He flinches. Why am I shouting?

You know why.

‘Please. Jamie. Please. Let’s go into my room and stay there till dawn. Then …’

Then what?

The idea of sitting round the tree opening presents is farcical. And cruel.

‘Come now, Jamie. Please!’

With a suspicious glance at me – perhaps a frightened glance – he climbs off the bed, reluctantly takes my hand and we pad back through the darkness, with my phone as the only light in this black-out. Without power and heating, the house is unnervingly cold. My phone is nearly dead: I’ve used the torch too much.

And of course I cannot recharge it, for there is no power.

Everything is slipping away. All contact with the outside world is dying, the snow is building walls around Carnhallow. So we must build an inner fortress in my bedroom, to keep the bad things away. The bad ideas in my head.

Guiding Jamie urgently to the little bed, I tuck him in, and he lies there with his head flat on the pillow, and his dark hair feathering his white cheek and he looks at me in the shrouding cold, with the light from my torch making shadows of silent animals on the ceiling.

‘Are you all right, Rachel?’

‘Yes, I’m OK. We need to sleep, and get through till tomorrow.’

His eyes, those eyes he got from his mother, widen in the silence. So very tired, and pink, and violet.

‘You’re frightening me.’

‘I’m sorry,’ I say. ‘I am really sorry. I’m not myself. But we will be fine.’

Don’t tell him what you’re going to do to him.

Now I turn the precious torch off, and Jamie says into the darkness, ‘Rachel, I did something bad. I’m sorry.’

I reach for his hand. It is small and cold.

‘I lied, Rachel. It was me that put all the fire letters in the Old Hall. I wanted to do a spell for Mummy to make her come back, like she promised, because I felt her getting nearer, when I hugged her, at the mines, when we did the photos.’

At least this is one mystery explained, yet still others open up, darkly.

‘Jamie, we all lie. Everyone. Me, your father, grown-ups lie too.’

He is not calmed. I can hear his sigh, though I can barely see his face. His voice is fluttering, anxious.

‘But she didn’t come back, Rachel, and I lied because – because – and I lied other times, I lied at Levant about Christmas, about you, I wanted you to go away at Christmas so Real Mummy could come back, wanted you to go and then I said you were going to die but now, now, now I think it’s true, I don’t know, oh.’

The anxiety is mixed with yawns. He is desperately tired, even as his hand grasps mine so tight. His words come fast and nervous, scratchy, desperate. It mixes with the noises of the house. The tapping noises, coming nearer.

‘Mummy said at the mine that Christmas, after Christmas, was really my day, my special day, and she said that one day she knew my mummy would come back and tell me all this and that’s why Christmas made her sad and that’s why I didn’t love her like Daddy, and – and that’s why I think she is coming back now and that’s why you had to go by then, by Christmas, but it was a secret, a big big big secret. Daddy said I should never tell anyone, what she said, he said I should never even think about it, not anything!’

He stops, exhausted, his eyes shut tight.

I do not begin to understand what he is saying, but I know the agony of the forsaken child. And perhaps I can help him, one last time. Before I am lost. Before it is too late.

‘Jamie,’ I am whispering. ‘I will tell you a secret. I lie too. I lied once, when I was young, a big lie. But I did it for the right reason.’

I’m not even sure if he is awake.

‘I said my daddy did something bad to me, and he did but he did it when I was much younger, but it was a good lie anyway. It explained things, it explained why I was pregnant, why I was having such a special baby. And it saved my mummy. A good lie. Sometimes people tell good lies.’

There is no reply: Jamie has fallen into an exhausted sleep. Maybe he did not hear me. But the house did.

For a final moment I look at him. The eyelids flickering as he dreams. I wonder what he is dreaming. This time.

And then, as I think about his dreams, a kind of answer forms. Nina’s injuries. Of course. Hair and blood and nails.
Of course.
It all echoes Jamie’s dream, from months ago. Hare and blood and hands. Is this, then, what happened in Jamie’s mind? Was his apparent prediction a reworking of his mother’s death, of the gruesome details from the inquest? I know enough psychology. I’ve read enough books about depression and the like. I know how the dreaming mind functions. Puns and rhymes and echoes.

But even if it does explain
something
, it is all too late now. The mystery has gone way beyond Jamie. The mystery is in me. I have become the source of the darkness. And of the danger.

I pull myself across the room. Through the murk and away from him. I must keep my distance.

Lying on my own bed, my eyes burning, I stare up into the gloom. I don’t regret lying, saying he raped me, made me pregnant: it got rid of him. And anyway, he had abused me, all those other times.

But the pregnancy sent me mad, as this one is sending me mad.

Yes, I am back. Too late now, Rachel.

Above me, his face is painted on the ceiling.

Too late for the truth.

The stats are a poem I must repeat: 5 per cent risk of suicide; 4 per cent risk of infanticide. Pregnancy-related psychoses.

How do I hide from myself? The storm is here in my head, the black waters close over. Because Daddy is in the room again. Daddy is back. Daddy is climbing the stairs. And I can hear the tap tap tap of the miners, underneath us. They are working again: the mine is coming to life. All the secret life, underground, is coming to the surface, and heading up the stairs.

Hello, Rachel, my lil Rose of Tralee
 

No!

The door opens.

No.

I shout, fighting. I am a twelve-year-old girl, fighting off her father – but this time he wins. Maybe he always wins, in the end: maybe this is his revenge, to get inside my head, to make me do things. No matter how hard I close my eyes I can see things. Like the vulnerable neck of my stepson. But I love him. So I have to protect him, hide him away. Hide him in the water, in the darkness. Hide him in the mines with his mother.

No.

Go to the kitchen.

No! I plead with the frigid air. Let me go. Let me not do this. Spare me. Stop this. Let me get through Christmas. Shutting my eyes to the terror of madness, I turn over, pulling the cold damp pillow over my head to fight the noises, and the voices. But my arms itch. Sleep is a ludicrous fantasy. I am lying here on Christmas night, eyes itching and scared, and the snow-mantled cliffs fall down to the waiting sea, trying to shut out the voices. The noises, the silence.

The moors are dead tonight, the crows sleep with their eyes open in the shivering gorse.

Crows can predict the future, too. Did you know that? You know what happens now.

I wonder if Jamie somehow detected my madness, lurking? The fire child foreseeing the danger in me? No. No no no. It’s too late.

Here it comes. Here it comes. The black water rising. Tap tap tap. I can hear the hammers of the bal maidens, hammering the deads.

I mustn’t let him win. But it is too late. He is winning. Always winning. Stronger than me. Oh yes. Oh yes.
Oh, Daddy.
He is pinning me down. The madness is bigger and older, a dark figure on top of me.

Daddy, stay down there. Daddy, don’t come up. Daddy, stay away
.

I turn over, my fingernails pressed so hard into my palms I think I can sense hot blood. Like I am cutting myself. And why not? I am good at cutting, I can always cut.

So I have to cut, and chop. I have to slice this open, with a knife.

It is done. I cannot fight this any more, not any longer. Christmas night will never end, so there is only one way to end it. To sing away my fears, like I used to do, when Daddy did what he did, on Christmas Day.

I saw three ships.

If I sing that, I won’t care what’s going on, won’t be aware. I won’t feel a thing, won’t care how I cut. That’s how I dealt with Daddy, that’s how I blocked him out
I saw three ships come sailing in. And all the bells on earth shall ring.

It is my very own special carol. The rosary of the raped.

Now my eyes snap open and they glitter in the dark, because I am ready.

Jamie’s breathing is deep and slow, and contented. As if he knows what is going to happen: what I am going to do to him. As if he accepts, and understands – that I do it because I love him. I have to save him from this terrible world. From the ghost of his mother, with her body floating nearer, as the black water rises.

I saw three ships.

Just as long as I keep singing, I shall be fine. I don’t need any police, no ambulance, no doctors, no psychologists.

I saw three ships come sailing in, on Christmas Day in the morning.

So I must be about my business. Lightly and gently, I swing my legs from the bed. There is a suppleness in me, now. It is all so much easier than expected. This is going to be much simpler than anyone said. It is as if I can fly.

Crossing to the stairs, I meditate on my task; I must get one of the bigger knives, they will be better. Slish slash, slish slash. Much much better. There’s no reason for little Jamie to suffer, not a second longer. I can put him in the grave alongside his mother. He will become a ghost like her. He will be able to return whenever he likes, floating in and out of our lives, he will be released from this torment.

I can see in the dark. It is marvellous. The voices have become lights. They guide me in my quick bare feet to the freezing kitchen, which is as silent as I can remember it. All the appliances have died. They are corpses now. The fridge, the freezer, all dead. Carnhallow house is a mortuary, it is where everything comes to die. It is where everything is moved underground, to the basement and the mine tunnels.

Here’s my knife. I draw it from the triangular wooden brick like I am a legendary princess and this is my mythic task. I marvel at its loveliness. Saabaaatieer. It weighs agreeably in my hand. The starlight is enough for me to see the sharpness of the blade, David keeps these knives so sharp, he loves them sharp, that husband of mine, that abuser of women, with a killer for a wife.

Me.

Go upstairs quickly.

If I slip the blade very swiftly across Jamie’s white neck, no one will notice; only I will see the blood, staining the snow of the sheets like rosewater on sherbet ice. Saving him from his violent father, saving him from his ghostly mother.

I am singing the song to myself, that happy song, the pretty little carol.

And what was in those ships all three,

On Christmas Day, on Christmas Day.

What was on those ships all three?

A knife. A knife. A knife.

A mother. A mother. A mother.

Back to the bedroom. I grip the knife tighter and tighter. The Christmas tree fairy is smiling, downstairs, beaming with approval, about to snap her wand, and make Jamie go away with a poosh of sparkly Xmas dust. Just like that. On Christmas Day, in the morning.

Let Mummy kiss you.

This is my job now, the one last thing I have to do. In the dark, yellow gloom of the Christmas moonlight I can make out Jamie’s sleeping body, in his little day-bed, draped with maternal care, by me, with sheets and blankets.

But I am not his real mother. I am better than a real mother, I am alive. I have two hands, one to hold his hair, the other to strip the blade across his startled, frightened throat, so the blood comes easy and painless. The death will be easy, easy, easy, like Jamie wants to die, wants to see his scarlet blood uncoil like cherry juice, churning into a Stuart silver fingerbowl.

It is Christmas morning, an hour or two before dawn.

I kneel by Jamie’s bed. His face is serene and quiet, the white eyelids flickering as he dreams. The sleep of an angel: his beautiful eyes closed, ready and waiting and innocent. The lashes will flutter as I cut, but he will not panic, he will accept his fate.

I am the mother, he is the son, I am allowed to do this, we just aren’t related like normal people. The knife is heavy in my hand as I lean closer, not singing my song, trying to work out the best way to kill him.

Four per cent risk of infanticide. One in twenty-five. Not so bad.