Goblins and Ghosties (10 page)

Seeing the look on Jacob's face, the duppy grinned. Then it began to laugh. A deep down belly laugh, it was. The duppy laughed and laughed, till it was shaking all over, the way things seem to shake when you look through a heat haze on a summer's day.

Gradually, Jacob realised he was actually looking through it. The duppy was slowly fading. Fading clean away, along with the sound of its laughter. Last to go was the grin.

That grin of the duppy's is something Jacob will never forget. It's the reason he always makes sure these days to be home by nightfall. Even then, he can't be sure it's not going to come back and haunt him in his dreams.

The Selkie's Revenge

Scotland

There was a crofter living on the west coast of Scotland. His wife had died, leaving him with a baby girl to bring up, so now he toiled, day after day, all alone. Growing vegetables on the poor little scrap of land attached to the croft. Spreading his nets along the seashore in the hope of catching enough fish to make a trip to the market worthwhile.

Life would have been a bit easier if the
seals
hadn't kept helping themselves. Time and again he came down to find a great hole in his net and not so much as a fish or two left for his own supper.

It made him angry. It made him wild. When he found a seal pup caught in the net, he didn't think twice, he just knocked it on the head.

He felt bad about it a moment after, when he saw the pup was dead, for he was not a violent man. He felt worse still when he looked up and saw another seal with its head poking out of the water, watching him with big sad eyes.

‘It looked so like a human mother grieving,' he told the market women the next day, ‘it put me in mind of the stories my grandmother used to tell of the seal people – the selkies.'

‘You're turning fanciful,' the market women said, ‘and no wonder − living alone on the croft with only a toddler for company.'

‘Still, I know I never should have done such a thing. I don't know what came over me.'

‘If you're not careful, you'll be turning
into
a grumpy old man before your time,' the women said. ‘What you both need is a woman about the place. Someone to come in each day and mind the child and the house, so that you can take the boat out the way you used to. You'd easily be able to pay her wages from what you made selling the extra fish.'

‘Maybe,' he nodded. ‘I'll think about it.'

A knock came at the door the very next morning. It seemed that the market women had been busy spreading the word, not giving him a chance to think about the idea for long enough to say no.

A young woman stood there. Big brown eyes, she had, and long dark hair plastered close to her head by the soft rain that was falling, though she didn't seem to mind it.

He had the strangest feeling that they'd met before, though for the life of him he couldn't say where or when.

‘I heard you were looking for some help around the house,' she said, smiling past him at the little girl.

The little girl smiled back and the crofter
felt
a pang of sadness. How long was it since his daughter had smiled at him that way? It was true what the market women said. He had been turning into a grumpy, unlovable old man without even knowing it.

So it was settled. The woman (whose name, she told him, was Mairi) would come early each day except Sunday and leave in the evening after dinner.

It was good to pick up his old life again. To put out to sea, feel the wind in his hair and taste the salt spray. To come home from market with money in his pocket, knowing there'd be a fire going and dinner ready on the table. Sometimes, he'd hear Mairi singing to the child as he worked the vegetable patch. Strange, haunting songs they were, such as he'd never heard before.

Sometimes, coming into the house, he'd find her and the little girl with their heads together, whispering secrets.

Other times they'd be gone all day, down to the shore as like as not.

‘Mairi's teaching me to swim,' the little girl
said,
her eyes shining.

‘She loves the water,' said Mairi.

And he felt again that pang of sadness, a feeling that, little by little, his child was being stolen away from him. Even when Mairi wasn't there, the child would say ‘Mairi did this,' and ‘Mairi said that.' Whenever she said ‘we', she meant Mairi and her. No room for him. No need.

He fell to wondering: what did he know about this woman, apart from her name?

Where did she go each night and on Sundays? Not to the kirk, for he never saw her there. Nor would any of the market women own up to having sent her to him. ‘Word gets around,' they said, shrugging off his questions. ‘Of course the child's fond of her. You're never there. Why don't you all do something together for a change, the three of you? Take them out in your boat, why don't you?'

The next fine day, that's what he did. Instead of taking the boat out alone, he got Mairi to
pack
up a picnic lunch for three. ‘Today,' he said, ‘you two are coming with me.'

So Mairi and the little girl climbed into the boat and the crofter pushed it off and jumped in after them and started to row.

As they pulled away from the shore, he looked at them sitting at the stern of the boat, arms round each other, heads together, whispering secrets.

Suddenly he burst out, ‘What is it you want from us, woman? Are you trying to take my daughter from me?'

‘Why not?' hissed the selkie woman. He knew now where he'd seen her before, knew her by her big brown eyes and her sleek black hair, now when it was too late. ‘Why not? Since it was you that took my child from me?'

With that, she wrapped her arms around the child and flipped herself backwards. Over the side of the boat they fell and into the water.

He watched and watched and at last he saw, far out and heading for the open sea, two seal heads break the surface.

Then
they were gone.

Often and often after that day he would stand on the shore and watch for the seals. And sometimes they came and sometimes there were none. But one seal looks much like another, so he had no way of knowing whether any one of them was his lost daughter. Or whether she'd drowned fathoms deep on the last day he saw her and was lost forever.

That was the worst thing of all. Not knowing.

As Cold as Clay

USA

She was a wealthy rancher's daughter and he was nothing but a lowly cowhand. Oh, but he had the bluest eyes you ever did see, hair the colour of honey and a smile that could light up the dullest day.

To cut a long story short, they were soon head over ears in love with each other. Nothing her ma and pa could do about it.

Oh no? Only send her away to stay with her aunt and uncle in the city, that's what they did.

(
Well, the young man was a good worker, so no way were they going to part with him.)

She pined for him and she wrote to him, but he never wrote back, most likely because someone was making sure he never got the letters. Still, she knew he was pining too. So she wasn't at all surprised when she looked out of her window late one evening and saw him there, riding the best horse from her father's stable.

‘Come quickly,' he said.

‘What is it?” she said.

‘You must come home.'

‘Is something wrong at home? Is my father sick? Or is it my mother?'

‘Just come,' he said. ‘Come now.'

So down she crept, through the sleeping house and climbed up behind him and off they went, like the wind, on her father's finest horse, her with her arms around his waist.

Through the silent city streets they galloped and out into the country, across the wide grassy plain. Not a mouse stirring, it
seemed,
not a night bird or a bat to be seen flitting across the vast, starry sky.

There was just the two of them, together under the moon and the stars, and it felt good. Except that with the two of them cuddling up like that, there should have been some warmth between them, but, ‘You're cold,' she said. ‘As cold as clay.'

‘I'm not,' he said. ‘Feel my forehead. I'm burning up. The sweat's running into my eyes.'

She felt his forehead and he was burning up. So she tied her handkerchief round his head to stop the sweat running into his eyes.

On they rode, and on again through that thick, dark night, till they came to her father's house.

She slipped down from the horse and knocked at the door and her father opened it. ‘What are you doing here?' he said. ‘And how did you get here?'

‘Why,' she said, ‘didn't you send…?' Then she stopped. The horse and her lover were both gone.

Of
course, he'd be in the stable, rubbing down the horse after that ride they'd had.

She ran to the stable and there was the horse, sweating and shivering, the saddle still on his back.

She turned to her father, who had followed her. ‘Where is he?' she said.

Her father knew at once who she meant. Sadly, he shook his head. ‘I'm sorry,' he said. ‘He took sick right after you left. We did everything we could and the doctor said there was every chance he'd pull through. But then, this evening…'