Long Lankin (41 page)

Jasper stared at the carpet and pondered this for a while, but the moment was disturbed by the dull throbbing of aircraft engines.

He got up, walked to the half-closed doors, and looked up at the night. “Wellington bombers,” he said, “heading for the sea.”

“To Germany?”

“Maybe.”

He watched as the silhouettes of the heavy planes passed over the house.

“If Lankin drank their blood, as you suggest,” he said at last, his back still towards me, “then I think he has taken part of their life force into himself. He has fed off them, and now they are compelled to dwell with him in this strange place, which is neither of the earth nor of paradise. The longer they inhabit the world of the monster, the more monstrous they themselves become. They are bound to Lankin, therefore they cannot be saved unless Lankin’s own life is forfeit.”

He turned towards me, the bones of his face unnaturally highlighted, the hollows of his cheeks dark and shrunken. Again, slow tears fell from his eyes, but he did nothing to check their flow, raised not so much as a finger to his face.

“Why are you weeping, Jasper?”

“I seem — I seem to cry for nothing most days, Ida,” he said. “But now I cannot bear the thought of what may have to be done, and I know I am the one who must do it.”

“What are you talking about?”

He moved to his chair and cast his watery eyes over the papers on the table beside it. He rifled through them, dropping page after page onto the floor, then grasped a sheet with tremulous fingers.

“This is the statement of Neville Harper, the surgeon who attended poor Thomas Sumner as he was dying of his burns after the fire at the old rectory. Remember I showed it to you before? It was in Haldane Thorston’s chest. Lankin came into the house to steal a child, Margery Skynner, and Piers Hillyard threw a candle at him?”

“Yes, I recall it.”

“Well, I don’t think I read it before today with any kind of particular insight, but listen — what does this mean? ‘But before they quitted the chamber, Piers Hillyard fell down upon the floor and died.’” Then Jasper spoke very slowly: “‘And the spirit of the said Cain Lankin took the life of the above named Piers Hillyard unto himself. . . .’ What on earth does it mean, Ida? Have you ever asked yourself why Piers Hillyard is in the churchyard, and how he actually died?”

“Well, we’ve always known how he died,” I said. “In the fire, of course. I have always believed that it was his choice to remain on earth to warn others, in recompense for the fateful decision he made to bury Cain Lankin’s body in consecrated ground. He tried to warn in life by carving out
Cave bestiam
everywhere, and . . . he warns in death. He appears, especially to children. . . .”

“Well,” said Jasper, “in this statement it also says, ‘Thomas Sumner affirmeth that he being badly burned and Piers Hillyard gravely burned also, he agreed to depart with him together.’ Obviously Hillyard was in a bad way, but he was not
in extremis
at that moment. I would think that he and Sumner possibly suffered a similar degree of injury, but Sumner didn’t actually succumb until two days later. Hillyard seems to have fallen down and died suddenly, unexpectedly, just as they were about to leave the room. Lankin, on the other hand, was in the thick of things,
not consumed,
but rather
roared and danced
. Somehow, when he believed he was on the point of death, he was able to preserve himself by
taking the life of the one who was causing him to lose his own
.”

We sat in a kind of daze.

“So, just as the children are condemned to remain with Lankin because he has consumed their blood,” Jasper continued, “so Hillyard is trapped in the half-world, too, because the monster absorbed his life.”

I struggled to make sense of it. “Are you saying,” I said, “that if you try to take Lankin’s life, you forfeit yours?”

Jasper sat down slowly, his body shrinking into the depths of the chair.

“Maybe Kittie Wicken tried to kill Lankin as well,” I said, “when he came for her baby.”

“She died in the creek,” added Jasper. “Could it be that she attempted to destroy him with water?”

“As Hillyard tried with fire,” I said. “Like Hillyard, she comes when there are children in the house. I have never seen Kittie clearly, just a fleeting glance, a shadow in the wrong place, but as a child, I did hear her singing, sometimes quite close to me. My brother Roland must certainly have seen her. He always said that a woman had shown him where the priest’s hole was, somewhere to hide if Lankin came in. Kittie must still have been employed at Guerdon Hall when they were constructing it. She knew the secret. But Roland used it against his brother. Instead of saving Tom, it — it —”

“Hush, hush, Ida,” sighed Jasper.

He rested his elbows on the arms of the chair, bowed his head, and closed his palms together as if in prayer.

“I keep thinking of Christian,” he said, “prepared to stand his ground in the Valley of Humiliation against the monster Apollyon. Apollyon was wounded by a blow from Christian’s sword, but he still spread his dragon’s wings and flew away. How can we be certain that, in that moment of sacrifice, when someone is prepared to confront Long Lankin, no matter what it might cost them, Lankin still won’t confound death, as he has confounded it for centuries?”

“So you fear that the sacrifice will be in vain?”

“I do, Ida.”

“But Hillyard and maybe Kittie Wicken were not aware of the consequences of what they did. Maybe — maybe if someone was willing . . .”

“How can we know, Ida? . . .”

And he began to weep again.

“Not long into the following year, Jasper was in Coldwell Hospital,” said Auntie Ida, staring into space.

“Auntie Ida, is — is Mum in a hospital like that — like Coldwell?”

“Oh, Cora . . .”

I shut my eyes. Auntie reached across the table to take my hand. I snatched it away. It could all have been so different. Auntie should have written a letter to my mum’s mum and dad.

It’s all my fault — all my fault
. Nobody had ever told Mum it wasn’t.

“He — Jasper — was discharged just as the war ended,” Auntie Ida went on quickly, “but — but a couple of years later, he was taken back in again. That’s when Hugh Mansell came.”

“I’m really scared, Auntie Ida,” I said, looking down at the tabletop. “I want to take Mimi home.”

“You must go home, Cora.” Auntie leaned her forehead on her outstretched fingers. “I feel Lankin is getting closer and closer. Three times now I have seen him near the house. He is waiting for one little moment of weakness, one small second when we let down our guard. We’re all trapped, Cora, you and me too, not just the children down in the graveyard . . . my little lost Edward . . . we’re all trapped. . . .”

Auntie raised her head.

“Maybe — maybe I could find somebody in the village to look after the two of you for the time being, until I can get you back to London. And then, somehow I could try to undo what Hillyard did. . . .”

“Auntie, please don’t say such a dreadful thing. It can’t be done.”

“Maybe that’s what I have to do . . . but who would help me?” She sank down again. “Nobody would want to help me.”

Auntie’s tears began to flow again.

I found myself putting my hands on her drooping shoulders and giving them a little squeeze. Then I leaned over and put my cheek against hers.

Auntie reached up and touched my hand. I didn’t shake it off this time.

“I’ll see if Hugh Mansell’s in,” she said, “so I can leave a telephone message for your father at the pub. I’ll need to run a flannel over my face first.”

I was tying up my shoelaces when Pete came in.

“Where we going, then?” he said, slopping the milk over his shredded wheat so it overflowed onto some spilled sugar.

“Thought I’d go down Mrs. Eastfield’s. Don’t put the box on top of that milk. It’ll stick to the table.”

“Mum’ll wipe it up,” he said. “Wait for me. I’ve got to find some socks.”

“Hurry up then. I’ll get the bikes out.”

It was going to be a really blazing day. On the main road, the tarmac was slightly soft, and the air above it already shimmering.

We stood at the top of the hill on Old Glebe Lane, levelling up to race each other down to the bottom.

“Can you feel that buzzing feeling?” I asked Pete.

“Don’t be daft. What buzzing feeling?”

“Like — I dunno, like when you’re standing under an electric pylon — you know, like the big one near the woods.”

“Nah. You ready?” Pete took off.

“Oi! Hang on! We’re meant to go together!” I shouted after him.

The ground was so hard we whizzed round at the bottom and into the Chase without stopping. The mud was baked into big lumps. Sometimes we had to stand up on the pedals to get along, but mostly it was a case of getting off the bikes altogether and pushing.

We waited for a while on the bridge outside Mrs. Eastfield’s.

“D’you reckon there are frogs?” said Pete.

“I don’t expect there’ll be any here. I think the water’s salty.”

“Don’t you get frogs in the sea, then?”

The tide was just about out. Only a trickle of water remained in the middle of the creek.

The electricity wire drooped from its pole near the bridge. All seemed strangely still, despite the busy humming of the insects in the wildflowers and the quiet babbling of the stream as it disappeared under the road. Not a single bird was singing from the trees around Guerdon Hall.

We dropped our bikes on the path and walked up to the house. I banged on the front door, and the dog started barking.

“Who is it?” came a voice from the other side of the door. “Quiet, Finn. I can’t hear.”

“It’s us.”

We heard the sound of a key turning in the lock. The door opened a tiny crack, and I saw Cora’s eye.

I’d already decided that if she was still going to be in a mood, Pete and me should just leave it and go down the woods instead, but she called out over her shoulder to Mrs. Eastfield, waited for a reply, then opened the door wide.

“Auntie Ida’s gone to get washed,” said Cora. “Best come in the kitchen.”

Auntie Ida came down, scrubbed up but a little flushed and puffy.

“Mimi’s still asleep but stirring,” she said. “In ten minutes or so, go up and check her. If she’s too hot, wring out a flannel in some cold water and wipe her forehead with it. I’m going up to Father Mansell’s to make this telephone call, and you absolutely must promise me you won’t leave the house, absolutely promise.”

We stood listening, our eyes round with serious attention.

“I should be less than half an hour. I’ve checked the windows. The front-door key is still in the lock.”

“What a blimmin’ palaver,” whispered Pete as Auntie put on her scarf.

She locked the back door behind her, taking the key. For some time, Finn jumped up on his back legs and scrabbled at the door, whining.

“It’s blinking sweltering in here,” said Pete, getting himself some water to drink from the tap. “Why’s she locked us in? What if there’s a fire and we’re stuck and get burned to death?”

“We can get out the front,” I said. “Anyway, you get used to it.”

“I’m flippin’ sweating,” he said.