Long Lankin (47 page)

“Oh, God, where’s Auntie Ida?” Cora shades her eyes with her hand and scans the graveyard. “She must have fallen!”

Mimi is grizzling and whining, crossly drumming her soaking feet in the moss. She starts to head for the tree.

“Mimi! Stay where you are!” Cora yells at her. “He won’t get you in the water! Roger, she’s not listening.”

We try to wade but are sucked in. I reach out for a clump of reeds, but my feet remain where they are and I splash into the bog. My head goes under the water. My mouth fills with threads of weed. Cora reaches out to help me. I lift my face and, wiping it with filthy wet hands, struggle to my feet.

“Get Mimi!” I shout, spitting to clear my mouth. “He must be behind the tree. She can’t see him!”

Desperately, Cora tries to lift her right foot. “I’m stuck!” She begins to panic. “Mimi! Stay where it’s wet!”

“It’s no use; she won’t take any notice.”

Whimpering, Mimi leaves the marshy ground and begins to climb the shallow bank a couple of feet from the tree. A grey-fleshed hand creeps inch by inch around the edge of the trunk.

Mimi stamps her feet, then pulls up a handful of grass and starts to wipe her toes with it.

“Mimi! Mimi! Come back to the water!”

She looks across at us, her little eyebrows knitted, her face flushed.

Lankin’s body emerges.

Mimi turns her head, sees Lankin, moans, and in one swift movement rushes along the edge of the grassy bank, then climbs up onto the fan of massive roots rising out of the pool. She presses her back to the tree trunk, arms spread out against it, her chest fluttering. Lankin disappears behind the tree. Mimi’s eyes, wide with terror, swivel from one side to the other.

We must get Mimi to the shallow water. Seconds pass while I struggle to move my feet. Then I look up and see Lankin again.

“Roger! Up there!”

Slowly, branch by branch, Long Lankin is climbing up towards the great bald hook of the tree. As he stretches upwards, his skin glistens and the sunlight catches the raised lines of the veins and sinews on his elongated arms and legs. When he reaches the upper part of the dry white trunk, where it forks into two, he wraps his legs around the crook and sits down, the top of his head shining under the blazing sun.

Then he bends forward, jerks his head, and, leaning out, studies Mimi, who is still darting her eyes right and left, stiff with fear. He bares his teeth.

“Mimi! Mimi! Run away!”

Long Lankin looks across to us, grins, and, headfirst, begins to lower his body slowly and deliberately down the trunk. He stretches out first one arm, then the other. Only when the fingers of his right hand touch her hair does Mimi look up and see him.

She groans and squeezes her eyes shut tight.

To the right, someone is stumbling through the grass.

“Oh, Auntie —” I gasp. “Auntie Ida!”

She reaches the tree. Lankin twists his head, bares his teeth at her, and snarls. Then, locking his legs around each side of a forked branch, he lashes out with his left hand, trying to hook her clothes with his nails.

Auntie Ida moves backwards one step, out of his reach. She grips the axe, white-knuckled, fists tightly clenched, her face set, grim and determined. She lifts her shoulders, swings the axe around her back, and, with a loud grunt, smashes it with a tremendous blow into Lankin’s body. There is a spurt of liquid, a terrible shriek.

Auntie struggles to release the axe from the tree trunk. For a moment, it remains embedded, then drops to the ground with a thud. With it comes a long grey arm.

A monstrous shudder runs through Lankin’s body. With legs twitching, he slumps out of the tree, slithers past the axe and past Mimi’s trembling figure, then flops into the water in a froth of bubbles. Auntie totters for a moment, then leans round the trunk.

“O-open your eyes, Mimi,” she pants. “He’s — he’s gone. Grab my hand.”

Auntie Ida leads Mimi onto the grass beside her. Mimi throws her arms around Auntie Ida’s neck and buries her head under her chin. With Mimi still clinging there, Auntie falls to her knees, gasping for breath.

Roger struggles towards me, his feet squelching. He grips both my hands and tries to drag me through the bog towards the tree.

“I can’t move,” I moan.

“Can you get your shoes off?”

I think,
How am I going to undo the buckles?
then remember they are the red slip-on shoes from Maisie Treasure, without any straps.

With a loud sucking, slurping sound, I wrench my right foot out, then my left. In turn my feet sink into the soft peaty mud. Roger pulls me hard, and I move forwards.

We trudge through the shallow, mossy water towards the bank, where I fling off my wringing socks before rushing to Auntie Ida and Mimi, kneeling, hugging them, my voice choking.

“Oh, Auntie Ida, it’s all over.”

With a huge effort, Auntie lifts her head and clutches my arm. “No, no. Take Mimi!”

She looks away from me towards the pool. Below the swirling surface, the water is heaving.

“Take Mimi! Quickly!” she says.

I unwind Mimi from Auntie’s neck and take her in my arms. Auntie staggers to her feet, then falls again.

“Come on, Mrs. Eastfield, I’ll help you,” says Roger, picking up the axe.

Auntie pushes him away and says through gritted teeth as she sinks down into the grass, “Get Mimi out of here.”

Take her away. Take the child away.

It is the voice of Piers Hillyard. We turn from Auntie. He is standing a few feet from us. Roger, dragging the axe behind him, and I, with Mimi wrapped around me, move in a wide circle around the bog, then back away towards the church and the silent, staring children.

I lie on the edge of the pool in a gentle nest of reeds, my hair trailing in the water. I watch the movement under the surface, the ripples, the bubbles. I know he will rise from this water as he rose from the waters of the flood. He is weakened, but not finished.

Piers Hillyard bends over me, his lips close to my ear.

It is not enough, Ida,
he says.
He is drawing the life from your body, his strength gathering as yours grows weaker. If you do not rise now, it will be too late. It will all begin again. You know what has to be done. It is the gate. It is the lychgate. Now is the time
.

I am weary. Let me be. Let me rest here.

Let us all rest, Ida. Open your eyes; raise your head. Look at the children
.

Leave me. Let me sleep.

Look at Edward.

Edward. At the sound of my child’s name, I feel my eyelids flutter open. Through the fringes of my lashes, I see him, standing in front of the others, his poor wasted face turned towards mine.

Another small boy moves forward to Edward’s side, then a little girl. I know it is my brother, Tom. It is Annie.

The gate, Ida. He is feeble. Now is the time.

Something breaks the surface of the pool. The water is rising towards me. I lift my head. Small waves lap against the bank, gurgling into my nose and mouth. I struggle to raise my chin.

I see Long Lankin floundering through the choking waterweed as he struggles to reach the side. With his one arm, he propels himself, splashing clumsily towards me, then lunges with his hand to clutch at the reeds. Drawing himself up with one mighty effort, he heaves himself above me, then plunges downwards. The water sweeps over my head. When it recedes, I smell Lankin’s fetid breath. He steadies himself against the bank by twisting my floating hair around his hard black tongue.

Ida, the gate.

As Lankin’s teeth draw closer to my scalp, my head turns to one side, and all I see in the line of my vision is the sad face of my son. Lankin grips my hair tighter, but gazing at Edward, I feel a strange tension enter my body, as if I were being stretched by a steel thread that becomes a hard, solid rod.

Grunting with effort, gritting my teeth, I roll my hands into fists, bend my elbows, and push myself upwards from the mud. My scalp is burning. I dig my knees into the ground and, groaning, inch my way backwards from the water’s edge, dragging Lankin with me.

Pausing for a moment for breath, I summon up the strength to crawl again, pulling away from him, away from the pool. I feel my hair roots stretching — straining, then ripping away from my scalp. I cry out. Lankin collapses into the reeds, gasping, and spits my hair out of his mouth.

I stagger up and lean against the tree, panting.

Piers Hillyard is standing among the gravestones. The children have not moved from their place near the church wall. Cora, Mimi, and Roger are in front of the lychgate, staring, their mouths gaping open.

Hillyard breaks the silence.

Ida, the gate,
he says.
Draw him back
.

Mrs. Eastfield totters towards us. Behind her, Lankin is on his knees by the water’s edge. He rubs his dripping forehead with his hand. Liquid is dribbling out of the shreds of his left shoulder and running down his side.

Mrs. Eastfield stops, swaying. “Roger!” she cries in a trembling voice. “Smash the chains! Do you hear me? Break open the gates! Use the axe — quickly!”

“I — I don’t think I can do it anymore. . . .”

“Quickly! Quickly!”

I turn and anxiously size up the chains and ropes binding the two old gates together. I swallow, take a breath, then bolt forward towards them with the heavy axe firm in my sore, weary hands.

I swing the axe high and feel the sockets of my arms straining against the weight. Mustering all my strength, I smash the head down against the rusty chains. As it crashes into the thick metal links, a jarring shock passes through my body. For a second, I am so weak, my arms shake.

I bring the axe up again and strike once more, then again. With the last blow, the chains and old frayed ropes split apart. I drop the axe and try to push the gates open, but they barely move. My arms hurt. I kick at the earth and weeds packed around the bottom.

“Roger! Roger!” Cora screams. I snatch a look over my shoulder. Mrs. Eastfield is almost at the lychgate, but behind her, his face twisted with both agony and hatred, the crippled Long Lankin crawls through the graveyard.

“Don’t stop, Roger!” Mrs. Eastfield cries.

“Here, climb over the gates!” I call to Cora. “Quick! Quick!”

With Mimi clinging tightly to her, Cora puts one leg over the right-hand gate. I take Mimi’s weight for a moment, and Cora scrambles over.

I swallow, wipe each hand on my trousers, then lift the axe once more. I strike at the gates over and over again. They begin to split. My shoulders ache. The palms of my hands are ripped.

A huge piece of the right gate shatters. I drop the axe, kick against the jagged pieces with my heel, and throw the loose bits aside. My hands are slippery. There is blood on the axe handle. I pull and push at the wood with my torn hands until the smashed gates move apart.

At last the way stands open.

I rush under the arch and stand on the roadside, where Cora and Mimi are locked together. On the other side of the arch, Mrs. Eastfield is at the gate.