A ghost story of mine from 2009
“I blame that Felicity Kendal,” said Amy, “Rob
used to watch endless re-runs of ‘The Good Life’. That’s how he ended
up dragging Kathy to Todmorden.”
Christina spoke next in the shabby red leather
booth of El Bareto.
“He bought all the books: Hugh
Fearnley-Whittingstall, Sarah Raven and John Seymour. Even got planning
permission for a wind turbine.”
“Well,
there’s plenty of wind up on the Pennines,” chipped in Emily.
The three High School old girls
smiled, then stared into their post January Sales drinkies, thinking of poor
Kathy.
“You all know what happened,
don’t you?” asked Amy, passing round the chorizo frito. They all knew
that look – time to order more tapas and rioja. Then settle back and enjoy the
tale.
“I went there once – never again.
Black Shaw Carr, up Raw Lane. Even the sat nav didn’t know where it was. Just
getting there was a trial - the feeling that if you drove off the track, the
bogs were just waiting to suck you down. You really needed a four-wheel drive
up there: the only way in, a lumpy dirt track surrounded by windswept moorland
in the middle of nowhere. It really was called Back o’Beyond. Look, there’s the
sign.”
Amy passed her mobile around to
prove the point. They squinted at the enamel sign, lurking behind spindly grass
stalks. Its heavy black letters matched the grimy drystone wall. Below it, the
crumbling tarmac was kerbed with dented granite.
“Well, it must have sounded all
very desirable in the estate agent’s particulars: barrel vaulted cellar,
original slabs and shelves, stone mullioned windows and a mistal (whatever that
is) and three acres with a spring. Apparently, it’s a traditional Pennine
longhouse.
What they didn’t mention was a
lousy mobile signal, grot dial-up internet connection and frequent power cuts.
Never mind the terrible isolation and the faint smell of dead things.
All credit to them, Rob and Kathy
had done a brilliant job on the place. I saw the photos of it as a ruin - black
and glowering like something out of Wuthering Heights. It needed the
word-burning stove – I felt like the damp was lurking, just waiting to seep
back in through the cold stones. And that was late August.
I left the day Rob grubbed out a
rowan tree growing right by the front door. Can you believe some idiot left it
to grow there? It was just after that he went off to China. Left Kathy pregnant
and in charge of all the free-range chickens and organic Brussel sprouts.
Kathy’s a coper, I thought.
Last thing I remember was getting
out to shut the gate onto the moors – keep the livestock in, that sort of thing
– and I tripped over this rock. See that thing like a milestone, all green with
age. A bit rough but it’s got ‘Te Deum Laudamus’ carved on it.”
The mobile went the rounds again.
Dusty memories of Kennedy’s Latin Primer began to stir.
“I asked about it when I got down
to the distant village. A bit out in the wilds up there, your friend,
isn’t she? says the woman. That stone’s where they used to rest the
coffins on the way to burial at Mankinholes. It has a kind of prayer on it –
for protection.”
Amy
took a sip of her wine and shook her head.
“I shouldn’t have left her there
in that godforsaken place. I should have known what a ghastly hole it was.
Crags looming over the farmhouse like Miss Spolton checking an essay written in
detention. Terrible even on a sunny day: wind sighing through twisted trees and
all that nothing out there crowding round at night.”
“You weren’t to know, Amy,”
Christina said, touching her arm. Her old school-friend took a breath, and then
carried on.
“The woman at the Co-op knew
Kathy. She kept coming down for bleach to tackle the mould stains. Everyone in
the village was impressed with what they’d done with the old place.
She’d a distinctive voice, Lois,
the woman behind the counter; strong local accent, deep and throaty. So I
recognised it immediately when she rang just before Christmas. She said she’d
got Kathy with her in a bit of a state and could I come up?
Lois directed me to her own
three-storey terrace house. Across the barren tops, where the only colour’s
nodding cotton grass and the odd demented sheep, and down to a huddle of
weavers’ cottages.
Kathy was sat by her fire,
swathed up in fleeces and throws. I hardly recognised her. Her eyes were
hollow, even haunted, you might say. She was never a big girl but now she
looked stick-thin, like something fragile wrapped up in cotton-wool.”
“Fragile? Kathy?”
There was a pause after Emily’s
outburst. Then Amy lent forward and spoke quietly.
“Yes. Kathy was fragile.
Like china that’s only just been mended. Lois said they’d found Kathy wandering
down the road, shoeless and covered in mud. It was only because Scott was out
walking the dog late that they found her. They could get no sense out of her –
except that she’d been flooded.”
“How could she have been flooded?
It must be 300, 400 metres above sea-level up there.” Christina wasn’t
convinced.
“She was rambling on a bit – but
that part’s true. Look at this aerial shot from the local rag’s website.”
Even on that tiny screen the
devastation was sickening. A filthy tongue of mud and stones slavered down from
the dark moors above. Its tip split Kathy’s home in two.
“You won’t be surprised to hear
the police cordoned the whole area off. Rob will have to salvage whatever he
can when they say the hill’s stable. Kathy won’t go. She won’t leave her
mother’s in Harrogate. Kathy wouldn’t go anywhere near the place now.”
“Why not? Whatever did she say?”
asked Emily.
“Well, like Lois said, she wasn’t
exactly coherent. You remember Kathy used to say the old place seemed to like
her, that sometimes things got done all by themselves?” Amy said.
“Mm, she went a bit pagan – stuff
about ‘hobs’ and ‘nisse’ and house elves,” said Emily.
“But even she admitted it could
be ‘baby brain’. What’s that got to do with the state she’s in now?” asked
Christina.
“I couldn’t make everything out
but she seemed to be saying the Lench Hole Beck, the stream above them, had
been diverted deliberately. She’d seen the stone wall being unpicked. It was
like a time-lapse film, a time-lapse film of a corpse being taken apart by
wriggling things, she said.”
Each of the girls took a last
swig of wine. They went straight home after Amy spoke.
“She said there was a creature, a
creature that broke the wall down, a creature made of roots, bones and
malevolence. And that wasn’t the worst thing that Kathy said. No, the worst was
that something had opened the door.
Something inside had opened
the door and let that horror in.”
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