Twisted Winter Page 5

  When I brought him to the kitchen for dinner, I found that she had laid two places at the table, but hadn’t brought out Dill’s high chair. Dill ran over to her, yanking with desperation at her skirt, but she just stared down at him, as if trying to remember who he was. Then she walked away to the fridge, leaving him to topple and sprawl in her wake.

  My blood ran cold. I went over and picked him up.

  Dill. Dill, her angel. Her favourite boy. The one who had left a thousand marks upon her heart and memory – bruises and jam smears, tiredness creases and crayon hearts. Before my eyes, those marks were fading, like footprints covered by falling snow.

  She was ceasing to care about him. Soon she would not remember him at all.

  * * *

  Dill’s screaming stopped eventually, his voice worn down to a miserable, quavering croak. Mum’s coldness seemed to break his world in two.

  For once he did have a reason to cry, a reason I understood. Dill was finding out how it felt when your pain didn’t count. Dill had fallen into my world, but he had plunged past me into the darkness and was still plummeting.

  I spent what time I could with him, but disasters kept dragging me away. A pipe burst, flooding the cellar, and I had hardly finished dealing with that when I had to go out and shovel snow off the ornamental bridge so it didn’t give. I brought Dill his truck and left him to play in the hall.

  While I was shovelling, my mind spiralled through nightmares. What would happen to Dill when I was at school, if Mum forgot he existed? What if nobody ever cared if he lived or died? What if all the crazy stuff inside him could never get out through colouring or breaking or getting attention? Would he go mad? I thought he would go mad.

  As those thoughts were going through my head, I looked up and saw the woman of the snows standing between our two pines, staring at me with a face like carved ice.

  She wore a dress of furs, so white it merged into the surrounding snow. Her shoulders and long neck were bare, and her hair was loose. She was glaring at my shovel blade, embedded in her sweet, luminous snow. Somehow she seemed taller than before.

  Dropping the shovel I ran towards her, but she melted amid the flurry of flakes, became a pattern of shadows amid the smooth snow hummocks. I stumbled around for a while, calling out, but she had vanished.

  I came back to find Mum sweeping the step and the front door ajar. Dill’s truck lay abandoned on the threshold. There was no sign of him.

  “Mum – where’s Dill?” I stared around at the thickening blizzard. “Did Dill come out here?”

  Mum did not seem to hear.

  “Come on in, Chloe,” she said. “I’ll go make us some cocoa.”

  I sprinted around the house, flinging open doors, but Dill was nowhere to be found. He must have wandered out past Mum, without her giving him a second glance. Now he was somewhere on the icy cliff paths, and there weren’t even any tracks for me to follow.

  * * *

  I didn’t try to reason with Mum, or call the rescue services. Even if they started searching for Dill, within minutes they would forget what they were doing, or stop caring. Instead I wrapped up warm, grabbed a torch and ran out.

  For an hour I scrambled along the cliff paths, yelling Dill’s name. Every shadow or half-buried stump looked like his sprawled shape. Every note in the wind sounded like his wail. Soon my feet and hands were aching with the cold.

  The dangerous thing about despair is that it’s the kind voice in your head. It’s the one that says, oh well, you tried your best. There wasn’t anything you could have done. Time to give up.

  I couldn’t give in. The voice was right, though, I wasn’t going to find Dill this way. So I changed tack and went in search of her.

  I knew where she would be. There’s a broad, high headland where the ground is smooth and unbroken, a perfect laying ground for snow. It has fine views of the other heads as well, just the place for somebody who wants to admire their white, velvet-smooth domain.

  Sure enough, when I huffed my way up the slope, there she was, standing at the highest point. Star-pure. Gleaming. All disguises cast aside. Something inside me quailed and bowed when I saw her. She made the snow looked dingy in comparison, and for a crazy moment I wanted to throw myself down and polish it, so that it was fit for her to tread.

  She looked at me and smiled. I felt like a scuff mark on the world

  “No,” she said. The question I had not asked soured in my mouth. “No, I will not give him back his power to spoil. I am disappointed that you would ask it.”

  I swallowed hard. I stared around me at the lifeless purity of the scene. I thought of Dill and Mum. I found the smile I used in reception and spent a moment straightening it on my face.

  “That’s not why I’m here,” I said.

  She looked at me for a long moment. One of her eyebrows rose slowly. Perhaps she didn’t believe me. Or perhaps I had her interest.

  “You’re beautiful,” I said. “You’re… flawless. I try so hard to be one of the people who make the world spotless. But… when I look at you, I see how grubby and clumsy I am. I want to be more like you. Whatever you took from Dill, can you take it away from me too?”

  Her gaze felt cold as it touched my scruffy hair, red nose, frayed gloves. She smiled again.

  “Very well,” she said, and moved towards me.

  As she drew closer, I kept my head bowed, breathing hard and forcing myself to stay still. She was two steps away, then one, and my skin was stinging with a terrible, blistering cold. Even with my gaze lowered, I could see her stooping to plant a kiss on my forehead…

  … and at the last moment I ducked my head, and snatched at the bracelet of black beads around her wrist.

  I yanked at the bracelet, and it gave. The beads sprang loose, but they did not tumble to the ground. Instead they whirled into the air and surrounded me, a swarm of wheeling black blobs.

  The woman gave a thin sound of rage like a rising wind. It rose until the air shook, and I fled, half-blinded by the flurry of white flakes and black motes. As I ran, the beads pelted me, seeking exposed flesh. When they found it they clung and stung, burying their way into my skin. The more they did so, the less my limbs felt like my own.

  I tumbled repeatedly, crushing shrubs. I put my foot through the bridge outside the hotel, and flung the front door open so hard its windows shattered. Then I blundered through the hallways and corridors, leaving mud, snow and blood from a cut hand everywhere I went.

  Mum had no patience with me. Five minutes before, she had noticed that Dill was missing, and she had been searching for him frantically ever since. She was sure I must have left the front door open when I went out for my ‘walk’. Fortunately we found his tracks in the snow, and followed them to his huddled, whimpering shape behind the shed.

  Mum was so angry that she barely spoke a word to me for the rest of the night.

  * * *

  No. Things aren’t back to normal. Not for me, anyway. Oh, Dill is much the way he used to be, and Mum’s even more protective now after ‘what nearly happened’.

  But me? I’m hopeless.

  I spoil everything. I can’t make a bed without ripping sheets. I can’t clean a window without breaking it. I can’t join a conversation without dropping a big, fat spiked truth into it, like an anchor through the bottom of a rowing boat.

  And when I sit down in front of a blank page or an unsullied screen, the words pour out. Thousands of them. All my fears and feelings and dreams and rage. I can’t stop them.

  I don’t think I have a future in hotel cleaning. I don’t think I’m a servant of the flawless any more. Some day perhaps I can return to something like my old self, but for now I can’t.

  For now I’ve got a lot of spoiling to do.

  Losers

  Frances Thomas

  The best part of the day, Brad thought. The light was growing dull, and the school bus in its fug of misted windows slowly wove its way through narrow lanes, spiny bare hedges scraping against the windo
w, everything cold and bleak outside, and waiting for him at home, hot tea and maybe a big peanut butter sandwich, or a wedge of homemade cake, the Rayburn stove filling the kitchen with warmth and the old dogs barking in the yard. English homework tonight, but he wasn’t going to do that if he could help it, silly cow. Waste of time, school, his dad always said. It wasn’t school learning that had got him the biggest farm in the valley, money stashed away, and the respect of all his neighbours. Teachers, said his dad, were losers, just like those daft folk in the cottage at the bend.

  Thinking that made Brad sit up in his seat and look out for little Rhys, sitting two in front of him in his old yellow anorak, hunched up as usual. No doubt thinking of all the fun Brad was going to have when they reached that bend in the lane, halfway between his cottage and the farm, where no-one could see what you got up to. Oh how Brad looked forward to that bend in the lane!

  Leesers Cottage, it was called, probably something from the mashed-up Welsh that got used round here, but of course his dad always called it Losers, and the name had stuck now, even in the village. They’d always been losers, from way back, folk who lived in that cottage. Stock got sick, crops failed, bankruptcies; one lot of losers moving out and another lot moving in. Then that story of the girl drowning herself. That was a long time ago, way before anyone could remember, but they still told the story. No-one knew why, but she drowned in the lake, down the Cae. The Cae his father wanted to have, only the old witch wouldn’t sell. Just her and that Rhys, now, the current lot of losers. A hippy, Dad called her, with her long drippy hair and wooden necklaces. Only a bit of land left to Losers Cottage now, a few chickens and a few vegetables, what sort of a living was that? And whatever had happened to their old man? Walked out, his dad said, couldn’t take being stuck with a witch like her, and that fool of a lad. Sometimes, she’d be at the mouth of the lane waiting for her boy as he got off the school bus, and there’d be nothing Brad could do about it. But mostly she worked, four days a week in the community centre in Llanwen. Brad’s mother had never had to go out to work a day in her life. She knew what being a farmer’s wife meant: stay at home, look after your menfolk, be there for lambing and haymaking, the important stuff. Not sitting all day on your backside in a stupid office, earning pennies.

  With any luck, Rhys’s mum wouldn’t be there today at the lane, and Brad could plan what to do. Oh, you could have such fun without leaving a mark! He knew exactly how far to bend back an arm before it would crack and get you into real trouble, how long you could put pressure on a throat before the kid turned blue, how tight to make a Chinese burn. And, daft kid that he was, Rhys never even fought back, skinny little runt, with that pale face and big frightened eyes. Fact was, Brad was even doing him a favour, showing what it meant to be a man. Better find out now rather than later it was muscle-power got you where you needed to be in the world, muscle-power and making folk afraid of you, that was what counted, not book-learning.

  And then there was all the fun you could have without laying a finger – that was the best. Suppose a fox got into your chickens at night – not that Brad could probably have achieved that, but he said he knew how, and the lad went paler than ever. Or that time he grabbed the lad’s homework – all that neat writing! – and shoved it into a cowpat in the lane. And then how the lad had whimpered, really whimpered, when that old cat he was so fond of had come along, and Brad had said all the things he could do to it. Mind, he never would, really, the way the ugly mog had scratched him only time he tried to pick it up. Maybe he could set the dogs on it one day – Patch could be proper vicious, specially if you gave him a kick to egg him on – but probably it’d be too much trouble. Plenty of other things he could do to the lad without getting scratched to ribbons first.

  The bus came slowly to a halt at the foot of Rhos Lane (see, even the lane was named after his dad’s farm; it wasn’t called Losers Lane, now was it?) and George the driver called out, “All right, lads?” Only Brad and Rhys got out here, half a mile of un-made-up road the school bus couldn’t go up, though his dad managed perfectly well with his tractor and quad bike. That was another thing Rhys’s mum was on about, couldn’t he get the road made up, all that mud and ice in the winter, but his dad said, why should he? Let her pay for getting it tarmacked, stupid cow, if she was so keen.

  Brad grinned at George as he stood up in the bus. Rhys stood up too, and with a wave of his arm, Brad generously let him get off the bus first; you’d think they were best of friends the way he behaved towards the lad in public.

  “Mind how you go now,” said George as he always did, and Rhys and Brad tumbled down the steps of the bus onto the grass verge and then on to the muddy lane. They stood and watched as the bus trundled off down the road and into the distance. After the warm fug of the bus, the December air was like an icy slap in the face; you could almost feel your eyelashes freezing up. This morning’s heavy frost hadn’t even melted, and the whiteness shimmered on the hedges and in the meadow, everything colourless and chill, only a few hawthorn berries blood-red against the grey. A river of ice ran down the edge of the lane; it had been there for days.

  Then Brad turned to Rhys and said with a grin, “Awright, kid?” Fact was, he hadn’t quite decided what he was going to do to the lad today, but he had a few ideas, and by the time they got to that bend in the lane he’d have worked it out.

  Rhys was already walking away. Brad called out after Rhys’s narrow hunched-up shoulders, “Awright, then? Ready for some fun tonight, are we?”

  Usually, this made Rhys cower even more and try to scurry away. But today something odd happened. For Rhys suddenly stood stock still in the lane, straightened his shoulders and turned to face Brad.

  “You’ve got a big mouth on you, you know that, Brad Williams?”

  For a moment Brad was so surprised that he went silent. What the heck did the lad think he was up to? Then he gathered his wits together, put his best menacing face on, and advanced on the kid. “You what?” he said, quietly. Always best to be quiet at first, like his dad always went when he was working up to get really angry.

  And now he had to show that Rhys. And he wasn’t scared of him, not one bit. He moved forward, slowly, baring his teeth like old Patch when you got him into a corner. “You what?” he repeated.

  Rhys started walking backwards, head still held up, staring Brad straight in the eyes.

  “I said, you’ve got a big mouth on you, and one day you’re going to run out of things to scare me with.”

  Brad was almost silenced, but of course he wasn’t really. “Oh yes, am I? You know, you’re going to be really, really sorry you said that.”

  Still Rhys walked backwards, facing him. For some reason Brad was finding this disconcerting.

  And then finally Rhys turned, and started to walk quickly up the lane, his yellow anorak glowing against the grey. For a moment, Brad didn’t know how to react, then common sense kicked in and he ran and caught him up. For a few yards the boys walked alongside each other, silently, as though they were mates.

  Then they turned into the bend, the hidden bend where no-one could see what you got up to.

  On the left, far as you could see, were Williams’ fields, fat and flowing, going on right up into the misty hill, a few Texels grazing peacefully, dingy against the silvered grass.

  On the other side, falling down to the stream and the lake that gleamed at the foot, was the Cae, left useless by that woman, just overgrown with wild flowers in the spring, the one bit of land round here that wasn’t Williams’, and damn well ought to be, it wasn’t right. Dad had offered her money, maybe not enough, but he wasn’t going to pay the old witch more than it was worth. He was waiting, and one day, maybe when she was poor enough, he’d hit the right price and buy her out.

  And then buy that miserable cottage of hers, and pull it down, or turn it into a holiday let, get fools from the cities to stay there at exorbitant rates, Brad’s mum could do all the cleaning and whatnot, look after it, money for old rope�
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  It just wasn’t right that folk who didn’t deserve it should hang on to property other folk could make something out of.

  Brad clamped his hand now on Rhys’s shoulder, feeling the paltry little bones of shoulder blade and arm beneath his meaty grip. For he had an idea now, something that would make the kid really squirm, really wet himself.

  “You and me,” he said, softly still, “you and me is going for a little walk.” And he turned the unresisting lad right round to the metal gate that led down to the Cae. He undid the gate with one hand, shoved it open with a clang.

  The grass was slippery and made them both skid a bit, but Brad’s force overcame that as he impelled Rhys downwards, their footsteps making a green trail in the frosty grass.

  And at the foot of the meadow, clumps of reed and water grasses, and the still gleaming surface of the lake. Frozen it was, too, a light skim of ice stretched over the top, and below you could see depths of a weird green blackness that seemed to go down for ever, though he knew that the lake must only be a few feet deep.

  For no reason at all, Brad felt himself shiver. And now he remembered, surely there were other stories about the lake, as well as the girl who drowned herself there. What were they? His gran had been full of them, but he never listened to her much anyway. But now fragments of those stories came back to him. Unexplained things, folk who wouldn’t go near, folk who’d been and come back changed, folk who got bad dreams. He couldn’t remember details now, but still enough to make him feel like a goose just walked over his grave.

  Still, he wasn’t going to let the lad see that. “Awright now,” he said. “And what about you going for a little swim?”

  And he grabbed the back of the boy’s puny neck, and pushed him forward, into reeds and frozen mud. Of course he wasn’t going to do it straightaway, had to get a bit of fun first, had to make the boy really afraid, so that he’d get the most out of the thing when it really happened.