Hags Tarn House

“A dog, I reckon.” Peter said it boldly, as if his reckoning it made it the most likely of all possibilities. Michaela, two years younger and a head shorter, had been answering back since before she could talk, and if that kind of speculative conviction hadn’t washed from her dad, she wasn’t going to take it from her brother.

“I reckon you’re wrong.”

They had found the jumble of bones in the shadow of the stone wall bordering the garden of the cottage. A long, grey-brown shaft with bulbous pocked ends, the spine, grass growing between the vertebrae, a dandelion poking between two perfectly intact ribs, half a dozen smaller bones, less distinct, less obviously the remains of a something once alive, and the skin, a scrap of pale leather suspended on the spine’s tip, wisps of pale hair moving lightly in the breeze.

“’Course it’s a dog, what else would it be?” Peter tossed a pebble into the grass in front of the bones.

“Why would a dog be all the way out here in the middle of nowhere?” Michaela scowled at the skeleton She still felt queasy from 12 miles of winding dirt track and fighting with Peter gave her something to hold onto.

“Well what else would it be then?” Peter challenged.

“Peter? Michaela? Come choose your bunks!” Gail was leaning out of the green painted door, smiling as if this wasn’t going to be the worst holiday ever.

“Sheep” said Michaela, and turned back towards the house, so that Peter had to stride after her or take which ever bunk was left.

The trip had been Gail’s idea. An “off-grid” escape, she had said, “time to connect.” It had been a year since Gail had come into their lives, and in Michaela’s opinion, she was still trying too hard. There was nothing wrong with her, nothing to prove. Gail was nice. Kind and caring and considerate of their needs. If she just took it down a notch, backed off a bit, maybe they’d be getting on better. Since when had a long weekend of monopoly been the route to harmony and unity anyway?

Michaela glanced back over her shoulder, glimpsing the hair again, waving like ripe wheat against the grey of the wall, and shivered.

*

From the doorway to the cottage, Gail watched Peter and Michaela moving up the garden path, Michaela purposeful, a battering ram in a dress, while Peter, slouched and sullen, shuffled behind her. Behind them, past the rough stone wall with the wooden gate, the purpled bulk of the mountainside cast an evening shadow across the near half of the valley, dissecting the lake into light and dark, and beyond that, the sunlit grass of layered hills bathed the whole in a green tinted glow. High above, a plane painted a slanted line through the sky, and Gail, stretching her ears to test the air, realised that she could not hear a single engine. Just sheep, birdsong, and the sound of their own voices. For the first time in weeks, she felt something unwind in the space between her shoulders, and the breath enter the base of her lungs.

They ate pasta at the table by the window in the little kitchen. There was a generator, the visitor guide said, beside the outhouse, but the day was long and the evening slow, and they had washed the last of the dishes before dusk truly took hold. The outhouse itself caused some consternation, but once Gail threatened to set up a bucket in the kitchen for them to use, the children came around to the idea. Peter went first, borrowing bravado from a Scout camp he had been on a year before, and Gail knew that Michaela would not be outdone. By the time the last blue light faded from behind the hill, all three of them were washed and ready for bed.

Gail lit a candle and set it on the windowsill, where the light bounced of the glass, double, triple, perhaps even quadrupling itself.

“Hot chocolate? Before bed?” Gail asked.

“But we brushed our teeth” said Michaela, eying the mugs.

“You can do it again? Come on, I brought mini marshmallows?”

“I’ll have one please Gail.” Peter was still so polite, too much on his best behaviour, thought Gail.

“Two cups then, you and me” she said, and filled a pan with water for three.

The three of them, blankets wrapped around their shoulders, took the chocolate out, onto the bench that leant against the back of the house. The lake was ink now, a well of blackness they could hear lapping the tiny beach in the breeze, but could not truly see. Above them though, a thousand stars seemed to fill the sky, and they sat, necks bent backwards, allowing their eyes to take in more, and more, and more.

“Mum would have loved this.” Peter’s voice, constricted and small, fell dead in the stretching quiet around them.

“How come there’s more stars here than at home?” Michaela asked.

“There’s no light pollution.” Said Peter. “Same stars, you can just see more because it’s darker.”

“Not NO light pollution.” Peter and Gail followed Michaela’s gaze out across the water.

“I can’t see anything” said Gail, but then Peter breathed in.

“There. I saw it. Just a tiny flash of light. Right over the other side of the lake.”

Gail continued to stare but saw nothing. “Maybe it was the candle? Reflected in the water?”

“Probably, yeah. Probably that.” Michaela sounded sleepy, now, and Gail gathered the children back inside and up the narrow wooden staircase to the bunk room. Both had wanted top bunks, so Gail was under Michaela, with Peter’s bed the other side of the small, deep set window. She lay awake a while, listening to them breathe, these two children she had agreed to learn to love, knowing that, if things went well, it would only be for a short time, promising to make that time count, to give them something to hold onto, an experience of knowing they deserved to be cared for, they deserved to rest, the deserved to have fun. Coming here had been a good idea, she though, a place where a child could be a child. She fell into the bosom of sleep, hearing nothing but slow, even breaths, and the hoot of an Owl.

Outside, far away across the lake, the light flashed twice, and vanished.

*

They swam, in the morning, or splashed at least. The lake was freezing and even in the full sun their skin puckered wherever the water touched them. Gail watched from the shore. She had hoped to get some phone signal away from the house, but there was nothing.

“Peter. Splash Michaela for a picture before I turn the phone back off.” She crouched on the slender strip of stony sand and took four photographs in quick succession, Peter laughing and Michaela twisting and shrieking as the water came towards her. It was too cold to stay in long though, and half an hour later they had hobbled on frozen bare feet back up the path to the house and were wrapped in towels allowing the sun to warm their bare legs.

“You had a bad dream in the night.” Michaela said it like an accusation, and Peter was quick to deny.

“No I didn’t.”

“You did, you were talking and everything.”

“What did I say then?”

“Okay, you were more muttering.”

“I didn’t have a bad dream. I’d remember if I had a bad dream.” Peter searched his mind. There was enough bad in there it was hard to tell. He HAD woken up and found himself afraid in the night. It had been so dark, not like at home, where the glow of street lights seeped around his curtain. Here, in the small hours, he had turned his face to the window and seen only the slender strip of the battery light under the outhouse door. Even the moon had vanished, and the lake had been indistinguishable from the hills or the sky. “Maybe I did have a bad dream. I don’t know. I’d be okay if we brought the outhouse light in though, so it wasn’t so dark?”

“I’m not sure the batteries would last all night.” Gail said.

“But we had it on last night?”

“No, I turned it off after I used the toilet.”

“No, I saw it, it was on in the night.” Gail could hear the rise in Peter’s voice and knew better than to push him further.

“Oh, well, I must have left it on, sorry. I’ll look for some more batteries, shall I?”

Michaela must have heard Peter’s growing distress too. “Shall we climb that hill?” she said, already getting to her feet.

They dressed and made sandwiches for the top and set off, making a beeline out past the old bones, over the stream feeding the lake, and straight up the hillside, straight lines giving way to ever wider zigzags, then long traverses as they found their way past rocky escarpments. By the time they reached the garden wall again, the lake was in shadow and the air was cool.

“That’s funny” Said Peter. “The thigh bone is gone.”

Michaela and Gail looked at the skeleton, and Michaela prodded the spine with her toe, lifting the edge to see if the bone had rolled into the longer grass. “Maybe a dog took it.” She said, and Gail felt the skin prick at the back of her neck.

*

In the house, they heated soup and lit the candle against the gloom, the three of them again gathering around the table to eat.

“Shall we play Scrabble?” Gail offered, but the children groaned.

“Can I see the photos?” Michaela asked. They had taken more at the top of the mountain, Peter and Michaela leaping high against a backdrop of green hills and glinting waterways beneath them. Gail passed her the phone.

“Ok, but just a quick look. I want to conserve the battery for the drive home.”

Michaela turned the machine on and they gathered around the screen as it lit up. There was Peter and Michaela, starfish on top of the world, and the three of them, pink cheeked, the rippled horizon crooked behind their heads. There was Michaela, biting into a sandwich, and Peter, half way up and pausing astride the mountain, smiling. There the two of them were, an arc of water bridging the gap between them, and their again, Michaela turning her shoulder towards the camera, Peter bending, lifting up his arms against the water to push it forward. And there….

“Wait. Zoom in?” Michaela splayed her fingers, and Gail placed her own against the screen, moving around the image until she saw it. There, behind a low bush at the western edge of the lake…

“Is that a rock?” Peter leant in, Michaela turned the phone a few degrees.

“I think it’s a….”

“It’s a face.” Michaela had grown still.

They looked at one another, and then towards the window where 400 acres of undulating grazing land buffered them from the world beyond. But their view of the hills was blocked. Behind the glass, pale against the candlelit interior, a face stared back at them, like it had been waiting to be seen.

*

“Mum!” Michaela cried.

“Mum is dead.” Peter shouted, blocking his ears with his hands.

Gail was on her feet, pulling the children by their elbows. “Come on, go. GO. MOVE.” She dragged them away from the window, away from the door, the door that hand no lock, because who needs a lock where no one ever comes.

Letting go of the children she lunged for a chair, anything to wedge against the door. “Phone 999 Michaela, phone 999!”

“There’s no signal.” Peter shouted back, but it was irrelevant, the door was opening, the chair legs scraping uselessly against the stone floor. Gail grabbed a kitchen knife from the sink and spread herself in front of the children, backing them slowly deeper and deeper into the single room, while a woman, tall, black haired, black clad, black booted, like she was garbed in the night itself, stepped into the room, her eyes glinting like moons in a midnight sky.

“Mum?” Michaela was crying, and Peter clutched her shoulder.

“Mum is DEAD.”

“Gail?” Michaela moved her eyes to Gail, but Gail did not turn.

“Peter, I need to you listen to me.” She sounded certain, she could hear that, but she could not keep the fear from her voice.

“Listen to her? Peter, we don’t listen to strangers, do we? Strangers don’t know what you need like I know what you need.” The woman’s voice was smooth, unhurried, and Gail heard Peter stifle a cry.

“Peter. I need you to take Michaela and run. Ok. Don’t wait, don’t look back.” From her pocket she pulled the car key and threw it behind her, hearing it hit the floor and then, thank god, the sound of Peter picking it up.

“But…”

“Mum? Gail?”

“Hello darling. Mummy’s come for you my love. Did you miss me?”

Gail felt Michaela step forward before she saw it, and lunged sideways, stalling her, slowing her, long enough for Peter to grab her. But the woman had anticipated Michaela’s move too, and reached out a long fingered hand towards the girl’s wrist.

“NO!” Gail slashed with the knife, making contact with the woman’s arm, and the woman turned towards the source of the pain, her mouth wide with fury.

“RUN!” Gail shouted, allowing the woman to come at her, grabbing at her clothing as Peter pulled Michaela forward and out towards the door. But the woman was stronger than Gail had though possible, bony arms making a mockery of Gail’s own attempts to hold her, and though she slowed her, she could not stop her. The woman was out of the door like the wind that swept through the valley, and into the dark.

*

Outside, Peter leant against the wall, Michaela held tight against his chest and one hand clamped over her mouth. His heart galloped in his ears, so that he was certain he would give them away. They could see nothing, but they heard the thud of feet on the path outside, nearing and then passing, heading for the car, parked in front of the house.

Loosening his hold on Michaela, he cracked open the outhouse door, praying that its hinges would not sound. The children slipped through the gap, making for the shadow of the wall, crouching into the ground. The woman, whoever – whatever – she was, would soon find they were not at the car and come back to find them, and Peter planned not to be found.

Peter could hear noises, around the car. The soft cluck of door handles being tried, the scuffling of feet. He strained to listen, waiting for the moment they should move forward, make for the car. Strained, and waited, and heard nothing from behind until Michaela’s muffled cry. He turned to make out his sister, held high in the grip of the woman, her gleaming grin pulling her face into focus.

“Hello my babies.”

Peter launched himself into her legs, shouting with the effort, and from the car, Gail ran towards the sound. The woman was fast though, and Peter fell into nothing as she strode towards the lake shore. He was back on his feet in seconds, and in pursuit, but where he and Gail stumbled in the dark, the woman seemed unimpeded by the uneven ground. She was making headway, Michaela screaming in her arms. They were on the beach now, and Michaela was on the ground. Above her the woman held aloft a bright silver knife, and Peter knew he was going to watch his sister die. But then Gail was there, throwing herself against the woman, and the descending knife was plunging through the air, meeting not the soft skin of Michaela’s chest, but Gail’s back, where the sliver of reflected light was swallowed by her flesh.

A cry rippled across the lake, diminishing to a gurgle as Gail slumped to the ground.

“Never mind my precious ones” the woman sang, “Now we can take our time.”

Michaela was struggling, trying to get to her feet, but she was pinned, Peter saw, by a second knife through her flank. Peter could see blackness pooling at her side. He should have run to her, should have pulled it out, made her run, got her away, but instead he stood, frozen in horror, while the woman reached out her hands and took his between her cold palms.

He struggled, then, kicking and screaming and writhing, but she was stronger than his mother had ever seemed, and he was forced to the sand within seconds.

“Good boy” she said. “Now, I have something special for you.” Then, from somewhere he could not fathom, the woman was holding something long and bulbous-ended.

“That’s it now. Come to Mummy”, the woman crooned, and he felt a pressure, deep and dull and then exquisitely painful, radiating from his stomach to fill all that was left of the world.

Beside him, still pinioned, Michaela wept as she watched Peter die.

“Now,” the woman turned to her, “let’s take you home”, and she lifted Michaela, the knife coming free like it was never rooted, and carried her into the freezing water.

“My mum” thought Michaela, as the cold hit her back, “my mum would have loved these stars once.”