Michael wanted his father all to himself, now. It was important.
Richard was shaking slightly. Susan withdrew from the bedroom door, because Carol was calling for attention. Michael’s shout had penetrated the house.
‘We’ll sing the song together, shall we? Just you and me.’
‘Yes! Just you and me!’
He began the story.
‘A long time ago, in a land not so very far away, a Great King lived in a Great Castle …’
‘The Fisher King,’ Michael screeched delightedly. ‘The Fisher King!’
‘He had another name, of course.’
‘What was it? What was his name? What was his name …?’
‘You’ll have to guess his name. Because his story is a tragic and sad one to begin with. Because in all his land there wasn’t one field, or one valley that was fertile. He lived in the blighted land—’
‘Waiting for the Grail!’
‘Don’t jump ahead of me, young man. If you want the story, wait for the story …’
Michael slipped down below his blanket, eyes glowing, face stretched wide with excitement as he listened to his father’s careful, slow telling of the story.
Every so often he whispered into the blanket: ‘When the Grail came everything was all right … when the Grail came …’
‘… and one of the fine Knights who came to the castle of the Fisher King was a bold and valiant Knight indeed … and do you know what his name was? His name was the same as yours. Sir Michael! He was one of Arthur’s favourites. One day King Arthur said to Sir Michael, “Of all the Knights in my Kingdom, you, Sir, are the bravest. You have the fine ginger hair of the Knights of Old. There are secret messages in the freckles that pepper your handsome features. You are swift on horseback, and a master of the joust. Truly, sirrah, there is no finer Warrior Knight in my Kingdom. And it is to you, Sir Michael, that I entrust the quest to find the castle of the Fisher King. You will find the land barren, a wasteland, empty, mournful, filled with crying, wailing souls, and great empty bogs, and sucking pits, and forests with grey leaves instead of green. There are people there who never laugh, never speak, never cry …” ’
I know …
‘ “And only you can find the true path to the castle doors, young Sir Michael.” ’
He saw his father and his mother, and they were ghosts …
‘So brave Sir Michael – famous for keeping his room tidy – rode on horseback into the barren land of the Fisher King, and at last he came to a great earthworks, the same earthworks that we now call Hawkinge Wood … and he crept up those earthen walls and looked over to see the land of the Fisher King beyond – and what he saw there, he would never forget …’
No. He won’t. He won’t. He’ll never forget …
He had watched from the top of the rise, face down in the leaf mould, fingers digging into the soft turf. The woodland was alive with birds. The breeze, heralding the approach of rain and colder weather, was already causing a sombre, shadowy shifting of light and movement in this favourite picnic place.
Carol was being cradled and cuddled, down there by the picnic fire, down there by the tablecloth, and the wicker hamper, and the cold box with its sparkling wine.
He watched them as they fussed and loved. He could hear their voices, the songs, the laughter, the hopes and fears for their daughter’s future.
What exactly was a hole in the heart? They seemed to worry. They seemed to reassure each other.
He heard mention of his grandparents’ names. Gwen and Doug. Poor Doug, his father said. But it had been quick. It had been sudden. He had not been in pain. What had been sudden?
His death, of course. Even as he watched the picnic party from his hiding place of leaf and turf, he knew that they were talking about the death of his grandfather.
Poor old Doug. Poor old horse.
Carol Carol Carol.
How they fussed. How they pampered.
(‘Where’s Michael?)
I’m here. I’m here. Poor old Michael. Poor old horse. I’m here. Call me down to you …
(He’s playing. He’s fine. Leave him alone. If he wants to come and eat he’ll come and eat. Sulky little bastard.
(Don’t say that. He’s not taking it well. He’s jealous of Carol, can’t you see that? He’s having adjustment problems and we need to be sensitive to his feelings.
(Sensitive to his feelings! What feelings? He’s his mother’s son …
(We don’t know anything about his mother!
(If he wants to be part of us he’ll be part of us. If he wants to play silly buggers in the woods that’s fine by me. This little lady though …
(This little lady is wonderful. But Michael’s a sensitive child. We must pay more attention to him.
(I don’t like him, Sue. He gives me the creeps. I don’t like him.
(He’s your son. He’s your adopted son … Make an effort, for God’s sake …
(He gives me the creeps. There’s something not right about him. All that shit with the earth. He’s haunted, Sue. And that frightens me. I keep wondering … I keep wondering—
(What?
(I keep wondering what will happen next.
(Nothing’s happened for a long time. It’s all passed. He frightens me too, Rick. He gives me the creeps too. Sometimes I can’t bear to have him in the same room as me, not alone. That’s why it’s so good to have Carol. But we have to try!
(Where is he now? Keep your voice down. He might be able to hear …)
YESYESYESYESYESYES.
I can hear!
I am here!
Here I am!
‘… and so the brave Knight knelt before the pale and ageing King.
‘ “Good King, there is only one way for you to save the Kingdom. I must quest far and abroad, I must fight great monsters, and evil Black Knights, and find the Grail, and bring that Grail to you. And how I do these things, what dangers, hardships, maidens and adventures I shall encounter … these stories are for another night, and another tale-telling, because it’s nine o’clock, and young Ginger-Haired Knights should be asleep by now.”’
He lay in the darkness, his heart beating fast, more content, now, than he could remember feeling in his life, happier than he had known for years. His father’s sudden affection embraced him like a warm and welcome hug. His mind was filled with the story, with the sound of his father’s words, the images from the voice that had spoken so softly to him, with such humour and with such affection. It made him chuckle. The laugh came from nowhere he could identify. He just felt like chuckling, staring out through the window to the glow of moonlight on the scudding clouds.
The bad images scattered. The raised, harsh voices faded. Memory shifted and stirred, slipping away into darker regions, and instead he felt the warm glow of sun, the smells of a picnic, and an odd and eerie memory of his mother, bending towards him, making sounds. He dreamed that she was reaching to pick him up. Her words:
Can you hear me, Michael? It’s time to go home …
He did feel at home, now. It was such an exhilarating feeling. Yes. He truly felt at home.
Unable to sleep, he climbed out of bed and ran to the window, staring towards the pit where Chalk Boy was resting. Michael wished Chalk Boy could leave the pit, could really come and play with him in the bedroom. He had only been dreaming about him the other night, and in his dream he had run around and disturbed things. But Chalk Boy was bound by the ancient sea, trapped by it, or so it seemed. Michael drew tunnels to let him through, but he never came further than the exit. Perhaps he was afraid to leave the rush and swirl of the ocean, and the shifting, scorching sands of the wild shore where he lived, so close to the great creatures whose cries filled the night, and whose movement through the chalk sea cast such giant, frightening shadows.
‘Chalk Boy …’ Michael whispered to the night, and at once a shadow seemed to wrap itself around him, startling him. He stepped quickly back from the window. Dull moonlight reflected on the d
ual imprints of his hands against the glass. His head started to spin. Michael realized he was dripping with fever-sweat. His heart was racing, beginning to hurt inside his chest. He bounded to the bed and buried his face in the pillow, rubbing his skin to dry it. Turning on to his back he lay gasping, feeling the fever-heat surge and flow through his body, but then ebb away, like a wolf slinking slowly back to its woodland cover.
Sitting up in bed he experienced a transient dizziness, but whatever it was, whatever had suddenly surged into him, almost possessing him, had gone. He found his tiny torch and switched it on, using it to locate paper and crayons on his bedroom table.
He drew a circle within a circle, then began to spiral the inner circle tightly, to draw the tunnel close.
‘Chalk Boy … ?’
But if Chalk Boy had been close to him, he had gone now, and this tunnel was merely a swirl of black crayon, without power. It didn’t touch the sea. There was none of the usual sound of waves. There was no heat and stench of seaweed.
The passing shock of a few moments ago had not overly disturbed Michael. He was still too high on the pleasures of the story, and the look of comfort and contentment in his father’s ringed and ravaged eyes.
He had looked so tired, like that comedian on the TV, whose face puffed and reddened while he made his jokes. His father looked so crinkled, these days, and he often smelled of sweat and the sharp odour of whisky. But this evening, all of that had softened. His breath had been sweet. His eyes had sparkled, like the golden wolf-girl. The ghost had gone, and the harshness with it.
Something in Michael had known all along that it would just be a matter of time.
He had dreamed hard about it for so many years, determined to make the dream come true, determined to stop his father’s distress and anger. And at last he had succeeded.
It gave him a good feeling, and he snuggled down again below the blankets and closed his eyes.
Deeper in the house, in her own room, Carol woke and started to cry; the door of his parents’ bedroom opened and there was the sound of someone moving across the landing. A second door opened and closed, and Carol’s wailing faded away.
And with it, Michael’s consciousness as he slipped into a dream filled with shadows, sea and the thunder of waves.
THIRTEEN
The day after his eighth birthday, Michael woke suddenly, aware of Chalk Boy’s call. It was just before dawn.
There was something new in the pit … something for him to fetch!
He stumbled through the darkness at the edge of the quarry, entering the gate, feeling for the familiar markers of the pathway that wound inwards to the place where he could see into Limbo.
Everything seemed the same, the undergrowth, the bushes, the stones on the path.
But something was wrong!
He ran, then hesitated, crouching between the scrubby trees and thorns. He fumbled for the shaped chalk blocks, the cold iron fragments, the cleverly positioned knots of rag with their twiggy limbs and painted features, the guiding spirits that he had positioned at each invisible gate through each invisible wall of Castle Limbo.
They were all intact. They all allowed him to pass through. He wound his way through the streets of the castle, watching dawn light spread on the high wall of chalk, on the sinister arms of the black trees that surmounted the wall. He pushed through the spiky gorse and brushwood that filled the heart of the pit and approached the place where the tunnel opened.
Here, he stooped and marked out patterns on the dirt-encrusted chalk, using his fingers, shaping the tunnels, sketching in the shadows blindly, calling for the sea and for Chalk Boy.
It came quite suddenly, opening in his conscious dream, startling him …
He felt giddy as the passage stretched away from him, and the surge and rush of sea deafened his senses. The salty smell overpowered him. He squinted against the bright yellow light that flooded from the farther end of the tunnel, illuminating the patterns on the round wall.
He stepped tentatively forward, looking for the bright thing, the gleaming focus that would normally start to form here, but he saw nothing. He edged further into the cold passage through the rock, his feet slipping. Spray touched his face, icy, sharp, and he licked the salt from his lips.
There was a child’s laughter, somewhere in the intense yellow light ahead of him.
He tried to call, but his voice rasped hoarsely, through fear, perhaps, or the strange atmosphere.
A shadow passed through the light. It was utterly black and fleeting in its movement. Michael beckoned to it, but all he saw was the surging column of water as a monstrous wave broke on the beach, somewhere ahead, crashing against the red cliffs.
Then the shadow again, hovering for a moment, enticing.
Michael looked around him, sensing the presence of an object, drawing close to it, but he could focus on nothing.
So he stepped further down the passage, further than he had ventured before.
Space opened!
He turned and stepped into the smoky room. Light streamed from a hole in the roof and children screamed. The pretty thing was before him, hanging from a wooden beam, and he reached towards it, reached for the green glitter of jewels …
A dog barked savagely.
His fingers seemed to thicken, to become heavy. A red face peered into his and shouted. Something hard passed through him, drawing the wind with it, making the grey smoke from the fire curl and gust …
And closed on the jewelled figure. Fetched it!
Dragged it.
He was suddenly flung back on to the chalk, rolling into a prickly patch of gorse, yelling.
Chalk Boy was laughing! Chalk Boy was amused by something …
He covered his face as wood and hot ashes rained down upon him in the half-light. The choking smell of smoke filled his lungs for a moment and he coughed violently.
Then everything became calm and he looked for the doll, which had fallen from his fingers and was now crushed against the chalk wall. He picked it up and grimaced as he smelled the rottenness of whatever existed below the ragged fabric of its clothing. The expression on its face was truly horrible. The eyes were not brilliant and exciting like the green jewel he had found a few days before. They were dull and glassy, protruding from the wooden face, hideously ugly. The body felt soft, unpleasantly pliable, and each time he squeezed it the stench was worse.
Disgusted, and feeling sick, he carried it gingerly around the chalk pit to the gorse scrub that covered the castle’s dungeon. Forcing his way through the bushes he found the metal grille that covered the outermost of the deep passages, where so much rusting machinery was still to be found. He reached an arm through, holding the doll by its legs. The smell that wafted from the dungeon was overpowering and he thought of some of the other things he had hidden here, some of the horrors he had fetched instead of the pretty gifts he valued.
A flick of his small wrist and the doll was consigned to its cell. It thudded among the rocks, wood and bone of the hidden place.
It was all a fantasy, then. An imaginary game.
From the quarry’s edge, Richard watched his son in the grey light, listened to the boy crashing through the underbrush, calling for his friend, laughing, then inventing sounds and words, making the crashing sounds of waves. In his pyjamas, Michael was just visible below. He was clutching something, a rag doll, maybe, or just a thick twig wrapped with a scarf. In the dull light it was hard indeed to distinguish any detail.
Richard had heard the boy leave the house and had followed after a while, intrigued by the game that Michael played, anxious to know whether or not the boy did meet a friend in the quarry.
An imaginary friend, then. Mind games. And there was no sign of the boy digging or excavating for hidden valuables. Only the smell of wood smoke was an intriguing intrusion into the normality of the quarry.
Michael disappeared for a moment and his father stood, walking round the quarry’s edge to see what was happening. The loose soil and e
xposed roots at the rim of the pit made walking dangerous and he had to step away from the edge for a few paces, before returning to look down into the gloom, leaning on the trunk of a young beech.
In that time Michael had begun to leave his fairy castle, weaving in a strange way, making the noise of gates opening, closing them behind him, calling out to the Watch that ‘All is well. One more to the Dungeon.’
All just games. It had taken Richard a year to feel convinced of this.
So where had the gold figure and the emerald brooch come from? And the more recent ‘gifts’?
Richard followed his son home across the dark field, and into the house. He entered his study and took out the two treasures, staring at them as he thought about wealth, and a wealth of strange talent.
Later in the morning, after Michael had gone to school, he went back to the quarry and searched the chalk cliff for the raggy doll-thing that he had seen his son carrying a few hours before. He found nothing, and eventually left the pit in some discomfort when he started to smell the unmistakable odour of some dead creature, rotting down among the gorse.
A week later, clutching her painting book and crayons, Carol walked along the driveway to the front door of her house, chattering on to Jenny, who listened with patient good humour to the stream of dialogue, thoughts, half-jokes and observations that characterized the six-year-old’s conversation.
‘Doesn’t look as if there’s anyone home,’ Jenny said, and Carol shivered slightly.
Her voice grim she said, ‘Mikey’s home.’
‘But not on his own … surely …’
‘Sometimes,’ Carol whispered.
Jenny sighed with irritation. ‘Well, I’ll come in and keep you company until Susan comes back. Shall I?’
Carol nodded, but her apprehension didn’t pass away.
In the event, the house was silent. Jenny opened the front door and called out ‘Anyone home? Michael?’