Cold Boy's Wood by Carol Birch (if you liked this book TXT) 📗

just occasionally some very pale pink lipstick, the kind a lot of girls wore then.

9

Perhaps I should get a toad. I’d like that. I picked one up once to put it under the hedge where it wouldn’t get stomped on by the horses, and it was scared and put its hands over its eyes and I thought oh you sweet poor little thing. It’s not that easy to get a toad though. What do you do? Sit in your doorway and wait for one to come. I’m sure I’ve read about that, old lady alone, lonely, back door, yard, toad. Hop hop. But they don’t seem to come to me. I’ve seen one or two but they seemed OK where they were, it seemed a huge imposition to intrude upon it and carry it off to my lair. In the old days I suppose they’d have called me a witch, ha ha. You can see how all that happened, can’t you?

A voice says, ‘Lorna?’

The hairs all over my body spring to attention. But it’s only the rain, light rain pattering in the leaves. There it goes, this thing under the skin. It’s moving again. I put my thumb on it and it pushes against me like a baby under the skin. It’s in my elbow. Go away. Stop. But it won’t. I think maybe I have some weird disease. It’s cold. I get into my sleeping bag, pull the blanket over and close my eyes. I think I fell asleep, because I was waking up suddenly from a dream thinking: What if it was all true? You did it. What if it was in you? That feeling – of something a long time hidden, down down down under a million gossamer layers, a memory that lies too deep for the daylight.

Here’s a pretty rhyme for times like these: the old woman alone at night in her cottage.

And still she sat and still she span

And still she wished for company.

and

In there came some girt girt legs.

With Ai-wee-ee and Ai-wee-ee-ee –

And sat them on the girt girt knees…

With Ai-wee-ee and Ai-wee-ee –

And still she sat and still she span

And still she wished for company…

Until the whole ghoul is there, girt girt head and all, and says –

I’ve come for YOU!

There’s company here in my head anyway. Those days, those days, that place, the view from the window at night when the street lamp shone on the square. Johnny always had people around him, it was his way. All these people all the time, so many many nights, eating, drinking, the talk going on and on and round and round, hanging like smoke in the air, even when they’d all gone. Cosy with the cats, Lemon and her baby, and the plants and the pictures on the wall. Salome with the beautiful curly-haired head of John the Baptist, dripping blood. Arthur Rackham, trees with faces. And later, very late, all of us talking in the big room, the yellow tasselled drapes of the people downstairs, the TV on with the sound down, getting sleepier and sleepier but it was perfectly acceptable to snuggle down into the big bright floor cushions, close your eyes and drift with the words all tumbling about all over each other like puppies, dialectic dignity democracy new start libertarian positivist boujadiste rule of humanism syndicalism pax truth enterprise republican league justice alliance equal positive law representative georgism blabbadyblabbadyblabbady blah… and every now and then, a tolerant backward glance from Maurice would cause Johnny to quietly implode. No words were needed, no change of demeanour. ‘That’s interesting,’ Johnny would say seriously, ‘that you should think that,’ his voice strained, a peculiar tightness in the set of his jaw.

*

Rain’s setting in, but I’m cosy here. You know, I was lying when I said I wasn’t scared? Did I? I did. But it’s not true. I’m alone now, but once upon a time it just about killed me. First time they left me alone in the house at night, God knows where they’d gone, no idea. I remember how time changed and I listened to silence, all scrunched up alone in the corner of the settee, biting my nails, hearing footsteps that might have been, far-away laughter that might not have been. Everything flew apart and I dissolved. Shh. Stay still. It was like fainting when I was very small and a door slammed on my thumb, the dent in my thumb, the dent in reality, and my head turning round and round and dropping into a whirling pit, and the fear and surrender, and the space where thought returns. I had to pull myself back, so I jumped up and switched on the radio. It was dark outside, probably only about eight or nine o’clock but it felt like the middle of the night. I heard a song I’d never heard before, ‘Bruton Town’ sung by Davy Graham, about blood and murder and sadness. Its mood was piercing in my loneliness. I can still sit still, let that feeling back in and let it creep.

Here you are, I say. Fear. Stare me down. Here I am all alone in the wood, just walk out of the bushes, put your head in my doorway and look me in the eye. That silly young doctor, first of many, all those years ago so happy to explain: you made it all yourself, in your mind, being very imaginative, blah blah blah—

How terrifying that was!

Far better if he’d said yes, you saw a ghost, it happens. But he made it real and placed it squarely inside me, and if that’s where it arises, there’s nothing you can ever do to get away from it. He meant the Tulpa but he didn’t have the word for it. The Tulpa is all yours, that deep soul fear from the void that sometimes spreads itself like a smooth sea over the hour of the wolf. But it’s got out, broken away, taken form and is