Secrets of Carrick: Ghostheart Read online

  Neven would even cross his arms on the brinkwater and shout at the wiggynagh to Come on Then. He told them straight what he’d do if any slaver tried anything on him. He shouted loud enough to be heard faraway up north where the wiggynagh lived, and by sea-monsters down in the seabed.

  I told him the Blue-men might snatch him and lock him deep away in some rusty cage where we’d never find him. I told him those scaly turnkeys wouldn’t blink at taking him – even if he was only four and not good for anything much. They’d train him up to some sort of usefulness, I told him. Mam and Da said I was right and his boldness faded for an hour but soon he was off again, straight down to the waterline, shouting.

  And now he liked to play at drowning. He liked pretending to be stolen by Blue-men or flayed by merrows. Or pretending to fight the wiggynagh with a stick.

  My Frights were dwindling and my heart settling. I turned from the sea back to the cliff, filled with dismal feelings from my outburst. Cliffend was now the only part of the shore still hidden in the morning fogs.

  At the far end of the Sands the cliff’s sea-caves open onto the stoneway, and the stoneway sweeps around into the razoring spread of the Barnacle Fields, and beyond that is all saltmarsh and frogs and cranes. The stoneway is shattered and mazy and full with rockpools left over from high tide. The best rockpools are right in the middle.

  If you lie down with your face half-a-span from the pool, you can see clear it’s another country. Its folk are only crabs and blossom-animals and seastars, and shrimps with bodies you can see right into, but it’s a proper world.

  The crabs are the bosses of the world and they eat the others dead or living or in-between. The blossom-animals look like flowers blooming in the pools. They look to be planted hard and fast but they don’t have roots. One day they’ll all be stuck to one side of the pool, and the next day they’ll be stuck to the other. If you try to move them, they break and die.

  The rockpools are the busiest places on the shore but if you drop a grain of sand into them, there is an uprush, and everything is gone just like that. The crabs go into the rock. The shrimp and the seastars too. And the blossom-animals pull their petals back inside their tube bodies. You’d never know anything lived there.

  My sea-cave was furthest from the town and harbour. It was furthest from the breakwater, furthest from the fishing ground, furthest from the sibs. The boomers broke harder out there, the spindrift flew sharper. Nobody came that far without a very good reason. The fogs drifted thicker under the cliff face. They clung to the rock face longer. After the midwater rigmarole I went out there to cling too, quiet as sea-fig, with every inside-part hurting and shamed.

  And Shenn Cooley’s bees came.

  I knew they were Mr Cooley’s. Cooley bees are the only ones allowed to graze the duneflowers. He had a shack in the Backdunes and his family got those bee-rights generations ago. Cooley honey tastes somewhat of salt but it’s all the nicer for it. That day his swarm flew close under the black line that runs the grey cliffs true and steady; running right round the island according to Mr Cooley, and he’d know due to him having been everywhere. Under the line the bees went like splinters in the fog, toward the sea-caves.

  I followed the bees.

  Soon I’d be at the sea-cave and everything would be all right. My sea-cave was the only place I wasn’t frighted. Or shamed at being frighted. Or fearful about the Frights. The only place I felt right. The only place I could breathe. Just thinking on it was like a dose of hearts-ease.

  The day looked to be picking up.

  But then I saw that thing break cover from behind Spindlestone Stack and the measure of my Fright when Neven was rolling in the sea dwindled to nothing. After the scaan went into the cliff, my heart was shrunk to a noil. My breath was stopped in my throat and the spit dried out of my mouth. My skin was set hard like a shell. Then it peeled away, leaving me like one of those ghost shrimp. Soft and small.

  And high-to-deadly.

  Mam and Da are not fussed by scaans. Neighbours are neighbours Da says, dead or living, flesh or spirit. In fact, he says the live ones are often more trouble than the dead. Mam says this is the scaan’s home as well as ours and when you think on it, the scaans have the prior claim. But they never said what happens if you see the scaan and the scaan sees you back through its Dead-mists. They never said what happens if its scaan-eyes look right at you. Look right into you like you were skinless.

  And sees you in there.

  Chapter Two

  Stonechamber

  ALL THE SEA CLIFFS had any amount of caves but the ones under Spindlestone Stack were like some fort. You went in and the caves led back and back, through tunnels, twisting to the right and to the other way, some shut in as tombs and others opening out like stone meadows. The threshold cave was hidden by Spindlestone Stack and a hang of creeper, and a few bleachy trees growing out of the rock, salt-beaten straight to wither.

  The Stack was narrow at its bottom from the chopping waters and it had a whorl at the crown, which is why it was called Spindlestone. All the Spindlestone caves were mine.

  Mine and Breesh Dunnal’s.

  After the scaan we stood on the threshold of the cave. Inside, it was like being in a stand of old trees with their stone trunks uprising and their stone boughs meeting high overhead. Outside, the crabs were busy in the rockpools and the gulls were beating the rockweed for scuds and hoppers. Mordecai boomed one last time and then there was only sea-wash and gull-calls.

  Breesh Dunnal put her arm round my shoulder. She’d seen me running with the Frights at my back before, and she never said a hard word. She never did a thing but give me this soft look like Ah, poor You. Then she’d pat my arm or something, then the pat would become a tap and then a push, and then I’d push her back – and I don’t know how, but then we’d be laughing. Rolling in the sand. Howling.

  She was my friend. My only friend; the only one I wanted. The only person who never tried to make me better. Who never tried to make me braver. She just liked me how I was and that was all.

  “I didn’t know if you’d be here,” I said.

  “Where else would I be?” she said.

  Me and Breesh could laugh and talk together and tell everything. We could be happy or sad together; it didn’t matter. When we didn’t agree, there was no spite; it was like not agreeing with yourself in interesting talks inside your own head. All the bits of us fit together and our spats only salted our togetherness. She’d been my best and only friend for years. As far back as I could remember.

  As farback as Dodi Caillet.

  But lately there were things I couldn’t say even to Breesh; there were things I couldn’t tell her. I supposed they were secrets and I felt bad for it. Secrets were for outside. For other people, not for us. I wanted to tell, and then it would be like it used to be.

  With nothing between us.

  Because inside that cave was my hide and my keep. The day only went right when me and Breesh could be there together. Outside I didn’t talk about her or the cave. I wasn’t sure, but I thought my parents wouldn’t like some of the things we did there. Anyway, when I was in the cave, Mam and Da faded somewhat like they were a story I’d heard. Everybody did.

  And Breesh said I mustn’t tell. If I told, we wouldn’t be able to see each other any more. So I didn’t. Not even Shenn Cooley, and with all the years on him, I thought he must have heard all-sorts.

  Breesh wasn’t the sort of person folk understand. First, she was a secret and folks don’t like secrets. They think it must be some insult to them or else something devilish. Second, she was a secret even from me when I was at home. How a person can keep a secret from themselves, I don’t know.

  They just can.

  When I was in the sea-cave, my parents faded in my mind; then when I was at home, the sea-cave was something in the corner of my eye. It was like my mind-eye couldn’t look on it straight, no matter how I strained. Breesh washed to shades and I had no words to tell my parents about shades. When
I thought on what I might say, the words curled up like burning spiders and rolled away. And when I was right on telling, they went squirming away into my brains.

  It was easy to keep the secret from my parents. My parents were always working and when they weren’t they were fretting about working. Or bossing us, or telling stories. They didn’t have time to notice things like secrets.

  So when Mam asked in passing where I’d been, I’d just say Out, like I wasn’t quite sure myself and she’d nod. She’d already have moved on to Coonie or Treen anyway. And when Da asked as I left who I was meeting, I’d just say Nobody and that was almost true.

  Because the only Who Da meant any more was What Lad?

  My parents were fretting about me and the boys, all of a sudden.

  It was disgustful. I didn’t like the town boys anyway. Or the churchy monkhouse boys. You’d think they’d have learned something more useful than all that big-mouthing and brawling but they hadn’t. Lovelypig had more sense than the boys I knew.

  That Dolyn Craig, for instance. He was the scrawniest-looking platterface monk with these huge feet and fists and knees like knots in string. He was a sneak and a bully, but that’s not the worst of it. He was also unexpected with it. You never saw Dolyn Craig coming. He came out of nowhere with those deadeyes that looked right through you – and that was if you were lucky.

  You never wanted to be seen by Dolyn.

  The only time his eyes got any life in them was when he was clouting somebody or thinking on it. He always picked on folk smaller than him, and he liked to follow them a span first. He crept after them and made right sure they knew he was there. That was so they’d got time to think on what was coming – and then sometimes he’d hurt them and sometimes he wouldn’t.

  It’s the waiting that’s the worst.

  Once I saw him following the smallest Killip boy, Illiam. He was only up to Dolyn Craig’s chin but that didn’t stop Dolyn stalking him all last summer. In the end Illiam went out into the back lanes and found Dolyn himself, and just about begged him to do whatever he was going to do.

  He couldn’t stand waiting any more.

  Dolyn commonly went about by himself but early in spring he’d gotten himself a gang, and he was right emboldened by them. He’d come out from the back lanes and marched about town, with them following him like some boss. His gang were mostly monkhouse boys but by the end of spring some of the town lads had joined him too, and they’d all been slouching about Mr Owney’s snug and drinking too much brew late into the hot nights and having to be thrown out.

  Dolyn big-mouthed to his gang about the monkhouse Devil and how He got into folk, or infested them with demons and turned them moony. He went on and on about that Devil and its love of infestation. His gang took every one of Dolyn’s words as gold and they went looking for anybody they thought infested, and then they hunted those folk like a pack on a hare.

  Their pet pastime though, was to hold badmouth contests. They chose sides and outdid each other with ugly words and insults. Dolyn was the first in this; the town boys doted on the foreign monkhouse curses he taught them on the sly. They learned plenty.

  “Witch!” a boy would shout at some crookbacked old woman just going home to her dinner.

  “Lamia,” Dolyn would bawl.

  That was the monkhouse word for a witch and his gang would pick it up.

  “Lamia. Lamia.” Their voices would boom after her, like the bells, all the way through town and to her own threshold.

  “Abi dierecte,” some boy on the other side would shout after her, for good measure.

  At last one of Dolyn’s gang would start the chant they liked best.

  “Germana inluvies. Germana inluvies.”

  And they’d chant it like at the hurly.

  I didn’t know what it meant but you could tell it was ugly all right. You only had to watch Dolyn’s face when his gang started up with that chant. He’d sit quiet, right in the middle and look like he’d won something.

  But that Dolyn Craig couldn’t stay fast even with a mob of hardmen. One day he was gone from Mr Owney’s, gone from Shipton-Cross and the Seaway. And after he came back not one of his gang would talk to him.

  Now they turned their badmouths on him, giving him all the ugly words he’d given other people and some new ones too. They called him demon. They called him filthy and bloodwitch. They told him to go back where he came from. And they hunted him down wherever he went. So now he was back, haunting the lanes by himself.

  I’d seen him.

  Because me and Dolyn Craig had haunted the same lanes for years. The back lanes are the only way to get about town unseen. I took them to sidestep the earwigging and the questions. He took them to stalk his quarry and nowadays to sidestep his old gang. He was always so set on his hunt he never saw me watching. He never saw me watching him and Illiam Killip.

  I saw him put Illiam Killip in Mr Shambles’s bone-bin and threaten to make a soup out of him. I saw him rub the maggots into his hair. I heard Illiam beg Dolyn to stop and cry for his mother.

  I should have helped. But I thought Mr Shambles would come, and then I thought somebody else would hear. And I didn’t want folk to see me.

  Specially not Dolyn Craig.

  If I stepped out into the lane, he’d only turn all that broutishness on me. And by then I’d learned to go about unseen. I’d learned how to be with people and at the same time, not be with them.

  I learned it from managing my Frights.

  When they were on me I had to quiet my breath and slow my mind. I didn’t talk. I didn’t move. I didn’t meet anybody’s eyes. I slipped to the side. I slipped to the back. After a while I might as well have been gone entirely. Nobody saw me any more. I was invisible. I knew because folk talked about me like I wasn’t there.

  Not Breesh Dunnal though. She could see me and hear me. She could stop me trembling when I couldn’t stop myself. It had always been comforting.

  Today in the sea-cave though, it gave me the irrits.

  “What are you doing?” I asked, somewhat sharp.

  “Don’t be gormless,” she said, giving me a bit of a shove. “I’m waiting for you.”

  She dragged me into the threshold cave. She lay in the downy sand and squinted through a low crack in the rock wall. I lay beside her and the humours between us settled. Lovelypig lay next to me and sighed.

  She didn’t approve of all the lying about and talking me and Breesh did. Mostly she pretended Breesh wasn’t even there, which I put down to her being jealous.

  “Ssssh,” said Breesh, pointing.

  She gazed into the stonechamber like it was full with stars.

  I knew what she was looking on that made her so beamy. Inside the hard rock a soft glow swelled. The stonechamber opened onto a shallow shining sea. And at the back of the stonechamber, right in the inside-parts of the cave and still leading upward to higher ground, went the old Otherway; the narrow and light-specked path the Others used in the old times. Breesh loved that path and I wasn’t frighted of such things when I was with her.

  She didn’t need to be braved to do anything.

  Breesh said the Others used to troop up-and-down that path inside the mountain. Every spring they came, glowing and fiddling. They played tunes that quickened their feet, or stopped for a brew and a slow tune and left behind music that still lived in the stone for those who have the ears to hear. The Otherway was hidden away from the chapel-priests who were right particular about their angels and devils. The Others came and went in secret and that’s how they liked it, Breesh said.

  Nobody saw them come and nobody saw them go.

  Nowadays the Otherway was closed tight. Rockfast in the stonechamber. I was glad; it stirred something inside me. It wasn’t Frights, but it was something very like.

  I lay close to Breesh and we looked in.

  At low-water herds of tiny snails grazed the bright green wort-plots on the edge of the little sea. Seastars crept about the roof and red and orange lace draped
itself over the walls. It was right lovely in there. Like a palace in a story.

  “See?” breathed Breesh.

  “Yes,” I said.

  We lay flat as dabs and looked in on the little country in the rock. Lovelypig snored.

  “What’s happened?” asked Breesh of a sudden, sitting up.

  “Nothing,” I said.

  “What?” she said.

  “Nothing,” I told her.

  “Everything’s nothing with you today,” she said.

  I stood and went to the threshold of the cave. All was sunlit out on the stoneway now and the rockpools were like so many looking glasses. The sea was returning; it was still far out in the bay but I could hear its swash and fuss. When it poured back, the cave would fill to the brim. Big fish would swim in-and-out. The blossom-animals would unfold themselves and the barnacles unlock. The cave would be open to the sea again, to whatever came in on the waters. At high-water the cave wasn’t ours any more. It wasn’t anybody’s. At high-water it belonged to the sea.

  Breesh took my hands again, firmly, and dragged me back into the deeps of the sea-cave.

  “Come on,” she said.

  “I don’t feel like it today,” I told her.

  We were already up into First Cave. I pulled against her. This bad feeling about what we did here was one of the things I couldn’t tell her.

  “I don’t want to,” I told her straight, stopping dead still.

  But Breesh Dunnal dragged me so hard I fell up onto the scaaney ledge.

  “That’s when you need to most,” she said.

  Chapter Three

  First Scaaney: Come

  THE SCAANEY POOL WAS at the back of First Cave. You stepped up off the soft sands and onto a low ledge – and there it was. It was the biggest rockpool in the cave and rubbed smooth as a bowl. There were any amount of those smooth stone-bowls up there but the scaaney was marked out by a line of red hands around its sides.