God, you’re clever! Look what you made! Think about it. I love horror films, I love the bit where she comes out of the telly, where she’s jerking and crawling down the stairs, where the little boy’s sitting under the table. I feel so sorry for the poor ghosts. Something terrible happened to make them like that, and they want to tell you. They want company.
Come, little Tulpa, through the trees.
10
The whine in the engine had gone, but he got a flat a mile from home, and wouldn’t you just know the damn spanner was nowhere to be found. Grumbling, he slammed the door and set off plodding along the lane.
He could tell at once that someone was there because of the way the cats were behaving. That look they got, all eyes. His high-walled garden gave nothing away.
He stood outside the gate and his spine went up like a dog’s. If he could have growled, very low, he would’ve. Standing very still, he gauged the air and listened but he couldn’t hear a thing. Cats were mad, everyone knew cats were mad, saw things that weren’t there.
He lifted the latch silently, crept in.
There was a horrible woman with long rough white hair and an old black coat in the opposite corner. Putting things in her bag. Eating his raspberries. She looked like a witch, and the scare she gave him was a huge affront.
She hadn’t seen him. She was stealing food, mint, sage, a sheaf of big dark green cabbage leaves.
‘What are you doing?’ he roared.
She jumped as if she’d been stung and stared at him. Good. Put the fear in her. She looked weird, her eyes were much too big and she had round high-up cheeks and a sunken mouth.
‘What are you doing?’ he said again, like a stern teacher who’s just caught a kid smoking. She said nothing.
Furious, he moved towards her. ‘What the fuck are you doing in here?’
She tensed, clutching her bag with bony hands and backing towards the gate into the woods, never taking her eyes off him.
‘This is private property,’ he said, shaking with anger. ‘Fuck off right now or I’ll call the police. You’re stealing.’
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, ‘you can have them all back, I’m sorry, I’ll go now,’ pulling all the stuff out of her bag and dropping some, her eyes looking all over the place.
She’s not all there, he thought. ‘Fuck off!’ he said, low down in his throat.
‘Here.’ She thrust an armload of cabbage leaves in his direction.
‘Oh for fuck sake, they’re no use to me now! Take them and fuck off.’
She walked quickly towards the front gate, down the flagstone path past the ragged mint and the compost heap, and he walked behind her with his most aggressive gait. She lifted the latch to let herself out into the lane. But that’s not how she got in, he knew it. She always came the back way. He knew the sound of that particular latch lifting after dark.
‘It was just the outer leaves,’ she said, glancing back. ‘I didn’t think you’d notice. Sorry.’
‘Fuck off!’ he said. ‘Now!’
‘I’m going!’
Gone.
For a moment, shocked, he scowled at the gate, then went after and stood in the lane, but he couldn’t tell which way she’d gone. That was outrageous, that was, just walking in and stealing his produce. What a bloody cheek. ‘I’m going to padlock these gates!’ he shouted, but she was nowhere in the road so she must have gone into the woods. How did she do that? There’s no way in there. Just disappeared. Crept right in through the undergrowth like an animal. Must be living rough. Must be mad lurking about back there in the dark scaring the life out of people.
It was a terrible invasion. Not like kids, kids he was used to.
Look at this gate, he thought, anyone can walk in any time, ridiculous, should have put a padlock on it years ago, and went back in, pulling the gate firmly to, dragging a couple of old planks from the side of the compost heap and shoving them up against it, determining to come back with a padlock. His poor garden. He’d let it go. Now suddenly he was stricken with a deep pride in it and wanted to protect it. And that’s another thing, he thought, returning to the yard, what do you think you’re doing leaving all those good tools just lying about all over the place? He grabbed what he needed and walked back to the car all unsettled. It didn’t take long to change the tyre, and when he got home, he walked round locking everything up, muttering to himself every now and then: ‘Unbelievable! Fucking unbefuckinlievable! What a fucking cheek!’
It was horrible. Everything felt spoiled. He didn’t want to go out and sit on his back steps tonight. He looked for a padlock but couldn’t find one, and that night he couldn’t get easy, kept wandering about the house picking things up and putting them down, things he’d kept from his three years at sea, a seahorse, a Chinese bottle with a painting on, a mechanical goose from Alexandria, reminders of longings and disturbance, yet still, comforting as an old jumper. Oh God, don’t let me get the willies, he thought, turning on the TV and not really watching some daft murder thing. His mind wandered. What if there’s more? A whole colony of mad old witches in the wood, the old kind, mad and wild and dangerous. Her face had had a hard cast. Something stealthy and stary about her. Not natural, living alone out there. Allison Gross who lives in yon tower, the ugliest witch in the north country. Where did that come from? His gran’s old book. Probably still somewhere about. He remembered the picture in the big poetry book, an old line
