Page 35 of The Mistletoe Bride and Other Haunting Tales

The nights were bad that week, though. My stepfather woke two or three times between midnight and six. A bad conscience, Mrs Sadler said, when I told her. So by the time the next Thursday came around, I was tired to my bones and tempted to go straight home from work. But, telling myself the fresh air would do me good, I set off once more along the path. A mist had come in from the sea and everything was muffled, suspended, though I could hear the suck of the tide and the call of black-headed gulls massing in the harbour. It was cold, proper December weather, and the chill seemed to soak through my woollen hat and mittens.

I’d barely gone a few steps when I noticed the smell again, the same as a fortnight ago, though far stronger. A foul stench of rotting seaweed and mud and rust. As if something in the earth had been turned inside out. I took a few more steps, then heard something moving in the reeds alongside the path. Not a noise quite, more a shifting of the air. Though I told myself not to be silly, the nerves twisted in my stomach.

I walked faster. The sound kept pace with me, a kind of rattling, shimmering, in the rushes to my left, then a loud crack of the reed stems underfoot, as if someone was pushing their way through towards the path. I felt a moment of blind panic, not sure where the sound was really coming from or whether it was just my imagination playing tricks on me.

I forced myself to stop. Stood still, completely still. Now, hearing nothing. The noise had stopped and yet, I knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that someone was close by. I could feel it in the pricking of my skin. Hands clenched inside my mittens, my palms greasy with fear, slowly I turned round. All the way round, 360 degrees, eyes staring into the white fog, but not able to make anything out. I was torn between turning back or going on. I took a few snatched steps more, the rustling in the reed mace again, the stench even stronger now. Looking around me, behind me, panic rising crawling over the surface of my skin. Was someone following me? Was there someone out here on the deserted marshes, just waiting for a girl like me to venture out on her own?

Then, then.

Suddenly, ahead of me on the path, was a figure, come out of nowhere. Indistinct in the mist, blocking my way. My hand flew to my mouth, stifling a scream, then a moment of relief. I gasped. It was her, it was the same woman, dressed just the same as before.

‘You didn’t half give me . . .’ I started to say, then I stopped. There was something not right in her silence and the way she was standing, her head down, hands hanging loose by her side.

‘You gave . . .’

Then, all at once, I realised why she looked familiar. She was the spit of the girl who’d gone missing fifteen years ago. They’d run her photograph on the front page of the Observer for weeks. And, more to the point, she was wearing the same WAAF uniform – blue jacket, shirt and tie, pleated skirt, cap. Women’s Auxiliary Air Force girls, they’d been billeted all over the village during the war.

I couldn’t help myself. My eyes slipped down to her hands. I saw her gloves were torn, fragments of pale material, all in tatters at the cuffs. A matching scarf around her neck, pale pink with a red lining, coming unravelled too. No, not gloves.

Not gloves, but skin. Torn, tattered skin.

A wave of nausea rose in my throat, threatening to choke me. It wasn’t possible. I took another step back, another, then turned and started to run. Stumbling, slipping, struggling to keep on my feet, running back along the path. I could feel her dead eyes on my back, felt the stench of seaweed and rotten eggs all around me, a palpable living thing, catching in my nose and my mouth. My legs moved faster, running through the reed mace, trying to outrun whatever was behind me.

Salt Mill House loomed suddenly up out of the mist. Was I safe? For a fleeting instant, I considered banging on the door and asking for help. But, then, what would I say? That I’d seen a girl on the path and got the wind up? And the foul smell hung about me, on my clothes, my hair, seeping through my skin, and I couldn’t stop. Didn’t dare stop.

I was out on the mudflats now, treacherous in the dusk. My boots sank lower at each step. The mud was like clawing hands around my ankles, trying to drag me down. Out here, pockets of swamp lay concealed amongst the reeds, sinking mud and false land where a person could be pulled down into the estuary. Flecks of grass, of seaweed, of sludge splattered up onto the back of my legs and skirt and hem of my coat. My throat was sore from running, burning like a slug of whisky in a child’s mouth, but panic kept me going, deeper into the marsh. On across the eel grass, where the savannah sparrows nested, over the samphire, faded at the tail of the year, past the creek, until finally Mill Lane was in sight and the solid, familiar outline of the library. My refuge then, a refuge now.

I stopped running, put my hand against the familiar bricks, to catch my breath. At last, I turned and looked behind me. Nothing was there, no one. I realised the smell had gone and the mist, too, was beginning to lift.

I don’t know how long I stood there, only that already embarrassment was replacing fear. How easily I’d let my imagination get the better of me. I’d been hoping to run into her, then, when I did, I turned tail like a rabbit. The girl herself, whoever she was, what must she think? She’d think I was off my rocker. So what if she was dressed in rather old-fashioned clothes? And as for the marks on her wrists, just a trick of the light in the fading afternoon. She’d hardly have been walking around otherwise, would she?

I hesitated a moment outside. I was late home already and I looked a sketch. Salt water splashed up the back of my raincoat, my gloves stiff with mud. Mrs Sadler would be sure to pass comment, she was the type who didn’t let anything go. But there was something I had to do, read, before I went home. I wouldn’t rest else. Mrs Sadler would have to wait.

I ran up the steps and into the library. To my relief, Albert was still on the front desk, his glasses perched on the tip of his red nose. Saying I’d forgotten something, and he wasn’t to worry, I headed through the stacks to the archive room at the back of the building, where back issues of local and parish newspapers were kept. Floor-to-ceiling hanging files and oversize drawers, nothing had been put onto film yet. In the middle there was a large central desk with drawers, large enough to accommodate ten people working at any one time. I scanned the years, months, weeks, until I found the box I wanted:

My heart going nineteen to the dozen, I flicked through until I found the edition I was after. Saw what I didn’t want to see. I stared at the black and white photograph in the newspaper, looking into the eyes of the murdered girl. Her hair curled out beneath the cap, the belted jacket and pleated skirt, shirt and tie. I caught my breath. And beneath, the description of the murder: her throat cut and marks on wrists suggesting she’d been kept captive for a while before her body was found in Cornmill House.

I slumped down on the chair, the photograph bringing it all back. The whispers, the pointed fingers, the speculation. Remembering when the police had gone, hearing Mum and my stepfather arguing in whispers, so the neighbours wouldn’t hear through the walls. She took Harry’s side, of course. Tried to defend him. Said they were talking to every man over sixteen, nothing sinister about it. Bound to be one of the soldiers billeted at Oakwood or Goodwood. Besides, what respectable girl would go on her own, to a place like that? Asking for trouble.

I put the newspaper back in the box and the box back in the stacks, then turned off the light. I waved to Bert on the way out and held up my bag, proof that I’d found what I was looking for, then I went out into the fading afternoon. Cold, dark, ice underfoot. Proper December weather. Back up Mill Lane, over the road to the row of terraced cottages where we lived. The back door was unlocked. I took off my boots and hung my coat, inside out, on the back of the door, before calling out.

‘It’s only me,’ I said, going through to the hall. ‘Sorry I’m late. I got held up.’

Mrs Sadler was dressed for outside, hat and gloves on, hands folded in front of her. She glanced pointedly at the clock on the window sill by the sink.

‘How’s he been?’

‘Same as usual,’ she said in a tight, clipped voice.

‘Has he had his tea?’

‘At four. He’s asleep now.’ Her voice was begrudging, hard done by. ‘He’s been agitated all afternoon, mind you. Talking about some girl. Your brother Harry, too, though it’s hard to know what he’s saying. The language.’

‘I’m sorry if he’s offended you, Mrs Sadler,’ I said, more sharply than I intended. ‘Thanks for staying on. I’ll see you Monday, as usual?’

A sly look crossed her broad face. ‘I don’t know. Mr Sadler doesn’t like me coming here, you know. He’s not one for talk.’

I was tempted to say, no I didn’t know, to make her come out with it. Admit that she’d heard the rumours about my stepfather, about our family. At least then I could say something in our defence. But I was more shaken up than I cared to admit and, besides, who else would come in and sit with him? So I just suggested we should perhaps come to a new financial arrangement, to compensate for any inconvenience. I got a note out and put it on the table. Would that help matters indoors? I could see her thinking about it, totting up the extra few bob. She held out a moment longer, then reached and pocketed the ten shillings.