FORTY-SIX

When the green van was long gone, Catherine rose from where she had been slumped upon the floor. She walked past her body upon the bed and drifted down the stairs of the Red House.

In the hall Tara still leant against the wall, but had found her feet again and gingerly prodded one dirty bare foot about. Within the housekeeper’s dress her body trembled. If Catherine were to undress her old nemesis, and check her flesh, she knew she would find a long scar.

The new housekeeper’s hands were raised, but performed no meaningful function. At least she had fallen silent. Not from acceptance, but perhaps from what preceded acceptance.

Tara flinched when she became aware of Catherine’s silent presence moving down the stairs.

When she reached the hallway, Catherine had no curiosity left about what would happen next, but inexplicably in her shock, knew the worst was over. But she did wonder again, in a vague and emotionless way, about what would happen if she were to lie down upon the bed with her old self. She knew it wasn’t allowed yet, and that it would be a struggle for her to get off that bed again. But when she did, at least there was a wheelchair and someone in the house to push it.

There was work to be done upon the specimen upstairs. When she looked at Tara, and when she thought of Maude and Edith and the old keeper of flies that was M. H. Mason, and Violet Mason in her case, and the population of Magbar Wood, she understood this. And she knew bitterly that the things she had seen in the attic, and the one slumped upon that bed upstairs, had been left as a form of explanation that no words could ever suffice to explain.

And Catherine wasn’t to remain here for long. Not in the building as it was here, but as it was in another place. In other places and in other forms that she had already seen. Now she had stopped screaming and sobbing and banging her hands against the damp wooden planks, the knowledge came to her as naturally as anything she could ever remember. Because the old house was telling her things now and she needed to listen. And when the awareness had dawned and broken through shock and resistance and fear and regret, and the daze that all of those things had reduced her to, she had risen and come down the stairs.

Perhaps Tara was to for ever remain as a hobbled ruin in the great house, as her mother had existed here, in whatever state the great house chose to show itself. Maybe Tara was here now to serve a new mistress, until the time came when the housekeeper would also be opened and emptied into the grass outside, and put inside the sack by the man in the mask. As Tara’s predecessor had been, as Catherine’s natural mother had just been, right before her eyes. One day perhaps this housekeeper would have her suffering relieved too. It seemed to be the way of things. She didn’t know, but she knew something would tell her soon.

The sound of the back door opening, and the sudden warmth and brightness of the light that spilled through, made Catherine and her unseeing companion turn towards the rear of the house. One woman turned towards the sound, the other turned to see the light that reached through and reddened the timbers and burnished the polished floors.

And outside, from the beautiful garden, came the sound of voices. The voices of many children, high and chaotic with the joy of play, circling like a flock of excited birds.

This place of decay began to fall away in the swift tide of transforming light, that rushed through to alter every brick within the brightness of a world older than the one she was about to leave, for ever.

Against the silhouette of the distant doorframe, as if a new sun of a new world was beaming onto the rear of the Red House, other figures moved and threw their small shadows onto the increasingly visible walls inside the building. Bright-blooded walls that soon reached the hall as it too was filled with a glorious light. A light she remembered from childhood, a light of comfort and confirmation and of safety and love that vanished whenever she’d awoken from a trance.

The visitors all seemed eager to get past Alice, and the three little girls beside her, who walked so slowly and in such an ungainly fashion. Because those others that entered the Red House behind the lame girls were keen to greet the mistress they had chosen and the servant they had provided.

And so together, the troupe of little tatty figures came inside from the divine garden to be with her. And to stay with her for some time to come.

Catherine knelt on the floor and opened her arms.