The Hidden World Read online

  The blankets were heaped one on top of the other, so they were difficult to lift. But in the end she manged to pull back one layer, and then another. She crawled forward, over the clothes, and then she saw what the pale thing was.

  It was a child’s face, with its eyes closed as if it were sleeping, or dead.

  Chairs and Clothes

  She jumped back in shock, hitting her shoulder against the eaves. But the child was lying there quite serenely, and didn’t stir. It was covered with a navy-blue winter overcoat, with two empty gloves dangling from the sleeves on tapes. Jessica’s mother used to do that when she was little, so that she wouldn’t lose them. She leaned closer, but she couldn’t tell if the child was a boy or a girl.

  She didn’t know what to do. She couldn’t think why Grannie and Grandpa Willy would want to imprison a child up here in the attic – but what would they do to her if she told them that she had found it? She tried to hear if the child was breathing, but the cold-water tank was still filling up, and the gurgling of water drowned out everything. If the child was alive, how did it manage to sleep under all those blankets without suffocating? If it was dead, on the other hand, why wasn’t it rotting? Its skin was sallow but it was absolutely flawless, like an angel.

  Jessica knelt beside the child and hesitantly held out her hand. Should she wake it up? After all, it had been calling for help, hadn’t it? But supposing it was dead?

  Summoning all her courage, she tugged back the blankets a little further. She caught her breath. There was another child, sleeping close by. A girl, no more than four, half buried under another coat.

  Gasping with effort, Jessica dragged all the blankets away, and it was then that she discovered three more children, all with their eyes closed. When she saw the last child, she cried out, ‘Ah!’ in fright, but then she immediately understood what the children were, and she almost laughed with relief. The last child had no coat spread over him, and he was nothing but a face with no body.

  She crawled toward him on her hands and knees. He looked as if he was almost the same age as she was, sixteen and a half. He had a broad forehead and a long narrow nose and he seemed to be very sad. But he was only an empty mask, molded out of wax.

  Jessica lifted the overcoats that appeared to be covering the other children, and they were the same. Five masks, not sleeping, not dead, but simply a poignant memento of five little brothers and sisters who were probably old men and women by now, if any of them were still alive.

  She looked at them. Even now that she knew what they were, they were so realistic that she almost expected them to open their eyes and stare at her.

  ‘Who are you?’ she asked. ‘Who left you up here in the attic?’

  She touched each of them on the forehead, very lightly, almost like a benediction, and then she pulled back the blankets and covered them up again.

  Halfway through the night, the snow stopped and the house fell silent. Jessica couldn’t sleep, even when her bedside clock flicked on to 3:45 A.M. She kept thinking about the children’s faces in the attic, and imagined that she could hear them whispering to each other under their blankets.

  She might have slept for a while; she wasn’t sure. She thought she could hear her mother coming into the room and moving around, picking up her clothes and tidying her dressing-table. You didn’t die, Mommy, after all. Where have you been all this time? I’ve been waiting for you here at Grannie and Grandpa Willy’s and I’ve been waiting so long.

  Her eyes filled with tears. Her mother bent over her, stroked her hair and shushed her. Mommy, I waited and waited for you and you never came. Why did they say you were dead? But her mother kept on stroking her hair and saying, ‘Shush … shush …’ even though Jessica didn’t want to go back to sleep.

  ‘Shush … shush … helpush … shush … helpus … shush … help us, please! Help us!’

  Jessica sat up with a jolt. As she did so, she felt something flurry in her hair, and there was a flicker on the wallpaper next to her, like a flower unfolding in a speeded-up film. She struggled frantically out of bed and stumbled over to the other side of the room. Her sleep-T was clinging to her and her forehead was crowned with perspiration. She stared at the wallpaper, panting, but it didn’t appear to have changed. The same faded pasture roses, the same slender stems. Yet she was certain that she had felt fingers trailing through her hair, and that when she had woken up the wallpaper pattern had hurriedly rearranged itself.

  Cautiously, she returned to her bed and switched on her bedside lamp. The roses on the wallpaper had always put her in mind of children’s faces, and their stems had always looked like little arms and legs. The irises looked like thin, austere nuns, while the blessed thistles were fierce little soldiers. But she had only imagined that she had seen something, hadn’t she, in the same way that she had imagined the man and the black dog in the attic?

  She climbed back beneath the covers, but she kept the light on and she stayed as far away from the wall as she could. She stared at the wallpaper for almost half an hour, but it didn’t move, and nobody touched her hair, and nobody whispered. Just before five o’clock, her eyelids drooped and she fell asleep.

  She was woken at nine the next morning by the sound of vacuum cleaning. She sat up in bed and switched off her bedside light. It was a dazzling sunny day, and the snow on the roof was dripping. She took a long look at the wallpaper. She even reached out and touched it. But it was only wallpaper, with roses and irises and blessed thistles, not children or nuns or soldiers.

  She dressed in a three-quarter-length blue velvet dress with a lacy collar. It made her look very old-fashioned, but she loved dresses like that, especially with big lace-up boots.

  ‘Morning, Lazybones,’ smiled Grannie when she came into the kitchen. ‘What do you want for your breakfast?’

  ‘Just Cheerios, thanks, Grannie.’

  Grace, the cleaner, was polishing the brass rail that ran along the front of the range. ‘How are you, Jessica? Your granny told me all about your accident.’

  ‘I’m OK, thanks, Grace. My head’s still a bit sore, but I can go back to school next week, once they take out the stitches.’

  ‘I had stitches once,’ Epiphany boasted. Epiphany was Grace’s only daughter, thirteen years old. She was sitting at the kitchen table threading plastic beads. Epiphany had strikingly large eyes, which looked even bigger because she wore magnifying spectacles. Her hair was braided into cornrows, and there were big golden hoops in her ears. Today she was wearing a pink Benetton sweatshirt and jeans, and bright red Kickers.

  Jessica sat down beside her. ‘When did you ever have stitches, Piff?’

  ‘I was nine. I was extra good for a whole week and I helped with washing the dishes and making the beds and everything and I never gave my momma no lip, so that I was a perfect angel.’

  ‘So what happened?’

  ‘I thought that if I was a perfect angel I could fly, so I jumped off the carport roof and fell head-first into a wheelbarrow and cut my mouth here, look.’ She pulled down her bottom lip to reveal a faint white scar.

  ‘If you want to be an angel it takes more than just a week of being good,’ said Jessica. ‘You have to be good for your whole entire life.’

  ‘Well, I know that now, don’t I? But let me tell you something – trying to be good for a whole week, that sure felt like my whole entire life.’

  ‘What are you making?’

  ‘These are voodoo bracelets like the ones that women wear in Gabon. They give women power over men and dogs. Well, same thing, really.’

  Grannie came over with a bowl and a jug of cold milk and a packet of Cheerios. ‘You’ll change your mind, child, when you get older.’

  ‘No I won’t, ever. Men think they rule the world but women are ten hundred times smarter. All men care about is baseball, beer and self-gratification.’

  Grace looked at her daughter and then at Grannie, smiled, and gave a little shake of her head. Grace’s father had walked out on the family t
wo and a half years ago, and ever since then Epiphany had been a fanatical little-league feminist. Her doctor had said not to worry: it was only a way of handling her pain.

  Jessica poured out her cereal and began to eat. ‘What are you doing today, Piff?’

  ‘Don’t know … nothing much. Me and some friends might go skating if Millard’s Pond is still frozen over. Or maybe I’ll stay at home and I’ll finish off these magic bracelets.’

  Jessica picked one up. It was made up of ten or eleven strands of red and black beads, all twisted together to make a spiral.

  ‘If you wear that one, your man has to cook your dinner for you.’

  Jessica picked up another, green and yellow. ‘So what does this do?’

  ‘That one’s for making your man wash your feet by licking them.’

  ‘Yuck, I wouldn’t want a man licking my feet!’ She munched cereal for a while and then said, ‘Do you really believe in magic?’

  ‘Of course I do.’

  ‘I mean, do you believe in other lands that people can’t usually see?’

  Epiphany stopped threading beads and frowned at her solemnly. ‘What kind of other lands you talking about?’

  ‘Like – I don’t know, like Fairyland.’

  Epiphany wrinkled up her nose. ‘Fairyland? Are you serious?’

  ‘I don’t exactly mean Fairyland … I mean somewhere different, but really close. Like a whole world, except that we can’t see it, only little bits of it, now and again, especially when we aren’t expecting it. I mean, did you ever see something and it looked like something else?’

  Epiphany thought about that for a moment, and then she nodded. ‘I saw an owl once, a baby owl. It fell off a branch in the back of our yard.’

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘I put a washbowl over it so that the cats wouldn’t get it, and then I told my momma. My momma called the vet, but when he lifted up the washbowl there was nothing underneath it but a dried-up old bath sponge. Same sponge I threw out the bathroom window the summer before.’

  Grace laughed and said, ‘She wasn’t wearing her glasses, that was the trouble.’

  But Jessica looked at Epiphany intently and said, ‘I’m talking about something else. I’m talking about things you see out of the corner of your eye, but when you look at them straight on they’re not there. I’m talking about things you see in the dark, but when you switch the light on they’ve gone back to being chairs or clothes.’

  Epiphany carried on stringing her beads. Jessica watched her, thinking she wasn’t going to answer, but after a while she said, ‘I’ve seen something like that.’

  ‘What was it?’

  ‘There was a shadow on my bedroom wall once. It looked just like a hunched-up man. I knew it couldn’t be a hunched-up man because my mom was downstairs talking to my Aunt Ellie. My bedroom door was open a little ways and it was only the shadow from the plant that stands in the hallway. But I couldn’t stop staring at it and I couldn’t help myself from feeling scared because it still looked like a hunched-up man.’

  ‘Is that all?’

  ‘No,’ said Epiphany, shaking her head so emphatically that the hoops in her ears jingled. ‘I heard my momma coming along the corridor and I thought, Oh no, the hunched-up man is going to get her! But before I could do anything the shadow ran all the way across my bedroom wall and disappeared into the corner. And it wasn’t a plant. It was a hunched-up man, or maybe some kind of a monster.’

  ‘That’s true?’

  ‘Cross my heart and spit in my eye.’

  ‘So where do you think it went?’

  ‘I don’t know. It just slipped into the corner, like – like there was a way through.’

  ‘A way through to where?’

  ‘To where you’re talking about … another world.’

  Grannie had been drying up cups. ‘Are you finished with your breakfast yet, Jessica? Grace needs to scrub the table.’

  Jessica finished up the last of her Cheerios. ‘Piff,’ she whispered. ‘I think there’s something here, in this house. I’ve been hearing voices, people asking me to help them. And seeing things, like the wallpaper moving. And last night I felt somebody stroking my hair.’

  ‘Whooh,’ said Epiphany, rolling her eyes.

  ‘So, what I’m saying is, why don’t you stay this afternoon and we’ll see if we can find out who these people are.’

  ‘I don’t know … we were supposed to go skating.’

  ‘I need a witness, Piff. Otherwise people will think it’s the bump on my head that’s done it.’

  ‘I’m not sure.’

  ‘Well, why don’t we both go skating, and then we’ll both come back here.’

  ‘Are you allowed?’

  ‘Sure I’m allowed.’

  ‘Allowed to do what?’ asked Grannie, taking away her cereal bowl.

  ‘I’m allowed to go skating, aren’t I? I’ll wear my thick woolly hat in case I fall over.’

  ‘You know what Dr Leeming said. Plenty of rest.’

  ‘I’ve had plenty of rest. What I need now is plenty of exercise.’

  ‘All right then. But you be careful. I had a boyfriend who nearly drowned in Millard’s Pond.’

  Under the Ice

  The pond was already crowded when they arrived. It was almost a third of a mile across, frozen white, with crackly frozen reeds all around its edges and snow-laden trees overhanging it on three sides. Twenty or thirty Jeeps and Landcruisers were parked along the roadside, and dozens of people of all ages were spinning, circling and ice-dancing. The afternoon air was so frigid that their voices sounded oddly flat.

  Jessica was wearing a shaggy red woolen hat, a white puffa jacket and red woolen tights. Epiphany wore a yellow jacket so bright that Jessica said it would melt the ice. They had been collected from the house by the mother of one of Epiphany’s best friends, Dianna, in her brand-new Jeep. On the way to the pond, Jessica had sat in the front passenger seat next to Dianna’s mother while Epiphany, Dianna and another friend, Whitney, had giggled in the back.

  Dianna’s mother was very slim and elegant, with a fake-leopardskin coat, long red fingernails and lots of gold rings, and she smelled of Giorgio. ‘That your grandmother?’ she asked as Jessica waved goodbye.

  Jessica nodded. ‘My parents were killed in a car accident. It was a year ago next month.’

  ‘I’m so sorry to hear that. You must miss them dreadfully.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I lost my mother in the summer, you know, and I miss her, too. But do you know something? I feel like she’s never very far away. I don’t know whether you feel the same.’

  ‘Sometimes.’

  ‘I was upstairs in the bedroom yesterday and I was straightening the bed when I felt her lay a hand on my shoulder. I knew it was her. I turned around, and I was almost expecting to see her standing there, but of course she wasn’t.’

  Jessica didn’t answer. They had almost reached the pond, and Dianna’s mother was slowing down. Then, as she was just about to park, Jessica said, ‘Last night, my mother stroked my hair.’

  Dianna’s mother stopped the Jeep and stared at her. ‘You really felt it?’

  Jessica nodded.

  ‘Then it’s true, isn’t it?’ said Dianna’s mother. ‘They’re not very far away, are they? They’re still with us, you know. They’re still so close!’

  They skated close together, the four of them, chattering and laughing. Even though Epiphany and her friends were only thirteen, they accepted Jessica into their circle immediately, as long as she didn’t mind talking about the latest Barbie accessories, and how cool it was to have a cellphone, and which boys in the eighth grade were really dreamy.

  They skated all the way across the pond and under the trees, flashing from sunshine to shadow and back into sunshine. Jessica skated faster and faster, swooping around Epiphany and her friends and then spinning on the points of her skates. On the ice, it didn’t matter if she had a limp, and she had always been a good s
kater. Her father used to take her skating regularly at Rockefeller Center.

  She took hold of Epiphany’s hand and helped her to pick up speed across the pond, and whirled her around like an ice-ballerina. Then she made all of the girls hold hands together, and they skated in a circle, faster and faster, round and round, all the way across the pond, until Epiphany tripped and they all tumbled over on the ice, laughing.

  Jessica knelt on the ice on her hands and knees, gasping for breath. But as she tried to stand up, she thought she glimpsed something under the ice, something pale.

  ‘Jessica! Come on, Jessica!’ called Epiphany. ‘Let’s do it again!’

  But Jessica was staring in growing horror at the blurred, oval shape that she could see beneath the ice. It looked like a face – a face that was wide-eyed with panic.

  ‘Help me.’

  She heard the words as distinctly as if they were being whispered right into her ear, even with all the shouting, laughing and whooping from the other skaters on the pond.

  ‘Help me. It’s coming to get us. It’s going to take us all.’

  Urgently, Jessica scraped away the fine crust of snow on top of the ice to clear a window. She looked down again, and the face was still there, pleading with her. And with a shiver, she recognized who it was. It was the same face that she had discovered in the attic, the boy with the rounded forehead and the long nose.

  She hit the ice with her fist, twice, but all she did was hurt her fingers.

  ‘Help!’ she screamed, awkwardly climbing to her feet. ‘Here! Help! There’s somebody trapped under the ice!’

  At first nobody took any notice. A middle-aged couple glided past her and simply shrugged at each other. But then she skated over to a large brown-bearded man who was teaching two little children to balance on the ice.

  ‘You have to help me! There’s somebody trapped under the ice!’

  ‘What?’ he said. ‘Where?’

  He called his wife over to take care of the children, and then he came skating after her. Jessica took him to the place where she had fallen over and knelt down. ‘He was here! I saw his face! I heard him calling out for help!’