Baba Lenka Read online

  Mum and Dad were due to come for the big day, and a fizz of anticipation built up inside. At four in the morning, I lay wide awake listening to the sleet spatter against the windowpane, wondering if Father Christmas had filled the old darned sock at the bottom of my bed, if there would be chocolates that day, and, most of all, if Mum and Dad would take me home with them. The ordeal was nearly over.

  Later on that morning, while the Greenway Moor brass band played ‘Silent Night’ and ‘O Come, All Ye Faithful’ on the gramophone, Grandma Hart asked me to help with dinner preparations in the scullery. Grandad had opened a bottle of sherry in the front room and was tapping the chair arm in time to the music. The more he drank, the harder he beat time.

  We set to peeling and chopping, chatting, rinsing and stirring.

  I was beginning to think about packing, and if Dad had painted my bedroom purple yet, when Grandad started shouting. Neither of us paid much attention. He seemed to be ranting to himself, but Grandma Hart had tensed up, chopping and peeling faster now, the conversation dying on her lips.

  “Bloody bastards! Did you hear me? I said bloody bastards!”

  I took in a bowl of crisps and set it down next to his glass. As I did so, he looked up and glared. Did he want something else? I didn’t know what to do. His eyes were bloodshot, and the lower part of his face had set to grim.

  “If it weren’t for our lads, Eva, they’d ’ave marched all over us. You kids don’t know you’re born!”

  He poured out another glass of sherry, slopping it over the rim.

  From the scullery, which was full of steam, Grandma’s voice warbled over the top of ‘Hark! The Herald Angels Sing’.

  “Me dad were just a lad, seventeen when he went to t’ trenches. Most of ’em lied about their age – thought they were going to fight for king and country and back ’ome in no time. Bloody tragic it were, and all because them at t’ top decided it were a good idea to wade in. Millions were killed in them trenches, just kids, sent to their deaths like they were nothing—”

  I slipped up. “That was the First World War. Weren’t you in the Second?”

  Half a bottle of sherry he may have had, but he was quick on the draw. “And what do you know about it? Were you there?”

  “No, of course not—”

  “Well, shut the bleedin’ ’ell up, then!”

  He stared me down, red-veined eyes burning a hole in the side of my face. I had the feeling, as Lenka had done with Uncle Guido, that he saw something in me he didn’t like.

  Fortunately, Gran came to the rescue. “Eva, love?”

  “Yes?”

  “Set the table in the parlour, will you? I’m almost ready.”

  I shot back to the scullery, rooting in the cutlery drawer. “Mum and Dad aren’t here yet, though.”

  She gave me a tiny pat on the shoulder. “No, love. They’re not coming. Just set it for three.”

  It was a bullet to the gut. “What? Why not? Why?”

  “Don’t take on, love. We had a telephone call last night to say they couldn’t come. So we’ll just have to make the best of it, eh? Now be a good girl and set the table.”

  The effort it took not to burst into tears was immense, Christmas dinner interminable. Every time I caught her eye, she shook her head and turned away – pandering to Grandad Hart, trying to make him laugh, to cajole and divert him in order to avoid an explosion of rage.

  So it was not until he’d lolled into a snoring stupor by the fire that the truth came out.

  We were washing up. Would they be coming over tomorrow, I wanted to know? Why not? Was I still going home after Christmas? When could I see my mother?

  “It’s like this, Eva, love. Your mum and dad have gone what’s called bankrupt. The house has got to be taken back by the bank, and your mum’s not well. They’ve got to go into a Bed and Breakfast, you know – a lodging house – but your mum’s got a bad chest, a nasty bit of flu, so it’s best you stay with us a while longer.”

  I blinked back the tears. “How much longer?”

  “Don’t make a fuss, Eva, and for goodness’ sake, keep your voice down. Don’t wake ’im up. They’ll get themselves sorted, you’ll see. It’d help, mind, if your mother pulled her weight – our Pete’s ’aving to work night and day.”

  “Can I see her?”

  “Not just yet. When she’s better, p’rhaps.”

  “What about Sooty? Is Sooty all right?”

  No one told me what had really happened, though. That didn’t come out for years. The truth was covered up, further questions went unanswered, and in the end I stopped asking. Maybe that’s why Lenka’s story became so important over the years, and why it was such a blow when the dreams stopped and she too, it seemed, had cut all ties.

  When I woke up on my sixteenth birthday, my first thought was to wonder why there had been another dreamless night. My second was that I could now leave if I wanted! Why not, except there was nowhere to run to? Besides, it was sunny and there was a party to look forward to. Being sixteen, I honestly thought it would be a brilliant day and even held out hope that the whole nightmare had ended. Looking back, there was a nagging feeling that something cataclysmic was brewing…but maybe that was because of what happened to Lenka when she turned sixteen? It didn’t have to be that way for me though, did it? I shoved it to the back of my mind, anyway.

  Nicky’s mum had organised a huge celebration, and most of the street was invited on that heady blue-sky day in May. Even Eldersgate looked pretty with cherry blossom in full bloom and green grass dotted with daisies instead of litter-strewn mud. People had hung up baskets of geraniums, and the ever-present smell of petrol and soot was now laced with the early fragrance of lilac and honeysuckle. I wore a pair of navy culottes and a white halter-neck top. Nicky had a red halter dress. I’d have killed for something like that, but Grandma Hart had taken me to C&A and bought ‘something serviceable’.

  Mrs Dixon went to a lot of trouble. There were sandwiches and sausage rolls and birthday cake, all set out on a trestle table in the backyard, and after everyone sang, ‘Happy Birthday’, we played games and danced. ‘Everybody Dance’ was Nicky’s favourite. ‘Night Fever’ by the Bee Gees was mine. She had better taste, but the thing that united us more than anything was dancing. We danced ourselves into a trance until the velvet of dusk descended and a few of the neighbours shouted, “Turn that bloody racket off, it’s fucking ten o’clock!”

  It was a good day, though. The best. I’ll never forget it. Some things you just hold on to, don’t you?

  Because exactly as Lenka’s world had eclipsed the day she turned sixteen, mine did, too. Although it happened somewhat differently, the outcome was pretty much the same.

  I was walking home, still smiling because Mark Curry had come to the party and he’d looked at me. A lot. He’d worn brown baggy trousers with big pockets stitched onto the sides, and a denim jacket. His hair was black and straight, his grin mischievous, which was to be expected – I’d experimented a little, popping thoughts into people’s heads, and the images I’d popped into his would definitely make him smirk. We had a slow dance to Yvonne Elliman’s ‘If I Can’t Have You’, and he held me. It felt so nice, his hands circling my waist like that, kind of warm and safe…but when the dance finished, neither of us knew what to do, and his mates were jeering. So he sauntered off and lit a cigarette and stood there staring at me until the sun went down, and Mrs Dixon told all the boys to scoot off home.

  He liked me, though, I know he did. Those feelings were so new, so raw, and I recalled how Lenka had yearned for Oskar – how her heart had snagged at the sight of his eyelashes glittering with water droplets.

  I was in such a dreamy state as I ambled home, sighing at the sight of the terrace in the shadows by the pit wheel. Did I really have to go back inside, into the shadows again? Just then, a familiar Elvis Presley song played inside my head, an earworm, as loudly as if it were on Nicky’s mum’s record player.

  I stopped dead.


  Everyone knew the song. But until that moment it had never registered that it was the same one Lenka heard in the farmhouse kitchen the day she’d returned from Mooswald. She’d been drinking a glass of water, upset and angry, when the voice of a child had sung the old folk song so clearly she’d thought her in the same room.

  Elvis’s beautiful melodic voice sang:

  Treat me nice,

  Treat me good,

  Treat me like you really should…

  He stopped. There was a lull.

  Replaced now by a deep, distorted demonic one, as if the turntable speed had slowed to 78 rpm instead of 33.

  Muss i’ denn,

  Muss i’ denn,

  Zum Städtele hinaus,

  Städtele hinaus,

  Und du, mein Schatz, bleibst hier.

  Stunned, and a little drunk from cider, I stumbled against the garden wall. The sound of children’s tinkling laughter was all around, echoing from every direction.

  The fun and games were over, weren’t they? There had been no Oskar for Lenka. And there would be no Mark for me. The deserted street darkened rapidly, and despite the balmy evening, an icy wind blew against my face. To think I’d believed the nightmare could be over…

  Oh God, what was coming? That was all I could think…what the hell was coming?

  ***

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  The previously ethereal dusk turned thickly brooding. Menace hung in the air. Shadows now followed me, standing when I stood, walking when I walked, looming over the hollow click of my footsteps like a giant winged bird. This wasn’t coming from Lenka anymore, was it? The moment she was initiated into the Order she crossed over to the dark side, and the demonic took hold. The memories transferred to me had been exactly that – memories from before that time, which meant this was now the same direct channel of darkness she had fought against. And a very real terror gripped my heart. What had possessed her wished to possess me – it was my turn.

  There was nowhere to run. I really was alone with this – abandoned by both parents, trapped with Earl Hart and his drunken rages on a poor housing estate where most people were struggling just to get by. What was I supposed to do? Would someone show themselves as they had to Lenka? Was there a person waiting to take me to the next level? Where was my instructor? The tears were blinding, even as shivers of fear crawled up and down my back.

  If only I could talk to my mother. Where was she? Since that desolate Christmas eight years ago, all attempts to find her had drawn a blank. She was poorly and not of sound mind, the place she was kept in not suitable for a child. When she came out, I could see her then and not before. Yet years had passed. Stranger still was Dad’s behaviour. His visits, always brief, had quickly dwindled to rare. First he said he was working away somewhere, then, shockingly, that he was considering remarrying. I sat in a daze when he said that, speechless while he patted me on the back of my head and said I could go and stay with them sometime, with this woman I had never met and her three children. I could tell he didn’t really want me to do that, though. When he looked at me, he saw my mother, was reminded of the issues I’d had as a child and the ones he must have had with my mum. A mad wife and a mad daughter. He wanted to step away from all that, you could see. There were deep lines around his eyes, and his sandy hair had turned peppery, his zest for life all fizzed out.

  Oh, he came over on birthdays, and of course he’d visited that morning and left a present – a small green plastic radio that was undoubtedly the cheapest in Dixons. It didn’t even pick up Radio One properly, let alone Radio Luxembourg for the charts. So I couldn’t go to Dad with this. Not in a million Sundays, as Grandma Hart would say. He had another family now.

  I walked down the gennel to the backyard and let myself into the scullery, feeling oddly watched. Grandad Hart’s snores were reverberating through the walls, and the double bed upstairs creaked and groaned with their combined weight. A mixture of odours lingered in the stale air of yesteryear – soot, oxtail soup and Vim. All was as it usually was, yet something undefinable had changed, as if the long shadows from the street had accompanied me indoors. After a brief wash at the sink, I brushed my teeth and used the toilet at the back, then tiptoed across the linoleum and upstairs.

  Everything looked grainy like a television with a poor reception, my ears crackled with static, and the moon seemed unnaturally bright. Fleeting movements caught on the edge of my vision, only to dissipate when I swung around. By then the sense that someone was standing right next to me, fusing into my skin, was prickling all over.

  And now it was nighttime, everyone asleep, the bedroom door shut, just as it had been all those years ago. No Lenka to pick up the story of her daily life. Nothing but this direct channel of evil. And this time, there would be no parents to race up the stairs, no doctor and no priest.

  In the front bedroom my grandparents would long since have removed their dentures and put them in a jar by the side of the bed. In deep slumber they rumbled through the night, oblivious to anything other than the turn of each day and the grinding of the mundane wheel. How I longed to be a Mundane. How blissful that must be.

  Lying back on the single bed, with the curtains wide open, I racked my brain for the lessons Sophia had taught Lenka – the ones for keeping the legion of demonic servants at bay while she’d learned and prepared for the main role to come. It was all about mastery, about building a fortress of steel around the mind, a strong barrier to prevent total possession. All those in the Order used this technique, as Lenka had discovered when she’d tried to read their minds. Because all of them knew those demons were real, and it terrified them.

  From inside my pillowcase I pulled out the poppet and clutched it. This was our talisman, our identity, all of us – from Baroness Jelinski to Baba Olga to Lenka to me.

  Muss i’ denn,

  Muss i’ denn,

  Zum Städtele hinaus,

  Städtele hinaus,

  Und du, mein Schatz, bleibst hier…

  The song echoed around the dark bowl of my head, repeating and repeating, the jaunty yet lamenting tune heralding a loss? Of what? Of the prospect of love? Or of our souls?

  My heart was hammering, eyes boring into the empty space between the end of the bed and the door. Who was here? Would something materialise? If that happened, if eyes flashed from out of empty air, I would die of shock, I would die…

  A low, distorted voice broke into my chain of thoughts, continuing the old German folk song:

  Wenn i’ komm,

  Wenn i’ komm,

  Wenn i’ wieder, wieder komm,

  Wieder, wieder komm…

  “Who are you?” I whispered into the ether. “What do you want?”

  And please don’t answer…please don’t. This is all fantasy, all dreams, not real.

  The silence buzzed, and nothing appeared. Eventually, perhaps from the cider earlier, together with the effort of being vigilant hour upon hour, my eyes began to close. I must have drifted, perhaps only momentarily. If only dawn would come and the light would lift…just to get through the night was all…

  What transpired, therefore, took a little while to register. Already in the first stage of sleep and wanting to sink deeper, at first I dismissed it. But gradually awareness filtered through that a strong breeze was blowing in my face and the air was freezing. On some level my conscious mind accepted this, only surfacing fully when the breeze became a whistling wind that billowed the curtains and rattled the windows. Hunkering down to keep warm, I tried to pull up the covers, only to have them snatched away by an invisible hand.

  Now I woke up!

  By then the bed was shaking, rocking like there was an earthquake. The picture of my parents swung on its hook before clattering to the floor; books wobbled on the shelves and tumbled off. Sitting up in a bolt of panic, I glanced at the clock. It was three in the morning.

  And then I looked up at the man staring down at me. A man dressed in a black suit, wearing a fedora pulled down l
ow over his eyes.

  He smiled, revealing a lower set of jagged, spiky teeth.

  “Hello, Eva.”

  ***

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  When I next woke up, it was to a cacophony of bird chatter and my grandma shouting.

  “What the bloody ’ell are you doin’ on the floor, our Eva? Earl! Eva’s fallen in the night - come an’ ’elp me.”

  Between them, they lumped me onto the bed. Sick was stuck to the carpet and the bedsheets, everywhere, even matted in my hair.

  “Her arms and legs were all crooked. I don’t know what’s up with ’er; she might have had a fit. Pass me that blanket.”

  “Bloody drunk, that’s what,” said Grandad. “Sixteen years old and drunk as a street tart.”

  “Now then, Earl—”

  “Don’t you ‘now then’ me! That Mrs Dixon wants a word ’aving wi’ ’er.”

  They started to row. Gran was wiping my face with a towel and trying to chivvy life back into limbs that were rigid. “Come on, love. Wake up, Eva. You’ve ’ad a fall, love.”

  But Earl’s words and the tone in which they were spoken now filtered through the haze of semi-consciousness. “No…” Struggling to surface, a mumbling croak came out. I tried again. “No, Grandad, it weren’t ’er. Me and Nicky took some cider from a lad, that were all – it were nowt to do with Mrs Dixon.”

  “What the ’ell were she doing letting lads in?”

  “No, she didn’t. It were my fault, not—”

  “Earl, no!”

  The punch in my face was such a shock, it scattered all further thoughts into splinters of light.

  Oh, so you really do see stars…

  “Now get up, get washed and get yourself to school,” he said. “You’re a bloody disgrace.”

  I didn’t go. Made up my mind the second he said it. Instead, I sat at the breakfast table eating toast while he munched through his Full English like a warthog snaffling through garbage.