The Shade of Hettie Daynes (19 page)

The councillor swung round, pointed at her. ‘Shut your stupid mouth, woman.’

They stood on the step and watched him roar away.

SEVENTY-SEVEN

‘IS IT MRS
Midgley?’

‘Yes, who’s this?’

‘Rob – Harry’s mate. Listen. Councillor Hopwood’s been here, after the diary. I told him the murdered girl’s family has it. He went ape-shape and drove off. I didn’t give him your name, but Carl might’ve mentioned Harry. I thought I’d better warn you.’

‘Did you mention the
bones
to him, Rob?’

‘Yes I did. I said the family’s seen the diary
and
the skeleton. He nearly passed out.’

‘Think carefully, Rob – did he
say
anything?’

‘Not really. He mumbled something about stuff to do – priorities.’

‘I’m going to hang up, Rob – I think he might have gone to the reservoir.’

‘The res –
why
, Mrs Midgley?’

‘To dispose of the evidence of course. He failed to recover the diary, but without the bones the diary’s just words. I’m off now – bye.’

SEVENTY-EIGHT

CHRISTA RAPPED ON
her son’s door. ‘Harry – are you in bed yet?’ It was ten o’clock.

‘Just going, Mum.’

‘Go downstairs, grab a bin bag, we’re off out.’

‘
What?
’

‘Just
do
it, Harry.’ She hurried to Bethan’s room. ‘Bethan, wake up sweetheart,
listen
.’

‘Whu . . .?’

‘Harry and I are off to the reservoir. We won’t be long. I want you to drop the latch behind us. Don’t leave the house, don’t let anybody in. All right?’

‘Suppose so, but why’re you . . .?’

‘I’ll explain later, love.’

Harry was in the kitchen, ramming a black bag in his pocket. ‘What
is
it, Mum – you finally flipped or what?’

Christa grabbed a jacket, shrugged into it. ‘Hopwood,’ she gasped, ‘after the bones. My poor aunt suffered enough, at the time and since. He’ll not rob her of a decent burial.’ She strode to the foot of the stairs. ‘You coming down, sweetheart?’

Bethan appeared at the top, looking bleary. Christa smiled. ‘Good girl. Lock up straight away, won’t you?’

When Bethan reached the kitchen, they’d gone. She dropped the latch and stood barefoot on the tiles, knuckling her eyes.

Then she padded across to the phone.

SEVENTY-NINE

HE STOOD, SHOES
full of ooze, in the yard of Hopwood Mill. The moon was a smudge in a veil of cloud. The mist made everything look the same. He’d pulled a thick, rotten branch out of the mud. With this he slashed at the mist, turning and turning, half-blind with tears. ‘My name’s Councillor Hopwood,’ he choked. ‘Matters to attend to, get away, get away.’

He’d searched everywhere. Wall bottoms, heaps of broken stones. No bones. When one thing goes wrong everything does – he’d left a powerful torch in the Rover. Now he was hearing voices.

Voices. He crouched in shadow by a bit of wall, breathing hard, staring at haze. It was after ten on a chill November night, who’d come here? Busybodies, that’s who. Folk with nothing better to do, like that scruff with the magazines. He grasped the branch and held his breath.

‘It’s this way, Mum – come on.’

‘
Wait
, Harry, he’ll be here somewhere, don’t get too far ahead.’

‘There’s nobody, Mum, listen – dead quiet.’

Harry reached the first wall and cried out. A figure loomed, shadow out of shadow. He flung up his arms to ward off a blow but the shape barged past him, Neanderthal, brandishing a club, shambling towards his mother.

‘Mum, watch out!’ He ran after the thing but it reached Christa, flung a thick arm round her neck, raised its club.

‘Stop!’ Hopwood bared his teeth at the boy. Harry stopped dead, gazing into the eyes of a madman.

‘L-let her go,’ he cried. ‘The police are on their way.’

The councillor laughed. ‘No they’re not.’ He flexed his arm, constricting the woman’s throat.
She
gagged. ‘Show me where the bones are, or I’ll throttle this slag like the nobody she is.’

‘Yes, OK.’ Harry nodded wildly. ‘They’re here, see – just here, under this pile of stones.’

‘Shift the stones,’ snapped Hopwood. ‘Hurry up.’ He squeezed a dry cough out of Christa. Harry bent, picking up stones, throwing them aside. He cared nothing for the bones, only his mother. The councillor watched closely, his glistening face next to Christa’s frightened one. The cloud veil slipped from the face of the moon and there, suddenly, was the pale glint of bone. With a snarl, Hopwood threw his hostage to the ground and stood over her, the branch raised high against the moon.

‘No –
don’t
!’ croaked Harry. ‘You’ve got the bones – you promised.’

‘Hah!’ Hopwood barked a laugh. ‘I promised nothing. It’s ladies first, then brats.’

He raised the club as high as he possibly could. Mother and son closed their eyes.

EIGHTY

‘EEEEEAAGH!’ HIS MOTHER’S
scream shocked Harry’s eyes open. Blood and splintered bone she’d be. A pinkish pulp, pulsating.

He blinked and gasped, unbelieving. She was whole, propped on an elbow. She hadn’t screamed – her assailant had.

The shade of Hettie Daynes stood over its bones, on nothing. It made no sound and its gaunt features were impassive, yet its fury seemed to crackle on the air, directed at the hulk that grovelled whining in the mud as though impaled on that thin, accusing finger.

‘I’m sorry,’ babbled the councillor. ‘So sorry
for
 . . . everything. Yes that’s it, for
everything
. Stop pointing, don’t look at me like that,
do you know who I am
?’

It seared him, that fury. Dammed for a hundred years in dim green silence, it poured like lava through his shuddering carcass. He wept and wailed and beat his head on the mud while the shade looked on, unmoved.

‘Harry?’ whispered his mother. She was kneeling now, starting to get up. ‘Do you
see
her?’

He nodded. ‘Yes, Mum.’ He couldn’t look away. ‘She’s guarding her bones,’ he murmured, ‘and her baby’s. She always has.’

The spectre did not react to their voices, they might not have been there at all. But Reginald Hopwood heard, and lifted a mud-streaked face. ‘Get her off me,’ he croaked. ‘Please. Make her go.’

‘She isn’t touching you,’ said Harry. ‘She can’t, and she wouldn’t if she could. Get up, she won’t even move.’

As the councillor shifted to obey, Harry noticed that the four of them were no longer alone. The mist had thinned to the point where the shore was visible, and there in a line stood
Stan
Fox, Steve Wood, and his sister in her dressing gown. From the reservoir’s west end, wearing fluorescent jackets, came the policemen Bethan had called. A torch beam swung, skimmed the mud, came to rest on the unhappy councillor.

Hettie Daynes faded and was gone, this time for ever.

EIGHTY-ONE

THEY BURIED HER
bones in a corner of the churchyard, under the bare branches of a shapely beech. The tree had sprung from a nut hidden there by a squirrel in the month of Hettie’s death, though nobody knew that.

Everybody was there. Well –
nearly
everybody. Reginald Hopwood had resigned from the council and had left the village at once. In fairness, it must be pointed out that he was blameless in the matter of Hettie’s death: if we were to be held responsible for the deeds of our ancestors, we would
all
have bloody hands. He was a difficult man to live with though, and
Felicity
had chosen not to go on trying. She and Carl were still at Hopwood House, but they were busy packing and sent flowers to represent them. Oh – and
The Big Issue
man wasn’t there. We don’t shun unwed mums any more, but we have other outcasts and the shame is ours, not theirs.

Steve Wood and Stan Fox published a brilliant piece in the
Echo
about Hettie, her ghost and her murderer, with snapshots by Bethan Midgley. This had the short-term effect of making Bethan and her three friends famous in the village, and the long-term effect of killing off once and for all the expression
daft as Hettie Daynes
.

Time has passed. The diggers and dumpers have finished their work and departed. Swollen by winter rain, streams and rills have refilled Wilton Water to its fringe of reeds. The ruined mill lies underneath its dark surface, but now no ruined spectre stands upon it.

A stone marks the place where Hettie sleeps with her unborn child, cradled in the roots of the beech. On the stone these words appear:

About the Author

Robert Swindells
left school at fifteen and worked as a copyholder on a local newspaper. At seventeen he joined the RAF for three years, two of which he served in Germany. He then worked as a clerk, an engineer and a printer before training and working as a teacher. He is now a full-time writer and lives on the Yorkshire moors.