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,