Prologue #2
Now, Constance dropped to her knees. The ground was wet and uneven here, ruptured with roots and bits of debris the old man must have raked to the side over years of clearing back for vegetables and fruits that were too bitter to entice any child to steal them.
In Constance’s throbbing ears, the filthy chorus had grown louder, threatening.
Her blood ran cold and icy. There was no going back now.
The garden was more overgrown than last time she was here.
She’d better not miss the gap to break away from the thick foliage, otherwise she would hit a dead end and be trapped for sure.
She took a deep breath, pushed further through the hedges, scratching her knees as she crawled, avoiding animal droppings and hoping that none of it clung to her clothes or her shoes.
Once through the undergrowth, Constance crawled quickly along a narrow trail made by all sorts of nocturnal creatures she preferred not to think about.
Evening was drawing in, the smell of woodbine sweet and cloying in the air.
Probably her mother had forgotten about the time.
Ideas did that to her mother. It was not a bad thing when other children were put to bed while the sun still shone brightly and Constance could laze in the garden or flop into a chair with a book and a glass of milk from the cool cupboard beneath the kitchen sink.
Behind her, she heard the boys move closer.
She hesitated, her heart thumping in her chest, suddenly disorientated, she wasn’t sure which way she should go, not without raising her head above the undergrowth.
She started to move quickly. Maybe it didn’t matter so much which way she went, if she could find somewhere to hide until they gave up.
Then she heard it. A noise, a mewling, it was a lonesome whine above the voices of the boys who scrabbled somewhere behind her.
It had to be a cat, hadn’t it? Not some ghostly apparition of old Mr Morrison, giving his onions one last check from the spirit world?
Constance shivered. There are no such things as ghosts .
The nuns at school were adamant about that.
No such thing . That’s what Sister Consietta said.
Although, the nuns were great believers in purgatory even if Sister Consietta wouldn’t be drawn on where that was exactly.
Stop it. Wherever it was, it certainly wasn’t at the end of Mr Morrison’s garden.
Two gardens across, she thought she heard Mr Wren’s car being reversed into the little garage he had built at the back of their house.
She was tempted to call to him for help, but she feared the boys would be upon her in an instant.
Mr Wren was the nicest of all the grown-ups she knew, and Constance couldn’t help wishing that he was her dad.
There it was again: a mewling sound coming from the end of the garden.
Was it coming from the old well? She was so close to it.
The well had been locked up years ago. You’d hardly even know it was there, thanks to the way the garden had outgrown itself over the last year.
It was little more than a hole in the ground with a wooden trapdoor across it.
No-one went near it usually, except if a winter storm flooded the gardens and it had to be pushed across to take the overflow.
The timber cover was crude but effective in keeping out animals and children, until now, it seemed.
The well wasn’t used any more. All the houses along here had been built with indoor lavatories and kitchen sinks linked up to the city’s main water systems. Her mother gave out often enough about the colour of the water some days and the fact that it turned her tea a dreadful shade of grey in summer.
Constance listened carefully, hardly daring to breathe; she tried to tune her ears unswervingly to the cries, above the drumming of her racing heart. It was definitely a kitten. He sounded pathetic. She heard him again; lower this time, a sort of keening sound.
Constance sat there for a moment, part of her afraid to break cover, but the howling felt like a knife twisting up in her guts and smothering out the fear of what she was risking.
She couldn’t leave the poor thing to suffer any longer.
She seemed to be alone in the garden: the boys had not yet broken through the fence.
A deep breath and she pushed through the undergrowth, looking up and down the garden all the while to check that it was safe.
She ploughed on all fours through a sea of overgrown vegetables and weeds that were probably waist-high in places, thistles and briars scratching against her bare arms and legs as she went.
‘It’s okay, I’m coming,’ she whispered under her breath.
The well was little more than a hole in the ground.
At some point, a rough frame had been placed around it, to define it by a matter of inches from the garden Mr Morrison had prized above all else.
Constance wasn’t sure she’d have been so brave had it been anywhere near the house.
The old cover lay loose across the low frame.
Constance crawled to it, slowly and carefully to avoid fox droppings and who knew what else was buried here in the neglected long grass.
In the distance there was a sharp scream.
Lickey Gillespie had been stung by a wasp; she watched him through the thick foliage.
Only a few yards away, but it seemed they had forgotten about her, for now at least. The boys were moving away, towards Mr Morrison’s empty house.
They had spotted a slightly opened sash window which proved more interesting than torturing Constance, a mercy she was grateful for even if she didn’t count on it lasting very long.
The mewling sound again made her push on.
Pushing the cover across was easy. Lying on her belly, gingerly she leaned over the edge. Urgh . Immediately the overpowering smell of putrid water caught her breath, making her retch. Now she wished she had her hanky.
The mewling was loud and echoey here, not the gentle sound that had whispered through the grass moments earlier.
Definitely a kitten . Constance told herself sternly to forget her mother’s warning that this place was filled with rats’ nests.
That had only been to put her off, why would rats choose here when there were far more comfortable places to set up home?
Dotty maintained it went down all the way to hell and if you got too close, there was a chance Satan himself could reach up and pull you in.
Well of course, Constance didn’t believe all that nonsense either.
After all, she had made her confirmation a year ago.
She knew better than anyone that the road to hell wasn’t down some smelly old hole in the ground.
Reverend Mother Mary Ignatius said it was to be found most easily in the big cities, especially in the communist and atheist countries.
You knew it because its road was paved with good intentions, not that Constance had any idea what that sort of road would look like.
She shivered in spite of herself. Perhaps she should wait for Dotty?
A pathetic whimper came from the darkness.
There was only one thing for it. She would have to reach down as far as she could and try to grab it.
The stench was getting worse the longer she was here, far better to move as fast as she could.
Naturally, this was what her mother had complained about for years: the foul-smelling constancy of it just when the days are good enough to open a window.
In winter time, it was like pulling a plug on an overfilling bath.
Summer was a different story. If the days were fine as they had been for weeks on end now, the reek of dirty water would hang on the air and cling to clothes drying on the lines in the gardens all along the road.
That didn’t matter now. All that mattered was— Silence.
The sound of the cat’s mewling had ceased.
Oh God, had she killed it, made some part of the wooden cover splinter down and cut the creature in half?
Constance scrunched her eyes up, afraid to peer over the edge, but she had to, she just had to get her courage up, move closer and peer down into its darkest depths.
She gripped the side of the well tightly, felt the dry slab burn against her skin.
The outer rim was little more than a few rough bricks dug into the earth to save the whole garden from falling in.
She had to force herself to look over the side, fully expecting to see nothing but black and the reflective circles of two pathetic dead eyes staring back at her from the bottom of the well.
‘Meow.’ It was faint, but by some miracle, the kitten was clinging onto a narrow ledge at the side. It was a little way down, but not so far Constance felt she couldn’t reach it if she stretched.
‘Shh, here puss, puss,’ she soothed as she pulled the sleeve of her dress up further, leaned over the side and reached down as far as she could to grab the kitten.
She hoped he wouldn’t scratch her, but she braced herself in case, because regardless of how feral the creature was, she had to grab him and pull the poor sod to safety, it would only take a second, not enough time for him to do any real damage.
Except, she couldn’t reach him, not like this.
His soft ears were just beyond her fingertips.