J - Echoes Chapter Ten

Chapter Ten

In the morning Susan Marsh rose from bed, shivering at the chill that
had settled over her room during the night. Hugging herself she
wandered over to her writing desk and smiled to herself when she read
her diary. It had been a strange day. James had seemed so reticent at
first, afraid even to kiss her, and when he finally started talking to
her properly, it was about that dream. Still, it had been a long
relationship by her standards and there were plenty of blokes at
university she wouldn't mind snogging.
Perhaps it was time for a bit of fun. James had always been serious.
Perhaps it had been that aspect that had attracted her to him in the
first place, but he'd also had his moments of fun, and had really
helped her with her mother. She called out, expecting her mother's
tired voice to answer her, but instead there was only silence. That was
good. It meant she'd sorted herself out and made it to work that day.
Things were looking up already.
In the bathroom she stepped out of her nightgown and stood under the
shower, her skin glowing as jets of luxuriously warm water washed over
it. She wiped condensation from the mirror and stared at herself for a
moment, pushing the damp hair back from her forehead and smiling. She
was never going to be a supermodel, but she shouldn't have any trouble
finding another bloke.
Downstairs she gulped down a mug of coffee and dialled her gran's
number. She loved talking to her. She was always able to make total
sense of everything, and, most importantly, to make Susan feel better.
James had always seemed a little uncomfortable in her presence, and she
could be unnerving at times. Her wise old eyes bore straight into your
soul and probed your innermost feelings. Susan suspected that James had
some deep-buried feelings that he didn't want probed.
Her grandmother's voice sounded weak and cracked. She got so fed up
with her physical condition sometimes. It must be awful for such a keen
mind to be trapped in such an ailing body."Gran, it's Susan here. I
just phoned for a chat."
"Susan! Just the person I wanted to hear from to cheer me up. Do you
know, I've had that dreadful nurse in here this morning trying to give
me yet more medication. How's your mum?"
Susan, for once, was glad to tell her some good news. "Well, she's not
in which can only mean she's gone to work. It doesn't really mean much
thought, because she'll probably be bad again tomorrow."
"I know," replied Julie Hallett. "I think it's about time I gave her a
good stern talking to again. And James?"
"Not so good," said Susan. "I think we're finished. I feel a bit sad
about it all, because I really liked him once."
"Well, there you go," said the old woman. "You said it. You liked him
once. Which means you don't like him anymore. Now's the time for you to
go back to university and have a good time. I always thought he was a
rather strange chap anyway. Forever drifting off into his own little
world."
"You're right there," said Susan. "Oh, one more thing. He started
going on about a dream he had last night. He got really obsessive and
serious about it. What do you make of these words - 'Walk the tracts of
night, climb the balmy air, tread the way of starlight and failing
that, despair'? They were in his dream. He could remember them
exactly.
Julie giggled like a child seventy years her junior. "Easy. A child
could have written them. It means live by your imagination. Don't let
logic run your life. If you do, you'll come unstuck. I've always taken
a great interest in the strangest notions racing around in my brain.
With the experiences I've had, I'd be a fool not to."
"That's exactly what I thought," replied Susan. "Maybe I'll tell James
that. .Maybe I can still salvage something from this
relationship."
"If that's what you really want," said her grandmother.
Fact and fiction, pondered Susan as she walked to work. She'd always
tried to balance the two, to exist somewhere between some greasy-haired
nerd forever fiddling with his test tubes and someone like James, who
spent most of their time dreaming to themselves. But she'd always been
a dreamer as a child, and the images she used to conjure up remained
imprinted on her mind to this day. When she was about three, her family
lived in a small two-bedroom house backing onto a windswept park. Her
father would take her down there when he got home from work and watch
her careful while she played with the other kids on the swings and the
slide. The grass was always a rich, beautiful green, mown to perfection
by some loving gardener. But beyond the park, civilization stopped. The
ground, as smooth as the surface of a mill-pond, rose up into hillocks
topped with great forests of wild, yellowing weeds that hissed and
sighed when the wind blew strongly.
A rusty barbed-wire fence separated the park from the fields.
Sometimes she's stand in front of it and stare wide-eyed at the
wilderness before her, at the sheds that crouched half-hidden amongst
the thistles and brambles, their roofs holed and rotten, their walls
gaping. Above the soughing of the wind she used to hear loose planks of
wood banging against each other, and hinges creaking mournfully. She
even imagined people lived in them, and they only woke up when the wind
blew up, and started banging about trying to repair the damage left by
years of neglect. Then, when the winds died, they settled down to sleep
again and their homes rotted around them.
Beyond the weeds and the old buildings, the land rolled away into the
bluish, hazy distance, dark clumps of trees and huddles of farm
buildings scattered here and there amongst the overgrown fields. Once,
she'd crossed the fence with a friend when they'd escaped from their
parents. They wanted to explore the huts, to see what the wind-people
looked like, and then to plunge on into the endless yellow fields and
become lost forever.
They hadn't gotten very far. The hut interiors had smelt of mould, and
the floor had crumbled beneath them. Susan's friend, Andrew, had put
his foot clean through an old rooted floorboard, and hundreds of pale,
sickly insects had scattered when the light shone on them for the first
time. Of the wind-people, there had been no trace. Disappointed, they
had carried on for a time, but the sun had begun to sunk below the
horizon they were headed for, and the shadows amongst the straggly
vegetation grew until they were afraid of losing themselves in the
darkness.
Their parents had found them hugging each other and crying in the
shelter of an abandoned barn, and they were relieved to tread on that
comfortingly even grass with the square shapes of their houses darker
against the cloudy eastern sky.
Six years later, Susan had to face the wilderness again. She was
waiting at the end of their little avenue as she always did, hoping to
see the twin lights of her father's car rounding the bend and blinking
merrily at her. The day had been so dark it seemed as if night never
really ended, and the rain pelted down from a wintry, seething sky. Her
mother had pleaded with her not to go outside, but she had been a
stubborn child and, suitably equipped with a huge waterproof anorak and
a thick woollen scarf, she had done so nevertheless.
That day her father never turned up. She waited, shivering in the cold
and the wet until her mother ran out into the street, her face pale and
her eyes trance-like and staring. She'd told Susan the news
straightaway. She'd always been grateful to her for that, at least. He
would never be coming home again. His car had skidded and collided with
a lorry. He'd died instantly.
So once again Susan plunged into the long grass, the unknown, the
future, whatever you wanted to call it. When her father was cruelly
snatched away from her, her childhood went with it. Her mother
collapsed into an alcoholic haze from which she had never really
managed to escape, and Susan was forced to cope on her own. Her friends
drifted away from her, hating the frigid atmosphere of her home and the
way she had suddenly become all serious and mature.
This time, there were no parents around to rescue her from the
wilderness. She had wandered on through the weeds up to that very day,
towards where the horizon burned with evening, where she could become
lost forever.
"Susan?" She stopped, shaken from her reverie. She was nearly half way
to the town centre already. She normally took note of all the familiar
sights as she passed, marking each as a step nearer her destination.
Today she had wandered off into a dream world and the walk had seemed
much quicker than usual. She realised her eyes were misty with tears,
and she dabbed at them with her sleeve. It was Nick, James' best friend
and a guy she'd always seen as a complete pain.
"Are you OK?" he asked. "Has something upset you?"
"I was just thinking about things," she replied. "Nothing new. Did you
have a good time out on the town the other night?"
Nick looked uncertain for a moment, his eyes peering down at the
ground from behind his round spectacles. "Yeah," he said finally. "Our
James got a bit pissed. I...uh...went off with some girl from
Effington. Anna was her name, I think. I woke up yesterday morning and
didn't know where the hell I was." He giggled, embarrassed.
"It's pretty grim round there, isn't it?" Susan paused, aware that
Nick was rubbing his temple painfully. It must have been a hell of a
night for him to be in pain two days later. She didn't feel sorry for
him in the slightest.
"Where?" he asked.
"Effington," replied Susan, running out of patience. "Where this Anna
came from."
"Oh right, yeah," he said. "You should have seen her father, string
vest, beer gut, the works. I got out of there as soon as possible this
morning. Thank God I don't live there."
Susan smiled sadly. "And James? Who did he go off with? He was in a
very strange mood yesterday morning."
"I... I don't think he went off with anyone," replied Nick. "I left him
in the Cross Keys. I..."
Nick was gone. In an instant he had simply vanished, as if blown away
on the wind. Susan whirled round, hoping he'd just beaten an
embarrassed and hasty retreat, but then she noticed the street had
changed as well. The road had narrowed, and it was cracked and pitted,
as if neglected for years. The houses had moved back behind a strip of
dense, shaded garden thick with poplar trees and dark patches of
rhododendron. Its grass was yellow and thin, as if beaten by a
Mediterranean sun, and the houses that Susan barely glimpsed through
the undergrowth seemed huge and elegant, their walls a dirty, greyish
white, paint peeling from their tall window frames.
The silence was total.
Susan shouted. "Hello?", unknowingly echoing James the day before. Her
heart had begun pounding in her chest and her legs felt suddenly
leaden, as if she were weighted to the ground. When she looked down,
she could actually see cracks spreading over the concrete, the tarmac
bulging in places as vegetation struggled to grow up from beneath. The
ground split below one of her feet, and she expected to see blind,
worm-like creatures scrabbling desperately in the soil like on that
strange day long ago. Instead, there were just more weeds, thistles
this time, their spikes glittering as if made of metal.
Then, a gust of wind billowed down the empty street, sending dry
leaves scurrying across the ground, rustling like death rattles. A
woman blinked into existence where Nick had been standing just seconds
before, a silvery-white robe flapping around her like some galleon's
sail. Her dark hair blew back from her forehead and fluttered behind
her, revealing wide, staring eyes of glittering silver. She was smiling
sweetly at Susan, and tendrils of white flame licked her lips as she
did so.
"Hello, Susan," she said. "I'm a wind-person. I know you've wanted to
see someone like me since you were a very little girl. Well, the wind's
blowing, and here I am."
"I'm dreaming, right?" asked Susan, struggling to register that
everything that had happened that morning was a dream; the phone call
to her grandmother, her thoughts as she walked into town, meeting
Nick.
The woman threw back her head and laughed. "That's just what James
said. He told you about me, didn't he?"
Susan looked up to see the moon suddenly prominent in the morning sky,
its features sharp and distinct. "You mean...his dream? The one he told
me about? The poem?"
"Yes. It wasn't really just a dream, and you were very wrong in
mocking him the way you did. You may have lost him forever." Her eyes
blazed white, and then became liquid silver again. Susan could see a
tiny sun gleaming in each of them.
"I'm not sure if I want to keep him anymore. Tell me, what was the
purpose of the poem? Was my grandmother right?"
"Oh yes," replied the woman. "Completely. She's a wise woman. We met
long ago in rather different circumstances. In a way, by letting her go
then, I'm responsible for your existence now."
Susan frowned. "What? I don't understand what you mean? Who are you?
What are you doing in my mind?" She tried to back away, but found her
legs were rooted to the ground. She looked down, and saw thick green
tendrils wrapping themselves around her lower legs.
"Leave him be, Susan. Don't concern yourself with either him or me.
The poem was intended for him only, and i was a little upset when he
shared it with you. I was rather upset with that whole episode in the
park, actually. He has great imaginative powers. They're what attract
me to him. They need to be tapped. Only then can I really exist. Away
from your minds, that is."
"Susan!" She snapped awake. Nick was holding her by the shoulders,
shaking her. "Are you alright?"
She blinked, totally confused, and then ran towards town, fighting
back the tears that were threatening to well up again.
She had to see James. That day.