Sarah England - Baba Lenka - Pure Occult Horror

When I woke up, it was to find both parents sitting on the bed, their faces ashen. By the look of it, they could hardly bear to be in the same room as each other.

There’s been a row.

“You’re going to Grandma Hart’s for a bit, love,” said my mother, thumping pillows into shape. “Here, come on, sit up and drink this tea or it’ll get cold.”

I swallowed a tepid mouthful. “Why?”

“Never mind that now,” my dad said. “It’s just for a few weeks until your mum and I can get the house fixed up. It were stupid to leave that plastic sheeting as it was and you here alone.”

My mother was glaring at him. Yes, they’d had a right old humdinger.

“It’s for the best, Eva,” she said. “It won’t be for long. And maybe you won’t get nightmares there about the house being haunted. It’ll do us all the power of good, you’ll see. Give us a bit of breathing space, bit of a rest.”

“By Christmas we’ll be in better shape,” Dad said in a false chirpy voice. “We’ll have this hole in the wall bricked up, and then with your mum working and you back at school, we can crack on with carpets, maybe even have a new bathroom. What colour wallpaper would you like in your room?”

“Purple.”

My mother’s smile faltered.

Dad grinned. “Purple it is, then.”

“And pink.”

“You’re to be good at Grandma Hart’s, mind,” said Mum. “No going on about dead people in the wardrobes and stuff like that. I don’t want them upset. They’re old, and they’ve been very good about this.”

“I want to stay with you and Dad.”

She sighed. “I know, love, and believe me, this is a last resort, but we’re in a bit of a pickle at the minute. We’ll both have to work all hours, and you’re not well enough to be left on your own. It won’t be for long.”

“We have to have you safe,” Dad said.

It made sense. At that time they really did think they were doing the right thing.

“Oh, and like I told you before,” Mum said, “don’t tell your grandparents you went to Germany, all right? Do not mention Baba Lenka, and do not tell them you went to the funeral. You know how Grandad Hart feels about Germany, and we don’t want him upset. He fought in the War and lost a lot of his friends and family, so it’s very hurtful.”

“His brother,” said Dad. “My Uncle Seth died.”

My mother nodded. “I mean it, Eva. Don’t say a bloody word or there’ll be no Christmas presents, do you hear? It’s extremely important. Promise me!”

“Yes, I promise.”

“Good, right, then. We wouldn’t do this if we weren’t forced to, so I’m going to have to trust you.”

“All right,” I said, watching their anxiety drain away… please don’t make this any harder for us … like water down a plughole. “I’ll go.”

“You won’t have to go back to that school, neither,” Dad assured me, warming to their success. “And me dad’s a great one for ’aving your back. No one will mess with Earl Hart’s granddaughter, believe me.”

“Aye, there’ll be no name-calling, that’s for sure. If anyone calls Earl’s granddaughter a Nazi, he’ll knock them into the middle of next week.”

“He were a boxer, me dad – used to have bare-knuckle fights. He earned a fair bit of money back in the day.”

I looked from one to the other. “And I’m definitely not going back to that school? Definitely? Not ever?”

“No, you’re doing schoolwork at home, where your gran can keep an eye on you. Then you’ll come back here after Christmas and go to the girls’ school at the end of the road. Like we said, it’s not for long, love.”

There was no point arguing. Besides, they were desperate, and it was all my fault. I was the one who’d brought the poppet home and with it the ghost of Baba Lenka. And that ghost was mine to deal with, no matter where I went. Moving me from one place to another was not going to ‘make me better’, I saw that now. So it was best for all concerned if they were left to mend the house and make it safe and get on their feet financially.

But after they left me at my grandparents in Eldersgate, said their goodbyes and drove off, the sense of abandonment was overwhelming.

Gran and Grandad Hart lived on the row of terraces closest to the pit, and, believe me, it looked its grimy worst on that miserable, foggy morning in late November. Earl, my grandad, had worked as a miner all his life until the pit had closed last year. Now he headed up the local union. It was Arthur Scargill this and Arthur Scargill that. Whenever we went to visit, he and Dad would get pretty het up about pit closures and trade union dictates. Either that or it would be the War. Earl had fought in the Second World War and wanted to go over and over it, often with the same stories and always ending with how much he hated the Jerries or the Krauts, as he called them. Odd he didn’t seem to notice my mother was German.

“Mum was one,” I said once.

He turned and fixed me with a cold blue stare. “She were only a lass; she knows nowt about it.”

There was an air of severity in their house. It was dark and narrow with a downstairs bathroom reached by walking through the galley kitchen at the back. Only a frosted glass door separated this bathroom from the corridor, which had a corrugated iron roof and adjoined the coalhouse. Unheated, this was where Grandad Hart had washed when he’d come in through the yard from the mine. You could still see ingrained soot in the paint.

The house was a miasma of brown and green, the staircase as steep as a roof ladder and so narrow my gran’s shoulders touched both walls as she led the way up to my new room. Tears filled my eyes. Everyone else had trendy parents who wore flares and platform boots and drove Capris. Grandad Hart had a bottle-green Škoda and wore a flat cap. The place smelled of soot and boiled vegetables. It was out of another age.

“You’re going to be with us for a bit, Eva, love,” said Grandma Hart. We were gazing out at the colliery through my bedroom window. It was so close you could see the rust on the railings. She was smoking a Senior Service and wore a hairnet with curlers underneath. “It’s just while your mum and dad get back on their feet,” she said, flicking ash out of the open window. “Then when the ’ouse is done up and you’re well enough to go to school, you can go back.”

It was coming into winter, and I’d been off school for nearly a year. Various officials had been here and left textbooks ‘to be getting on with’, but it was expected I’d go to the all-girls’ school in Leeds after Christmas. The one with the lovely navy uniforms.

“You’re to get on with your reading and sums, love. Now, if there’s nowt else you need, I’ll get tea on. You can put your clothes in them drawers over there and come down when you’ve unpacked.”

After she shut the door behind her, I sat on the bed and cried.

This was all my fault.

If only I hadn’t picked up the poppet – that’s what had brought the evil witch, Baba Lenka, home with us. At least that was clear now; I wasn’t imagining things like everyone had said. She had followed us home and she’d come out of that wardrobe and she’d spoken to me – my mother knew it, too. Why else would she have brought Baba Lenka’s old spell books back with her? She knew things, believed in them, and was terrified of admitting it. Why? Was she ashamed? Hiding something?

I begged her to tell me more about the alraun and the books, but all she would say was “No, Eva. Because once you know, you can never un-know. Trust me.”

Know what, though? Dad said it was all hocus-pocus. The vicar said there were no ghosts. The doctors said it was hallucinations. So what was it she knew that everyone else did not? Why wouldn’t she tell me? Was it preferable to have her daughter branded insane?