Sarah England - Baba Lenka - Pure Occult Horror

“No, I can’t eat… I can’t—”

“Well that’s as maybe, but you can ’ave manners, young lady. You can sit there and ruddy well wait ’til others have finished, do you ’ear me? And you don’t leave the table until you’re told. Not in my ’ouse, any road.”

“I can’t eat. I can’t eat anything. I’m not well. I’m too hot.”

“Aye, well, you will when you’re ’ungry enough. I’m going back down or me tea’ll get cold. You can get ready for bed, miss. I’ll fetch you a glass of water when I’ve washed up.”

Snivelling, I wiped my nose with the back of my hand.

“Don’t take on now, Eva. You just need a bit of straightening out. Your mother’s been far too slack with you, if you ask me.”

Never before had I yearned for nighttime. Other people were another species. I didn’t belong and didn’t fit in. I wasn’t like them. I couldn’t even stand to hear them eating, to watch their mouths – hated the food, the smells, the noise. What was wrong with me?

When she finally shut the bedroom door behind her, it was a blessed relief. Her footsteps thudded heavily down the stairs, and the familiar sighs and murmurs of bewilderment drifted up. After a while I moved over to the bed and lay down, staring up at the changing shapes on the ceiling. Their anger would pass. Soon they would turn on the television and watch a sitcom just like my parents did, and later Grandma Hart would come up and peep round the door.

I prayed for sleep. Now that I’d accepted Baba Lenka’s request to tell her story, dreams no longer seemed daunting but an escape route – a different world awaited like the open pages of a fairy-tale book, complete with illustrations of castles and snow and forests and mountains. I couldn’t wait for the story to start, for this other me to begin the adventure that was Lenka’s. Think of it, I told myself, like watching Fiddler on the Roof at the picture palace. It would be exciting. It felt as if it might be…

Only it wasn’t like going to the pictures at all. It was real. I slipped inside her skin and became her so completely, so perfectly, that it was less a dream sequence and more of a memory. I walked in her footsteps as if they were mine. I breathed the same air and had the same thoughts. Her heart bounced with a powerful joy that infected mine; her body danced, and her mind glittered like diamond dust. Her fingers tingled, and excitement skittered along her veins. It felt as if there were others around her, invisible yet mischievous beings, and as if anything she wanted could be achieved. She knew it, had been born with it, and intended to use it. Lenka was, in short, magical and wonderful, her life so very much more desirable than mine.

As predicted, Gran did come back to check up. Plonking down a glass of water, she swished shut the thin flowery curtains, then kissed my forehead, her breath sour with cigarettes, milk and gravy. I had been falling, falling, falling down the rabbit hole to a sparkling world, about to blossom into beautiful Lenka, when she sat heavily on the side of my bed and shoved me gently on the arm. “Eva, love?”

Please go…

“Your grandad’s not best pleased, I ’ave to say, but we’ll bring ’im round between us, eh?”

Please go…

“Been a bit of a day, ’asn’t it? All right, I’ll let you sleep. See you in t’ morning. You’ll ’ave a boiled egg, won’t you?”

Oh God … “Please could I just have toast?”

Her shoulders sagged. “Aye, all right, love. We’ll do you some toast over t’ fire on a toasting fork. Have you ever had it like that? Nice, thick white bread with butter and treacle? I’ll get your appetite back. You leave it to me. Mind you, yer dad were never this fickle. Right greedy little sod, he were!”

Eventually she left me in the darkness again. They always did. Only this time, it was not in terror but in thrilled anticipation of what was to come. The first page of Lenka’s storybook was opening, and I plunged back in. Sleep took a while to return, but when it did, a cold wind blew against my face. My heart clenched a little.

Don’t be afraid…

No, I won’t be …

And then she was standing before me, more than a dream, so real – a voluptuous girl in a long red skirt and billowing white blouse. Around the waist she wore a deep-laced black corset. Flame hair framed a high-cheekboned face with slanted grey eyes. The face was bewitching, mesmerising and twinkling with mischief, but there was something odd about one of her eyes: one was fractionally different from the other – something I was homing in on, trying to work out what it was, when she raised one finger and beckoned.

Come, Eva, let me show you… you must see die Heimat. Komm und sieh!

I followed the call of the piper’s tune as eagerly as a Hamlyn rat. Destiny is destiny, after all, particularly if it’s ancient sorcery passed down through generations. No rites, no initiations, no studying or covens needed – the knowledge and power is for always and is hereditary. Of course, I had little concept of the kind of force we had aligned with. At the time it seemed like a magical world of make-believe, a Grimms’ fairy tale of spectacular colour and infinite fascination. This was my gift, and I was going to accept it.

See, it was easy after all… So much suffering and all for nothing …

Yes, yes, I see that…

Ultimately, the full enlightenment was a process that took many years, but acceptance, as every skilled manipulator knows, is best instilled at the youngest possible age and done gradually, so silkily and surreptitiously that the victim is, in fact, a willing one. This particular point was to be underscored on many levels, as Lenka’s terrible story was drip-fed into my subconscious over the best part of a decade. Because of its enormity, the slow feed was crucial in terms of acquiescence, in order to avoid madness or suicide. Had it not been accepted by my growing mind, I realise now that I would not have been able to take the path chosen for me, cross so many bridges of disbelief, or wander so far into the unknown that there would be no way home again.

And she did a good job; she really did. Because when the time came for the most horrific shock imaginable, I was exactly as she had said, primed and ready, and insanity did not come.

It took nine months for Eva Hart, the child, to fully reject mundane life.

The tricky part at the time was managing those around me, protecting them from what was happening inside my mind, concealing what was secret, dangerous, and incredible. In effect I had to become an invisible ‘good child’ in order not to attract attention. She. Me . Strange, I know, but I think now of Eva as someone else, more of a vessel for what was incubating.

Looking back, perhaps ordinary life was supposed to verge on intolerable – perhaps, well, almost certainly to push her ever further into the world of the occult. And it was intolerable. It was Earl, you see? Poor Eva. I see her now as she was, so alone, terror having almost killed her night after night, rejected by her parents, then ultimately forced to fit into the world of Earl and Maud Hart. Every word of Earl’s had to be listened to attentively, acknowledged and obeyed, and the painful pretence began at seven every morning with breakfast on the table, seven days a week.

Everyone must have chores, said Earl, and Eva’s was to set the table for meals, help with potato peeling, and do the washing-up. She must also keep her room tidy and go to church on Sundays. If Earl Hart was speaking, then she did not interrupt, and if she didn’t clean her plate at mealtimes, then there would be nothing more. Anything left on the plate would be reheated and served again next day until she was hungry enough.