Rebecca James - The Woman In The Mirror - A haunting gothic story of obsession, tinged with suspense

‘Take this,’ says Tom, producing an old dog whistle and looping it round my neck. ‘Like I said, you’ll fast lose your bearings.’

‘We’re not going far.’

‘I’m excited!’ Constance is pulling on her mittens. Next to her, Edmund yanks his cap down over his ears. ‘We’re going on an adventure,’ he says.

I smile at Tom in a way I hope reassures him that we are doing no such thing. But Tom doesn’t look reassured.

‘Take the whistle,’ he says, ‘and watch your step.’

Minutes later, the door closes behind us. I cannot wait to get out on the moors. The world seems changed, magical and deeply peaceful, as if we might slip into it unheeded, like woods on a snowy morning awaiting a first footprint.

‘Can you hear the sea?’ Constance cries. ‘I can hear it – but I can’t see it!’

She’s right. It’s an odd impression because we are so close to the cliff drop and yet we cannot detect a thing. The sea crashes in with a deep, mellow roar, which takes on a new personality in this muffled, sunken world. Without bearings to situate us – a few steps from the house and it disappears completely – our senses are primed elsewhere. The tide bellows louder; the cold snap in the air smells startlingly clean.

‘Hold my hands, children.’

‘Look at our boots!’ Edmund exclaims as we walk, emerging in pockets of better vision that enable me to reclaim our situation, before we are engulfed once more. Our boots do indeed look strange, uncannily real as they plod ahead, three pairs in a line, two small, one big, and bizarrely separate from the rest of us. It is as if we are walking on clouds, and for a moment the ground beneath us feels precarious, as if we could fall through it at any moment.

I stop. The fog is closing in, too close. I cannot breathe.

‘What’s the matter, Alice?’ Constance asks.

‘Nothing, I—’ My lungs strain. ‘Nothing.’

‘Listen for the lighthouse,’ says Edmund, in a voice that sounds much older than his own. ‘That’s how you can tell where you are.’

‘Do you often come out in the mists?’ I ask, with a nervous laugh. Edmund doesn’t reply. I listen for the Polcreath tower, and its sharp fog blasts tell me we are over the westernmost brow and close to the sea. But in the next instant, I wonder that I don’t hear it to my other side, or above, or behind. The blasts grow louder and more aggressive. My knees weaken. I’m back in London, on a cold March night during the Blitz, and the air-raid sirens are wailing, louder and louder, louder and louder…

‘Bombs away!’

Edmund releases my hand and runs into the wall of fog. I turn, turn, turn, gripping Constance tightly, but I cannot see a thing. I cannot see him.

‘Edmund!’

I think I hear him whooping in the distance, then it is only the ravens’ caws I can hear, and if I can’t see a metre in front of me then how can he? How can he see the cliff edge, the churning swell of the sea, the dagger-sharp rocks below?

‘Edmund! Come back here now! ’

But how will he know where we are? How will he see me?

‘EDMUND!’

‘Don’t worry, Alice,’ says Constance, her little-girl voice light and singsong. ‘He’ll be all right. He knows Winterbourne better than you, remember.’

All at once the very sound of Constance, my sweet, sweet Constance, turns on me. I cannot see the child’s face, only the pale grip of her small hand in mine, and our joined palms appear ghostly, dismembered, horrifying. All at once I remember that other hand, her hand, years ago, in the water, reaching for mine, and for a shocking instant it could be hers, her clammy grip, rigid with fear, threatening to drag me in!

‘We both know Winterbourne better than you.’

Why does she talk to me in that tone?

‘EDMUND!’

‘Don’t be silly, Alice. You are being silly now.’

I release her hand, drawing mine sharply away as if something black and slippery has crawled over it. Constance starts crying.

‘Oh, my Constance!’ I kneel to her, find her face with my hands and embrace her. Suddenly she is my Constance again, the strangeness dissolved. She is but a child! ‘I’m sorry, my darling. I’m worried for your brother – that is all. We must find him. Do you know where he is? Do you know where he might have run to?’

The girl sniffs. She wipes her eyes. Her features soften and morph in the eerie half-light, and for a second she looks canny, before her innocence resumes.

‘What are you looking at, child?’ For Constance’s gaze is trained over my shoulder. I turn but see nothing. ‘What are you looking at?’

And then I see her. The mist spools patiently across the cliffs and in one glimmer of clarity I see her. There is a woman. She is facing the sea. She wears all black, head to toe, like a widow. I squint, trying to draw her more sharply into focus, but the more I look, the more she escapes my definition. She flickers and fades, in moments as real as day and in the next a mere black shape, impossibly still and impossibly menacing. What is she doing there? She is right on the bluff; she must be mere inches from its edge. Who is she? ‘Hello?’ I call. ‘Is somebody there?’

Constance has my hand again, and her thumb tickles mine for an instant, as if she is stroking it, as if she is the one replying, Yes, somebody is. The vision itself does not reply. The woman does not move. I have the blinding, improbable notion that she has taken Edmund, stolen him and flung him over the edge into the roiling swell…

She’s come back for you, Alice.

You always knew she would.

I cannot bear for Constance to witness her. Whirling back on the girl, I capture her in my cloak, shutting out our dark companion.

‘Alice, Alice, I can’t see a thing!’

I crouch to her, my eyes wild. ‘I don’t want you to see, my darling.’

‘Why?’ She snivels, wipes her nose, at once a little girl again, my harmless child. ‘I’m scared, Alice – you’re scaring me!’

I turn my head to the cliff edge but the woman has disappeared.

‘She’s gone,’ I say, searching left and right. ‘Where did she go?’

‘Who?’ Constance is crying again now, gripping my cloak with one hand but seeming to pull away at the same time, as if she can’t be sure where the danger lies. But I know where it lies. It lies with that spectre, which, now vanished, seems all the more looming for its absence. There is nowhere the woman can have gone. The mist churns silently across the landscape, exposing the hill as it goes. If she had moved off, I would have caught her by now. She is nowhere. Not unless…

Beneath us, out of sight, the tide rolls on, a thunderous crash of waves.

‘Didn’t you see her?’ I shiver, pulling the girl close. ‘She was right there!’

‘I didn’t see anyone.’

I crouch to her again and search her face. I want to tell Constance that I saw her looking, I saw her, before I turned to the phantom myself – but the words dry on my tongue. Constance’s lip is trembling, her eyes wet with tears. Am I mistaken?

‘It doesn’t matter,’ I manage, and pull her towards me. I must get a hold on myself. This sweet girl is my charge. Her arms wrap round me and her hair is fragrant gold: once again she is my angel, and we neither of us saw the devil on the cliff.

As we pull apart, her hands cross over my elbow. I feel pressure on the bruise inside my arm, as if her tiny fingers have pressed it.

I stand and call his name. Nothing. The whistle blows, short and shrill.

*

Tom is with us quickly. ‘I’m sorry,’ I stammer, ‘he ran off. Edmund ran off. Didn’t he, Constance, darling? He just let go. I don’t know where he is. Oh, help us, Tom!’