Sandy ran through the rain, trying to keep her eye on the tree while dodging… whatever it was she had to dodge.  Every so often, she’d feel something swipe through the air beside her, just missing her.  The storm seemed to be throwing it off, but not completely.  Sandy raced ahead, shoes splashing through the mud, and she thought, Find out what her limits are.  She’s got to have limits.

But why was she assuming that?  It wasn’t as if Sandy had any.

She’d had a plan for the tree, but now Mrs Jaeger had thrown her off.  She wasn’t even sure if she’d have been able to do it, anyway.  All she’d been able to manage last time was a few wriggling branches.  That wasn’t enough.  Nowhere near.

Sandy hit a large puddle, and felt her foot sink into the mud below.  Struggling for balance, she put her other foot down, but the same thing happened.  Before she worked out what was going on, she was in up to her knees.  She was sinking into the puddle.

Sandy grasped for something solid, but there wasn’t anything.  Even the ground had gone soft and muddy with the rain.  She was up to her stomach now, grasping at grass that came away in her hand.  Mrs Jaeger stood over her and laughed.  “You’re going to have to turn the weather off now!”

Sandy thought about it, just for a second.  If she made it stop raining, there was no guarantee that she’d be able to get out of the puddle, especially with Mrs Jaeger standing right over her.  And if she turned off the weather, Mrs Jaeger would know that she’d managed to scare her, and go in for the kill.

Instead, Sandy reached to the side and grabbed a longer clump of grass.  It began to snap in her hand, but before it fully came away, she’d managed to hoist herself far enough up the grass bank for the tree to be within reach.  With her free hand, she reached out and slapped the tree with her palm, as if she was in a relay race.

And her palm stuck to the bark.

Sandy tried to flex her fingers, and the branches flexed instead.  They reached out to Mrs Jaeger, who tried to run.  The muddy ground slowed her down, and the branches found her wrists and ankles and wrapped as tight as they could.

She struggled.  Little fires kept breaking out among the branches, but they didn’t last long in the rain.  Every so often Mrs Jaeger would jerk upwards, as if she was trying to shoot into the sky like a rocket, but the branches kept their grip.

After a couple of minutes, when Sandy had managed to hoist herself out of the puddle and watch Mrs Jaeger slowly give up, the branches finally lowered the old woman to Sandy’s level.

Sandy looked at Mrs Jaeger, trapped in the branches, and sighed.  Part of her wanted to tell the tree to squeeze tighter and tighter, until the old woman was safely dead and would never bother her again.  But she was cold and wet and covered in bruises, and mostly she just wanted to sit down for a minute.  “If I let you go, do you promise to leave me alone?”

Mrs Jaeger grinned, a little sheepishly.  “Doesn’t look like I’ve got much of a choice, does it?”

*

Sandy spent most of that evening in the police station, telling them about the strange woman who’d beckoned her outside, beaten her up, and run off.  Sandy was pretty sure the police would never track down Mrs Jaeger in a million years, but she’d needed to tell Grandpa Buckland something to explain why she’d come back to the table with a split lip and clothes covered in mud, and she’d been too exhausted to make anything up.

She was sitting on one of the plastic chairs in the hallway, waiting for the next person to come along and ask her questions, when Grandpa Buckland handed her a plastic cup of tea.  “Not exactly Earl Grey,” he told her, “but it should settle your nerves.”

Sandy took the cup, and smiled back at him.

“I’ve called Shirley and Arnold.  They’ll be her to pick you up soon.”  He sat down and sighed heavily.  “Not much fun, having to explain to them that their granddaughter got beaten to within an inch of her life on my watch.”

“It wasn’t your fault,” said Sandy.

“It happened less than ten yards away from where I was sitting.  I should have been at least that observant.”  He sipped his tea.

“You thought I was just going to the Ladies’.  You didn’t know that was going to happen.”

Grandpa Buckland smiled at her.  “Still.”

A policewoman, one of the ones Sandy had spoken to earlier, came over to them.  “You’re free to go now.  We’ll circulate a description, make sure everybody knows who to watch out for.  She can’t have gone far.”

Grandpa Buckland nodded.  “Have you checked the restaurant’s CCTV?”

Sandy frowned.  She hadn’t thought of that.  If there was any tape of what had happened, that could definitely lead to some awkward questions.

“They’ve said they’ll give us what they can, but they only really film the inside of the building.  It’s not likely to be too helpful, I’m afraid.”

Sandy relaxed.

The policewoman bent down a little so that she was more on Sandy’s level.  “Now, Sandy, I don’t think you’re likely to see this woman again, but if you do, tell an adult and they can report it to us.”

Sandy nodded.

“But don’t be afraid.  Don’t let this stop you from enjoying your life.”  She nodded towards Grandpa Buckland.  “Remember, there are people in your life who’ll protect you no matter what.  That’s the great thing about being a kid- if you’re worried about anything, you can just tell an adult and let them deal with it.  Take advantage of that while you still can.”

Sandy nodded.  “I’ll keep that in mind.”

(I’ve decided to put up the ninth part in two sections, as a reassurance that it’s actually getting written.  I’ve had the tenth part finished for a while now- it’s just this one that’s causing me problems.  Part 9b will be up soon.  A lot sooner than this was, anyway.)

Saturday Night- Grandpa Buckland

When they’d got to the restaurant, Sandy had seen a little patch of grass around the side of the building, with a sickly, spindly oak tree near the edge.  That was good.  She could use that.

Grandpa Buckland was admiring his glass of wine from underneath, as if he wanted to see how the restaurant would look if it was yellow and covered in bubbles.  “This is rare stuff,” he told her, “I don’t think there’s anywhere in a hundred miles that makes a blend as soft as this.”

Sandy forced a laugh.  “Grandpa, I don’t know what half those words mean.”  For the nineteenth or twentieth time, she glanced out of the windows at the stony white courtyard in front.  Still empty.  It wouldn’t be for long.

Grandpa Buckland laughed.  He was permanently jolly, all thick grey hair, expensive sunglasses, an aftershave that you could smell three metres away.  “Sorry.  I keep forgetting that not everyone’s an old drunk like me.”  He looked at the glass again, then added, “Would you like a sip?”

“No thanks.  You enjoy it.”  She glanced outside again.  Still empty.  She thought she knew what she had to do tonight, but she’d have to be careful.  You always did, when people like Mrs Jaeger were involved.

Grandpa Buckland shrugged, and took her advice.  “Probably just as well.  I remember when I took your father out for his thirteenth birthday.  I ordered Grey Goose, but I didn’t notice how often he was filling his glass until it was too late.  He spent the next morning in bed with a pounding headache.  Your grandmother hit the roof.”

“God, really?” asked Sandy.  Grandma Faith had died before she was born, but she and Grandpa Buckland had been divorced for a long time before that.  Sandy thought she could probably see why.

“Really.  I tell you, Sandy, there’s nothing as scary as an angry Irishwoman when she’s got you in her sights.  She almost…”

And Grandpa Buckland’s words faded away, because Sandy had just seen a small figure waiting out in the courtyard.  An old woman with straggly hair and sharp yellow fingernails.

Sandy swallowed, choking down any hint of a scream, and turned back to her grandfather.  “Is it OK if I use the loo?” she asked. 

Grandpa Buckland chuckled.  “OK, but hurry up.  Starters will be here in a minute, and your plate is probably going to look pretty tempting to me if you’re not here.”

At that moment, Sandy couldn’t even remember what she’d ordered.  She couldn’t imagine eating anything ever again.  “OK.  I’ll be quick.”  She got up and headed to the entrance.

It hadn’t been that loud in the restaurant, but in the courtyard, it seemed as if all the sound had suddenly died off.  No cars on the road nearby.  No birds in the trees and bushes.  No wind to disturb anything.  Just Mrs Jaeger, standing there with her hands in her pockets, waiting for Sandy. 

“You ready?” she asked.

Sandy nodded.  Her head felt as if it weighed ten tonnes.  “But not here.  Not where people can see.”

Mrs Jaeger scratched her chin.  “Then where do you suggest?”

Sandy looked around for the patch of grass with the oak tree.  For one crazy moment, she was convinced that it would have disappeared and left her with nothing to back her up, but there it was, right where she remembered.  “Round the side, there?”

Mrs Jaeger took a long, careful look at it, then nodded.  “Alright, then.  Round the side.”

She didn’t move, so Sandy turned and walked towards the patch of grass.  She glanced behind her, and saw Mrs Jaeger gradually begin to gather herself up and follow her.  Sandy turned back to the tree.  Maybe if she could get it to move, she could have.

Something hit Sandy in the back of the head, and she fell to her knees.

“Shouldn’t have turned your back on me, should you?” Mrs Jaeger cried out in glee.  She was still three or four yards behind Sandy, which shouldn’t have been surprising.  Somebody like her didn’t need her actual fists to hit you.

Sandy barely had time to scramble onto the grass before it happened again- something rose up from the ground and hit her on the chin, slamming her jaw shut with a painful scraping of teeth against teeth.  She looked around for the tree, and something else gripped the hair on the back of her head and pulled sharply.  For an instant, Sandy found herself looking up at the clouds…

…but an instant was all it took, because thunder rumbled and the clouds burst with rain.  A flash of lightening lit up the sky, and Mrs Jaeger cried out in alarm and ran away just in time.  Whatever had been pulling Sandy’s hair loosened its grip, and she scrambled to her feet.

(To be concluded.)

Friday Night- Uncle Nicky

“How are you doing that?” asked Uncle Nicky, “I can’t even do that trick with the invisible ball and the paper bag.”

Sandy shrugged, and looked back at the card.  It was the Queen of Spades, kind of dog-eared at the corners and with a weird brown stain where tea or beer had splashed on it once, and Sandy had just made it move clockwise around Uncle Nicky’s kitchen table without touching it.

She was brainstorming, in a way.  The old lady- Mrs Jaeger, if that really was her name- would be back at some point, and Sandy wouldn’t be able to catch her off-guard a third time.  Part of her hoped that she wouldn’t even need to, that maybe the old lady was bluffing.  It wasn’t as if Sandy had ever seen her doing anything supernatural.  Maybe she couldn’t.  But then Sandy would remember the way Sonny had growled when he’d seen her, and the way she’d known exactly who’d caused that bloke’s voice to go away at the fete, and decide that she couldn’t take that chance.  She needed to come up with a plan.

“Are you blowing on it?” asked Uncle Nicky, “You have to tell me if you are.”  He put his bottle of John Smith’s down on the table, considerately away from the card’s path.  “I saw this clip on telly once with that James Randi bloke…”

“No,” said Sandy, “I’m not blowing on it.”  Which was the truth.  But she wasn’t going to tell him how she was doing it, and she wasn’t going to do anything that she wouldn’t be able to explain away if it all got too freaky.  Otherwise it would be Amy’s sister and the tree all over again.

“I’d like to see you try this with a Ouija board,” said Uncle Nicky, “You could be one of them fake mediums.  Make a killing.”  Ever since Sandy was a toddler, Uncle Nicky had been fascinating to look at.  He had so many tattoos and piercings that you felt as if you’d never be able to count them all.  There was always one that you’d never noticed before, like the spider just behind his ear or the name “Debbie” on his calf.  It was as if he was a human Where’s Wally puzzle.  “I’ll be your agent, if you like.  We’d be partners in crime.”

Sandy laughed, and looked back at the card.

The thing with the tree hadn’t been something she’d done because she was angry, or because she wanted to do someone a favour.  It had happened because Sandy had looked at a tree and let her mind wander.  That was all it took, apparently.

She’d been walking through the park with her friend Amy and Amy’s little sister Chloe, and she’d found herself staring at a willow tree and thinking of how much it reminded her of a film she’d seen once, a cartoon where the trees had suddenly grown cruel, scowling faces and grabbed the heroes with their branches.  And just as she’d been thinking that, the tree had moved.

Sandy hadn’t even been shocked, at first.  She found herself moving her hands, and watching the branches mirroring her, moving to the left and the right, and then towards the three of them as she beckoned them in…

And then Chloe had screamed.

Sandy shifted the card to the middle of the table, and let it lie still.  “OK, that’s enough of that,” she said, stretching out her arms as a warm-down exercise.

Uncle Nicky chuckled.  “The old inner eye getting tired, is that it?”

“Yeah,” said Sandy, who wasn’t completely sure what he meant but got the basic idea.

“Well, we can’t have it getting Repetitive Strain Injury.  Last thing you need.”  He pointed to the living room door, across the hallway.  “Want to take a break and watch some crap telly?”

“Sure,” said Sandy, getting up from her chair and leaving the card on the table.

Amy, who hadn’t seen it properly, had told Chloe that the tree had just been moving funny in the wind.  Sandy had backed her up, but it had taken a long time for them to convince Chloe, and even then, she’d looked pretty pale and shaken.  After that, Sandy hadn’t been able to kid herself that she was imagining things, or that everything she did was basically harmless.  She hadn’t done anything as big and unmistakable as that since then.  Even the thing with the hailstones on Sunday was the kind of thing that could be explained away- weather changed quickly sometimes, no big deal.  But doing something as blatant as the tree was too much of a risk.  People might see, and not be able to explain it to themselves.

But whatever she did when she saw the old lady again, it was probably going to have to be even bigger and more blatant than that.  It would have to be, if she wanted to scare her away.  Otherwise she’d never get rid of her.

Sandy sat down on Uncle Nicky’s sofa, and thought.

Thursday Night- Cousin Jacob

There had been a bit of an argument over whether or not Sandy should spend the night at Cousin Jacob’s.  Gran had said that, if he wanted to see her, he was perfectly capable of staying round Caroline and Anthony’s on the same night she was there.  Sandy didn’t know what Aunt Caroline had said about that, but she had overheard Grandad say, “If it’s because you think it’s unseemly for a twelve-year-old girl to stay with a single bloke…”

“It’s nothing like that, Arnold Copstick,” Gran had said sharply, “He’s the last person I’d…  I’m just not sure I’d trust him in an emergency.  That’s all.”

“You don’t need to trust him in an emergency as long as you trust Sandy,” Grandad had pointed out.

Sandy thought she knew why Gran was worried.  Jacob hadn’t lived on his own for that long.  He was going to be twenty-eight in December, but sometimes Sandy found it hard to believe he was that much older than her.  It wasn’t a bad thing, at least not from Sandy’s point of view.  When you were twelve years old, it was hard to find adults who you could trust to take everything you said seriously.

They sat cross-legged on either side of the weird little table that was basically just a cushion with a board on top, drinking herbal tea.  “There’s an old superstition,” said Cousin Jacob, “They used to say that red-haired people would automatically become vampires when they died.”

Sandy thought about this.  “Cool,” she said with a nod.

“I just thought you’d like to know.”  Jacob picked up the little yellow teapot and refreshed their cups.  He was the only person she knew who used a teapot as an everyday thing.  He was also the only person she knew who didn’t have a TV or a computer (he had a mobile phone, but only at Aunt Caroline’s insistence).  “Also, if you were born with a caul- you know, a bit of dead skin across your face- or if you were born on Christmas Day, you’d be able to see ghosts.”

“Well, that’s me out.  My birthday’s in February.”  She sipped her tea.  It was like getting a mouthful of perfume.  “Unless, wait, would that cancel it out?  If I had red hair and a birthday on Christmas?  I mean, you couldn’t be a vampire and see ghosts, could you?  It’d be too over-the-top.”

“I don’t think it cancels out,” said Jacob thoughtfully.  He took a couple of pistachios from the bowl, then pushed it towards Sandy.  “If anything, it would double it up.  Your connection to the supernatural.”

“Is that how folklore works, then?  All mathematical?”

Jacob laughed, eyes screwed up and looking down at the floor.  He did that a lot, when Sandy was around.

They’d had a good afternoon.  Jacob had taken her to a craft fair round the back of St  David’s, stopping at each stall and having fascinated conversations with the people running them.  He hadn’t gone there for Sandy’s benefit- that was just the sort of thing Cousin Jacob did with his days off.  That was probably why his flat was full of odd-looking things- old records (instead of CDs), paintings of unicorns and dragons, a wall of cactuses, a stuffed ferret in a glass case.  It was as if Jacob had turned his flat into a big cocoon by padding the walls with stuff he liked.

“I heard,” said Sandy, “that they used to say that babies would grow up to act like the first person who kissed them.”

“But, wait, wouldn’t that just be their parents?  They’d be the one with the earliest opportunity…”

“Dunno.”  Sandy thought about it.  “Maybe if a woman died in childbirth and her husband wasn’t there, the midwives would have to have a debate over which one of them was most qualified.  Maybe that’s where the fairies giving gifts in Sleeping Beauty come from.”

Jacob went quiet.  Sandy wondered if he was thinking about her parents.  Caroline said he’d always got on well with her mum.  He hadn’t known her dad for as long, even though he was Caroline’s brother, because Anthony and Caroline had only adopted Jacob a year and a half before her dad had died.

Sandy waited for as long as she could, then broke the silence.  “OK, if you could give magical gifts to a baby, what would they be? Say, three things?”

Jacob laughed.  “OK…  Um, three things?”  He stared at the wall opposite him, and thought.  “Well, not beauty.  I don’t think that helps as much as people think.”

“It helps Ewan McGregor,” said Sandy with a grin, “He’s gorgeous.”

“He’d probably be just as happy if he wasn’t.”

“I wouldn’t!”

Jacob laughed again, leaning back in his chair and looking up at the ceiling, as if asking the heavens what on earth he was going to do with Sandy.  “I don’t know,” he said, “What would you pick?”

&&&

They’d just finished dinner (pizza delivery) when Jacob realised that the pottery snail was missing.  It had been the first thing he’d bought at the craft fair- a chunky, ten-times-life-size snail statue painted in glistening green and brown- and it had been packed in a white paper bag that Jacob had been carrying around for most of the afternoon.  Except that now, neither Jacob nor Sandy could remember where he’d had it last.

“You definitely had it when we left the fair,” she told him, when he’d paused for a moment in between looking through the cupboards, “I remember asking you if you wanted me to carry the bag.”

“Yeah…” said Jacob, gently biting one of his knuckles.  Sandy had seen him do that a few times before.

“And we walked here, so you definitely wouldn’t have put it down anywhere.  It’s definitely somewhere in the flat.”

“Yeah…” said Jacob.  He didn’t sound as if he believed it.

Sandy wanted to help him look, but she didn’t know where to start.  If she just started pulling at the nearest pile of things, she’d probably end up breaking something without meaning to.  All she could do was stand around and try to say encouraging things.

Jacob was still biting his knuckle.  It made Sandy think of the time she’d broken her glasses and got stuck in the tunnel during the Adventure Weekend her Year Five class had gone on- wanting to scream or cry, but knowing that it would make everyone think she was a stupid little kid and wouldn’t even get her rescued any quicker.  Maybe he was asking himself why he cared so much about a snail statue that had only cost five pounds.  But asking that didn’t stop him caring.  It had been his.  He’d bought it because he liked it.  And he hadn’t even been able to keep it for an hour before it disappeared.

“Maybe I put it over here,” said Jacob, turning round to look down the side of the table.  As he did that, Sandy closed her eyes.

She thought about the pottery snail, the way its horns went up at a funny angle, the way its scales had felt when Jacob had handed it to her, the little white chip on its tail.  She thought about it, and the world moved and shifted around it, as if it was the only real thing falling through a black vacuum.  It was somewhere open.  Somewhere quiet and grey.

“Hey, Jacob?”  Sandy opened her eyes.  “I think you might have left it down by the front door.”

That’s where it was, alright, down in the foyer, just where they’d come into the building, halfway between the front door and the steps.  If Jacob had left it any closer to the door, it would have been smashed the next time someone had opened it, and if he’d left it outside instead of inside, there was no telling what might have happened to it.  But here it was, down on the speckled grey lino, still in its paper bag and still in one piece.

“I think you put it down when you opened the door,” said Sandy, as Jacob took the snail out of its bag and sighed with relief, “Then you must have picked all the other bags up, but left that one behind.”

“Yeah.”  Jacob put the snail back in the bag, and smiled at Sandy.  “Sorry for scaring you.  I know I freaked out a bit.”

“Nah.  I’m just glad we found it.”  Jacob started up the stairs back to the flat, and Sandy followed him.

As Jacob opened the door to his flat, he paused and looked at Sandy.  “Hey, when you closed your eyes just then…  When you were trying to work out where it was…”

Sandy felt as if she’d been caught doing something shameful.  “Yeah?” she replied, not meeting his eyes.

“Were you…  Um…”  Jacob fidgeted with the door handle.  “Well, my mother…  Not Caroline, the other one…  When she lost something, she used to pray to Saint Anthony to help her find it.  Is that what you were doing?”

Sandy had never heard Jacob talk about his biological parents before, and the surprise chased away her embarrassment.  She didn’t know if he’d never talked about them before, or just not while she’d been around.  She’d have to talk to Caroline about that.  “Something like that, yeah.  Not exactly, but similar.”

Jacob nodded, and unlocked the door.  “Do you want some more tea?  I’ve still got half a box left.”

Sandy shut the door behind her.  “Sounds good to me, yeah.”