Risk Street9

The smell of burning was heavy in Angela’s nose and the taste in her mouth made her want to throw up every few steps. She stumbled like a drunk up the dirt track, unhitching the gate and swinging it back into place, as if the symmetry of normality would send out a message, a signal to the world, that everything was back to the way it had been. Her eyes strayed over to the fields next to Harry’s burning caravan. She didn’t realize what she was looking for then it hit her. The horses should have been up at the end of the fence mooching for food- carrots, chocolate, bits of long grass from the embankment, it didn’t seem to matter- or endlessly roaming like skaters performing figures of eight, around the two adjoining fields, close-cropping the muck. They were nowhere to be seen and she didn’t want to look too closely if looking meant finding carcasses. She blinkered her eyes and walked on and up onto the canal path.

Angela chided herself for not noticing at first. At the other side of the canal there was smoke and burning buildings. She began to run, haltingly at first, her sore leg slowing her down and then more quickly, until the old wooden humped bridge over the canal came into view and she was out of breath and had a stitch in her side. An old Ford had been turned over all that remained was the sooted skeletal metal frame. A more modern car, a hatchback was smouldering lying sideways next to it, as if some giant had toyed with them and then wandered away. She’d expected sirens and fire engines and police cars, but apart from her panting, and the noise of the early morning birds, there was little noise. She ignored the pain in her legs and started limping as quickly as she could towards home. She knew it was still very early and half- expected to see Mr Wilkie with his morning paper walking up towards the train station, going to work, or other neighbours standing around looking at the fires, the kind of thing she’d seen on the evening new, or bustling about in the background hubbub. But there was no camera crews, nobody making a fuss in Glendevon, and nothing that suggested they had, and that worried her most of all.

Angela felt as if she was being watched. She squinted out of the side of her eyes at the houses on the hill, but in the early morning sunlight the windows were blank eyed reflecting the blue sky. She cut down Regent Street. It was quieter in Glendevon, with neighbour’s cars parked in their usual places, with the promise of a more ordered world. The sight of dad’s half painted fence and home was almost enough to reassure her. A dog padded its way down the back lanes towards her. She didn’t recognise it, or think it came from around their house, or that of her neighbour’s. It was some kind of mongrel on early morning walk-about. It hugged the shadow of the wall staying on the grass verge, out of harm’s way. Somehow, that also made her feel better. As it trotted closer delicately sniffing the air around Chalmer’s lavender bush Angela pulled back the hand that she’d absent-mindedly readied to pat it with and choked up as if she was going to be sick. For a lightening second, the dog had a face of an infant; of a crying child. But it payed her no heed, its dog paws clacking on the tarmac and away up onto Singer’s Road.

Angela’s mum was always moaning about the back gate being bolted, but for once she was glad nobody listened to her. The back door was similarly sometimes locked and sometimes not. Again Angela was lucky. Her feet scrapped the floor in the kitchen and she looked down to see if she’d dragged in muck. Dust motes hung in the air; the house seemed foreign, unlived in. Her feet took her quickly into the living room. It too was empty. She flung open the bedroom door half expecting her sister to be sprawled sideway in her bed, like a tousle haired exclamation mark, with a naked leg trailing out and a voice screeching what she was going to do to her for waking her at this godforsaken hour. Angela would have wept with joy had that been the case, but there was no big sister. The salt tears were real enough; reservoirs, welling up in her eyes and running unwiped down her face. She slowly pushed open the door to mum and dad’s room. The curtains were still closed letting through a muted yellow light. It had always somehow been the quietest room in the house, as if it had been sprinkled with her mum’s calmness. Angela slumped down on the ocean of her mum’ s bed. The world outside seemed muted, on hold, as she cried. She fell asleep clutching the blankets to herself.

Angela dreamt she was sitting an exam in the big auditorium hall. One of the electric lights was flickering on and off, but she ignored it, as there was no invigilators to complain to, nor were there any other pupils. There were long rows of identical desks. For some reason she couldn’t work out she had been placed at the very last desk on the back row. Now and again her hair would fall over her face and she’d brush it away as she continued writing furiously on the loose leafed scraps of paper in front of her. Then she seemed to notice that the pen she was using was a quill and the writing material was parchment. A clock in the corner caught her eye and she didn’t seem to be able to look away. It kept sweeping round and coming to the six and catching and bouncing back and hitting the six again and again. The putrid scent of decay and disease blew into the hall and seemed to wrap itself around her like a coat of frozen fog. A bugle blasted…Angle sat up in the bed. The blankets were up around her and she was wrapped in the smell of her mum.

The toilet didn’t seem to flush after she’d used it. She just let the lid fall with a clatter. There was only a trickle of water from the taps. When she turned on the TV and turned the dials there was only snow. She sat in dad’s armchair with a blanket draped her shoulders, bent from crying. That’s when she remembered her radio. It was difficult to believe that she’d forgotten it. She usually carried it everywhere with her so that she could listen to the top 10, even in the bath.

Her radio was lying on top of cabinet in the bedroom were she’d left it. She flicked the radio on. ‘And they called it Puppy Love. And I guess they’ll never know-oh-oh’ immediately filled the room with suger sweet smoochy love language, which made her want to cry again, because things might, just might, work out.

The downstairs window crashed in. As she ran for the door she heard the roar of the fire taking hold and the smoke rising and reaching out, filling up all the empty rooms. Other windows crashed in. She heard voices, some she knew, her neighbour Mr Matthew’s screaming:

‘We know you’re in there. Thou shalt not allow a witch to live. Come out witch.’