Mrs Babington's Notebook (i)

Mrs Babington's Notebook

Snow fell all around. The trees sagged, topped with white, the branches growing icicles in place of leaves.

A low wind worried Mrs Babington's ankles.

Caspar was tearing a line through the snow, cutting trenches across the field. Mrs Babington cupped a hand over her eyes and watched him dart here and there. Soon they would have to turn and head home, back to the small house on the edge of the park. There was stew there for both of them.

Mrs Babington rubbed a hand over her woollen hat, dislodging a small mountain of snow, and drew in a frosty breath. She watched the dog as he veered away towards a small copse of trees then cupped her hands to her mouth.

- Caspar! Home now!

Caspar vanished into the trees, his progress marked by the bluish shadows his body had carved into the snow drifts. Mrs Babington waited a moment then shouted,

- Caspar! Time to go, come on now!

The snow storm grew heavier. Thick flakes drifted into her vision hiding what little she could already see. Mrs Babington sighed and resigned herself to the pursuit of the dog.

She strode across the field, the snow throwing icy kisses at her legs, and aimed for the trees. The late December moon peeked out from between banks of cloud and cast a sliver of illumination by which she could see Caspar's paw prints in the snow. The prints crossed over each other then suddenly veered off into a gap in the trees.

The gap was aglow, silver and orange radiating out into the night. Mrs Babington approached it slowly and eased her body down until she was squatting.

- Caspar?

Silence except for the flutter of snowflakes falling. Mrs. Babington took a breath and pushed through the clawing branches into the clearing beyond.

She pushed herself to her feet and looked around. The circle of trees came together at the top, the upper branches twisting around each other to create a canopy three meters overhead. The grass was bare underfoot with no trace of snow.

The space was lit by fireflies. Thousands of them.

A wave of tiny bodies broke themselves on Mrs. Babington's cheek and she fell to the grass, her hands protecting her eyes.

Where was Caspar? Was he somewhere in this chaos? The soft sigh of firefly wings beat against her skin. Mrs Babington looked up into the storm of tiny bodies and saw what she thought was Caspar's small brown form spinning up into the branches. As his body vanished she saw a more angular shape appear. A book, it seemed, falling from the very place Caspar had entered. She clapped her hands to her eyes as it fell. It bounced over her knuckles and on to the grass with a thump.

Mrs Babington peeled her hands away from her face and looked down at the book laying in the grass. Cautiously she bent and picked it up. It was a standard ring bound notebook that could be found in any shop.

She flipped the cardboard cover over to reveal the first page. In black ink, half way down the lined page, was written the following: tsin am

The rest of the notebook was blank. Mrs Babington cast a final sorrowful glance at the canopy of branches and then slid the notebook into her coat pocket. She turned and headed home, thinking the stew would not taste as good without Caspar there to share it with her.

December froze into January. Then February melted into March and the world started to spring into life. Mrs. Babington spent her days pinning posters of Caspar to telephone poles, trees and shop windows.

On the twenty-fifth of March she received a phone call from a man in Glossop who said he had spotted Caspar at the bottom of his garden. When Mrs Babington drove out there it turned out to be a fox that had been killed, possibly at the hands of the man who made the call.

April arrived bringing more sunshine, and showers that washed away the final remnants of winter. Mrs Babington read the words in her notebook seeking meaning but finding none.

tsin am

Then, in May, she read a story in the local newspaper about a cat that had 'vanished in a whirlwind'. The incident had occurred only 15 miles away. With her notebook in her bag Mrs Babington jumped on a bus and headed to the place where the cat had vanished.

Tadfield was a tiny village that spread itself liberally up a gently rolling hill.

Mrs Babington jumped from the bus to the pavement and looked around. The main shopping area consisted of a single street with a post office and a Tesco Metro. A carpet shop stood out like a sore thumb on the corner. Mrs Babington dug around in her bag until she found her notebook. On the page after the one with the mysterious writing she had written in her own neat hand:

29 Chipperman Close

She walked along the main road, checking the name of each street. Just opposite the carpet shop she found Chipperman Close. Mrs Babington made her way down the narrow terrace street until she found number twenty-nine. She lifted the cat-shaped door knocker and tapped twice.

A moment of silence was broken by the flapping of slippers which grew in volume until there came a rattling of locks and muffled curses from the person behind the front door.

The door slammed backwards into the darkness of an unlit hallway. From out of the shadows a woman appeared.

- Mrs Babington?

- Yes, that's me.

- Please come in dear. The kettles on.

The woman standing in front of Mrs. Babington barely reached half the height of the doorway, her spine bent so severely that she looked up at Mrs Babington as if from the bottom of her stairs. She wore a powder blue flannel nightgown and slippers that were shaped like cats. The wave of heat that escaped through the open door made Mrs Babington think that the nightgown and slippers were unnecessary. As she crossed the threshold she was already removing her light jacket.

- Hang your coat there dear.

Mrs Babington hung her coat on the hangar as instructed and followed Mrs Cluley into the living room.

The room was tiny and filled with pictures of a brown haired child aged 0-40.

- Please sit

Mrs Babington perched on the edge of a threadbare sofa. Mrs. Cluley sank down into a chair that resembled an alien egg sac, close to the electric fire.

- You wanted to speak to me about Chairman Meow?

- Yes, and thank you for inviting me to your home. I wanted to ask you some questions about the night he vanished.

- Ask me anything you like dear. My body might be winding itself down but my mind is still in working order.

Polite laughter.

- Where exactly did your cat vanish?

- Oak Park dear. He hadn't come back for his tea. Chairman Meow always comes back for his tea. I make him salmon sometimes but Richard says that's too rich for his kitty stomach. Still, you like to spoil the ones you love don't you dear?

- Richard is your son?

- Yes, he went out looking for Chairman Meow after he hadn't come home for his tea. Richard knows I get worried if Chairman Meow doesn't come home for his tea.

- Richard sounds like a good boy, you must be very proud. What happened when Richard went out looking for Chairman Meow?

- Richard spotted him near the gates to the park. CW ran off and Richard followed him. Richard said he saw Chairman Meow dash into a circle of trees. Then he said fairies took my cat away in a whirlwind.

- Fairies?

Mrs Cluley bristled at the tone in Mrs Babington's voice.

- Yes dear, fairies. My Richard doesn't lie. He told the man from the newspaper the same thing and they printed it.

- I believe him Mrs Cluley. The fairies though, could they have been fireflies?

- Why now you mention it dear, I suppose they could have.

The kettle reached boiling point in the kitchen and clicked itself to sleep.

- Now how's about that tea, dear?

Spring turned into summer and Mrs Babington continued to place her posters about Caspar around the area. The weeks came and went without any hint of a sighting. Then, in the first week of September Mrs Babington received a phone call from her friend Rebecca Haley.

- Meet me at the Cornerstop Caftomorrow at 12pm. I have something to show you.

- What is it you want to show me?

Mrs Babington was not close with Rebecca and a coffee shop date was not an activity she wanted to share with her.

- Just meet me tomorrow. I'll explain everything.

Mrs Babington agreed to the meeting, sighed, and hung up the phone. She took an early bath and then settled in front of the muted TV with the notebook in her lap. There must be some meaning here, she thought. tsin am. What are you?

That night Mrs Babington dreamed about a house in the middle of a deep, dark wood. The house was at the very heart of the wood, the boughs of many trees twisting into each other to form a thick canopy over the roof. Thick roots sprung from the ground to form a dimly lighted entrance. Mrs Babington approached the entrance slowly then bent to peer into the gloom.

Beyond the roots she could see a house, not dissimilar to her own, glowing at the windows as though on fire inside. She pushed her way past the roots and found herself on a patch of lawn overgrown with weeds. A child's slide was rusting among a clutch of browned grass.

As Mrs Babington climbed to her feet the door of the house flew open and clouds of fireflies spewed out, filling the enclosed space within seconds. They filled her mouth and battered her eyes with their wings. She tried to scream but the fireflies were in her throat. She pushed her fingers down her throat and tried pulling the flies out but there were too many. Just as she felt the tiny bodies crawling into her chest Mrs Babington woke up gasping.

The cafwas almost empty. The lunch time crowd had slunk back to work and the only patrons beside Mrs Babington and Rebecca were an elderly couple arguing over the crossword and a young mum reading a book to her baby daughter.

- This is what I wanted to show you.

Rebecca was in her mid-thirties, thin as a fishing rod with wildly curling brown hair piled on top of her head. She spread a clipping from a newspaper article on the table between herself and Mrs Babington. Mrs Babington peered down at it.

- Uncle Stan?

- Correct, Uncle Stan.

Rebecca sat back in her chair. Mrs Babington read the newspaper clipping carefully then said,

- He vanished in a whirlwind as well.

- Correct.

- I can see the connection to Caspar. What is all this?

Rebecca reached across the table and took Mrs Babington's hand in her own.

- Please don't panic but you're the victim of a witch.

- A witch?

- Yes, look let me explain...

Rebecca pointed at the newspaper clipping.

- This tortoise, Uncle Stan, has been taken.

- By a witch?

- By a witch, yes. The same as Chairman Meow and your Caspar.

- Why would a witch do that?

Rebecca released Mrs Babington's hand and looked into her eyes.

- Familiars. A witch needs familiars, creatures who are easy to control and can be sent out into the world to be the witch's eyes and ears. Animals are preferred although they will use men if they can find one suitable. Women are impossible. Too much higher brain activity.

- Are you really saying that Caspar, Mrs Cluley's cat and this tortoise have been taken by a witch?

- Correct.

Mrs Babington sipped her tea and thought for a moment. The she reached into her bag and withdrew the notebook.

- Does this mean anything to you Becky?

She placed the notebook on the table between them and turned to the first page,

tsin am

- I know it, yes. It's a summoning. The actual phrase is...

Rebecca began to shift uncomfortably in her seat.

- Could you write it down for me dear?

Mrs. Babington lay her notebook on the table and offered Rebecca a pen.

Mrs Babington spent the next few days thinking about what Rebecca had told her. It sounded like madness. Was she supposed to believe that a witch was lurking somewhere nearby and taking pets to use as slaves? But then how to explain the bizarre circumstances of the disappearances?

She made tea and sat in her upstairs chair next to the window overlooking the park. The circle of trees that had stolen Caspar looked weary, their leaves gently browning and their branches sagging towards the grass. Autumn was creeping up on summer. The air was edged with a shivering cold and the winds grew more confident with each passing day.

Mrs. Babington studied the words in her notebook,

tsin am

And those written in Rebecca's rounded script beneath,

I call you in blood

During October the man from Glossop called. He claimed to have spotted Caspar digging up dead birds in his garden. Mrs. Babington let him off with a stern warning that if he were to call her again she would visit a solid beating upon his head with a stout stick. The man from Glossop hung up.

Yet still the mystery remained. Where was Caspar? Where was the witch? What, exactly, was the notebook trying to tell her? She made stew, sat by the fire, and pondered.