The Beggar’s Curse

Colin walked up the gloomy lane to Stang church. There was a feeble sun shining, but it didn’t feel much warmer. He might join the others in Molly’s studio when he got back; she was showing them how to throw pots. It was always warm in there, even when the kiln wasn’t on; the thick old walls obviously retained the heat. The poodles had discovered that too, and Dotty kept disappearing. Yesterday Molly had found her nesting in a box of jumble she’d left in there for the next church féte, and she was always climbing into drawers and hiding. Dotty was a good name for her; she had a screw loose.

All the way to the church Colin kept stopping and looking round. He felt he was being followed. It was nothing he could see or hear, the only sound was his feet squelching through last year’s leaves; there was nothing but the damp, dripping lane, and the trees that clasped leafless hands over his head, stealing the light.

He let Jessie off the lead and she went romping ahead and out of sight. The churchyard was very quiet. He looked round for the builders, but there was no sign of them. No sign either of whoever had followed him up the lane. No one there but the dead. He walked over to the bottom of the tower and peered up through the scaffolding. If he was going to be an archaeologist he’d have to get used to clambering about on old buildings. Anyway, he wasn’t chicken. Not like Oliver, who didn’t even like using lifts.

He left Jessie snuffling about in the long grass and cautiously made his way up the first ladder to the top of the square tower. But he knew he couldn’t climb an inch higher. Over his head the thin steeple was bending horribly. Colin simply couldn’t look at it. Nausea and dizziness swept over him like a cold sea, and he made his way down again, blindly this time, hardly daring to open his eyes.

Back on the level he sat down on a flat gravestone and wiped the sweat from his face. He felt so sick he couldn’t raise his face again to look at that awful tower. Then he heard something, a sliding, grinding noise from up above, and a loud rattling, as if someone was working ropes and pulleys. Everything started to move at once. The noises grew louder and louder, all merging together in one massive wave of sound, powerful enough to split an eardrum. The steeple was falling.

“No, no,” he moaned, shaking his head wildly from side to side. But through closed eyes he could see everything, the crooked finger beckoning, lurching sideways, then crashing down and disappearing into huge clouds of rubble and dust, turning the enormous churchyard trees to matchwood. As it fell, the Edges, Wrights and Bovers leaped from their graves and ran shrieking down the sodden lane towards Blake’s Pit.

Colin screamed and forced his eyelids open. A black shower of rooks flew up into the sky, but the tower, with its leaning steeple, was perfectly still. The builders’ tarpaulins flapped gently in the wind and in the grass at his feet lay Jessie. She was trying to bark but only made a pathetic little sound, like the mewing of a kitten, and one of her shaggy front paws had disappeared under a large piece of newly cut stone.

He took her back to Elphins in the builder’s barrow. She was a heavy dog to lift, but he rolled her in somehow and set off. She didn’t struggle, or try to bite him, she just lay there in a heap, uttering dry little yelping sounds. Colin loved this dog. Rage and hatred welled up inside him towards whoever had done such a thing, but as he manoeuvred the barrow over the potholes his hot passions ebbed away, leaving him cold and numb. That stone hadn’t been aimed at Jessie at all; it had been meant for him.

He tried to keep his eyes away from the sticky pink-and-white pulp that was the dog’s left paw. Her whole leg might be broken, and she might limp for ever. What use would that be to a creature like this? Colin couldn’t bear it. As he thought of her tearing across the fields on their long country walks at home, his eyes filled with tears. She’d be better dead.

Who was responsible? His first thought was Sid Edge, but that was impossible. He’d climbed up the church tower as far as the base of the steeple, and seen the tiny platform constructed for the two stonemasons. There was no way Sid could have got up there without Colin seeing him, unless he’d climbed up from the other side, and he wasn’t Spiderman. The lump of sandstone was enormous anyway. How could anyone have heaved that at him with such force?

As he pushed the barrow past the village shop he saw Sid lolling against the window. He looked as though he’d been there all day, and his nose was running like a tap. He said nothing as Colin trudged by, but glanced in the barrow with cold curiosity, and sniffed. No coming forward to see what the matter was, no offer of help. Resisting the temptation to spit in his eye, Colin left Jessie by Molly’s car and ran into the house.