Chapter 2 - The Den

She is walking out towards the river again. It is growing dark, but not yet night-time. An unnatural silence hangs in the air.

As she enters the still, clear water, her attention is drawn to something moving beneath the surface. Like a white cloud trapped beneath the waterline, it floats and she instinctively moves towards it to investigate.

It begins to rise upwards, towards the water's surface. It is alive and seems to her to be human. Through the clear water she can see a shock of black hair floating like seaweed. Then two pale arms thrust to the surface. The arms stretch out towards her and she moves forward to meet them - unable to resist.

As the figure emerges fully from the water, its head turns towards her to meet her gaze. She feels strangely reassured by its presence, even though it possesses a face she does not recognises. The figure - a female dressed in an all-white nightgown - stands upright, knee-deep in the river opposite her, water dripping from her body, leaving gentle blemishes on the river's surface.

Her face is white and luminous; her eyes firmly closed. There is a voice whispering soft words, although its mouth is closed in a tight, exaggerated smile. The white-clothed figure continues to move closer to her. As it moves within an arm's length, it beckons her to come closer. Come, come, come with me, the words are spoken without the lips moving. Come, come the gentle voice sings, its arms outstretched. She moves closer and stretches out her arms in reply to its pleading. Slowly the white figure's eyelids begin to lift open and, as she reaches out to embrace her, its eyes open fully.

Only there are no eyes.

Hollow, cavernous holes stare back at her - as thousands of maggots seep from each of the empty sockets.

She steps backward, terrified. But the figure continues to move closer. Come, come with me. The voice loses its gentle, singsong tone and now sounds gritty, hoarse - the words seeping into the eerie silence. She turns from the creature to run, but the water feels solid - like compacted mud - and she cannot move. Still she can hear the imploring voice behind her, Come, come, come with me...

Then she is back inside the old, wooden shack once more, entwined within the torn sacks she uses for blankets. All is familiar. She is alone and lying awake upon the floor. But she is unable to move; her arms and legs are rigid. She looks to the splintered beams of daylight cutting through the jagged holes of the hut's wooden planks. She begins to close her eyes again. She feels both awake and asleep.

Then there is a sound, the voice of that thing once more dragging itself across the solid floor. The white figure's repeated requests echo throughout the hut, come, come, come. She reopens her eyes and it is there in front of her, inside the wooden shack, shrunken, creeping up her body from her feet.

She cannot move. A paralysed scream is lodged inside her throat.

The figure slithers upon her chest, the hollow eyes and the croaking voice. A silent scream is her only response.

Her open mouth becomes a target for the thing. It is now upon her chest and begins to suck the air from her screaming mouth.

She cannot breathe. She knows she will die.

The tension is released from her body and she begins to move. She closes her eyes and is ready to embrace death...

***

"Maggie! Maggie!" shouted Tom standing above her.

Maggie twisted in torment on the floor - the stitched together sacks covering her body thrown to one side. Her eyes at first flickered, and then opened fully.

"Was it the dream again?" he asked.

"Dream?" she mumbled and looked around the hut. "It was no dream."

Maggie struggled for breath; her face pale, her hands still trembled, as she looked around the old, abandoned fisherman's shack. It looked like her home she tried to reassure herself. Yet remained unsure whether the nightmare was really over.

"Dream in the morning, heed the angel's warning." Tom said half to himself.

But Maggie wasn't listening. She sat up and began to scramble for her bag. She rummaged through it; looked briefly at the letters and other documents she had collected. Along with the only book she owned - a battered copy of the The Pilgrim's Progress - she discarded most of the letters to one side, until she unfolded and began to read one letter in particular, mouthing the words to herself.

Meanwhile Tom fetched a piece of linen, hidden at the rear of the shack behind a damaged crate. He unwrapped a stale crust of bread, which he struggled to rip in two pieces. Looking up from the letter in her hand, Maggie watched his struggle then gestured to him to pass it to her.

As if thinking aloud, she began talking and handed Tom half of the roughly torn bread. "We've got to find something else. We can't go on living like this," she said. "And I'm approaching an age when...when I can't even begin to imagine where I shall find myself next."

She fiddled with the clump of bread but did not put it to her mouth. Tom took his share of bread, which was slightly bigger than Maggie's, and nibbled at its hardened ridge.

After a short silence, he spoke. "You're thinking of Ratcliff Highway again, aren't you Sis? That's what's on your mind, isn't?" he asked.

She did not answer.

"I know what goes on up there, Sis. I'm not -"

"No!" she hadn't intended to shout, but the unspoken thoughts in her mind made her flinch, as if somebody had stepped upon her future grave.

Another silence followed, broken by a yearning sound discharged from Tom's stomach. They had just about become used to hunger, used to the feeling of never eating enough, used to their appetites never being sated. The previous day they had been lucky and cadged a couple of apples from a kindly stallholder, and fought a stray dog for scraps of meat thrown to them by a laughing sailor outside the nearby Devil's Tavern. But most nights they slept with the pain of hunger, dreaming of the new day to come and praying for a change of fortune.

"We need to leave this place. Leave the river. And we need to find this man," she fished out the letter she had been reading earlier and pointed to a name written in her father's hand.

Tom seemed disinterested.

"I know we tried before but I think we need to try again," she said.

"But is it far to go, Sis?" asked Tom working his way through the stale bread.

"Fetter Lane? It's a fair bit away. Remember we went to the charitable school a few months back? I know you didn't like there. But we can no longer stay here. Our circumstances are dire. We have no friends, no family, and even the other mudlarks don't seem to want us around. If our journey turns out to be worthless, we may at least be able to beg food from the charitable school afterwards. What do you say?"

She saw from Tom's expression, he despaired of ever going back to the charitable school. She knew, as he did, they would have to sit for hours on end in an unruly, overcrowded and noisy classroom, and listen to the master go on and on and on...

And if you drifted off to sleep, he would whack you with his cane and bother you about how grateful you should be that good Christian people had given up their hard-earned money and precious time so that you, too, can discover the great works of the Almighty. And delight in the wonders of mathematics. But you are only here to scavenge food - isn't that it? The master believed he could spot them a mile off - the mudlarks, the pure collectors, the runaways from the workhouse and the semi-criminal street beggars.

Maggie began to gather the few things of value they possessed and packed them into her homemade bag. She picked up The Pilgrim's Progress, opened the title page and read to herself the inscription within. Maggie, This book will make a traveller of thee. Your loving father, Thomas. January 1839.

Often she thought about selling the book...However, since the day her father failed to return home, she had come to know the words inside its pages by heart. For a second she thought she would cry, but soon turned her attention back to Tom.

"Take all you need," she said.

"Are we ever coming back?" he asked.

"I hope not," she replied looking around the hut, as if recalling each and every unbearable day of occupation.

"What if we don't find this man? What then?" Tom asked. "You won't send me away to the workhouse will you?"

She chuckled. "No, of course not. Never. Never, ever in a thousand years. We stick together; look after each other. That's the deal. And it always will be."

Mother had nurtured Tom's fear and mistrust of the workhouse, Maggie thought. She had once told them that at all costs, they must avoid that particular place. When Maggie pressed her as to why - as she did on many occasions - she would only say if you wish to leave this life in a suitable condition, and be fit and ready for the next world, then make sure you did so in one piece. That meant keeping clear of prison and the workhouse, she added, muttering something about anatomists.

Still to this day, Maggie was uncertain of what it was her mother objected to, but true to her mother's wishes she remained steadfast in her determination to avoid the workhouse at all costs.

"Ready?" Maggie asked.

"Suppose," he replied.

They stepped outside to meet the noon sunshine, closed the hut door behind them and began to walk northward to the city.

***

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