The Ocean at the End of the Lane: A Novel

top of my voice, “Lettie? Lettie Hempstock! Hello?” but there was no reply, and I had not expected one.
    The thunder grumbled and rumbled into a low continuous roar, a lion pushed into irritability, and the lightning was flashing and flickering like a malfunctioning fluorescent tube. In the flickers of light, I could see that the area of field I was in came to a point, with hedges on both sides, and no way through. I could see no gate, and no stile other than the one I had come in through, at the far end of the field.
    Something crackled.
    I looked up at the sky. I had seen lightning in films on the television, long jagged forks of light across the clouds. But the lightning I had seen until now with my own eyes was simply a white flash from above, like the flash of a camera, burning the world in a strobe of visibility. What I saw in the sky then was not that.
    It was not forked lightning either.
    It came and it went, a writhing, burning blue-whiteness in the sky. It died back and then it flared up, and its flares and flickers illuminated the meadow, made it something I could see. The rain pattered hard, and it whipped against my face, moved in a moment from a drizzle to a downpour. In seconds my dressing gown was soaked through. But in the light I saw—or thought I saw—an opening in the hedgerow to my right, and I walked, for I could no longer run, not any longer, as fast as I could, toward it, hoping it was something real. My wet gown flapped in the gusting wind, and the sound of the flapping cloth horrified me.
    I did not look up in the sky. I did not look behind me.
    But I could see the far end of the field, and there was indeed a space between the hedgerows. I had almost reached it when a voice said,
    “I thought I told you to stay in your room. And now I find you sneaking around like a drowned sailor.”
    I turned, looked behind me, saw nothing at all. There was nobody there.
    Then I looked up.
    The thing that called itself Ursula Monkton hung in the air, about twenty feet above me, and lightnings crawled and flickered in the sky behind her. She was not flying. She was floating, weightless as a balloon, although the sharp gusts of wind did not move her.
    Wind howled and whipped at my face. The distant thunder roared and smaller thunders crackled and spat, and she spoke quietly, but I could hear every word she said as distinctly as if she were whispering into my ears.
    “Oh, sweety-weety-pudding-and-pie, you are in so much trouble.”
    She was smiling, the hugest, toothiest grin I had ever seen on a human face, but she did not look amused.
    I had been running from her through the darkness for, what, half an hour? An hour? I wished I had stayed on the lane and not tried to cut across the fields. I would have been at the Hempstocks’ farm by now. Instead, I was lost and I was trapped.
    Ursula Monkton came lower. Her pink blouse was open and unbuttoned. She wore a white bra. Her midi skirt flapped in the wind, revealing her calves. She did not appear to be wet, despite the storm. Her clothes, her face, her hair, were perfectly dry.
    She was floating above me, now, and she reached out her hands.
    Every move she made, everything she did, was strobed by the tame lightnings that flickered and writhed about her. Her fingers opened like flowers in a speeded-up film, and I knew that she was playing with me, and I knew what she wanted me to do, and I hated myself for not standing my ground, but I did what she wanted: I ran.
    I was a little thing that amused her. She was playing, just as I had seen Monster, the big orange tomcat, play with a mouse—letting it go, so that it would run, and then pouncing, and batting it down with a paw. But the mouse still ran, and I had no choice, and I ran too.
    I ran for the break in the hedge, as fast as I could, stumbling and hurting and wet.
    Her voice was in my ears as I ran.
    “I told you I was going to lock you in the attic, didn’t I? And I will. Your daddy likes me now. He’ll do whatever I say. Perhaps from now on, every night, he’ll come up the ladder and let you out of the attic. He’ll make you climb down from the attic. Down the ladder. And every night, he’ll drown you in the bath, he’ll plunge you into the cold, cold water. I’ll let him do it every night until it bores me, and then I’ll tell him not to bring you back, to simply push you under the water until you stop moving and until there’s nothing but darkness and water in your lungs. I’ll have