The Ocean at the End of the Lane: A Novel

him leave you in the cold bath, and you’ll never move again. And every night I’ll kiss him and kiss him…”
    I was through the gap in the hedgerow, and running on soft grass.
    The crackle of the lightning, and a strange sharp, metallic smell, were so close they made my skin prickle. Everything around me got brighter and brighter, illuminated by the flickering blue-white light.
    “And when your daddy finally leaves you in the bath for good, you’ll be happy,” whispered Ursula Monkton, and I imagined that I could feel her lips brushing my ears. “Because you won’t like it in the attic. Not just because it’s dark up there, with the spiders, and the ghosts. But because I’m going to bring my friends. You can’t see them in the daylight, but they’ll be in the attic with you, and you won’t enjoy them at all. They don’t like little boys, my friends. They’ll pretend to be spiders as big as dogs. Old clothes with nothing inside that tug at you and never let you go. The inside of your head. And when you’re in the attic there will be no books, and no stories, not ever again.”
    I had not imagined it. Her lips had brushed my ear. She was floating in the air beside me, so her head was beside mine, and when she caught me looking at her she smiled her pretend-smile, and I could not run any longer. I could barely move. I had a stitch in my side, and I could not catch my breath, and I was done.
    My legs gave way beneath me, and I stumbled and fell, and this time I did not get up.
    I felt heat on my legs, and I looked down to see a yellow stream coming from the front of my pajama trousers. I was seven years old, no longer a little child, but I was wetting myself with fear, like a baby, and there was nothing I could do about it, while Ursula Monkton hung in the air a few feet above me and watched, dispassionately.
    The hunt was done.
    She stood up straight in the air, three feet above the ground. I was sprawled beneath her, on my back, in the wet grass. She began to descend, slowly, inexorably, like a person on a broken television screen.
    Something touched my left hand. Something soft. It nosed my hand, and I looked over, fearing a spider as big as a dog. Illuminated by the lightnings that writhed about Ursula Monkton, I saw a patch of darkness beside my hand. A patch of darkness with a white spot over one ear. I picked the kitten up in my hand, and brought it to my heart, and I stroked it.
    I said, “I won’t come with you. You can’t make me.” I sat up, because I felt less vulnerable sitting, and the kitten curled and made itself comfortable in my hand.
    “Pudding-and-pie boy,” said Ursula Monkton. Her feet touched the ground. She was illuminated by her own lightnings, like a painting of a woman in grays and greens and blues, and not a real woman at all. “You’re just a little boy. I’m a grown-up. I was an adult when your world was a ball of molten rock. I can do whatever I wish to you. Now, stand up. I’m taking you home.”
    The kitten, which was burrowing into my chest with its face, made a high-pitched noise, not a mew. I turned, looking away from Ursula Monkton, looking behind me.
    The girl who was walking toward us, across the field, wore a shiny red raincoat, with a hood, and a pair of black Wellington boots that seemed too big for her. She walked out of the darkness, unafraid. She looked up at Ursula Monkton.
    “Get off my land,” said Lettie Hempstock.
    Ursula Monkton took a step backwards and she rose, at the same time, so she hung in the air above us. Lettie Hempstock reached out to me, without glancing down at where I sat, and she took my hand, twining her fingers into mine.
    “I’m not touching your land,” said Ursula Monkton. “Go away, little girl.”
    “You are on my land,” said Lettie Hempstock.
    Ursula Monkton smiled, and the lightnings wreathed and writhed about her. She was power incarnate, standing in the crackling air. She was the storm, she was the lightning, she was the adult world with all its power and all its secrets and all its foolish casual cruelty. She winked at me.
    I was a seven-year-old boy, and my feet were scratched and bleeding. I had just wet myself. And the thing that floated above me was huge and greedy, and it wanted to take me to the attic, and, when it tired of me, it would make my daddy kill me.
    Lettie Hempstock’s hand in my hand made me braver. But Lettie was just a girl, even if she was a big girl, even if she was eleven, even if she