The Little Cloth Cap

by Caroline Mallon

The day was unseasonable: chill and holding none of the hallmarks of the last days of Summer. Noah remarked that it was like that warm day in January– when a few misguided bees had woken early and flew drunkenly around in the false Spring sun for a few glorious hours before a frost had set in. It was far too cold for August and I gathered my woollen jumper about me now as a particularly vicious gust rattled down the street. Noah made a nervous climate change joke and  I chuckled half-heartedly, looking up at the new house while he searched for the keys in his pocket.

The house was terraced – narrow and red bricked just like every other house on the street. The windows were adored with long abandoned spiderwebs in the corners and the sills were eroded with time. There were pretty patterns of yellow brick within the red that I tried to trace into shapes but to no avail. The estate agent’s SOLD sign swung limply in the wind and I thought about ripping it away from what remained of the wooden gate it had been nailed to. It would be an easy job for the gate had been the feast of many winters; behind it a headless duck ornament had been stuffed by the previous owners. The head itself stared up at me mournfully from next to the wheelie bin.

Finally, Noah located the key. The door swung open, gaping like a mouth, revealing a red carpet that was a long lolling tongue disappearing into the shadow of the dark corridor. He rushed in ahead of me, barely able to contain his glee. I hung back, nervous. This house was like a thousand others we’d viewed in the Glasstown Works District: a cemetery of terraced houses with Victorian bones and post-war skin. The old Glassworks slumped like a great mechanical heart in its midst. And we were its newest residents – ghostly blood cells populating a corpse.

Crossing the threshold, I exhaled with relief, glad to be free from the turning season outside while Noah rattled on about how we’d finally managed it. I smiled weakly, feeling nauseous. It felt remarkably shadowy in the long hallway. The smell of paint and bleach filled my nostrils.

 “Comforting to know that our predecessors cleaned the place thoroughly after they chopped up the corpse,” I jibed, poking Noah in the ribs. He rumbled his chesty laugh and I tucked myself under his arm.

                                                                                  *                       

It was around a week before the house began to resemble a home. We had relatively little furniture and the first few days were largely spent assembling cheap flatpack items: a coffee table with questionable structural integrity; a bedframe which had boasted ‘Our Lowest Price’ online and a wardrobe which wobbled precariously before we fitted it to the bedroom wall. There were very few other residents on our road. The entire district had been marked for demolition by the local council a decade previous – including the old glassworks itself. But a change of leadership had meant the scheme was abandoned. Instead, the old factory was going to be repurposed as an arts centre. Noah spoke enthusiastically about the opportunities that great fortress of industry held for the local area.

“There’s something poetic,” he said, bright-eyed one night, and reminding me very much of his days as a Geography undergraduate, “about the town’s biggest ever employer reopening its doors once again – after fifty years!”.

Not being a Glaston native myself, I struggled to share Noah’s enthusiasm for the old works reopening, but I was amused by his excitement.

“I wonder what the old masters would think of this regeneration project,” I mused. “Do you think they would approve of the micro-brewery?”

Noah chuckled – never easily offended. “I doubt they’d approve, really.” He answered, “In fact, old Richard Shard – I should say the Right Honourable Richard Shard MP, rather – was a bit of a nasty piece of work.”

“Really?” I asked, intrigued despite myself.

“Yeah – big time! Employed children under the worst conditions imaginable; refused to replace worn out machinery until the body count was high enough; proud enemy of the unions... We used to tell ghost stories about his victims as kids!”

“Maybe the microbrewery will name a beer after him.” I said.

“Shard’s Bitter.” Noah laughed.

“Poverty Porter!” I said.             

*

We were happy in our little house for a time. It would require a lot of improvements we knew, but it didn’t take long for us to reach a level of shabby comfort. It wasn’t until we began work on the fireplaces that the trouble started. I often wonder whether we would have had any trouble at all were it not for my insistence that we knock through the chimney breast in the dining room. A fireplace was the thing I’d most been looking forward to and nothing – not even Noah’s pragmatic warnings about the ‘momentous task’ – was going to rob me of it.

It was October when we decided to break down the wall that had been built to cover up the fireplace. I hovered excitedly while Noah tore into the house, swinging the mallet with relish. Eventually, a large imperfectly formed hollow was visible. We were disappointed to find that the original cast iron fireplace had been removed. Within the chimney breast, the brickwork was badly damaged and uneven. It was filthy and it smelt damp. Being the smallest, I was able to clamber inside and peer up the chimney with my torch in hand.

It was incredibly dark. Even the beam from my torch served only to illuminate the blackness of the soot lined brick work. Nor was the brickwork smooth. Jagged protrusions stuck out like uneven teeth and disappeared into a darkness too complete for my torch to penetrate.

“It’s filthy in here.” I called out to the him. “I can barely breathe!”. My hands moved frantically around in the dark, trying to find something to grip onto.

“I’m coming out.” I said, trying to hold myself steady.

My hands were tickled by the unmistakable touch of gossamer and I recoiled as I felt some unseen dweller scuttle over my skin. I let out a yelp like a wounded dog and hurried to clamber back through the wound in the wall – not before my hand, in gripping onto one last jagged piece of brickwork, clasped onto a very dry, very dusty piece of cloth.

Noah’s arm was suddenly around my waist and without warning I was blinking in the bright light of the dining room. His face cracked into a smile and he threw back his head.

“You look like a little chimney sweepe” He told me. Sure enough, my reflection in the mirror revealed a face almost entirely engulfed in soot. My shirt, which had been a pale blue, was also covered in ash and dirt. Only the whites of my eyes shone out fearfully.

I looked down at the cloth stupidly for a moment. Like my shirt, it was almost entirely covered in soot, but I could see beneath the layers of grime and age, that it had once been  navy.

“What’s that?” Noah asked, suddenly aware of my silence.

“It looks like a hat.” I said baffled. “A cap for a child.”

*

Noah was at work the first time I saw the boy.

       It had been a wet, blustery walk home from the library where I worked, and I decided that I’d earned a cup of something warm before I started dinner. I switched on our new electric fireplace and stood at the window, looking out into the garden where the trees waved back and forth rhythmically. The leaves were golden in the sun, but this afternoon’s rain made them dull. I wondered ruefully whether or not I would be able to persuade Noah to help me rake their fallen comrades.

As I have said, we had no neighbours at that time. The district was still very empty and would remain so until the glassworks reopened, and the area became a hub of activity once more. It was for this reason that I let out a great cry when I saw the little black figure sitting on the low wall between our garden and the next. Little black legs kicked against the wall; little black shoulders slumped dejectedly in the rain. Only a bird’s nest of flaxen hair assured me that this child was not a shadow. The hair, yes – but also the pale, insubstantial eyes which watched the storm mournfully before turning their meagre gaze on me.

I dropped the tea at my feet and yelped in pain and fright as the scalding liquid soaked through my slippers. I fell to the floor in some sudden instinct to remain unseen and reached instinctively towards my poor scalded toes.

“What a face!” I cried aloud, bewildered.

The little black figure which sat upon my garden wall had so resembled my own reflection that day I had clambered out of the chimney breast that there was no doubt in my mind that he had been there too, in the dark and the filth. The ash and soot that stained his skin. The too wide, white eyes like tiny lamps in his head.

                I thought of the cloth cap which even now was stowed away in the cupboard under the stairs. I thought of the halo of yellow hair which the lost cap of the child had exposed. I thought of the harrowed eyes which shone out of that wasted face.

But it wasn’t until I turned and saw that I was no longer alone in the living room that I knew beyond doubt that this wraith child was not of this world.

For just behind me, staring up at the flaming screen of our new electric fireplace,  sat the little boy. Darker than shadow, stiller than death, and cross legged before the chimney breast where I had found his cloth cap.

I scrambled in a ecstasy of terror out of the room and into the shadowy corridor where I would wait transfixed and Noah would find me, an insensible heap upon the floor, and the child, gone.

*

The child would appear with some regularity after that. Never when Noah was there, and always at a distance. I would catch sight of him playing at the back of the garden; I would see him out of the corner of my eye as I moved about the house. Often the wretched figure would sit staring at the fireplace, casting no shadow, feeling no warmth, the light from the electric screen never penetrating the darkness of his person. I existed in a state of constant agitation. Whenever I tried to approach him, he would disappear – not with a flash, nor with a wasting away – he would simply cease to be, and I would be left tearful and frightened.

Noah refused to believe in the child’s existence. He begged me to visit a doctor. I stubbornly refused.

“You brought us here, Noah! And something terrible happened in this house.”

“What are you saying?” he shouted in exasperation. “Do you really think you’ve seen a ghost?” He flung his hands up in the air and ran his hand through his hair.

“Why not?” I asked wildly. “You told me when we first moved here that you used to tell ghost stories - ”

“When we were children!”

“You still told them!”

“Oh, come on-”

I took a step towards him and grabbed both of his hands. He didn’t want to look me in the eye. I knew I looked wild and unkempt. I knew he was scared to look into my eyes and see some terrible truth there.

Noah let out a very deep sigh and I was surprised to see there were tears standing in his eyes as though trapped behind imperceptible sheets of glass.

“This is nonsense –“ he began.

“Noah – what is it?” I said detecting some distant memory, some half-remembered nightmare.

He sighed again and began slowly. It was like drawing poison from a wound.

“When we were children,” he began, “there used to be a story – an urban legend, if you like – about Shard.” I must have looked confused because he added, “you know – the old Glassworks owner.” I remembered then. We had joked about the old Master and his cruel treatment of his workers.

“There was this one story,” Noah continued, “about a dispute Shard had with one of the union men. This guy had a talent for whipping up a strike and arguing back. The other men respected him, and he was a thorn in Shard’s side.”

“Go on!” I insisted, gripping Noah’s hands so hard, it must have hurt.

“Well, this union guy – he had a son – a boy who worked as a chimney sweep. It wasn’t uncommon for the boys to get stuck in the chimneys back then.” Noah gulped and seemed to be looking anywhere else than the chimney breast while he spoke. “The story goes that the son got stuck and he was screaming and screaming for help. Only Shard had the authority to knock down the walls because he owned half the bloody district.”

I looked at Noah in horror. “What happened?” I asked in a whisper. I was vaguely aware of a little black figure sat on the rug before the fire. Noah edged further away as though part of him knew that there was something behind him.

“Once Shard found out that the boy belonged to his union agitator,” Noah said, whispering now, “well – he – said that he would not give permission for the wall to be knocked through…. They say – well, they say – it took the boy days to die.”

I clapped my hand to my mouth and realised that my own face was damp too.

Noah took a deep breath and took my hand once more. Then, shuddering slightly, he turned around to confront the thing he had been avoiding: the little wraith by the fire that sat still and quiet with his back to us. We watched him together, too frightened and too horrified to speak – not, perhaps at the spectre before us – but rather at the wretchedness of human cruelty.

Conscious to be quiet, insistent that I would not scare the ghost, I crossed the room to the cupboard under the stairs and retrieved the little cloth cap. It was dry and dusty as it had been on the day I found it. It occurred to me now that it was rather more like shroud than a garb for child.

As gently as I could, I walked towards the small form by the fire, careful not to thread too heavily upon the floorboards, and replaced the cloth cap upon his flaxen head – a child clothed in the clothes of death.[1]

And we watched our little shadow with what kindness we could afford until night passed into day and his little form was no more.

[1] William Blake, ‘The Chimney Sweeper’ in Songs of Experience.