Seventh Child
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I realised that as I studied the birth certificates. It was fate, inexorable, unchangeable. But for Father I might have had only occasional lapses, followed the pattern of the maternal line.
Mother was the seventh child of a long line of seventh children. That in itself was ominous enough but worse was to come.
My childhood was happy enough except for a troublesome recurring nightmare. If we had a cellar I could have made sense of my nightmare; related it to some childish fear, but our house was bright and new. A suburban box standing four square in two patches of green. The floors were pitchmastic, which was fortuitous since had they been wooden my fears would have driven me to raise the boards to reassure myself.
I began to realise the significance of my place in the family when I saw Frasor die. We were returning home on the school bus. Frasor pulled the ribbon off my hair as he passed my seat.
"See you tomorrow," he said.
"No!" I shouted as he leapt off the bus.
It was on the TV news. "Killed instantly," they said. "Clutching a bright red hair ribbon in his hand."
"I saw him," I told mother, "lying in the road."
"You couldn't have darling it happened at half past four. You were at home."
"I saw him!" I repeated.
"The seventh child of a seventh child," she whispered. She didn't explain this seventh child thing until after Cheryl was drowned. On the Sunday before Cheryl was due to go to Blackpool, I had gone with her family to the Lido.
The sun blazed and there was hardly enough space to spread a towel. It was so packed that as I lay sleepily sunbathing, people trod on me on their way to and from the pool. And then Cheryl threw a carton of water over me. The shock galvanised me into action. She ran, I chased I caught her. As I grasped her wrists I saw her reflection in the water- she had seaweed in her long fair hair, her eyes were open. "You're dead!" I whispered.
She screamed and fell.
Two weeks later, while they were on holiday it happened. The tide carried her away. After the funeral her mother came round. She said Cheryl had nightmares after that day at the Lido. Said I'd put a curse on her.
It was then Mother explained this seventh child business. I was having premonitions, she told me. And I must learn to keep quiet about them otherwise people thought you had made it happen instead of just seeing it.
"Shouldn't I try and warn them?" I asked.
Apparently that would only make things worse. You couldn't stop whatever you saw happening. It was like a time warp. In a sense it had already happened.
It was after Mr Mahoney, my French teacher died that I began to wonder if she was right. He made me look small in front of the whole class. Jeered at me because I said, "Le chateau est sur ma tete."
Heat flamed red like a ball of fire in my guts and in the fire I saw a car burning. "You're dead!" I said.
The class stopped laughing. There was an eerie silence as his face whitened with anger.
"Out!" He yelled. "Out!"
He left me standing in the corridor for the rest of the lesson. The time wasn't wasted. I concentrated on the car. I conjured the image- a red Ford Cortina. I couldn't recall the number though I'd seen it every day in the school car park. I put his face behind the wheel.
His car hit a lamp post on the way home and burst into flames.
Then the whispers started.
I caught Sally James telling a group how I'd bewitched Cheryl and made her drown. Silly cow! Cheryl was my best friend. I scared Sally all right. Told her I'd turn her into a frog. The funny thing was, right after that, our drama teacher made us improvise a scene from 'Wind in the Willows' and she gave Sally the part of toad. Well, she was near enough a frog so I pretended I was letting her off lightly.
The nightmare was now more persistent and more real. Now it took me some time after I awoke to control the fear. I'd wake sweating and shaking but I still didn't know whose head I was trying to bury in the coal slack. It was so bloody and pulped that it was unrecognizable. All I knew was that I had to get rid of it. Each night as I lay down to sleep, I determined I would take positive action. Set fire to it perhaps but I never had any matches even though I went to sleep clutching a box of Swan Vestas.
Dad insisted I saw a psychiatrist. Mother warned me to take care. "he will try to hypnotise you," she said. "Then he will probe your memory. Concentrate on the sevens and he will fail. Think of your seven times table; the seven wonders of the world; the seven signs of the zodiac. Tell him you do not remember your dream or why you wake up screaming."
She taught me this rhyme:
Seventh child of a seventh child
Born on the seventh day of July
Cancer running wild
Seven times multiply
Satan is the creator
The power of seven is greater
Than time.
"Concentrate on this and if all else fails say it aloud."
That caused a rumpus I can tell you. The psychologist was convinced I was the victim of an occult sect.
Dad was furious. Called him a quack. We did a moonlight flit. If we hadn't I'd have gone into 'care'.
My new school was one of those glass hot houses; all concrete roofs and windows. The rain drummed down in time with Miss Oxely's droning. On and on she went about the economics of war. My legs were sticking to the grey plastic chair and I itched where I couldn't scratch. My toes curled with boredom and my eyes rolled to the ceiling.
A crack began to split its length. "The ceiling," I yelled. Its coming down!"
They thought I'd flipped. I was taken to the head and Mum was sent for.
"I told you." Her hands twisted and writhed. "Why couldn't you keep quiet?"
I didn't answer. What could I say? Have you ever tried to weigh your words when you see a catastrophe?
Only three died. Miss Oxely was one of them. Good riddance I thought.
I swore I had read about a roof collapsing and that there was a crack. After that, unless I thought I was in danger, I said the rhyme of seven whenever the future loomed before me and I managed to keep my secret.
Until I fell in love.
I might have saved him but he lied to me. He was seeing someone else. He had been cooling off for some time and I knew I had lost him. Not that I had seen my future. Perhaps I could have if I'd really tried but fear held me back. Whenever I tried to concentrate on myself, terror swelled in my brain like a black balloon and I just had to switch off.
I saw Gareth die. If only I hadn't been so mad at him he might have been alive today, but then he'd have been with her. As it is he didn't have time to ask for his ring back.
Life is pretty drear without friends. The loneliness of walking into a room crowded with familiar voices, which fall silent as you enter, is a rat gnawing in the stomach.
The library became my refuge. I read every recorded account of premonitions and that led me to the witchcraft connection.
The seventh child of a seventh child often has some supernatural power. Many become white witches developing their innate abilities. They were not, thankfully under satanic influences except on the rare occasions when both parents were seventh children of seventh children.
I had three aunts and an uncle on Dad's side so I wasn't worried until Aunt Mabel remarked after a television discussion on funerals for the still born. "What a lot of fuss. Why I remember your grandma saying the one blessing after her baby was still born was she didn't have to find the money for a funeral."
My throat was dry. "When?" I rasped.
Aunt Mabel didn't know. She just remembered Gran saying it.
The birth wasn't registered but those that were told the story. Gran's first registered child was born thirty months after the wedding. The others were twelve or fifteen months apart. Dad was the youngest. To make matters worse Gran herself was a seventh child. I was the seventh child of a double line.
Once I knew, the nightmares stopped. I blocked the premonitions with the rhyme of seven and developed a herb garden.
I would have been safe if only aunt Mabel hadn't willed her house to me. It was a huge rambling Victorian place. There were three storeys and two cellars. I had to see to the clearing out before I could sell it.
I made my way down the uneven brick steps. The only light came from a grating in the wall at street level. The first cellar was full of empty jam jars and dusty wine bottles. An old mangle and a cauldron stood rusting in the corner.
The other held a few lumps of coal and a mountain of slack. A shovel leaned against the flaking whitewashed wall. I picked it up. The crunch of a step on coal dust behind me swung me round shovel raised. In a frenzy of fear I struck again and again.
The head was almost unrecognisable yet I knew him. My nightmare is with me now day and night. I'll never be able to leave this house now and it doesn't even have a herb garden.
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