Grandma said they only return every hundred years. Grandma lied. They’ve just finished the new housing estate on the outskirts of town. Obliterated the Scrubs. Cleared the brambles. Filled in the May Beck and concreted over Hangman’s pond. We should have known there would be consequences. No one’s buying the houses. The families and young professionals came in droves to view the new-builds with their three-car garages and solar panels. But all left with strained expressions and their feet on their accelerators. We told the developers. More than once. The Scrubs is wasteland for a reason. The Methodist church clung on for almost seventy years. But after the third suicide the minister was not replaced. The building was boarded up and left to rot. The Scrubs was left to grow wild again. We told everyone. They didn’t listen. It was a Tuesday night I first saw them. I was so tired. Work had been particularly bad. I got home around five hours later than I should have done. That was a record. But the ward never stops and the staff never stay. Except me. I was weary down to the marrow but I couldn’t sleep. The air was thick. It was January but something like humidity, but colder, choked the air. I watched the slice of moonlight move across my bedroom ceiling and tried again to figure out how I could get out of there with no money, no car and no qualifications. Then I heard them They were laughing. My heart slugged through almost a hundred beats before I was able to move. I went to the window. Put my eye to the gap in the curtains. They were on the grass that divided my yard from the back of the estate and the boarded-up church. There were four that I could see but I knew, somehow, there were more watching from the shadows. Grandma said you may mistake them for children. I think she lied about that, too. Black pits for eyes and mouths. Skin like stone, unmoving. But they were laughing. They knew what was coming. And they were laughing.

Mavis said to her, “What are your dolls doing down the street?” “They need a reminder of who they used to be.” “What do you mean?” “Well the one on the right was the Dean who ruined the lives of children and ended up cleaning the outhouses up at Manson’s Creek.” The one on the left was the school principal who led the children of parents he didn’t like straight to Death Row. The tears of the parents fell so heavily on his head that six months before his death he took his own faeces from his pampers and pasted that on his hair to look good for the television crew that was coming to do a documentary on him. He did that daily. And the middle two, one hired them and the other supervised them and said what they were doing was right and within the law.” Lucita answered in detail. She was so serious that Mavis wondered aloud whether she did do anything wrong in her job as auditor. “Are you saying they are in those dolls?” “Yes. Their bodies went in the grave but not their spirits, Not their souls. Not their feelings. They have to collect payment for all those children they destroyed. They knew exactly what they were doing. They just didn’t count on payday. Whenever their families come out, they get to watch each other. They don’t recognize the dolls as family of course, but if you look carefully at the dolls, you’ll see the tears.” “How come they’re so dirty?” “Whenever their descendants do the same wrongs as they did, their clothes get dirty and heavy.” Mavis was now horrified. As always when she’s nervous she starts biting her fingernails. As now, so Lucita asked with a smirk what are you nervous about Mavis. She didn’t dare look Lucita in the eye. “I’m wondering it I did any bad things and if you have a doll for me. Please don’t answer, please don’t.” The two of them did walk back to where Mavis saw the dolls but they weren’t there. So they walked again and found them in front of the supermarket. “How did they get here? Mavis asked in total confusion. “I do not know how they get anywhere. I was just made responsible for them. I do not know what wrong I did.” “I am thirsty. I need some coffee. Do you want a cup? Let’s go. That’s my house up there.” “Really? I always heard that that is a haunted house.” “What?” Lucita laughed out aloud. “Come on. Let’s get us some coffee while you tell me what other nancy stories you’ve heard.” They entered the house through the back door and Lucita settled Mavis in the rocking chair close to the window where she could see the sloping hills down to the flat by the supermarket. Lucita went in to the kitchen ostensibly to get coffee. “Hello Miss Mavis what are your dolls doing in front of the supermarket?”

Four diminutive figures in children’s raincoats standing out in the field of maize, while the rain threw itself down upon the ground. Not one of them moved saved for a slight swaying as they were buffeted by the wind. Each had mask for a face, as tough but brittle as china, with deep holes for eyes and mouths, and no features beyond. Eyeless they stared towards the town, standing between it and the chapel, and their dread gaze forewarned any from approaching. Some claimed that the figures were moving closer with each dawn, yet none could say for sure that they had seen any real signs of progress. No one approached the figures either, but neither would they walk around them. The chapel hadn’t been used for a decade, and its bell would only ring if a wind strong enough blew around the edifice and up to the belfry. When they did ring the peal was irregular and jarring. All who heard those tangential chimes closed their shutters, and bolted the doors. It didn’t matter that they knew not what they feared, it was enough to be afraid. On that last night the bells had chimed again, but this was different; fear in the town had given way to terror. The bells rang out in sequence now, and the old folk of the town knew it as ‘the nine tailors.’ This was the sign that someone was going to die that night. Behind each locked doors there was the sound on incessant prayer. None would rise from their knees until dawn broke. That is except for Simeon Seth, the son of the blacksmith. Like his father he had grown up in the heat of the smithy and had, like the shapeless ore, became toughened against the throws of nature. While his father hadn’t broken from his vigil by the forge, Timothy had left the heat and unlatched the back window, then climbed out into the night. Timothy would be cautious, regardless of his bravura, and circled around the masked figures, unmoving in the cold air. Someone, he knew, had to be in the chapel, ringing the bells against the night. More than one person, trying to scare the town. The smith’s son would call the bellringers out and free the town from their superstition; his father would be proud, and the folk grateful. As he reached the door the errant child-hero looked back, to see if any had followed him from the town, he was disappointed that no one had. Only the childish figures stood out there in the field, their eyeless stares fixed upon the town. Timothy pushed the chapel door open, the creak of the door was echoed afar, but in the shadow of the antechamber he was unable to see the hardened clay-faced children turn to face the chapel. The door closed behind him and the shadows engulfed the boy. As the sun rose the next day there was another empty eyed figure standing in the field of maize. Its china face covered in the smuts and dirt of the forge. (For JB Wokowski, who will appreciate the Nine Tailors)