Chapter Nineteen
NINETEEN
Sam is agitated, bouncing on the balls of his feet. He’d found a phone box and, after being passed around the switchboards of the hospital, he finally spoke to the ward Vicky had been placed on.
“I told them I was her cousin,” he says. “She’s in a coma. They’re treating her for anaphylactic shock. Some insect crawled into her mouth, they think. Probably got right to the back of her throat before it stung her.”
I think of the wasp that crawled over Alice’s fingers. There is a deep feeling of menace, sleek and slippery, uncoiling inside me. Sam shakes his head, as if in wonder.
“It’s taken me fifteen minutes to walk back here on account of every bugger stopping me and asking what’s going on. All asking if I thought Alice did it on purpose.”
“‘On purpose’? How could she have done that?”
Sam shrugs. “I don’t know, Mina, I’m just telling you what they told me.”
“You sound like you’re starting to believe it yourself.”
My voice is firm, and I’m surprised how angry I feel when Sam hesitates, looking down at his hands.
“Do you remember, Mina, what I told you about desperate people? How they’re driven to do desperate things? Mothers finding the strength to lift cars away from trapped infants, the Donner Party eating their own in the snow to survive—climbing into the attic for your dead daughter’s clothes in the hope that a psychic might somehow be able to reach her.”
He gulps, as if he is suppressing a laugh but it’s a bitter, icy sound loaded with grief, and I wish I hadn’t heard it. I nod.
“When I first heard that voice on the tape, I felt something I hadn’t felt in a long time. Hope. ’Course I know now why they describe it as a ‘glimmer of hope’ because that’s exactly how it feels, like a narrow chink of light through rock. A flame burning low, on the verge of guttering out. I came to Banathel because I felt hopeful, Mina, but maybe hope is just desperation dressed up in fancy clothes because I still haven’t found Maggie, I haven’t found proof of any kind. Just a sulky teenager and that fucking shoe in the fireplace.”
“So do you want to stop? Do you want to go home? Sam?”
I’m surprised how much this thought bothers me. The idea of going home without digging a bit deeper, without helping Alice out the other side of whatever she’s going through. I pull at his arm and he looks at me, his face creased in misery.
“I need answers, Mina. I want Alice to stop hiding in her room and come and fucking talk to us. I want proof. ”
He hooks me with his gaze, scowling. I understand his agitation but I’m not convinced. Alice seemed genuinely afraid when I sat with her yesterday morning. Whatever it was she thought was in the chimney, she believed in it as much as the people gathered outside believed in her. Perhaps Sam reads this on my face because he snorts and shakes his head.
“I know you want to think this is genuine, Mina. I do, too. Because the alternative is that Maggie and Eddie are gone and that’s unbearable, isn’t it? Almost impossible to get your head around. But you have to, otherwise you’ll end up like me in a few years, chasing spooks in the dark.”
“I just— I don’t think Alice is capable of any great deception. It’s not just that she’s so young, it’s—”
—she watches me through the cracks in the bricks… I see her eyes in the holes—
“—a lot to put on her shoulders. I don’t think she’d be able to maintain it this well for this long.”
“Well, let’s prove it, then, shall we?”
“How?”
Sam’s flushed, sweating slightly. I can see how hungry his expression is, all mouth and glittering eyes. He gives me a fervent, wolfish grin.
“We’re going to hold a séance, Mina.”