Chapter Twenty-Three
TWENTY-THREE
As Alice takes a shower, I fill a bucket with sudsy water to help Paul scrape the worst of the black substance from the wall and carpet. We work silently, avoiding each other’s eyes. The room is stiflingly hot, suffocating. I keep thinking about Alice saying “I know what you did, Meens,” and fear passes over me like the shadow of a raptor.
“Soot and rainwater,” Paul keeps saying, wringing his cloth out into the bucket. “Must have been trapped up there over winter, just collecting into a pool.”
We both scrub at the carpet, stained an ugly dark color.
“There’s probably a cavity in the bricks. Maybe that’s what’s been making all these tapping and gurgling noises, eh? Maybe the heat forced it out of the walls.”
I don’t reply. I don’t know precisely what the liquid is but it is gluey and black as tar. Paul sees my hesitancy and gives me a sick grin.
“Some investigator you are. The look on your face when I came in!” He gives a mean little laugh. “You looked like you’d been hit with a fish.”
I was frightened, I want to tell him. She knows about me, your daughter. I don’t know how, but she knows.
“Is Sam back?” I lean back on my heels, wiping my forearm across my brow. Paul shakes his head, lighting the cigarette that hangs out the corner of his mouth.
“Done a runner, I should think. Don’t blame him. I wish I’d thought of it first.”
“What about Lisa?”
“Tomorrow. The kids will stay with their grandparents a bit longer. Just till all this is over, like.”
“I might sleep in here tonight. In Tamsin’s bed. Keep an eye on Alice.”
Paul frowns.
“You still think she’s delusional.”
“What did you mean when you said ‘this town is built on witches’ bones,’ Paul?”
I see his brief hesitation, as if pulled up short. He grunts, flicking ash into the fireplace.
“You getting married soon, Mina, that right?”
I hesitate a fraction too long. Just thinking about it feels like shards of glass are being pushed into my chest but I don’t feel like admitting to Paul that actually no, my fiancé has almost certainly been cheating on me with his lab assistant, so I make an effort to keep my voice steady when I say, “Yes.”
“Heh. He’s some sort of scientist, isn’t he? Must be rich doing such an important job. Must make a lot of money. Own home, own car. All that’ll be yours one day, too.”
I frown.
“I suppose.”
“Then you’ll forgive me for saying that you don’t know what it’s like to be broke. To be so desperate for money that you dent tins in the supermarket so they’ll sell them to you cheap. To bring home the meat that no one else wants eating—offal and chitterlings and bones to make broth. Desperation makes you inventive, Mina. I just think it’s important you know that.”
I think of the rabbit corpses, skinned and gutted and glossy with blood.
“Every day in this family it feels like we’re sinking. I mean, look at this”—he indicates the wall, smeared with black sludge—“the house is falling apart. We’re putting food on the table but the kids are growing fast and I don’t know how much further we can make things stretch. Do you remember me talking about the Enfield poltergeist? All over the news it was, how them little girls were haunted.”
I have a vague memory of a photograph of a young girl catapulted into the air above her bed by what was described as an “unseen force.” I nod.
“It was serialised in all the papers at the time. What they called ‘supernatural events.’ There were photographers, television crews—it was a big thing. Reckon that family made a fortune off it.”
He sighs.
“When I called Sam at The Herald, Alice had been ill, and although there were some things going on we couldn’t explain, I might of made more of it than it was. Elaborated on a few things, maybe.”
“Because desperation makes you inventive?”
“I didn’t lie, Mina. I just wanted to catch Sam’s attention. That’s all. That stuff about her puking up the hair and pins, I got the idea from a movie. But everything else—her hearing voices, seeing things—that’s all real and now it’s gone too far. I’m scared for Alice. It’s superstitious, ’round here. You asked me about Banathel being built on witches’ bones—they used to drag them onto the green and cut their tongues right out of their heads so they couldn’t speak their spells no more. Riddance, it’s called. A lot of these women—girls, really, barely more than teenagers some of them—were left to bleed out like cattle. Think about it. All that blood over the years, soaking into the earth. Banathel’s foundations are rotted.”
“That’s horrible.”
He turns to look at me over his shoulder. I can just make out the curve of his stubbled cheek and the glint of one dark, suspicious eye.
“It’s tradition, Mina. You can’t outlast it. Best you can do is outrun it.”
I wait for Sam to return but by half past nine there’s still no sign of him. I eat cold pizza and gladly take Paul’s offer of a beer, sitting with the cold bottle clamped between my knees while I write in my little moleskin notebook. I need to find some order, and recording it this way helps me forget how Alice leaned toward me and hissed, “I know what you did, Meens,” in a rich, thick voice so unlike her own. I write down how she looked, with her head lowered and her eyes glaring at me through slotted lids. I write about how she said, “I hear her voice all the time now,” and then something occurs to me. I set down my pen and rub my temples. Paul is doing the washing up in cold, greasy water, a cigarette jutting from his mouth.
“Hey, Paul, do you have any batteries?”
“What size?”
“Uh, Walkman size.”
Paul grunts, wiping his hands dry on the front of his jeans.
“Gone dead, has it? I’m not surprised, the amount Alice listens to it. I said to Lisa that it’s cost us more in batteries than it did to buy the bloody thing. We ought to sell it, I told her, we’ll save ourselves a fortune, but she won’t hear of it. Said it’d be cruel. Tell you what, though, she won’t be laughing when we have to have them headphones surgically removed from Alice’s bloody head!” He laughs coarsely and nods toward the dresser behind me. “They’ll be some in those drawers. Bottom ones, not the top. Have a look. I’m off to watch the news. Apparently they pulled some local kid out the quarry this morning.”
My head snaps up. “Dead?”
“Yup.” He sighs, shaking his head. “Dumb fucking kids. Everyone knows that quarry’s a death trap.”
“Who was it?”
Paul shrugs. His face is drawn tight. “Don’t know. Just some kid, I heard. Probably trying to cool off in this bleddy heat.”
I think of Tuff Shit saying “coming to set your hair on fire,” his face creased with tears. Buzz Cut with his thick neck and flat, mean face. I feel that worry again, deep-set and squirming in me like a clew of worms. I rub my hand over my dry lips.
“Can you find out who they are?”
Paul nods. He appears disinterested, nonchalant, but I think it’s an act. I think he’s thinking the same thing I am. Another one of Alice’s tormenters has gone. I close the notebook and turn to the dresser, pulling open the top drawer, the one Lisa seemed to try to hide from view when she found me the map. I forgot about that moment till now and then I see what’s in there, and I understand. I reach in and pull out a clump of letters, held together with an elastic band. The first morning we were here, Lisa told us the phone had gone down but I think she was skirting the truth there. It hadn’t gone down, it had been cut off. All these envelopes are official-looking, marked IMPORTANT or FINAL REMINDER or DO NOT IGNORE . I pick up one of them and read Legal Action Has Commenced through the little plastic window.
“Shit,” I hear myself say. I remember Paul saying “desperation makes you inventive,” and my stomach sinks. Just for a moment I entertained the idea that this could have been a genuine haunting—that long pale hand I thought I saw retreating into the chimney, the way Alice spoke about Maggie, that clicking in the back of her throat like insects building a nest there. Just for a moment I allowed myself to consider the possibility that it was real—because if it was real that meant Eddie might be out there, somewhere. But these bills, this desperation. That changes everything.
I give the batteries to Alice who takes them gratefully, sliding the headphones up over her head with a look of silent relief. I brush my teeth and change into my pajamas, climbing into Tamsin’s empty bed with the Garfield covers and array of small stuffed toys beneath the pillow. Even though it’s nearly ten, it isn’t quite full dark and in the dusky light I can just make out Alice sprawled on her covers, can hear the muffled beat of her music and her soft regular breathing as she falls asleep. She looks so peaceful that it’s hard to equate her with the same girl who said just hours earlier, “You’re going to die, Mina Ellis.”
I close my eyes and press myself as far back against the wall as I can. Some deep, primal reflex means I am unwilling to turn my back on that fireplace with the black, soot-streaked stains and the holes through which it’s all too easy to imagine a glaring eye staring back out at you. I let my mind drift, returning to Oscar and inevitably to Lucy, the girl with the stud pearl earrings and citrusy perfume who sometimes took rides to work with him in the car. Lucy, who probably knew the right way to hold a lump of meteorite in her hands, who could tell the difference between nebulae and galaxies and who knew that once someone got dead they stayed dead.
I fidget miserably, sadness pressing like a concrete block on my chest. It stung earlier when Paul told me “You don’t know what it’s like to be broke,” because there is a truth to it, isn’t there? Oscar has a good income, disposable wealth, a long future in an ever-expanding field of study. Without that support I’m going to flounder.
“Flounder,” Mina? that internal voice sneers. Sweetheart, you’re going to fucking drown.
I look down at the engagement ring on my finger. I feel like the coyote in the Road Runner cartoons who cycles in empty air in the moments before he realizes he’s gone over the edge of a cliff. I reach for a frisson of excitement at the new possibilities opening up for me, the endless small changes I’ll be free to make once I’m single. I’ll be able to take those evening classes I’ve always wanted to do. Pottery maybe, or jewelry making. I’ve always thought I had a creative side, but never explored it. Maybe now is the time.
TapTapTap.
I sit upright, suddenly wide awake. My head turns very slowly toward the fireplace. Alice is asleep, lips parted, hands slightly curled by her head.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
It’s a very deliberate sound. I slide my legs out from under the covers and stand up beside the fireplace, horribly attuned to the slightest noise. My blood roars in my ears, my pulse frantic. I’m almost dizzy with the anticipation.
TapTapTap.
No, not the fireplace. I move toward Alice’s bed, my eyes drifting to the wall above it. I take a couple of steps closer and lean over her carefully, putting my hand on the wall and then pressing my ear up against it, listening. The wallpaper is green with small pink balloons on it. It must have been hung when Alice was younger, before Tamsin was even born, maybe. It feels cool beneath my touch. I curl my fist. I rap back, three times. The tapping comes back right away, urgent, as if they have been waiting for a response.
Taptaptap.
Pause.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
Pause.
TapTapTap.
“Are you kidding?” I whisper to myself, almost laughing. “Ess-o-ess? Really?”
Oscar loves Morse code. He actually bought one of the old machines from the Second World War at an auction, displaying it proudly at home. He’s fond of telling anyone who listens that the term “SOS” doesn’t, as is commonly believed, stand for Save Our Souls. It is simply a useful sequence designed to be easy to communicate in an emergency. I pull back from the wall, frowning. That’s Bert and Mary’s house there, I’m sure of it. Could one of them have had an accident? I knock against the wall again but this time there is no reply and when I press my ear to the wall there is no sound at all.
“Shit,” I say, my hands on my hips. I’m going to have to go around there and check. I glance at my watch as I pull on my jeans, cursing the heat and the knot of anxiety in my stomach, pulling tighter and tighter.
God, I’m so thirsty. My throat feels stripped dry. I reach the bottom of the stairs and turn back toward the kitchen, thinking I might just grab a drink before I go. Might, in fact, just skip using a glass and stick my whole head under the faucet, letting the cold water run right into my open mouth. I push the kitchen door wide and there is a figure sitting there in the dark, hunched over a little as if in pain. As their head turns toward me I’m sure for a moment that the eye sockets are empty.
An empty, eyeless head.
I slam the lights on with the heel of my palm.
“Fuck, Sam! What the hell are you doing?”
His eyes have a feverish luster, his jaw speckled with beard growth. The chair creaks beneath him as he leans back.
“What time is it?”
“Coming up to eleven.”
“Can’t sleep?”
His voice is croaky and damaged sounding. I shake my head, explaining about the tapping coming from Bert and Mary’s house. He smiles, but there is not much humor in it.
“I’ve just been speaking to Bert outside. Maybe five, ten minutes ago. He’s fine. I’m sure Mary’s fine. Do you want me to come with you?”
“Are you sure? There was definitely someone tapping on the wall.”
“I’m positive. We just talked right out front. Bert’s worried about the graffiti out there. Have you seen it? All the stuff about witches? He said it feels like a threat. He was asking if he should call the police.”
“What did you tell him?”
Sam lights a cigarette, waving out the match with a flick of his hand.
“I said wait till the morning. Things always look different in daylight.”
My heart rate is slowing now, just a fraction. Maybe I’m being stupid. Overreacting. Sam gives me another of those barely touching smiles as I turn to the sink and fill a glass with water.
“Morse code.” He laughs softly. “Were you a girl guide, Mina?”
“No,” I say sulkily. “But I recognize an SOS when I hear one.”
“It’s probably the pipes, hon. These houses aren’t old but they’re badly built. Most postwar estates were designed for efficiency, not longevity. Sit down. Have a drink.”
“Can’t you sleep, either?”
“Not sure I’ll ever sleep again. I feel like I’ve taken a load of speed.” His leg is jittering under the table as he knocks the tip of his cigarette against the ashtray.
“Brandy?”
He tilts the bottle toward me. I shake my head and he pours himself a large measure into a plastic beaker. I gulp my glass of water down, almost breathless with thirst.
“Where have you been?”
“Walking. Down into the valley and past the stone circle. Almost made it as far as the coast. I had so much adrenaline feels like I could have kept on going right into the sea.”
His gaze drops and he rubs the pad of his thumb against the tabletop, fidgety and anxious.
“Alice was right. I did abandon Maggie.” He takes a sip of his drink. His expression is of a man in shock, pulled from the twisted wreckage of something. “She had measles, but we thought she’d brush it off, the way kids do. Only Maggie got sicker and sicker, couldn’t eat, couldn’t drink. They put her in an adult bed on an adult ward. It made her look so small, like a little doll. In the bed beside her an old man was coughing till blood came out his mouth in a mist. I tried to draw the curtain and my hands were shaking so badly I couldn’t manage it. I remember saying to the nurse, ‘How long till we get out of here,’ and she said, ‘As long as it takes.’”
I wait. I can hear him gathering his breath, the way the tears threaten, rising in his throat.
“I told Carla—that’s my ex-wife, Maggie’s mum—‘I can’t do this. I can’t watch her die.’ She said, ‘Running away won’t stop it happening, Sam.’ She thought I was a coward and she was right. The last thing I said to her was ‘Call me when it’s over.’ That’s the last thing my little girl ever heard her father say. ‘Call me when it’s over.’ Jesus Christ.”
His voice is shimmering, but doesn’t break. There are no tears but his mouth works silently for a moment as if warding them off. I reach out and take his hand.
“Sam, is there any chance you told Alice about Maggie, even in passing? Any chance she saw the picture of her you keep in your wallet? ‘Hair like autumn leaves,’ Alice said. Remember what you told me about cold-reading, Sam. It’s clever, but it’s still a trick.”
“No.” He’s shaking his head, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “No, it was her, it was Maggie. The thing about the shoes squeaking? I hear it every night. Every single night.” Now his voice does break, his breathing heaves ragged.
“Sam.” I reach out a hand and touch his own, his skin warm and dry. “Sam, it’s all right, it’s all right.”
“It’s not fucking all right,” he says, rubbing his eyes angrily. “It’ll never be all right.”
He falls silent, playing with his glass.
I lean closer, my voice low. “I spoke with Paul earlier. He admitted he’d elaborated some of what he’d told you about Alice—and you know what I found in that dresser drawer? Overdue bills. Lots of them. The phone’s been cut off. The gas will be next. Things like this don’t go away if you ignore them, they just get worse and worse. How long till they lose the house? Three children to feed, only one parent working? It must be a struggle.”
“Why are you telling me this?” His voice is weary and sad. It’s heartbreaking.
“Because it’s money they’re after.” I think of Tamsin saying “ My dad says when we get our new house we can have a bedroom each” and add, “Maybe even getting rehoused. All this stuff about Alice, it’s just to get their story in the paper. You were right, Sam. You were right all along.”
I’m not sure what I’m expecting. Satisfaction, perhaps. A nod, an indication of understanding. Sam doesn’t even raise his eyes to me, simply stubs his cigarette out before lighting another.
“Sam?”
“I don’t care.” He shrugs. “This isn’t about the story anymore. I need to ask Alice to talk to Maggie and tell her that I was afraid. I need Maggie to understand, Mina. I need her to forgive me.”
I don’t know how to respond.
He looks at me, eyes hooded in the dark. “What about you?”
“What about me?”
“I mean, put your skepticism aside for a moment, Mina. You were at the séance today. You heard those sounds at the door and the way Alice’s voice changed. That wasn’t pretend.”
“We don’t know that. Hauntings are faked all the time, it’s not impossible.”
A silence spins out as fragile as an eggshell. Sam leans across the table until our heads are nearly touching. His voice is rough, dry.
“Why are you here, Mina? Why are you really here? Can you answer me that?”
I open my mouth to tell him about my degree, the long hours of study, the weight of it on me. How I need experience, a foothold. But Sam is shaking his head as if already anticipating my excuses, swirling the brandy around in his glass.
“No, be honest. Tell me the truth, Mina.”
“Eddie,” I say abruptly, so sudden and honest I’m shocked at myself. I instinctively want to clamp a hand over my mouth but I resist. “I want to find Eddie.”
“Why?”
“To tell him I’m sorry.” My voice has started to shake. The air shimmers as tears prick my eyes.
“Sorry for what?”
Sam’s voice is soft but it still feels like hands are squeezing my lungs into knots. I inhale shakily.
“Mina,” he says, “tell me what happened to Eddie.”
So, I tell him. I tell him how the air smelled like metal, so cold it burned my nostrils. It snowed in the night and the next morning the schools were closed. We ran, Eddie and I, through the lanes and down toward Brewer’s Pond, skidding and laughing, our cheeks flushed red. I tell Sam how I saw the lake with its thick layer of glittering ice, how I ran out onto the middle of it with my heart and laughter soaring in the frosty air and how the cracking beneath my feet was suddenly too loud, the world tilting, the snap of Eddie’s voice, “ Mina! Don’t move! ”
I stood very still, not even daring to breathe as the ice began to split beneath my feet, cold water seeping up through the cracks, numbing my toes through the flimsy canvas sneakers I was wearing.
“Eddie, I can’t swim.”
“I know, Mina, just stay still, stay cool. Like a cucumber. I won’t let anything happen to you.” He inched out onto the ice on his stomach, cheeks glowing red, that long lick of hair he hated so much hanging in his eyes. He reached out his hand and his little voice was shaking, he must have been so cold.
“He knew exactly what to do,” I tell Sam, wiping at my eyes with the tips of my fingers. “Eddie saved my life.”
Something aches inside me, deep in the hollows. Bones and rubble. I was alone with Eddie the day he died. By that time my father had become heavily involved with the church. My mother was out walking the dog. When she came home and I told her he was gone, she said, very quietly, “Well, that’s that, then.”
When I finish the story, Sam is looking at me with a tenderness which almost takes my breath away.
“Mina, we can save Alice. If you’re right, and this is all a scheme to get some money or a new house, then she’s being manipulated just as much as we are. We can’t leave without exposing that. But if I’m right, then she has a gift, and we can’t ignore it.”
“What are you saying?”
My voice is trembling. I have a bad feeling then, a sensation as though my insides are melting like rubber. Slippery and slick. I know what Sam’s saying. He’s saying we can try to reach Eddie, and even though I’ve waited so long, even though I’ve come all this way cradling hope like a flame in cupped hands, I feel sick at the thought of it, because what if Alice can reach out to my brother and he comes through the way Maggie did, his corporeal form shed, his bones light and hollow and filled with ice? That would be bad enough but what if he told them what I’d done? What, then?