Chapter 40 #2
“Then that psychologist came to Britain in the early 1900s. Took a sneaky sojourn up north. You won’t see anything about it in his meticulous diaries, so you’ll just have to believe me when I say he came this way.
Not for long, but long enough to stumble across something.
To suffer a strange confrontation. He became menaced by hallucinations, visions and voices.
See, he’d always believed that he contained two selves, and now he’d found something that explained why.
He spent years writing up his experiences with the thing he found, the thing he realised everyone carries but no one wants to be.
A thing that, if ignored, has the potential to take over and frustrate even the most well-meant intentions. ”
She looked to the curtained window and the dancing shadows of the hanging baskets outside, then back at me.
“Starting to sound familiar?”
I leant onto my knees.
“What is it?”
Callie-Ann looked up around the ceiling, her eyes an icy blue, as if admiring the bones of the room.
“This place, like all the world really, used to be a wild place.” She tapped her cane on the ground.
“Thousands of years ago, people would travel across Doggerland—the land bridge between the rest of Europe and here—back and forth across multiple ice ages. Over time they collected stories. Stories of forbidding, strange places on the other side of the water. Of the creatures that lived there. Faeries. Pixies. Changelings.” She leant toward me, voice deep and low.
“There are strange things in the darkest corners of every country, where the land is still a little bit wild. But when you’ve mapped most of the mountains, chopped down the forests, drained the bogs, you don’t leave much space for whatever used to live here before you.
It wouldn’t be too much of a surprise if some things remained, hidden in the quiet corners of these islands.
Deep in the earth. In the treetops. Under the waves.
Or in a remote cottage in the middle of nowhere, waiting for someone to move in.
” She sighed. “Whatever your neighbour was before you got here is lost to history. What’s important now is how she’s chosen to manifest. How she’s chosen you.
Now she is your shadow. And it is as your shadow you must deal with her. ”
“Okay.” I took a big breath in. “So how do I get rid of my shadow?”
Callie-Ann barked a laugh. It rang off the stone walls that surrounded us. I ducked down in my chair. Something in the laugh made me think of thunder, of blizzards, of rocks falling from the sky.
“Oh child, you can’t get rid of your shadow,” she said as she wiped a mirthful tear from her eye.
“What do you mean?” I swallowed. “Do I have to leave?”
The old woman shook her head. “Wherever you go, she’ll follow.”
I threw up my hands. “Then what am I supposed to do?”
Callie-Ann looked at me, kindly, firmly.
“You have to face her,” she said. “Normally this would be as simple as a conversation. But you’ve been running—avoiding all of this—for so long, she’s not going to come to the table easy. No.” Callie-Ann scratched her chin. “You’re going to have to go to her.”
I blinked, trying to follow.
“What, like, break into her house?”
“You won’t be able to break in. She’s too strong for that now.
Especially with how different things are this time.
” One of the logs in the grate popped. “You’ll have to get her on the attack.
Make her the aggressive one. That’s the only way to weaken the boundary.
Go back to the house, alone, and wait until it’s dark. ”
Back to the house. Alone. In the dark.
A tremble ran through my body. But Callie-Ann wasn’t finished.
“Then you go to sleep.”
“Absolutely not!” I said.
“Absolutely yes!” She hammered her stick on the ground.
The breeze outside briefly rose then fell away.
“She has to think you’re weak. And you have to be in a liminal space if you wish to cross over to her side.
Darkness. Sleep. The places where the mind wanders, where you can see things differently.
Don’t worry, you’ll wake up when it’s time.
She’ll want you conscious when she hunts you. And she will hunt you.”
I saw myself inside that house. Alone. Anyone who’d known me had long moved on, tired of waiting. Not worth sticking around for after all.
“What do I do then?”
“Do not leave the house. You’ll need to find the breach over to her side. Once you do, break through as quickly as you can.”
“And then the shadow will leave me alone?”
She pointed to the square she’d drawn in the ash.
“Once you’re on her turf, that’s when the real work begins.
There you’ll face her four times. Four for each wall, each corner of your house.
Four challenges to prove you are ready to take back your home and take back your life.
And four opportunities for her to tempt you.
You’ll have to listen, but you mustn’t give in to your impulses. ”
I screwed up my face. “I don’t think I—”
“Don’t play stupid, now.” Callie-Ann waved a hand toward the main room.
“Your impulses, like when you’ve got the green eye over someone else’s life, so you get the impulse to shag their husband.
Or you’re seeing red over a perceived rejection at work, so you get the impulse to spit in your boss’ cup.
Anger, envy, they’re misunderstood gifts.
If you listen to them properly, they’re just telling you what you want out of life, or pointing out unfairness in the world.
And they can give you the power to drag yourself back on your feet when the world has seen fit to bury you. ”
I thought of this morning in the orchard, how the ringing tone in my ears came again, but this time it felt less like I was shaking apart and more like I was coming back to life.