Chapter 34 #2
Another flicker of movement and this time Alex saw both the girls glimmer into view.
Maeve’s age. Barely older than their portraits downstairs.
Daisy was blonde with ringlets, her face a soft oval with rosy cheeks, like her portrait.
Rose had dark hair in plaits, and she smiled at Alex in a slightly unsettling way. Too intently, too fixed.
Their scrutiny was powerful. As if something else was looking out through those eyes. It reminded her too keenly of Blaise Chambers.
‘I-I’m your relative,’ Alex said, because she couldn’t think of anything else, not when they looked at her like that. Like sharks, something deep inside her whispered, and she wanted to curl up and hide. ‘Sort of.’
What was she to them? She didn’t know the family tree. A cousin? Or great-great-great-niece or… something… Cousin. Cousin was easier. Quicker too.
‘I remember you,’ a voice whispered, a little girl’s voice with an edge of something else. ‘You were here before. Long ago. We only wanted to play. Blaise said we could. But she wouldn’t let you play with us, the old witch…’
A chill shivered up Alex’s spine again, colder and darker than before.
They knew her. They remembered her. From when she was a kid.
On one hand, they were only little girls.
She could see that. Of course they wanted to play, not that whatever they had in mind sounded playful.
Not with Blaise Chambers’ name appended to it.
They’d wanted to play with her, and now with Maeve.
On the other… they were ghosts. Actual ghosts.
She was looking at ghosts. She had the proof she’d always wanted.
Not objective proof. This could all be a hallucination. But she could see them, was talking to them. And they were talking back. Rationally. Clearly…
Her phone felt cold and heavy in her hand. She could take a photo. She could do it one-handed. Would they come out in a photo? If so… Gabe would lose his mind.
And she… she would finally have proof. The actual proof she had always wanted, demanded. She’d have it right there…
‘Just hold still a second,’ she murmured, and lifted the phone up, framing them as best she could. She pressed the camera button on the side, praying it would work. It had to work. That terrible fake shutter noise echoed around the attic room.
Maeve gave a cry of alarm, an abortive warning, and something hard slammed into Alex from behind. She fell onto her knees and another wave of impacts sent her face down into the floor. Weight piled down on top of her, layer upon layer of it, pinning her there, helpless.
The door opened behind them. ‘Alex? Oh, dear God, Alex. What happened? Maeve? What did you do?’
Nick was standing over her, hauling off magazines and boxes and whatever else had avalanched its way on top of her. Alex tried to stand up but her whole side protested. She coughed, clearing dust out of her throat and mouth and somehow that was even worse.
‘Maeve,’ she wheezed.
‘Did she do this?’ Nick looked horrified at the thought and his voice darkened as he turned his attention on his daughter. ‘Did you?’ The girl stood all alone now, awkwardly, one leg wound around the other, her hands knotted together.
Alex’s heart squeezed inside her. It wasn’t Maeve, and it wasn’t fair she got the blame either. ‘No. No of course not.’ How did she even begin to explain who, or what, had? She picked up her phone which she’d dropped when she went down and opened the screen.
And there it was.
Blurry, definitely not in focus, and mottled with flying dust and the weird half-light. But she could see Rose and Daisy flanking Maeve, both of them. Not quite there, not quite real… but she could see them.
‘Nick,’ she hissed and showed it to him. ‘Nick, look.’
He glanced at the screen and snorted. Like it wasn’t groundbreaking. Like it wasn’t anything special at all. But he wasn’t scoffing at the picture, Alex realised. Rather he was annoyed by what it proved.
‘Where are they?’ he asked the girl, his tone positively murderous.
Maeve looked up at him in horror, like she didn’t know him at all. ‘They’re gone, Daddy. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—’
‘It’s not me you should be apologising to.’
Her voice went up half an octave with anguish. ‘I’m sorry, Alex.’
Alex folded. She couldn’t help herself. ‘It’s okay, love. No harm done. But they – what were you doing with them? They could have hurt you, Maeve.’
‘They wouldn’t hurt me. They’re my friends. They’re just… they’re angry and they’re sad and they don’t have a proper mummy either and they want… they want a family.’
Alex tried to stretch her aching body and then froze.
A mother? Did they see her as a mother? She certainly hoped not.
Taking back the phone, she sent the photo to the team.
And instantly regretted that. What would they say?
They were going to be all over this. Gabe would definitely be on the first plane out now.
Downstairs the main door slammed and they both heard Patricia shouting for Nick, her voice frantic.
‘Shit,’ he said, his face suddenly pale. Well, Alex wouldn’t want to be on the wrong side of an angry Dr Patricia Neary either. Nick peered at her doubtfully. ‘Are you sure you’re okay?’
Just attacked by ghost children, she wanted to say but this was not the time.
Just captured actual evidence of their existence too.
The one thing every ghost hunter, no matter how sceptical they might be, has ever wanted.
Something wild fluttered inside her, something that didn’t feel part of her at all, a sense of vindication.
Which was stupid because her whole mission had always been to disprove the existence of the supernatural, to find rational explanations and yes, to unmask charlatans.
Not… not this…
Not find proof. And at the same time that was all she had ever wanted. Actual proof.
Nick was still studying her, waiting for an answer, but anxious to intercept his mother-in-law as well.
She nodded firmly and followed him down the servants’ stairs and out into the main hall where the local doctor was standing, her hands on her hips, the very picture of an enraged grandmother.
Alex stopped in the door, not wanting to intrude.
Maeve gave a little moan of despair, and shrank back behind Alex’s legs.
Oh yes, she knew what was coming.
‘Where is she? I swear to you, Nick, I took my eyes off her for a second while I was seeing to Maura O’Shea’s leg. I’d been trailing up and down the whole village looking for her when Alex rang. Where is she?’
‘Here,’ he said, in a surprisingly calm voice. ‘Don’t fret yourself, Patricia. She’s safe. She made it to the house.’
‘Anything could have happened to her. The little devil. You let her run wild, Nick. You always have. You and Sally both. No discipline, that’s your problem. No discipline at all.’
Nick drew in a breath and the air went decidedly chilly, and not through anything paranormal. Not this time.
‘Patricia, this isn’t the time.’
Alex had never heard him use that tone with anyone before. She’d thought his relationship with Sally’s mother was fine but this… this was weird.
‘No, this is exactly what I’m talking about.
You hole yourself away up here, because of all the nonsense Sally put in your head, and in that child’s head.
No wonder she hares off up here at the slightest provocation.
She’s frantic to be with you, Nick. You’re all she has left.
But neither of you should be here. You should have left when my Sally died.
You should never have come back here. Everyone knows that, everyone says it.
The whole place is cursed. Every dog in the street knows that.
Those bastard de Wildes have brought us nothing but misery. Even now.’
Alex backed up, horrified to be overhearing any of this.
‘Patricia—’ Nick said again, trying to placate her with his tone before she said something more, but it was too late now.
‘Yes, the de Wildes. It’s always the de Wildes, isn’t it? First that Theo, with Sally mooning over him when she had a perfectly good man in you. And you, staying with him after Sally died. Even though it was his fault. And now her.’
Patricia turned on Alex, glaring at her. She didn’t even look like the same woman. Not anymore. The kindly doctor was gone and Alex didn’t know what was in her place.
‘Don’t think I don’t see you there, Alexandra de Wilde. This is all your fault. You swan back in here, stirring it all up again, waking up what should be left to lie. You and your whole cursed family.’