Psychic Surveys Companion Novels

by Shani Struthers

  “It’s the tyres,” she replied, “there’s no air in them, they’re flat, every single one!”

  * * *

  I was glad to see Mum still determined. She stomped back into the house, muttering something about a taxi, Aunt Julia following her, Ethan and me following them.

  “I’ve got a card for a local taxi firm somewhere, I’ll try and find it,” Mum said when we were in her office.

  “And I’ll phone the train station,” Aunt Julia offered. “As it’s Christmas Eve, trains will be a bit on the sparse side.”

  We stood by as they carried out their respective tasks, both of us nearly jumping a foot in the air at the sound of a loud bang – the front door slamming.

  Mum was shaken too. “Did you leave the door open?” she asked us.

  Ethan held his hand up. “Yeah, I… I think so.”

  “So why’s it banged shut? There’s no wind.”

  Aunt Julia gasped. “Has someone come in, do you think? The same person who sabotaged the tyres!”

  Mum glanced at us; clearly worried we‘d be frightened by her words. “We don’t know the tyres were sabotaged. It could just be… coincidence.”

  It was obvious Aunt Julia didn’t believe that for a minute.

  “I’ll go and check,” Mum appeased, leaving the morning room and walking into the hallway shouting ‘Hello’. There was no reply. Not one that she could hear anyway.

  I’ve told you, you can never leave.

  “Mum,” I called, galvanized into action by the whisper in my ear, “we need to phone the taxi! Right now.” We couldn’t delay. We shouldn’t.

  Mum returned. “Yes, yes, I know that.” She started searching her desk. “Where’s that card, where is it?”

  “Was there anyone there?” Aunt Julia asked, still fretting about an assailant.

  “Of course not,” was Mum’s terse reply.

  Aunt Julia started ringing the station to check the train times, looked at the phone in confusion, and ealiz again. “I think your phone’s up the creek, Hel. I guess we’ll just have to take pot luck.”

  Mum only briefly looked up from the drawers she was rifling through.

  “I’ll check the Internet for train times instead,” Aunt Julia decided.

  “Yeah, we can look up a taxi firm online too, order one that way.”

  Aunt Julia started frowning again.

  “What’s wrong?” Mum asked her.

  “The page won’t load.”

  Straightening up, I think Mum wanted to scream. “What the bloody hell is wrong with everything today? Nothing’s working!”

  The phone started ringing.

  “I thought you said—”

  Aunt Julia shrugged. “I don’t know, Hel… it was making a strange crackling sound when I tried it.”

  Mum answered it and immediately her face was one of concern. “Oh, no,” she was saying. “I’m sorry, so sorry. Truly, I… I can’t believe it.”

  A few minutes passed whilst Mum continued talking, she’d turned her back on us, her voice so low it was barely audible. Putting the phone down, she looked at each one of us. “That was Dad. Carrie lost the baby.”

  Her announcement was as stark as the news.

  “Oh, no,” Aunt Julia responded. I was too shocked to say anything, so was Ethan.

  After a few moments of silence, Aunt Julia took the phone from Mum. “I’ll call the station again, check those train times.”

  Once more the phone was dead.

  “Damn it! I don’t understand.” Her nostrils flaring in anger, Aunt Julia looked at Mum. “You know what, let’s just bloody walk shall we? I don’t care how far it is!”

  Still reeling from Dad’s news, Mum sank into her office chair. “Poor Paul, poor Carrie, I feel so bad.”

  “Well, it is sad, but—”

  “No, Ju, I mean it, I feel awful.”

  Aunt Julia didn’t ask it, I did. “Why, Mum?”

  I don’t know if Mum even realised it was me who’d spoken; she was staring into the distance, a tear trailing down her cheek. “Because I wished for it to happen. I sat in that kitchen, distraught, and I wanted them to be as distraught as me. I hated the fact that they were happy.” She burst into heart-rending sobs. “What a terrible person I am, what a terrible, terrible person! It’s my fault. Everything’s my fault.”

  Aunt Julia rushed to console her. “It wasn’t your fault, how could it be?”

  Mum continued crying and I felt like joining in – somehow I knew all hope of leaving Blakemort that day was lost. Mum had retreated into herself; so far even her sister couldn’t reach her. She pushed Aunt Julia away slightly and stood up.

  “I… I just need to lie down. You don’t mind do you? I’m sorry…” Her voice trailed away as she left the room.

  Aunt Julia turned to me, defeated. “We’d better get the bags in from the car.”

  * * *

  I forced myself to go and see Mum later that day. Standing in the doorway, I looked at her, my shrunken mum, lying in that bed, her eyes fixated on the ceiling, she was humming, incessantly humming.

  “Mum,” I called but she didn’t respond. “Mum,” I said again, much louder.

  Finally she noticed me. “Go downstairs, sweetie. Go and see Aunt Julia. We’ll leave soon, I promise. But not yet, I can’t go anywhere just yet. Run along.”

  I wanted to hug her, to tell her not to worry about anything, that we’d look after her, Ethan, me and Aunt Julia too, help her to move on like Dad had moved on. But I wasn’t brave enough to go further into the room. I wish I had been. I wonder sometimes if a hug there and then might have changed everything.

  I went downstairs. Aunt Julia and Ethan were sitting in front of the fire playing a card game. Despite his teenage years, Ethan looked like a little boy again, lost. We all were, perfect fodder for that house in so many ways.

  All too soon, afternoon gave way to evening. It was getting later and later, and, despite ourselves, we were growing heavy-lidded. The house around us was quiet. Everything was quiet. Silent night. I started biting my nails, something I never did. It felt like we were in the eye of the storm, waiting for something to happen.

  Which of course we were.

  Aunt Julia yawned widely and then suggested we go upstairs too, that if Mum still wanted to be alone, the rest of us could bed down in my room together.

  “We’ll be just across the landing from your Mum, close enough, you know… if we’re needed.”

  I nodded and Ethan shrugged. Seeing that she forced a smile, rose and stretched again – making a bit of a show of it. Just as quickly she seemed to double over.

  “Ow!” she yelled, her hand reaching behind her. “My leg!”

  “Your leg?” I jumped up too.

  “The fire! My leg is on fire!”

  How? She was close to the fire, but not that close. Had it sparked and we’d not seen it?

  Without questioning further, I rushed over, Ethan did too, me at least expecting to see all sorts of horrors, but there was no evidence whatsoever of scorch marks on the trousers she wore, despite her insisting otherwise, her face a mask of bewildered pain. Helping her to the sofa, she continued to complain of burning, tears in her eyes as gingerly she rolled up her trouser leg. Again there was nothing, although an acrid smell filled the air, reminding me of meat left too long on the barbeque.

  I looked around, at the four walls that enclosed us, desperation rising, but who was there to help? No one living, no one dead either. The house had seen to that.

  “Aunt Julia, did you ever see Carol? Do you know what she looked liked?”

  “Carol? Why are asking me now?” Her breath was coming in short, sharp pants.

  “I just… want to know.”

  “I saw a picture of them together once. She’s got short hair, shaggy, pale skin, freckles, pretty in a plain sort of way.” Again she gasped, “My leg bloody hurts!”

  Short hair, shaggy – the woman standing behind Mum at the window, screaming. Was that Car
ol? The woman we thought we were renting off, the dead lady, the one who’d committed suicide. I gulped.

  “We need to get out.” How many times did it have to be said?

  I looked at Ethan and he looked at me. He knew it was crucial too. But what could we do? Children are so helpless – at least we were. There was a single scream.

  Forgetting her own pain, Aunt Julia sat bolt upright. “Helena,” she whispered, and then to me, “Help me up, for God’s sake, help me up!”

  Quickly I obeyed, so did Ethan.

  “We’ve got to go upstairs,” she continued.

  Standing at the bottom of the stairwell, we looked upwards. It was dark. Why had Mum turned off the lights? I went to the light switch, flicked it, but nothing happened.

  “I think the lights have blown again,” I said. “We’ve got a torch.”

  “Where is it?” Aunt Julia asked.

  It was Ethan who answered. “It’s in the kitchen.”

  “Run and fetch it,” she instructed but he didn’t move an inch.

  I volunteered instead.

  As I ran, I refused to look towards the music room, which was also in darkness. Again, there was the sound of a piano playing, mixed in with laughter, not just from the spiteful boy, but so many spiteful others. Fuck you, I thought. Like ‘bloody’, the word sat well with me.

  The torch was kept in the utility cupboard. I went straight to it, pulled it open, and searched around. The light was on in the kitchen but it had sunk very low. I needed that torch! Where was it? Behind the bottles of bleach, perhaps? There were so many of them, as if Mum had been stockpiling. Using them to clean the mould, the yellowed kitchen surfaces, and the general layer of grime, invisible to the eye mostly, but there, always there and easily sensed, even by the non-psychic. I knocked several bottles over, they made a loud thud as they fell to the floor but finally my hand closed around the cold metal of the torch. In my hands now, I switched it on, turned and the light bounced off the window, but more than that, a shape at the window – that of a man, peering in and glaring at me, blaming me, as he’d blamed Ethan – but what for? How were we to blame for any of this?

  A scream lodged in my throat as I continued to stare, as others joined him, so many others.

  You’re bastards, all of you!

  And you! The words flew back at me. You’re Corinna Bastard.

  I shook my head, blinked my eyes. Argued no more. Instead I got out of there, fled to the hallway, to the foot of the staircase.

  “Oh, there you are!” There was so much relief in Aunt Julia’s voice when I returned, as if she couldn’t believe I had returned. “Come on, help me upstairs.”

  She was limping, heavily. She placed one arm around me, and the other around Ethan, the light bouncing erratically off the walls.

  “We’re coming,” she called ahead. “Helena, don’t worry, we’re coming.”

  Upstairs, the torch was barely sufficient, and the smell that hit us was the same as that which had been in Ethan’s room, only intensified.

  The smell of death.

  Yes, I’d grasped that; I didn’t need one of the unseen to tell me. And then the words hit home. Whose death were they talking about?

  From downstairs something burst into life – a chorus of voices singing.

  “What the hell is that?” Aunt Julia screeched.

  “It’s the TV,” I quickly replied.

  She turned towards me. “Did you leave it on?”

  “No.”

  “Ethan?”

  “I never touched it!”

  It was a Christmas song, not a hymn, a pop song, Live Aid: Do they know it’s Christmas? Just as quickly it died down, the TV switching itself off.

  Aunt Julia was shaking. I could feel how violently her body trembled. “Let’s focus on your mum,” she said. “Helena, Helena, we’re here.”

  We approached the bedroom and the door was shut. Earlier it had been open.

  Aunt Julia released us and fell against it, resting her head briefly. She seemed exhausted, no life in her at all. “Darling, are you asleep?” she called. “Helena?” There was no reply. She turned to us. “We have to go in.”

  I took a step back not forwards. “I can’t,” I breathed. “I just can’t.”

  “Don’t be stupid,” she said and I bristled. She’d never called me that before. “Give me the torch.”

  “Yeah, go on, stop mucking about.” There was spite in Ethan’s voice too.

  I handed over the torch but reluctantly. Let them go in, I thought. Let whatever’s in there consume them. That will show which one of us is stupid.

  Don’t.

  The word flew at me.

  Stay calm.

  My hands either side of my head, I wanted to scream. What were these voices in my head? Who did they belong to?

  Carol?

  My own thought was met with no reply. Instead there was silence again as Aunt Julia and Ethan moved into the dark chasm of the room.

  “Helena,” Aunt Julia called.

  “Mum,” said Ethan.

  The two of them lowered their voices to whispers.

  “Where is she?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “She can’t have gone far.”

  As Aunt Julia had said, she couldn’t have gone far, she was in no fit state. I turned to the left, walked towards the staircase that hid itself away, stood at the bottom of it, and stared upwards again. I could hear something – a faint humming, drifting towards me, echoing in my ears. How I wish she’d stop humming that damned hymn! That hateful hymn! I didn’t want to hear it. As much as I used to love Christmas, I hated it now and everything to do with it – people pretending to be happy when they weren’t. Mum pretending to laugh and smile when she’d split with Dad, telling us we’d be okay, that we were still a family, a happy family.

  She’s a liar!

  It wasn’t my thought but I couldn’t disagree. That’s exactly what she was. I started climbing, my tread sure, my eyesight adjusting. Whereas before I’d needed the light, now I knew every tread, every square inch; I could have navigated them blindfolded.

  The attic door was ajar, always ajar – that strange mix of ‘come in’ and ‘go away’ – and I pushed it further open. The light was working; it was on, but more sickly than ever, as diseased as the house, as the ground it stood on. Death. Always death. We’d been surrounded by so much of it for so long.

  I could hear Mum but not see her, not yet. What I could see were shadows, more than ever before, gathering again for another performance, eager to enjoy the show. There were flies too, hordes of them, not in the air, but crawling over surfaces, their movements not fluid but strangely jagged as though they were part of an old black and white film, the kind that flickers constantly. In the rafters, something fluttered, not a fly, much bigger than that. I steeled myself, inhaled. Let it swoop at me. Let it dare!

  “Stop that noise, Mum,” I said, my voice impressive, bold.

  The humming continued.

  “Stop it,” I repeated.

  When still she refused, I crossed to the box that Ethan had previously opened and reached into it. Immediately my hand closed around the smooth glass of a paperweight, one that Ethan hadn’t stolen for his morbid collection.

  Accompanying the humming was whispering, soft at first but becoming frenzied.

  Do it, do it, do it! Kill her, kill her, kill her! Do it, or we’ll kill you!

  And then another whisper, more timid: Don’t give in.

  Yet more: You can’t leave. You can never leave.

  The soft voice again: Try. You have to try.

  I closed my eyes, becoming even more confused. Try what?

  To kill her.

  It was those words that were the clearest.

  There she was! I could see her at last. Sitting in the middle of the room, dead centre, with all those strange, spider-infested clothes scattered around her and swaying back and forth, her eyes closed and humming – my mother, my beautiful but weak a
nd lying mother.

  It’s my fault, she’d said. She’d actually admitted it. Everything’s my fault.

  Something fluttered above her head now but just as quickly it disappeared. On her hair a fly landed, seemed to settle.

  I clutched the glass weight tighter and continued forwards, started to hum too. Silent Night, Holy Night. No, Mum, no. There was nothing holy about this night.

  There was a tugging at my hand but easily I shrugged it off.

  Don’t, don’t, don’t.

  Ignored too the accompanying pleading.

  Even when I stood before her, Mum didn’t open her eyes, didn’t bother to acknowledge me. Typical of her, she never acknowledged anything.

  It’s your fault, all this torment. You’re to blame.

  I lifted my hand, higher, higher still and then, as the whispering turned to laughter, to cheers, to a resounding applause, I brought it crashing down.

  Blakemort Chapter Twenty-Seven

  All hell broke loose. There were footsteps behind me, screams from both Aunt Julia and Ethan, wild fluttering above, then more screams, but not from the living. Some frantic, others whooping with joy. Amidst all this, Mum never stirred. As for me, I was screaming too; such a strange sound, distant, disconnected, but me nonetheless, my mouth wide open. The object was still in my hands and there was red, so much of it – blood on the floor and blood soaking my mother’s hair as her body crumpled, not matching the shade, but turning it darker, so much darker, blacker than black. This was no vision, not like the one I’d had in the drawing room. This was real.

  Desperate to regain some kind of control, I threw the glass weight as far from me as possible; heard the thud as it landed in some far corner. I threw myself too, across Mum’s body, yelling out for her, praying fervently that she’d be all right.

  “What have you done? What the hell have you done?” As much as she was able to, given her perceived injury and all the junk that was in the way, Aunt Julia rushed towards us.

  Ethan stood perfectly still. “It’s the house,” he kept repeating. “It’s the house.”

  Mum stirred. One hand reached upwards and came away smeared. She looked into Aunt Julia’s eyes not mine. “Get me out,” she managed. “Get us all out.”