Psychic Surveys Companion Novels

by Shani Struthers

“And?”

  “They hadn’t.”

  “Little wonder. What about the boys that helped Mr Cameron? Did they leave too?”

  “It was just the one boy by that time, a young lad called Liam, and he’d been dismissed a few months earlier. Mr Cameron said he had no need of him, that it was a waste of money employing him, that he and his wife could manage well enough.”

  “Is Liam still on the island?”

  “No, he left at the first opportunity, a lot of the youngsters do, to be fair. They go to Glasgow or Edinburgh. Unless you’re into farming, there’s not much to stick around for.”

  “Has Liam still got family on Skye?”

  “Aye, his dad’s here, Ron McCarron.”

  “Perhaps I can talk to him.”

  Angus snorted. “Good luck in finding him sober enough to make sense.”

  “Oh,” I responded.

  “Oh indeed.”

  “When was the lighthouse put on the market?”

  “Only recently, a whole ten years later. In this part of the world, things have a tendency to move slowly, business included. As you know, my uncle really wants to invest in it. He said it’d make a mint as a bespoke guesthouse, that the punters would love its quirkiness. There are those on Skye that doubt that, who think it’s in too remote a location to stay busy all year-round, but Uncle Glenn insists that’s not a problem, that people will flock here, come rain, shine, hail or snow. And they may do if what happened to Ally gets fixed.”

  I nodded, mulling over in my mind what he’d said and what I knew already. Ally Dunn had barely spoken a word in the two months since she’d been here. She and a group of her friends had sat upstairs, as so many had done on so many occasions before, and played Thirteen Ghost Stories. There’d actually been thirteen of them that night according to Angus, usually there were a lot fewer, each of them telling a story, and, as they’d counted upwards, got closer to thirteen, things started to happen. Several of the teenagers experienced blinding headaches, another two felt sick, one to the point of retching. One girl swore blind that the teenager next to her had pinched her, whilst a boy felt someone blowing into his face, a short sharp puff that caused his eyes to water profusely. But, of course, it was Ally who’d suffered the most.

  “Poor Ally,” Angus was saying, looking around him, at the shadows that seemed to be on the increase. His hands were in front of him, the fingernails of one hand scratching the palm of the other – a nervous habit perhaps? If so, I didn’t blame him. Just as he was nervous, I was too. I wasn’t sure what was here, yet – but there was something. And its energy… was it dark or was it troubled? There’s a difference as far as I’m concerned. Troubled I could identify with more, whereas the dark verges on something I don’t want to believe exists – worse than any human savagery, it’s something inhuman.

  I took a breath, reminding myself what I was here to do: to discover if this place was haunted or if what happened to Ally Dunn was the result of teenage imagination, which is fertile enough at the best of times, never mind the worst. “I need to know everything you know.”

  “Well, it was… erm… Christ, it’s hard to get the words out, you know, standing here…”

  “But here is where it happened?”

  “Like I said, it was upstairs, in the one of the kid’s rooms.”

  “Which kid?”

  “The girl’s.”

  He meant Caitir’s room – a private room, a sanctuary, or at least it should have been.

  I glanced upwards at the ceiling, at the cracks similar to a spider’s web and made a decision. “Then we’ll do the same, Angus, we’ll go upstairs. You can tell me there.”

  Thirteen Chapter Four

  1973

  Ness, Ness, don’t cry. Mum really doesn’t hate you.

  She does!

  She doesn’t, she just gets… angry sometimes. So do you.

  Me?

  I was upstairs again, in my room, the only place I could find respite from the rest of my family, where they didn’t usually bother me. Only my twin bothered me. There’d been yet another argument between Mum and me, or rather Mum had laid into me for yet another perceived slight. I’d been lying on my bed sobbing, but at my twin’s words I sat bolt upright. “This has got nothing to do with me. This is her fault, hers and… and yours.”

  Her pale eyes clouded, as her shoulders wilted. Feeble, I thought, that’s what she looks like, and then immediately felt guilty. Another thing that had been pointed out to me several times by my mother was that I’d been the twin who took all the nutrients from the other one. ‘Greedy,’ she’d called me once. I’d had to bite down hard on my tongue so I wouldn’t retaliate. How the hell could anyone blame a foetus! But I had been greedy, even if unwittingly, stealing my sister’s life force to bolster my own. Staring at her, I started to reach out, to touch her arm, an apology forming on my lips, but I stopped, and couldn’t go through with it. Instead, I snatched my arm back and threw more words at her.

  “I wish you’d all leave me alone.”

  Ness—

  “Mum, Dad, my dumb brothers and sisters, but most of all I mean you. How can I ever hope to be normal when you’re always hanging around?”

  The way she sat there, huddled on the edge of my bed, only served to infuriate me more. She was doing it deliberately, I was sure of it, acting all pathetic in order to try and make me sorry for her, to admit how horrid I was being. It wasn’t going to work, not this time. I shoved my face into hers, expecting her to recoil, and was surprised when she didn’t.

  “I hate you, do you know that?”

  Ness, don’t.

  “I don’t want to live with ghosts.”

  But it’s your gift.

  I laughed, such a bitter sound. “Being able to see you, to see others, is not a gift!”

  It is, Ness.

  She always said this, always!

  “If I could unsee you, I would.”

  You can’t unsee things. That isn’t even a proper word.

  “How do you know? How the heck do you know? You don’t go to school.”

  I’m not stupid; I know a lot of things, as much as you do, if not more.

  “Then keep it to yourself and don’t bother me with it.”

  She was the one who tried to reach out, but I reared back.

  “Don’t touch me,” I spat.

  In truth, what always surprised me whenever she did touch me was the warmth of her. She wasn’t cold at all, not like I expected her to be, she was as warm as anything living.

  You don’t always hate seeing me.

  “I do,” I replied, wiping at the tears that threatened to spill.

  Sometimes we have fun.

  “No we don’t!”

  But that wasn’t strictly true. We could have had fun together, plenty of it – like that time last year when the snow came, we could have gone out together, played and laughed. God knows I had very few friends as well as a family who either treated me as an outcast or a joke. Yes, there had been some who’d tried to befriend such a solemn child, but when you think your own family doesn’t like you, you simply can’t believe that strangers will either. And so it’s easier to shun people before they shun you, it’s easier to be alone. Especially when you weren’t alone. When you could see others hovering around the little girl that’s smiling at you or the boy who’s asked you to join in a game of tag – attachments, spirits, some inviting you, or rather pleading with you to help them, to acknowledge them, to admit you can see them. The despair on their faces as you shake your head, as you walk away, their terror that someone might never see them again, that wasn’t fun, none of it. It was too much for someone who was just a little girl as well.

  Ness.

  She was tugging at me now.

  Ness, everything will be all right, if you’d just accept me.

  Anger caused my chest to heave.

  I’m the only family you really need.

  My breath was coming in short, sharp pants.

 
The only friend.

  Was she being serious?

  We’re a part of each other, Ness.

  Still she was tugging at my sleeve, desperate for me to answer.

  Finally, I raised my head and looked her straight in the eyes again.

  “I hate you.”

  She was even more pitiful than before.

  Don’t keep saying that.

  “Why not? Tell me a good reason why I shouldn’t?”

  Why? Because you’re beginning to sound just like Mum, that’s why.

  Thirteen Chapter Five

  The hallway was also littered, ankle-deep in places, and that terrible smell… it really was sickening, a real stench. We needed more light, the torch was useless against such inky blackness, but it was also the only thing we had. Ironic really, that more light was needed at the lighthouse. It defied its existence alone on the cliff top and it defied its name too.

  “Why was this lighthouse decommissioned?” I asked, as we found the stairwell and began to climb, Angus insisting on going ahead of me. “Was another one built?”

  “Aye,” he couldn’t keep the shiver out of his voice, “there’s one further up the coast, just a tower, no big house or cabins attached to it and therefore much more cost effective. After the Camerons left, this lighthouse was converted to automatic operation for a while, but the light kept failing, and for no reason that they could fathom, so it was decided to build another. That one works well enough. Mind you, with satellite marine navigation coming on in leaps and bounds, by my reckoning, in ten to twenty years, there’ll be no need for lighthouses at all. There’ll be loads of them up and down the country, left like this, abandoned, the new tower a few miles away included, the lights turned off forevermore.”

  It was a sobering thought.

  At the top of the stairs, on the landing, we stood side by side. More darkness stretched before us, and in that darkness were deeper patches – doorways to bedrooms, which at this moment felt like they harboured other dimensions, ones we weren’t equipped for.

  Striving to keep my breathing calm, to keep it even, I nonetheless had to reach into the pocket of the coat I was wearing. In it I’d placed a great big chuck of obsidian, my hand closing around it and feeling how solid it was, how cool, its black shiny surface as smooth as glass. A lucky charm, a talisman, call it what you will, it gave me comfort. Renowned for its ability to repel negativity, to protect a person from psychic attack, it was also supposed to have healing qualities, helping to release lower or negative emotions – I hadn’t found it much good for that, but it was certainly a stone I was drawn to at the moment, more than tourmaline, which was widely considered the queen of the protection stones. It was my stone and without it I felt exposed. Having drawn strength from the crystal, I inhaled again and composed myself as much as possible, given the circumstances. That feeling that there was something here – besides Angus and myself – was becoming more apparent. There was something and it was watching – hiding in shadows that were darker still.

  “Come on,” Angus said, either getting braver or wanting to get this whole shebang over and done with as quickly as possible. “The girl’s room is this way.”

  My conflict continued. Should we be doing this – going into what might be the epicentre? Maybe it was best if I went alone, I didn’t want anything to happen to Angus. Another option: we could call the whole thing off and seek more advice. It’s not as if I fancied putting myself in danger either. But here we were – just feet from Caitir’s room. It might be possible to make contact, and if we did, we could wrap this whole matter up tonight and what few days I’d booked here I could enjoy instead, taking long solitary walks beside lochs and along cliff tops, immersing myself in the beauty of Skye, which might prove healing too. Hope – how it spurs a person on. And despite my fear I was hopeful. I also reminded myself of other encounters I’d had previously; spirits that seemed as dark as this one, as spiteful, and as mischievous. They’d all been human once, humans who had suffered, and in the spirit realm were suffering still. That was what kept them grounded. So often – as with the girls in the woods, certainly the one I’d managed to contact anyway – it was shock, hurt, despair and disbelief at what had happened to them, that people, living and breathing, could inflict such cruelty, could be so merciless. What if, like her, something terrible had happened to whoever was grounded here: what if it was experiencing a similar range of emotions and having lost faith in this world, had lost faith in the next too? If so, that might be why it had hit out – at Ally Dunn, at the other teenagers. It had simply had enough of being teased, even if that teasing was more attributable to youthful ignorance than malice. If I could release its spirit, not leave it lingering in such a lonely, desolate spot, anger and fear growing ever more potent, then I had to try.

  That little girl in the woods – she was never far from my mind, or her expression as her body was eventually found, as she’d hovered above it, staring down into milky eyes that had once shone with vitality, at a perfect complexion now mottled and dirt-encrusted. The girl was sad, of course she was, but she’d been relieved too. Finally there was resolve and because of it she could let go, her sadness fading entirely as the light wrapped itself around her. The second girl in the woods, her friend, I’d tried so hard with her too – but you have to be ready for release, you can’t force it. As free-will exists in life, it seems to exist in death too. We may have found her body, lying right beside the first, but her spirit continued to elude me – she was there all right, she was grounded, but she refused to come forward. But I’ve made a promise: one day I’ll go back to those woods, as lonely a place as this, and I’ll go alone, with no police officers in tow, and try again to coax her.

  Having bypassed the two other bedrooms, the bathroom as well, Angus pushed the door to the third bedroom open. I don’t know what I expected; perhaps a rush of energy as whatever was grounded hurled itself at me, a mad keening perhaps from something barely visible, a burst of emotion that would force its way down my throat to broil in the pit of my stomach. My imagination runs riot as much as the next person. But there were no spectral hands to tear at my hair, no hollow eyes that bored into mine, there was nothing – absolutely nothing. It was just a dark space, into which we stared blindly – Caitir’s room, only a very little of her energy lingering: the innocence, the sweetness, and the fear.

  Who’d she been afraid of?

  Who or what?

  Outside the wind had picked up. I pictured it curling itself around the building, tendrils desperately seeking portals they could rush into, entering at last, in belligerent triumph. I envisioned the mist too as it crept stealthily inland, intent on suffocating us.

  I gulped. “Angus, I think we should come back in day—"

  It wasn’t him who interrupted me; it was a high-pitched cry that rang on and on.

  “It’s just the weather,” he said.

  “I know that.”

  “It can sound pretty eerie at times.”

  That was the understatement of the year. But he was right, it was just the weather and I needed to keep calm. This was my profession. I couldn’t run at the slightest hint of unease. I discarded entirely what I was going to say earlier. “Let’s go further in.”

  We did, Angus at my heel.

  “Shall we close the door?” he asked.

  “Leave it open.”

  “The wind might catch it, that’s all.”

  It might. We’d see.

  “So now, tell me everything that happened,” I said, steeling myself, imagining not what was lurking, or the elements as a living beast, but a swathe of pure white light, drawn straight from the beating heart of the universe, bold and brilliant. A shield, that’s what the light was, one that no dark force had the power to penetrate. Immediately, I could feel my shoulders relax and my jaw unclench. I could do this. We were safe… or safe enough.

  “It was a wild and stormy night,” he began, “similar to this one…”

  Immediately I reprima
nded him. “Angus! Come on, kill the jokes.”

  “Sorry,” he replied, laughing and then he paused again. “Actually it’s not a joke. It was a wild and stormy night, as many of them are on Skye. The kids had gathered here again, probably a couple of the older ones had borrowed their parents’ cars or something and were looking forward to another night of partying. But I think they looked forward to the game the most – I know we used to, when we were young. It added that extra bit of spice. They’d drank, mucked around a bit, the usual, and then they’d settled down – this is along the lines of what I’ve been told, by the way, by one of the lads who was here. I can’t give you a blow by blow account, it was hard enough getting this much out of him.”

  “Okay,” I conceded, shivering a little. “It’ll do for now.”

  “The candles were lit, thirteen of them, and then everyone took their place, sitting in a circle. The first person told their story, blew out the candle, the next, and the next, and so on. There’d be giggles, a bit of elbowing to hush the gigglers up, one teen clutching onto another, any excuse, eh? But as the stories continued, the atmosphere must have changed, that clutching became pinching, people no longer laughing. They’d started to accuse each other of stuff, getting tetchy. During all of this, Ally had grown quieter, those either side of her, Isabel and Craig, had noticed but not said a word, to her or each other. It was as if she’d gone into a trance, Craig said. She was just… staring.”

  Coming to a halt, it took a few seconds for him to continue.

  “Finally they got to the last story, which is always a tense time. Soon the room would be in complete darkness. It was Isabel’s turn to tell it, but she didn’t want to, she’d got scared, the way that everyone was behaving, not sitting as quiet as they usually do, as rapt, but getting aggressive with each other. Most of all, Ally was unnerving her, her being as still as a statue. I think Isabel made some joke about not bothering with the last story, leaving the candle to burn, but the response to that was aggressive too. She was told to ‘bloody get on with it.’ So she did, trying to string it out a bit, to make sense of what was happening around her, but just as there’s a beginning and a middle, there’s an end, and so she leant forward to blow the candle out. And that’s when it happened.”