Psychic Surveys Companion Novels

by Shani Struthers

  “Denny—”

  “Stop!” I commanded. “No arguing. That’s one of our rules, isn’t it? We keep calm, we even have a bit of fun, and we shine the lights.”

  “Some fun this is,” whispered one of them, Lainey I think, immediately inciting anger. How dare she say that! Who does she think she is? Stupid fucking bitch!

  The force of my thoughts shocked me. They made me want to reach out and grab Lainey by the throat, shake her until she was as limp as a rag doll, tear her limbs apart.

  “Light another candle,” I said, a desperation in my voice that Angus responded to straightway.

  “Light a few of them,” he added.

  We needed the light and I needed to keep calm, close a door on my weakness too – my anger. But it’s not easy; it’s not bloody easy… “Isabel, please, just tell your story.”

  She did and it was a good one, as light as I’d hoped, as funny as I’d wished for. Her torch also worked perfectly, and because of that we seemed to settle again.

  “Breathe, kids,” I reminded them. “Slowly and deeply.”

  “It’s impossible to panic when you breathe like that,” Isabel piped up.

  “That’s the intention,” Angus answered for me.

  “Denny, yours is the eleventh story,” I said. “Almost there. We’re almost there.”

  Denny began his story but he kept faltering… his gaze constantly drawn to another corner of the room, the one behind me. I wanted to look round, to try and see what had captured his attention, but I refrained. If I did, I’d give it validation, and so I kept gently prompting him instead. “Just another minute or so, Denny, and then it’s over.”

  “I… I… Sorry, I can’t. I keep forgetting the words.”

  “Then wrap it up,” I suggested. “Any way will do. Give it some kind of ending.”

  “It’s just he keeps laughing at me, that’s all.”

  “No one’s laughing at you, Denny.”

  “There is, it’s that man in the corner. He… he… keeps looking at me and laughing.”

  Denny was a sweet kid, a brave kid – he was here after all, when others wouldn’t come near – but he was also very overweight with a mop of dark hair that was even more unruly than Angus’s. The man he insisted was laughing at him, I think I knew where that was coming from – people did laugh at him, his friends, his friends mates, maybe even total strangers. They’d look and they’d laugh at the fat kid. And it hurt. It really hurt. And this thing that was with us, it knew how much its laughter also hurt the boy.

  “It’s just the seven of us in this room, Denny, that’s all.”

  Denny paused, his expression turning slightly sour. “He’s laughing at you too, Miss.”

  “Then let him,” I replied. “I’ll tell you what, why don’t we laugh along with him, let him know that we find him just as funny.”

  That horrified Denny. “No, no, please don’t do that, it’ll make him angry.” He hung his head in fear and sadness. “Let’s just… ignore him. I can do that, honestly I can.”

  “He isn’t there,” I repeated, glancing at Angus who couldn’t resist turning his head to see what had transfixed Denny. Having done so, he looked at me and gave a slight shake of the head. A manifestation unique to Denny, as the spider had been for Amy, I only hoped it would fade soon. “Denny, bring the story to an end, then turn on your torch.”

  He managed to do as I asked, but I could tell he was struggling. His torch came on, but the light was weak. “Can I light a candle too, Miss?” There was a quiver in his voice.

  “Light as many as you want.” I was glad to give him something else to focus on.

  There was silence again, a few sounds from downstairs managed to pervade, but they sounded so far away, as if at the end of a long, long tunnel. It was isolated on this part of the island, but in this room I felt more isolated still. We all did I think, cut off from the rest of the world, from reality even – playing a game that had serious consequences.

  The time for the twelfth story had come – Lainey’s second turn. Not all but some torches at least, shone around us, the light confined to the circle that we were sitting in. The candles glowed too, but some had already gone out. No matter, Denny was continuing to light the ones he could, pushing those that remained lit away from him, making room for more. There was an obsessive quality to his behaviour, and the others, plus Angus, noticed. The game had to come to a head soon – one way or another.

  “Lainey, can you please take your turn?”

  The girl tore her gaze from Denny to stare at me. Was I mistaken or had her expression changed? There wasn’t fear in it, or worry, not any more. She looked… amused.

  “Lainey, are you okay?”

  “I’m fine,” she insisted.

  “Keep your story short, two or three minutes is fine, then Angus can finish the game. The light is so much stronger than the dark, and we are so much stronger if we work together. And that’s what we’re doing; we’ve got each other’s backs. I’m proud of you, Lainey, I’m so damned proud. I’m proud of all of you. What a great team we are.”

  Her expression was beginning to return to normal, just as another torch went out.

  “I’m scared.” It was Amy, her eyes darting furiously around again.

  “I know you are–” I began, but Angus interrupted me.

  “Amy, Lainey, all of you, we fight this thing or it wins. We’ve come so far, do you really want to give up now?”

  “Lainey, come on,” urged Craig.

  “Okay, okay,” she responded, no hint of amusement in her voice at least, she sounded defiant instead – whether that was in our favour or not, I couldn’t tell.

  Taking a deep breath, looking at each of us in turn, her gaze finally came to rest on me. In the glare of the torchlight, with the darkness at her back, she had altered. She seemed bigger than she was before, and she had a yellowish cast to her eyes. Was it because of the flames spluttering at her feet? Not a cheerful yellow, it was dirty instead…

  As she opened her mouth, I braced myself.

  “Once upon a time there was a girl, a lonely girl, a girl who was misunderstood.”

  Don’t rise to it, I told myself. This may have nothing to do with you.

  “She had hair as dark as mine, and lived in a big house with her mummy and daddy, and her brothers and sisters.”

  The skin on the back of my neck began to tingle.

  “Her bedroom was tiny, the smallest of all the bedrooms, but in it she would hide from the world. And not just the world, but those who were from other worlds too.”

  Should I interrupt? I couldn’t, the twelfth story had to be told. It would be all right if I just didn’t take the bait.

  “One of those that she hid from was her twin, her dead twin. Even though the twin was nice to her, needed her, this girl wasn’t nice back, she was mean to her poor dead twin, nasty, and she was that way because she’d learnt to be. Her mother had taught her well.”

  I couldn’t do it, just sit there and listen, I tried, but words tumbled out of my mouth. “Lainey, if you don’t feel well, if something’s wrong—”

  “Let me speak!” she hissed and not only me, all of us flinched. Reminding myself that this was someone’s child, not something terrible, I tried again to reach her.

  “Lainey—”

  “Oh this mother of hers, she taught her hatred, anger and fear, and all of this the girl practised on her twin, someone who’d suffered enough, who was dead for Christ’s sake! She’d killed her in the womb; sucked the life from her. That’s why her mother felt the way she did, that’s the true reason. Her mother knew the twin that lived was evil.”

  “STOP IT!” I shouted. “STOP IT NOW, LAINEY!”

  As Angus looked at me in both shock and bewilderment, as the teenagers looked at me in that way too, Lainey began to snarl. “The twin that lived then decided to hurt her family more, to bring great shame on them and herself. She hurt her twin too, the twin who’d always tried to help her, to com
fort her, the twin who’d forgiven her for the life that she’d stolen. But the living twin couldn’t forgive, her soul was black, and her heart was twisted.”

  “Lainey…” My voice seemed to have lost its strength as sobs threatened to choke me.

  “Go on, Ness, tell them what you did, to your twin, to your family, and to yourself. Tell them about the madness that runs thick in your veins…”

  “I’m not mad,” I denied as the lights flickered, but again my voice was weak.

  “The psychiatrists said you were.”

  “I’d been driven mad,” I countered, so many shocked pairs of eyes on me, “but it was only temporarily. I swear I’m not mad.”

  “You are,” Lainey insisted, “and yet here we sit, listening to you.” She shrugged. “Perhaps we’re mad too.”

  “Ness… Lainey…” Angus didn’t know which one of us to address first.

  “Tell us what you did,” Lainey took no notice of him at all, her gaze, that filthy yellow gaze, fixed solely on me, “when you were thirteen.”

  “No,” my voice was a mere whisper, “I can’t.” I was drenched in shame all over again. Why couldn’t I close the door on what had happened, why had I never been able to do that? How ironic, that of all of us here, I was the weakest link. “We need to end this game.”

  “We can’t,” Lainey replied, “not until the thirteenth ghost story’s been told. And it’s your turn, Ness. It’s your story that completes the game.”

  Thirteen Chapter Twenty-Three

  1975

  Happy thirteenth birthday!

  The card I held in my hand, the cheery greeting printed in large red letters against a backdrop of a girl on a scooter, felt flimsy. The words, the girl, equally as cheery, seemed to mock me. Happy was the very opposite of what I was feeling as I sat at the table in our dining room, my brothers and sisters around me, chatting with each other, but rarely with me – even though this was all supposedly in my honour. Dad was trying at least. At the head of the table, he smiled in my direction, even raised his eyebrows a couple of times as if issuing some sort of apology. As for Mum, she was in the kitchen – spending as much time as possible in there, an avoidance tactic. I knew it, and so did everyone else.

  Since the miscarriage last year she’d been even more distant with me. Whenever I did catch her glancing my way, the look in her eyes was almost more than I could bear. I’d stopped looking lately, stopped seeking any kind of acceptance. I wasn’t as young, as naive, or as hopeful as I used to be, I knew when I was on a highway to nowhere.

  As I sat there, toying with my birthday meal – hamburger and chips, my favourite, or at least it used to be, nothing seemed to taste good lately – I furtively glanced around the room. It wasn’t just my birthday, it was hers too – my twin’s. She hadn’t shown herself since this morning, when she’d dragged me from sleep, excited about the day ahead.

  We’re thirteen! We’re thirteen!

  She kept saying it, over and over again, the shape of her more substantial than it had ever been. Her hair, her clothes, the heart shape of her face, it was all mine, but my eyes, I swear they were emptier than hers.

  I’d had to go to school – no day off for the birthday girl, not if my mother could help it. The teacher had made a bit of fuss over me, got the other kids to sing Happy Birthday, but few, if any, had done so with enthusiasm. I wanted them to stop. I wanted to get to my feet and yell at them to shut up. So what if it was my birthday? But I sat there and endured it, my hands clasped under my desk, my nails digging deep into the palm of my hands.

  And then the bell had rung and I walked home alone, to this: a birthday tea, a family gathering, the only presents given to me ‘serviceable’ ones: a flannelette nightdress to replace my old one, socks, a winter scarf, and vests. Nothing frivolous, nothing fun, no make-up, not even a new book – how I’d wished for another Brontë book, Wuthering Heights this time. Perhaps they’d have it in the library, I could always borrow it from there.

  Having finished their meal, two of my sisters started complaining.

  “Where’s Mum? Me and Suzy want to go out tonight, we can’t hang around for long.”

  “And I’ve got homework,” said Paul, “I need to get on with it really.”

  They were itching to leave the dining table. Dad too, he kept glancing at his watch and then at the TV – clearly worried about missing something, the news probably.

  “Love,” he called through to the kitchen. “How long will you be?”

  “Not long,” came the irritated reply. “Just give me a minute, will you?”

  To do what, I thought? Brace yourself to face me again, your demon daughter.

  Eventually she left the kitchen and entered the room, a cake in her hands, one that, to my amazement, looked homemade. I’d never had a homemade cake before.

  “Get the lights!” my father said, nodding at Ollie. “Quick!”

  In the darkness, the cake, with its white icing and jammy middle was remarkably pretty, with not just one or two candles, but thirteen, blazing merrily away.

  A voice interrupted my wonder. Ness, look at our cake!

  It’s my cake. Straightaway, I shot the thought back. Just mine!

  But Ness, it’s our birthday, both of us.

  That cake is mine!

  As the second chorus of Happy Birthday began, I tried to ignore just how mean I was being, didn’t truly understand the reason why – my moods had been up and down a lot lately, more down than up if I’m honest. Maybe it was the number of candles that did it. As far as I could remember there’d only ever been two or three in the past, and not just on my cake, but all my siblings’ cakes. ‘Candles are an unnecessary expense,’ Mum would say, if someone happened to complain. ‘We’re not made of money.’ But today I’d got the correct number and a cake she’d baked herself, not something shop bought. She’d made an effort – a huge effort – and my eyes watered to see it. Perhaps I wasn’t so hardened after all; perhaps I did care. And wonder of wonders, perhaps she did as well.

  As the cake was set before me, I leant forward to blow the candles out.

  Let’s blow them out together.

  Still my twin was insisting. Forgetting myself, I turned my head to the side and glared at her. No!

  “Ness,” my mother’s voice contained its usual curtness. “Will you hurry up? I don’t want wax dripping all over that cake.”

  “Sorry,” I muttered, chancing a smile at her. She didn’t return the gesture.

  Drawing in another deep breath, I warned my twin again. Just stay back.

  Maybe it was this way even when you had a living twin. Sometimes, just sometimes, you wanted your own space, a bit of individuality, and a fuss made of you and you alone.

  As I went to exhale, she beat me to it – the candles spluttered for a moment, as if on my side, as if protesting, but finally giving in. I stood there, staring at the extinguished candles, at the smoke trails, stunned. How was she able to do that? She’d already used a fair amount of energy this morning, materialising to such an extent. She’d need time to recharge before interacting on this scale, a day or two, a week – not mere hours.

  Something inside me – brittle for so long – snapped. Without thinking of the consequences, I lunged forward, one hand connecting with the cake and swiping it off the table, knocking it flying across the room, all the while screaming in my head, NO! NO! NO!

  It wasn’t just in my head I realised, I was screaming out loud too, and not just those words but far more. “You’re always here, you’re always interfering. I don’t want you anymore, don’t you realise? I want you to leave me alone. You didn’t have a birthday. Not really. Only I did. This is my birthday, and my cake, and those were my candles.”

  Too late, I realised the horror on the faces that surrounded me, my twin’s included. And then as always, from those who were living anyway, came the suppressed humour, the tired sighs, the eye rolling, and my mother’s terrible ire.

  “Look what you’ve done!
” she screamed. “You… You… I don’t know what you are!” There seemed to be genuine confusion in that last cry. My mother honestly didn’t know what she’d spawned. “That’s it, your birthday’s over. Go to your room. Get out of my sight!”

  In just as much shock as she was, I forced my legs to move, my feet connecting with the goo of the cake that lay splattered on the floor, slipping and sliding momentarily, causing even more merriment amongst some of my siblings. Once in my room, as much a sanctuary for me as the kitchen had been for my mother, I slammed the door shut, threw myself on my bed and prepared for the sobs that would surely wrack my body. It surprised me when they didn’t come, when my eyes remained stubbornly dry.

  Pushing myself up, I shunted along to the edge of my bed and sat there instead. How long for I don’t know. Time had ground to a halt. Eventually I could hear activity on the landing – my brothers and sisters, my parents, preparing for bed, passing my room but not bothering to call out to the occupant inside. Silence descended. My twin was close by, I could feel her, but she had the good sense to keep her distance.

  At some point I rose from my bed with the intention of going downstairs to the kitchen. Before I did, however, I walked across to the mirror that hung on the far wall and stared at my reflection. I hated what I saw – the monster that faced me.

  Gently easing open the bedroom door, managing to avoid all the creaking floorboards, I padded downstairs, carpeted floor soon giving way to cold tiles. In the kitchen, I didn’t bother to turn the light on. The darkness suited my purpose. I welcomed it, wondering just how dark it was going to get; not on this side, the other side – the darkness in which things existed.

  Ness, don’t.

  Finally, my twin had dared to materialise, but I ignored her. Instead, I reached for the wooden block just behind the toaster and chose what I hoped was the sharpest knife.

  I’m sorry. It was mean of me to blow out the candles, you’re right, but I couldn’t help myself.

  Calmly I turned towards her – not substantial, not anymore, she was barely a shade.