“No, they shall not. I will see to it. You are safe.”
For the first time ever.
Stephen prodded the driver, who grumbled his way back into consciousness, clearing his throat in a rather pointed manner before taking up the reins.
Once seated, I looked back at Mears House from the carriage window. What would become of it?
As we drove away, I continued to look back; especially at the attic, where there were no windows at the front. A thought struck me: Mother had left a photograph for me; she had left a necklace, both of which had been hidden. What if there was something else I had not yet discovered; something that needed to be discovered.
There is more armour coming, I promise.
“Rosamund.” Stephen interrupted my thoughts. Having noticed me shivering, he was holding up a blanket, gesturing for me to drape it around my shoulders. I did so and he drew me to him, encouraging me to lay my head against his chest, the pair of us caked in filth and not minding one bit. Safe. Right now, that is all that matters.
And in that moment, happiness, true happiness, began to bloom.
Rosamund Chapter Twenty-Two
‘Reader, I married him.’
I had a husband and I had six children – six! Five boys and the youngest – by several years – a girl: Sarah – a final blessing when we had already been blessed so much; a child who could see further than her brothers, which was something we encouraged; something we guided, Stephen and I. And, Reader, I also had a dog – a black Labrador, Jared, who sat with the children and adored them as we did – as faithful a companion as I had always hoped.
It was just before Christmas and all of us were in the drawing room of our townhouse in the Chelsea suburb of London – the Davis family in its entirety. Our eldest, Stephen, named for his father, was almost nineteen, and planning to study medicine, but oh, what a different life he had led compared to me; a comfortable life; privileged. Nonetheless I wished to think that he, along with all our offspring, was sensitive to others; not in the same way that I was sensitive, but in a way that mattered just as much; treating everyone as he would like himself to be treated – with respect and compassion. They all did; they made me very proud.
“Mama,” it was my blonde-haired boy, Edward, speaking. “The tree looks magnificent!”
His brother Paul nudged him. “Look at the gifts beneath it! Which is mine?”
“You will find out tomorrow,” our youngest boy, Robert, assured him. “For tomorrow is Christmas Eve!”
Sarah had broken from the fray and gone over to the window. I knew what she was about and who would be there. He always came visiting at this time of year.
“Harry!” she said, her four-year-old chubby fingers pointing.
I went and stood by her side.
“I wish he would come inside,” she continued.
I did too. I had beckoned him in on one occasion, but he had shaken his head. His place was outside, on the streets. He was an urchin; a guardian; a child with the eyes of someone who had lived a thousand years, or had been dead for the same amount of time. Guardians came in all shapes and forms; they could even be dogs or cats. Very often that was the case, something I had come to realise through my research at the psychical society; a society I had helped to found that was very different from the one my husband once belonged to; one he now shudders to remember; a society destroyed by its members’ role in the death of Constance. Shunned by all in London, their endeavours came to nothing. In contrast our society was held in high regard. I was held in high regard. Our goal? Similar to theirs, it was to ‘prove’ as far as possible, to the sceptical; to those who were quick to damn; to those who clung to the constraints of a religion – a religion that strangely, believed in ghosts, provided they were ‘holy’ – that the paranormal existed; a world outside the normal – or what we, as humans, perceived normal to be. And this we did via a process of collation; collecting diligently the experiences of those who had encountered the paranormal; people willing to offer their experiences rather than be coerced into it. Of course I have included my own experiences, lately preferring to specialise in another area, one which a number of my colleagues chose not to study: that of the non-spirit, of which our understanding is still basic. My father’s girl after all? No, for I seek to help them, not use them for my own personal gain.
Sarah was lifting her hand and waving.
“Yes, that is it,” I encouraged, “wave to him. He enjoys that.”
And it was not only she that lifted her hand, so did the boys. They saw what she was doing and ran over, accompanied by Jared, all of them, even my eldest, as excited by Harry’s annual appearance as much as by the appearance of the Christmas tree itself.
“Harry! Harry! Hello!” Their shouting accompanied by Jared’s barking amounted to a deafening roar, but Harry’s smile became wider to hear it. The boys could not see him, only Sarah and I could, and, I think, Jared, for his eyes never strayed from the spot where Harry stood – but in our house such behaviour was blessedly common.
As Harry began to fade, I shooed the children away from the window, and gradually, one by one, including the dog, they left the room, involved in a game of hide and go seek. I resumed my seat by the fire and took up some paper and my pen.
Stephen bent to kiss the top of my head. “Rosamund, must you?”
“There are merely a few notes I wish to jot down and then I shall be done, I promise.”
He took the chair opposite me. “You work too hard, you know that?”
“So do you,” I countered, for he did, his work as a doctor consuming him sometimes, but he had stuck to the promise he had made at Mears House that day; he was finished with the dead, and tended only to the living. The dead were now my work.
Presently, I finished my notes and rose from my chair, crossing over to a bureau in which I kept my writing. The key was secreted in a vase high on a shelf. I retrieved it in order to open the bureau and place my notes in there. We did not hold with secrets, not in this house, but there were some things to which the young did not need access, at least not yet. Let them be children all the while they could!
When I had placed my notes neatly in one of the available drawers, my hand could not help but gravitate to another drawer, pulling at the handle to open it.
All the notes that Mother had written, at last I had found them – the final treasure.
“Darling, are you all right?”
“Yes,” I said, my back still to him.
“Would you like some sherry?”
“Perhaps a small glass.”
I heard him rise and cross over to the sideboard where the decanter resided. “Dash it,” he cursed. “Empty. I shall ring for some more.”
This time I swung around. “Why not save old Mrs Lovell’s legs and go and fetch it yourself?” Rather like Miss Tiggs, she would be warming herself by the kitchen fire; unlike Miss Tiggs, she spoilt us, far too much, and I tried to reciprocate whenever possible.
“You are quite right, I will,” Stephen conceded; dear Stephen, handsome Stephen; my saviour; my equal.
He left the room and as he did so, the lights in the drawing room began to flicker. They often did, as if he took some of the light with him. A curious phenomenon and one I had documented, of course, in spite of the fact that he laughed whenever I told him about it. ‘That is just you, Rosamund,’ he would say, ‘I doubt anyone else would notice a dimming of the lights when I left them.’ I understood what he meant, but still…
Alone in the room, I withdrew Mother’s notes. I knew them word for word, so had no real need to read them; I just wanted to hold them; to remember her.
We had gone back to the house years later, Stephen and I. I had an urge to see what had become of it since we had closed it up. I had had no more to do with it since, but suddenly, quite suddenly, something nagged at me to return; instinct I suppose you could call it.
The drive was as bumpy as I remembered; the villages, the towns, the countryside had barely cha
nged, but the house had changed; it had fallen even more into disrepair – an old house, it had become as much a part of the countryside as the trees that shielded it.
As I alighted from the carriage; as I walked up the gravel path towards the front door; as Stephen heaved his body weight against it; as it finally yielded, I expected to sense at least something; the hustle and bustle of before perhaps. But there was nothing. The house was empty, quite empty; no furniture of worth remained and even the shadows seemed to have eschewed it.
“Where would you like to go?” Stephen had asked me.
“To the attic,” I replied. “Just the attic, nowhere else.”
His eyes were curious but he did not question further. He chose to trust me, you see, just as I had chosen to trust him all those years before. Implicitly.
In the attic, there was still that familiar shaft of light – my eyes watering somewhat to see it. This room, this sanctuary, why was it so? We began to search, the two of us, pulling covers from furniture, revealing not the twisted limbs I had dreamt of as a child but fine, sturdy pieces that had been allowed to remain, thieves not daring to venture in here either it seemed. We looked in drawers, in boxes and in old leather trunks.
“What are we looking for exactly?” Stephen had asked at one point.
“In truth, I have no idea.”
“But we keep searching?”
“We do.”
But oh, how frustrating it was proving to be, when time after time our search proved fruitless. My eyes were watering again when I eventually stopped to look around, not just dust the cause, but dismay.
“Perhaps I was wrong,” I breathed, as much to myself as to Stephen.
“Darling,” his hand was gentle as he laid it not upon my arm but my stomach. “The baby, perhaps we should…”
The baby – our first – was lying deep within me, just as something was lying deep within this room.
An idea formed.
“The floorboards. We need to check beneath the floorboards!”
“All of them?” Stephen had looked aghast at the idea.
“No,” I said, trusting myself implicitly too. “I remember once stamping my feet, I thought there was a rat you see, in the corner, and beneath me a board rattled as if loose. Rather than unsettle it further, I moved away from it. Oh Stephen, if only I had unsettled it further! It was a sign I think, another sign.”
“Where is this board?”
“There, where the light shines.”
Where it had always shone; where I had sat when I was young; where I had slept and where I had cried. The exact light that had been in Mother’s photograph; a light she had created – clean, as Josie had said – pure. That was where the notes were waiting for me.
Now I hugged them to me once more as tears erupted from my eyes.
My darling mother, how she had tried to help me; to let me know what I could not possibly have known as a child: that what I saw, what I sensed, what I had denied for so long because I was confused and frightened by it, was an inheritance from her. She described it not as a curse but a gift, but she warned me that there were some who would seek to exploit it, as my Father had sought to exploit it. There was darkness in mankind, she said, and because of the gift, I would be able to see it, and be vulnerable to it. And of that darkness were born other things darker still; that lingered in the dumping grounds, as I tended to call them, on the edge of our senses, but always waiting to break through; to be given a purpose; to feed and to multiply.
Oh, how I knew this to be true; how I fought every day to remain in the light. Mother, however, had succumbed, but not because she was weak. She was not.
When we had left the decay of Mears House, I knew I would never return; I would let the land have it; the trees creeping ever closer, their bare branches like the lover’s hand I had once imagined – possessive. I had found what I needed – more armour in the form of validation; the truth, or my truth at least. It had attracted me to the attic but had repelled Father; someone who could not face up to what he was; whose own demons had destroyed him, a host of them, not just Clauneck. But more discoveries were yet to come. I could not forget the dream of Mother. When I had seen her in the distance, she had been a dazzling figure. When I drew closer, she had looked wretched.
She was a good woman. If she were dead, she would have been at peace.
If she were…
Like a woman possessed, I began my search for her, Stephen my ally as always. And we found her – we found my mother! Or rather a semblance of her.
She was in an asylum, in London itself, and had been since I was two years old. An old lady now: if her hair had once been red, it was now white; if her eyes had once been green, they were now as grey as her complexion. Stephen found us access to the hospital, one no better to my mind than the Bedlam Dickens had written about, a hospital that had long since been torn down. As I walked to her cell-like room I could hear the screams and cries of the inmates. They belonged not just to the living.
But Mother did not scream or cry, she was mute, quite mute, and although I introduced myself to her; although I tried to cling to her wrinkled hands and kissed her cheek a dozen times, she gave no response at all.
Locked-in Syndrome is what she suffered from, possibly caused by a stroke. A distressing diagnosis, it was not new to me as I had read about it previously in a book, fiction of course – Alexandre Dumas’s Count of Monte Cristo, in which the character afflicted was depicted as ‘a corpse with living eyes’. She was not expected to recover from her catatonic state and in that, the medical profession was correct, as she did not. She died four years later, on the eve that Sarah was born, and I liked to think at least something of her lived on in this child of mine, which was perhaps why I spoiled her so at times, trying to make up for what Mother endured.
As father had tried to bargain with the devil, Mother had bargained too, not with the dark but with the light, an even more formidable force. She could not prevent me from being born but she would make sure that the marriage produced no other issue, or rather pawns for Father to take advantage of. And me she tried to help in whichever way she could, through the photograph, the necklace, and her copious notes. Remember me. I did exist. You are not alone. You are never alone.
She had sent me Josie, I am certain of it; a woman so like her, who was there when I needed her most; who showed me what a mother’s love could be; who taught me so well.
Anna Sarah Clermont was my mother’s name and she had loved me; she had poured all her love into her words, until nothing was left inside and she had become a mere husk. Father had had no choice but to get her committed, because he was not a murderer, not then at least, that was to come as he deteriorated further; as he succumbed. The asylum, as grim as it was, had also provided her with sanctuary. There may have been indignities visited upon her, but the wall of light she had built would have offered further sanctuary still. Often I consoled myself with that thought.
Alone still in the drawing room, as Stephen had not yet returned, I wandered back to the window and looked out.
There are things one should never see. And there are things one should never be: intolerant, selfish, vain and greedy, but at times, we are; it is human nature, only natural. For as long as we maintain some semblance of balance, we can walk the line well enough. When we fall, however, the danger is that we fall into the abyss.
Harry is no longer out there; he has now gone; but there are others. Sarah cannot see them yet; she can only see what is good. But Father opened my eyes a long time ago to what else exists.
Waiting for my glass of sherry, I clutched at my necklace, feeling the warmth of the stones flood through me, and their staunch protection. I could feel Josie too, and Mother, as well as the lingering presence of my husband, my children and my dog, though they were in other parts of the house. I could feel Constance, and I marvelled at how happy she was, caught up in the throes of yet another journey. We were, as Josie had said, connected. Together, we stood against wha
t waited in the shadows, although I lifted a hand, and I acknowledged it. I had only pity for it, you see; this thing that knows not where it belongs, only that it cries out; that it is hungry; that it is insatiable. It cannot harm me, however; not when such light surrounds me.
And that is the thing; the light is there if you look for it.
It is there in abundance.
This is a good time to be alive.
Constance said that to me, and I agree, wholeheartedly. I have walked through Hell and I have emerged, to find that life is surprisingly good.
And that is why I write, not to alarm or to instill dread or fear into others, but to dispel ignorance, for ignorance is our greatest foe. If we remain in it, we remain lost.
The door opened and Stephen entered, brandishing the sherry.
“Sorry I took so long, darling, the damned bottle was hiding at the back of the cupboard. We had the devil’s own job trying to find it, Mrs Lovell and I.”
I laughed at his words, which were delivered with such innocence.
The devil’s own job.
I write to keep the light shining.
The End
Also by the author
Eve: A Christmas Ghost Story (Psychic Surveys Prequel)
What do you do when a whole town is haunted?
In 1899, in the North Yorkshire market town of Thorpe Morton, a tragedy occurred; 59 people died at the market hall whilst celebrating Christmas Eve, many of them children. One hundred years on and the spirits of the deceased are restless still, ‘haunting’ the community, refusing to let them forget.
In 1999, psychic investigators Theo Lawson and Ness Patterson are called in to help, sensing immediately on arrival how weighed down the town is. Quickly they discover there’s no safe haven. The past taints everything.
Hurtling towards the anniversary as well as a new millennium, their aim is to move the spirits on, to cleanse the atmosphere so everyone – the living and the dead – can start again. But the spirits prove resistant and soon Theo and Ness are caught up in battle, fighting against something that knows their deepest fears and can twist them in the most dangerous of ways.
Psychic Surveys Companion Novels Page 51
