She didn’t believe his sudden change of mood for a moment. She wanted to scream at him and kick him and his little tart out, but with only her suspicions to go on she’d seem deranged.
“I’ll take Mrs. Dearing’s advice and soak in the tub.”
“Good, good,” said the housekeeper. “I’ll whip you up a light dinner when the boys have finished their tea.”
“You’re a blessing, Mrs. Dearing.”
Gosha took her mug and her sachet of herbs and made her way up the stairs. A bath could come later. The safe embrace of her studio beckoned.
* * *
The house was large: four stories above a basement flat that lay empty save for Gosha’s darkroom in its tiny kitchen. The kitchen, dining room, and sitting room were on the main story. The boys and their nanny’s bedroom were one flight up, her studio above that, with the master bedroom at the top. She hadn’t given the decor a once-over in a few years. All that antique bohemian grandeur found on many happy weekends exploring Morel Market might have become dated, but to her it was exotic and safe.
Her studio took up most of the third floor, away from the distracting tumble of the boys’ room. Photographic studio, archive, and office rolled into one, no one went in there unless invited. Even George learned to respect her privacy.
Her lighting rig and backdrops were set up against one wall, the archive of her negatives and prints housed in cabinets against the other. Shelves filled to burst with reference books covered the third from top to bottom. The final wall, across from the window, was a gallery. Prints covered every inch of surface, some framed, some mounted, some tacked to the wall with pushpins. In the center, dominating the rest, hung a giant print of her favorite: the very first portrait she took with her very first camera, a gift from George. Miranda Lovelock sat in a rickety cane-backed chair looking out an attic window. It was the first time Gosha risked opening herself to her second sight and letting it guide her work. She captured Miranda’s fragility, a delicate, tragic quality that, in the years that followed, drove her to addiction. But this wasn’t the portrait of a tragic figure. It showed her resilient in the face of adversity. This was the Miranda Lovelock Gosha knew and loved.
She slumped into the chaise by the window, took a sip of tea, and slipped the sachet of herbs out of her pocket and gave it another sniff.
What am I going to do about Mick? she thought and fell asleep.
6
The torc around his wrist begins to burn.
Not now, he thinks.
It’s the worst possible time, right at the beginning of a take, with who knows how long till he can get away.
He suspected it would happen soon. The torc had been getting heavier and heavier over the past few days. Emerson warned him that’s how it would happen. His sleep was filled with nightmares of a strange creature holding him down so he couldn’t move, no matter how hard he struggled. This morning, when he woke up, he thought he was back at home with his mum’s cat asleep on his chest.
Emerson said he might start to feel anxious as the time drew closer. He warned Mick he might get cold feet, but it was normal, just the crude mundane world recognizing he was about to escape its clutches and doing everything in its power to make him waver, make him change his mind. He won’t let that happen.
Finally, the take ends. Behind the camera, Gosha calls cut and the crew huddle, waiting for word of if the take was good or bad. When she emerges, the satisfaction is obvious on her face, and the Assistant Director calls lunch.
“Mick, you okay?”
Johnny bounces over to the keyboard rig, panting from dancing around.
“Yeah, yeah.” He does his best to look enthusiastic, but the torc hurts like hell. He needs to get away somewhere quick. If he doesn’t do this right, all his work, all the faith Emerson put in him, will be for nothing.
It’s a good thing. It’s a really good thing. He just wishes he could have told Johnny about it, but Johnny would never understand. No one here would.
Gosha comes over with her camera in one hand and fires off a few snaps. Her outfit, based on a costume from the French Revolution in red and orange fabric, softens her severe dark makeup.
“It’s going great. Fantastic job, lads.” She puts the camera back to her eye and takes more photos, of Johnny and Mick, of the set, even of the crew, documenting everything. “We’re bringing in the dancers after lunch, and then I’ve had some ideas for inserts. Sound good?”
She puts the camera down and beams at them. The slight cast to her dark brown eyes makes her look fierce, like she could slice you in half with a meat cleaver. He pushes his crush down. Can’t think about it now.
“Gonna run to the loo,” he says to Johnny. “Grab me a sandwich?”
He turns back on his way to the gents to look at the set. It’s amazing they got this far. Even after all those hours rehearsing and planning with Johnny, in the back of his mind he never believed it would happen. It’s all thanks to Emerson.
He takes off the torc, even though he’s not supposed to, the skin beneath an angry red. Fitting that it should happen today of all days. He looks back at Johnny one last time. They’ll be all right without him. Johnny’s brilliant. He’ll take over the world.
The gents is a pit. Before Emerson and the circle, he would have been disgusted by it. Under Emerson’s tutelage, he’s learned to see places like this as shrines of earthly grace, places where people come to honor the process of their bodies and pass out waste, taking themselves a step further toward purity, if only of the body. If he gets it right, he’s about to take the ultimate step, to find the perfect purity beyond the gross mundane world.
He takes his gear out of his pocket and lays it on the edge of the sink. He’s been carrying it ever since Emerson gave it to him. The bottle containing the divine sacrament that will prepare his consciousness glows faintly in the afternoon light. He unfolds a slip of paper with a single word written on it in Emerson’s own hand. A holy word, Emerson said, of perfect language to signal the cosmos that he’s ready. He kisses the paper and offers a prayer of gratitude for Emerson’s generosity in showing him the way.
After more than a year in practice with Emerson and the group, he’s able to find the meditative state with ease, despite his apprehension and the painful heat of the torc in his hand, and he holds onto this as a sign everything will work out.
Spirit descends upon him. His body becomes weightless. When he opens his eyes and looks at himself in the mirror, his skin glows, making the black of his clothing and hair stark in contrast. This is it. He has to do it now.
The steps Emerson gave him couldn’t be more simple. Hold the slip of paper and speak the word. Set it on fire and place the holy sacrament on his tongue. The paper burns up in a flash and the sacramental powder tastes sweet and bitter. As it dissolves, he feels elated and whole. All his worry melts away.
A moment passes before he realizes something’s wrong. As his skin glows brighter and brighter, his limbs grow weak and he finds it hard to think.
This can’t be right. It’s supposed to be beautiful. Emerson said it would be beautiful.
As he collapses against the sink, a sound comes from the shadows.
“Johnny? Is that you? I don’t feel right. Can you get someone? I don’t feel right.”
It’s not Johnny. Two yellow eyes glow in the dark corner and a low rumble echoes off the tile.
Mick realizes it’s laughter. He tries to shout for help, but he’s too weak. He turns to run away, but stumbles, falls against the wall and slides to the floor, unable to move.
His breath becomes shallow, such a struggle to fill his lungs, it would be easier just to stop. Even his fear leaches away as he grows more and more weary. Soon, he can’t lift his head. Mouth dry to the point of cracking, there’s no part of him that doesn’t ache.
His last thoughts are confused. This isn’t what he was promised.
What did I do wrong?
“Nothing, child,” says the thing in the corner
, standing over him now, though he can’t lift his head to see it. “You did exactly as you should have. You did it perfectly.”
A taloned claw of skin so dry and bones so deformed it could be made of twisted wood reaches down and takes the torc from his hand.
7
Gosha awoke with a start, her head throbbing. Her skin was on fire, the cotton of her shirt rough as sandpaper against it. Though cold, the mug of tea was still fragrant, so she chugged it back. Mrs. Dearing’s herbal tea was better than any booze or drugs to steady her nerves. Outside it was dark, the streetlights leeching all color from the night. How long was she out?
That was no dream.
Her headache and jitteriness confirmed it. It was some kind of vision, but nothing she’d ever experienced before. To be inside someone’s head like that, to see through their eyes and feel their emotions felt like a violation on a profound and degenerate level. Religion was never part of her upbringing, but it felt like a sin.
Something supernatural took Mick’s life, something involving Influence and Craft, but Mick thought he was doing a good thing. Someone tricked him into killing himself, but for what purpose? The thought of this poor young man, little more than a boy, being duped into doing something so heinous made her heart ache. What if that happened to Edmund and Timothy? Cold anger flared up within her at the thought of the boys preyed upon by evil forces the way she was as a child, trapped in that cellar on her own in the dark. Whoever did this to Mick had to be stopped.
But who? Who would take it upon themselves to stop them? Word was out that Mick killed himself with a drug overdose, just like hundreds of rebellious kids who refused to fit in and fell by the wayside. Even without a supernatural element to his murder, his haircut and clothing marked him as an outsider. The police wouldn’t bother to investigate further, no matter what story she might concoct to get their attention.
Did some authority govern her mother’s hidden world? In Poland, an endless network of aunts and grandmothers stretched out across the countryside. Meeting in kitchens and back gardens, they would cluck judgmentally about the antics of this woman or that, but if an auntie crossed the line, what became of it? When the Communists came for her father and the witch hunter took her, who came to Gosha’s rescue? Only her mother. And they were forced to flee in fear of retaliation, to leave behind everything and everyone she ever loved. Who could she turn to now? Who would even believe her?
Getting away from the supernatural had been hard work. It took years, but now a broom was just a broom to her. A sprig of lavender you put in a drawer to keep the linens fresh and nothing else. A loaf of bread on the pavement was nothing more than a sign that someone’s grocery bag had been too full. To imagine otherwise was too terrifying. She could easily put her head down, ignore what had happened to Mick, and treat the tragedy as a simple overdose. Johnny and the rest of the band would need help to pick up the pieces and move on. That she could do. Except she kept seeing the expression on Mick’s face in the bathroom mirror and heard the confusion of his final thoughts, wondering what he could have done wrong.
If only she had someone to talk to, someone who wouldn’t think her mad.
Footsteps clunked across the ceiling, George walking from his study to the bedroom and back. He’d believe her, she was certain, but he could be so immature. After Liverpool, she refused to discuss Craft and Influence with him again.
A wave of Mick’s desperate confusion as his life faded away cut through her like a remembered dream, the bilious tang of his fear sour on her tongue.
She couldn’t keep this to herself.
* * *
The door to George’s study was closed, so she knocked. Even though their relationship had soured into mutual frustration and contempt, at least they still managed some respect for each other’s private spaces.
Talking to George frankly and openly about Craft and Influence would lead her down pathways she would rather leave unexplored. So many of his questions she couldn’t answer. In the past she would have gone to great lengths to keep it that way, but she couldn’t manage this on her own. If the price of figuring out what happened to Mick was to help George live up to his father’s expectations, perhaps something good would come from facing her fears. She always hoped they could salvage their relationship, if only for the sake of the boys.
“Yes?” The twinkle in his eyes dimmed as she swung open the door and realized it was her. Who was he expecting? “Gosha. All better? Did you take your bath?”
She held her breath, a frozen moment of hesitation between one inhalation and the next before plunging ahead. This could be a dreadful mistake.
“Something happened when Mick died.”
He glanced back at the room behind him, pulled the door to and clicked it shut.
“It must have been terrible.” He cupped his hands around her shoulders. “I don’t know how you did it. I would have stood around and waited for someone else to get on with it.”
After pushing him away for so long, the words to express herself wouldn’t come. The smell of wet earth filled her nostrils. A memory of tiny legs crawling across her neck made her shiver. She could still change course and tell him some lie designed to elicit sympathy, and hope he’d be enough of an adult to comfort her.
“I saw something right before he died.”
“Oh, darling. Was it Miranda all over again?”
There was no need to lie. Tears flooded out of her, leaving no room for words. He fidgeted next to her for a moment before wrapping an arm around her shoulders. She let him press her head into his chest.
“We don’t have to rehash it now,” he said, leading her into the bedroom. “Let’s go to bed. We can talk about it in the morning when you’re rested.”
“No,” she said, pushing him away. “This is important. Something terrible happened to Mick and I think we need to do something about it.”
“Darling.” He ran his fingers through her hair.
They still had sex, two or three times a year. Usually it was quick and functional, with little affection involved, but tonight something stirred within her. He used to play with her hair like this when they were first together.
“What can we do about an overdose? Find his dealer and have him arrested? It’s a miserable tragedy, but it happens all the time. People get addicted. Not everyone is as lucky as Miranda to have friends like you to save them.”
He sat her next to him on the edge of the bed. She held his hand in hers.
“It wasn’t drugs that killed him.”
Why was he being so oblivious? She thought he would have been all over her at the slightest suggestion of the supernatural.
“It was something else, like when I saw your father.”
“Oh, Gosha.” He cupped her cheek with one hand and drew her face closer. “I love you so much.”
He kissed her on the lips with a softness she hadn’t felt in years. Despite all the stress of the day, despite all the horror and grief, a great hunger rose within her that washed away all her exhaustion. She pressed her lips into his and kissed him back.
8
What did I do wrong, he thinks.
“Nothing, child. You did exactly as you should have. You did it perfectly.”
A great rushing sound fills his ears in a slow, faltering rhythm. The cold of the tile floor is distant, miles away, a sensation felt by someone else’s skin. The heat of the torc burns someone else’s hand.
As the taloned claw takes the torc, a noxious stink fills his nostrils, and a pair of eyes, flecked and rheumy with yellow pus, set in a face with skin the cracked gray of aged wood, stare at him. The mouth parts to reveal rotted teeth, and a gray tongue licks the mangled lips.
If he were stronger, he’d be afraid. He’d push away with everything he has. He’d scream at the top of his lungs. Instead, as his body fails him, as his mind grows dark, as memory and emotion leech away, he escapes into oblivion.
9
She awoke again with her head pounding, the he
avy covers crushing her into the mattress.
“George?”
Downstairs, the doorbell rang, and George leaped out of bed, stumbling across the floor as he pulled on his trousers.
“I’ll get it. Stay in bed.”
“George, wait!”
But he was already out the door.
Blood throbbed between her temples, preventing her from going back to sleep, so she slid herself up on the headboard, slipped her robe around her, and made her way to the bathroom to get an aspirin. When she returned, George still wasn’t back. She went down to investigate, one hand against the wall to steady her. Cressida peered out from her room as she passed.
“Make sure the boys are still asleep,” she hissed, sharper than she should have, but with her head throbbing so badly, Gosha’s irritation outweighed her manners.
At the front door, George exchanged whispers with a well-dressed young man she didn’t recognize.
“George,” she called from the bottom of the stairs. “Who is it?”
He pushed the visitor away and shut the door, a large manila envelope in his hand.
“Darling, I’m so sorry.” He rushed past her back upstairs. “I have to leave.”
“What do you mean?” Her heart pounded with the effort of running up after him, making her headache worse. “In the middle of the night?”
He took one of the small suitcases from under the bed and began to pack. Stopping and starting as he rushed about the room in a disorganized scramble, he grabbed clothes from his dresser and tossed them into the suitcase.
“Where are you going?”
“Don’t you remember?” From the bottom of the wardrobe, he pulled out a pair of trainers and stuffed them in the corners of his bag. “I told you I had to go up north. There’s a band in Glasgow I’ve been courting. That glam-rock outfit with the Christmas song.”
“And you have to leave now?”
“We got a tip another management company’s made them an offer. If I don’t get to them quick, I’ll lose them.”
Waking the Witch (The Witch of Cheyne Heath Book 1) Page 5
