Hidden Company

by S E England

  It was hard to say exactly what it was about the modern business world that so alienated her, but if she tried it would be a toss-up between the falsity of its employees and the meaninglessness of her existence while doing it. Everything from the fashionable speak adopted by her colleagues who, ‘like, literally guys, ended every sentence with an upwards inflection,’ to the general loud sense of entitlement and pouting readiness to be offended, cut her further adrift. And the longer it went on the more the screaming pressure inside her intensified. Week on week. Month on month. Until there was no longer any choice but to change her life immediately.

  But by then it was way too late.

  Nina now ran her own fledgling business, still single, still gutsy.

  Isobel, on the other hand, had walked away with nothing. Divorced. Lost. Drowning in alcohol and wondering what the hell to do next. Then again, few had to endure the barrage of psychic attacks assailing her on a nightly basis …sometimes even during the day…and even fewer believed it actually happened at all. She was not meant for the same world as everyone else, that was the truth of it - the pull towards what some may call talking to the dead and others would term spiritual mediumship, setting her apart. Little wonder her husband had become angry and one by one every single person she came into contact with backed off. They were all scared. Really scared. More than that – terrified.

  The painful realisation that she was different began as a child, when one night she opened her eyes to find a ghostly figure standing in the middle of the bedroom – a lady with an ashen complexion and hollow eyes wearing a long, ruffled dress. At her throat she wore a locket on a choker, and her hair had been fashioned into a fringe of curls beneath a fussy black bonnet. The woman told her she used to live in the house, and that a bottle lay hidden in one of the foundation walls, which contained both a newspaper of the day and some photographs. The apparition then faded softly into the upholstery, leaving five year old Isobel staring in amazement.

  Next day at breakfast she excitedly related the event to her parents, urging them to seek the bottle and see if it was true.

  What happened next, however, caused a rift in the family that never healed. Her father fixed her with a glare of dismay, his words shards of ice. Ghosts never had and never would exist, Isobel. He had expected better from a child of his, and she was never, ever again to mention such nonsense in this house, did she understand? Did she?

  The shocked silence at that breakfast table with everyone staring at her, still occasionally replayed in nightmares, the way her reality had been exposed as an unspeakable thing. Worse, her mother said that people who saw and heard things that no one else did, ended up in lunatic asylums. In tears she’d sat and howled, learning from that day on never to mention the shadow people standing in the corner of a room, or to pass on information that flashed into her mind.

  Many years later though, when the kitchen floorboards became springy with wood rot and her father hired a joiner to rip them out, a bottle was discovered nestling in the brickwork. She watched her dad’s reaction, how the colour drained from his face as the man fished out the contents. He could hardly tell him not to do it – it was an exciting find, after all. And then exactly as she’d described ten years before, the time capsule revealed a rolled-up broadsheet from 1891 together with several sepia photographs. Wordlessly, these were passed around to each member of the family, at which point Isobel’s heart had almost stopped right there and then. Staring out of the picture in the newspaper article about a missing girl, was a woman in Victorian dress with a locket around her neck and a fringe of curls – without question the one who had previously shown herself.

  After that, she knew she had the sight. And that it was real. She also knew to be very discreet about who she told - that most people either did not believe in the afterlife or were too frightened to want to think about it; and some, as her mother cautioned, would actually think her mentally unwell. Although that, as it turned out, was far less concerning than communicating with the spirit world itself. Many were not wholesome, and some could be downright dangerous, setting out to purposefully terrify or even possess. The truly evil ones, those from the lowest astral planes, often pretended to be a loved one, preying on the bereaved, heartbroken or recklessly curious in order to enter the material world. And it was these tricksters she had inadvertently meddled with. And let in.

  Alas, as with so many things, the lesson had come with far too high a price and was far too late.

  Intrigued by her gift, a schoolmate had spread the word and before she knew it she’d become something of a curio, suddenly popular and in demand. One or two girls asked her to read their cards, which she quickly learned how to do, surprising everyone including herself with their accuracy. And then came the game of Ouija. It had been a dare, a laugh, with lights out and candles lit – the girls giggling, the boys swigging high percentage cider. She didn’t let on that it wasn’t a joke, that it was real and it seriously frightened her. Instead she played along with the horror movies, pizza night and cheap booze. Then laughing and flirting, pushed the planchette around the board with the others.

  Hoping nothing would happen.

  Praying inside that it would not.

  Knowing in her heart that it would.

  With her there, it definitely would.

  All at once the teenage giggling and shrieking became muted as if from a great distance, replaced with what sounded like a tuning fork singing in her ears. Quickly followed by the queer sensation of falling backwards down a dark well. The fall was felt as a thump in the solar plexus, the same feeling as the lurch sometimes felt on falling asleep, except it continued and the fall went on and on. She must have gasped and gripped the table, trying desperately to stop the descent.

  Are you all right?

  Has she fainted?

  I told you not to bring that home brew…

  One or two candlelit faces swam overhead, voices echoing as if shouting down a drain.

  Perhaps she was drunk or had been drugged and they were laughing at her?

  But the place she was in had a hard, cold floor like a cellar or vault, and a chill wind whistled from a tunnel, along with the funereal toll of a bell.

  The others did not hear. But she heard. Knew what was coming even as she began to surface with what felt like the worst hangover ever. Knew that when a bird banged into the window making the girls scream, and then a door slammed upstairs, exactly what had been invited in.

  After that night she couldn’t sleep, frequently starting awake with the conviction someone was in the corner of the room. Sometimes it felt as though a cat was on the bed, a purring weight, yet she had no cat. Other times there would be a sudden cold blast of air against her cheek in what was a warm, heated room. To escape the sensation of being followed and watched, she speeded up – kept busy, tried to never be alone, kept the lights on even at night, and made a concerted effort not to think about it, to zonk spark out with pills at the end of each increasingly busy day.

  But in the end the darkness caught up with her. Just as she knew it would.

  It happened one night walking home through the park from a club, initially in the form of solitary footsteps on the path behind. Time and again she winged around…only to find the park empty. Continuing at a more hurried pace, positive someone was right behind her, the fast walk became a jog then finally a sprint. It was not real. There was no one there…Over and over she told herself this was her imagination…even as the footsteps quickened along with her own…and the night darkened rapidly to the point where not even the outline of the trees could be seen. Was it still her imagination that the moon had vanished behind a sky now blacker than black, the lamplights in the park dimming? She broke into a flat-out run, the feeling of dread now overwhelming, until there he was – suddenly and impossibly. Directly in front of her stood a man in a coal black suit and hat, waiting by the church railings, the tip of his cigarette a singular red spark.

  Drink, drugs, all-night parties an
d a punishing workload helped, but not forever. The spirits pursued her. Relentlessly. It ruined her marriage. It ruined her career. It ruined nights out and it ruined friendships.

  All except Nina’s, that was. Nina got it. “Seems to me you haven’t much choice, love. You’ve got to learn to control it or you’re going to be a sodding victim all your life, and into the next.”

  “Oh, great.” She eyed her friend. “Seriously, have you any idea, I mean any idea, how real this is? What it’s like to be drifting off to sleep and feel someone sit down on the side of your bed, only you’re the only one in the house? Or be talking to someone and see their face change into someone else’s? And how do I know what’s genuine and what’s a trick?”

  Nina, who believed in karma and reincarnation, shook her head and confessed she knew nothing of the dark side.

  She told her then about the sudden drops in temperature before an apparition; the babble of voices - like a choir rising and fading on the breeze; and some but by no means all, of the disturbing events experienced during the times she’d dabbled, prodded and taunted the Unseen. It was hard to describe the confusing welter of howls and unearthly screams that had almost sent her mad; even harder to explain the echoing footsteps of someone not there that night in the park - how she’d run to the point of collapse until she reached the church, only to find him there first. She had pulled and pulled at the lychgate to get onto holy ground but it was padlocked, then practically vaulted over the railings and huddled in the porch until first light like a whimpering dog. That it had left her with a fear so great she’d spent the rest of her life running from it. She could never be on her own too long, couldn’t sleep, and if she did it was to wear headphones playing audio books into her head for fear of hearing voices.

  “Did you get help?” Nina asked.

  “Kind of. I learned how to pray, to believe in God, to picture white light–”

  “I mean with being psychic?”

  “Well, no because I don’t want to be–”

  “But you are - a gift like that, you know - you can’t not have it.”

  “But don’t you see? It’s what comes with it…it’s like you acknowledge the Unseen and a door opens and…”

  No. Stop. Isobel, stop! Don’t go over this kind of stuff at this time of night, especially not here in this bloody house…

  She must not re-conjure what happened that night. Mustn’t think of all she had told Nina, and of that terrible time spent in the hospital…

  Think of something else for Christ’s sake!

  She stood up and stretched. Then despite the hour, rummaged through a box of groceries brought from the sold-up marital home, unscrewed the cooking brandy and began flicking through pictures on Rightmove and Zoopla – looking at houses on the coast, imagining the fresh breath of salty air and billowing white curtains. Calming down, thinking nice things.

  Before resuming the email.

  ‘You know I’m thinking, Nina, that maybe you were right after all, and I am going to have to confront this. I suppose I thought if I got away from people there would be less of a barrage of spirits, but they’re here too, even in the middle of nowhere, in fields and mountains…It’s as if I’ve run into the dead-end of a darkened alley and finally have to stop running–’

  She stopped typing. What the fuck was that? Every single light downstairs was switched on for a good reason - spirits travelled in the dark much more easily. She emptied the last of the brandy into her coffee mug and took a good long swig. Spirits and spirits…Yeah, well why not? Who wouldn’t in my situation?

  Resuming typing, she scrubbed the last paragraph and decided to adopt the jolly, ‘I’m fine’ tone she used when at her absolute worst. ‘Anyway, I have to say this valley is breath-taking. It’s the right place for anyone who wants to stop the world and get off for a while, that’s for sure. I imagine it’s been the same for hundreds if not thousands of years – virtually unspoilt – I’ll upload some pictures tomorrow. As for the asylum it’s now in ruins and only a small part of it’s lived in – by the local doctor and his wife, would you believe? Apparently she’s very involved in church fund-raising activities. Oh, I must tell you, though – talking about things not changing for hundreds of years – the village is a bit weird actually. The pub was empty last night when I arrived, apart from this woman who couldn’t be arsed to open up until someone phoned her. Anyway, there were some really spooky paintings on the wall – sort of tiny wizened creatures that were neither human nor animal – like trolls from a fairy tale. They had crinkly, tissue paper faces set on black canvas and they looked startled, as if caught out, not used to being seen...’

  Again she paused. The silence fizzed almost like a living thing.

  “Who’s there? Is someone there?”

  She stared through the atoms - at the fully lit, glossy white units, the steadily humming fridge, then down the corridor towards the front door. A light rain spattered against the kitchen window.

  Did she dare begin to use her gift again? Attempt to control it? Here? On her own? Really…? What if there was an answer…?

  Her heart squeezed in her chest. She reached for the mug and downed the dregs.

  No, no, no….go away!

  It was the fear. The one thing she couldn’t describe - not to Nina, not to anyone. That sickly bang in the chest, a piercing awareness that this was either communication with dead people. Or entities that may never have even been human. Or insanity.

  Again there came a creeping feeling of being observed like an actor on a brightly lit stage.

  With shaking fingers she hastily finished the email. ‘Anyway, Nina, don’t worry, so far so good. I just wanted to tell you that I got here in one piece and it’s an amazing place. Look, I promise to sort myself out, honest. I’ll be fine. Keep safe. Hope all is good with you and chat soon… lots love, Issy xxx’

  She closed the laptop. Well, she had to be all right, didn’t she? Six months’ rent upfront had used up the last of a pitiable divorce settlement. Question was, had she made a terrible mistake coming here or was this to be the making of her?

  “Guess I’ve run out of options either way,” she said aloud. “Right, come on then, Isobel Lee, you’ve got to do this. No one can do it but you because you’re absolutely on your bloody own.”

  Methodically she began clearing the table, rinsed the mug, and made another coffee to take back up to bed. Soon it would be dawn and with it the light would come. Logic. It was important not to let fear overrun her mind. First it would be useful to know who the ghosts were in this house and communicate with them - find out what they wanted. Then have the whole place blessed.

  Right, good, in that case what was needed was the history of Lavinia House. A few names would help. And a visit to the local vicar. Oh, and she must be in good physical health too - lots of walking in this stunning countryside – the forest, the lakes, the mountains…because God only knew this sleeplessness wore you down. Yes, here was where she would finally stand ground and face up to her demons.

  “Come on then you lousy bastards,” she muttered as she stomped upstairs. “Do your worst - I’m ready.”

  ***

  Chapter Six

  Lavinia House

  At nine o’clock, Isobel let herself out into the grey drizzle of a February morning. As she locked the door she noticed a pathway around the back, and decided to take a quick look at the garden before setting off for Lavinia House.

  It looked as if it had once been properly landscaped and well stocked, but now lay sadly neglected. The orchard and hedges had been pruned to sticks, the boxed beds and borders covered with ivy and rubble from the recent laying of a patio.

  It seemed a shame, she thought, picking through the long wet grass. This garden had once been full of scented roses…

  Where did that thought come from?

  Too late, she’d missed the aura of warning, the air all too quickly sweet and cloying, the drone of bees, omnipotent.

  No, no… I don’t wa
nt to see anything…

  She hurried around the side of the house towards the gate. A vision was coming and she wasn’t ready, didn’t feel at all well - suddenly sick and dizzy, the atmosphere static, colours too bright. Lurching along the path like a drunk, she staggered and almost tripped over the body of a small bird. It lay on its side, neck broken, on the ground beneath her bedroom window. Prey to an early predator, the eye had already been pecked out of its socket, entrails prostrate across the gravel.

  “Ah! You poor thing.”

  Wait! The knocking noise last night? Had it been a bird flying repeatedly into the window, then? Her mood picked up. Yes, that might explain it…

  What, at that time of night?

  No. Enough. It was just a bird that had flown into the pane and died.

  She walked briskly now towards the gate and through to the driveway, making a concerted effort to think positive thoughts and do positive things. Hopefully Lorna Fox-Whately would be at home. It would be reassuring to have a friend close by – someone to call on if necessary, not to mention enlighten her about the history here. One thing she did know about being a spiritual medium was that information helped enormously, especially - and here she gulped at what might lie ahead - if you had to persuade an earth-bound spirit to move on. Wasn’t that the job? What Spirit wanted her to do? Oh God!

  In reality the driveway was longer than the half mile cited by the agents, but pleasant enough, lined by a post and rail fence, and gravelled, albeit with grass growing through the centre. Grass, grass everywhere…for miles either side. Dotted with sheep the landscape was so green it shone like polished emerald, despite the trees not yet being in bud and the brooding mountains towering over the valley. It was easy to see why this was the country of The Mabinogen, and home to tales of the fae and gateways to the Otherworld. Pure heaven for the storytellers of old.