EMERGENCE

by R. H. Dixon

  ‘Who are you?’ Sissy Dawson croaked. ‘God’s agents? Have you come to take me away?’

  ‘We’ve come to talk,’ Natasha said, her tone sharp but not entirely unfriendly. ‘We met a long time ago.’

  ‘We did?’

  ‘Yes. Me and John, we were very young then.’

  Sissy’s eyes widened a fraction and she tilted her head to the side. ‘I don’t remember.’

  ‘Let me remind you.’ Natasha walked to the bed, so she was standing just a couple of feet away from the old woman. ‘I was pregnant. You gave something to us.’

  Sissy Dawson’s expression didn’t change.

  Natasha unzipped her handbag and rummaged around. After a few moments she looked at John. ‘Did you fetch it?’

  John patted the pockets of his jeans, even though he already knew they contained nothing more than his wallet and house key. He sighed. ‘Shit, we must have left it on the kitchen table.’

  At this news Sissy Dawson seemed to relax.

  Moving to the bed, and standing next to Natasha, John bent over the old woman and said, ‘It was a cameo brooch. You remember giving it to me, don’t you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Think harder because I think you do.’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘Yes you do,’ he insisted. ‘We lost our baby! I want to know what’s wrong with that fucking brooch because my six-year-old daughter is in danger.’

  Sissy’s eyes grew even more moist and she shook her head. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, trying to cover her ears with her hands. ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I didn’t want…it was Her…She made me. I wanted peace, I wanted Her out of my head…but…but I never would have…I didn’t want…She made me do it.’

  ‘Who did?’

  ‘Don’t you know?’

  Natasha and John looked at each other.

  ‘Alright, alright,’ Sissy Dawson whimpered. ‘I’ll tell you. I’ll tell you everything, if it’ll bring me peace.’

  _

  39

  10th November, 1955 – Thorpe Hospital

  _

  Sissy Dawson passed through the open gates, staying close to the grass verge. The redbrick building which served as the houseman’s residence, immediately to her right, rested in darkness. A cold blustery wind made her walk a little faster than usual and as she scurried along the road she glanced warily at the storage building to her left. Back in the 1800s, when Thorpe was built, and up until just six years ago it had been the hospital’s morgue. In those days Thorpe had been a specialist hospital for those inflicted with infectious diseases. It had been known locally as Fever Hospital; an establishment that had known its fair share of pain, suffering and death. Sissy didn’t care much at all for the old morgue building during daylight, never mind at night. The number of bodies it must have stored over the years inspired uncomfortable thoughts, and the idea of going inside was enough to quicken her pulse. A keen imagination always saw to it that dead eyes watched her pass at the beginning and end of each shift, fevered eyes belonging to those that would never leave because they’d succumbed to some nasty ailment or other. Henry, her husband, had always said she was too flighty for her own good.

  Once inside Ward Three, the delivery section of the hospital, Sissy, a state enrolled nurse, began a lengthy nightshift alongside Mrs Rogers, a midwife from Grants Houses. Mrs Rogers was a blunt but not unfriendly older woman with coarse, greying hair and the beginnings of a moustache. She’d delivered countless babies and was adept at overlooking the gruesome aspects of the job and doling out empathy where applicable. Their first delivery of the evening began not twenty minutes after Sissy had arrived, when a young woman from Easington Colliery declared her waters broken. The birth wasn’t an easy one. At first Mrs Rogers suspected the baby was breech and Sissy imagined she’d need to go and wake the houseman, but in the end Mrs Rogers managed to help the young woman deliver a healthy baby boy. Then just half an hour after that mother and child had been taken to Ward One, another woman started with labour pains.

  After six hours on her feet helping to deliver two babies, sterilising equipment and administering gas and air, Sissy eventually went to the break room. She found Muriel Beasley, a fellow SEN, there, nibbling on a triangular sandwich.

  ‘Busy night for you?’ Muriel asked.

  ‘Dead on my feet,’ Sissy said, plonking herself down on the padded seat of a wooden chair.

  ‘Ha! Imagine that.’ Muriel swiped crumbs from her lap, then dabbed at the sides of her mouth with an embroidered floral cotton handkerchief.

  ‘I don’t have to try very hard.’ Sissy smiled wearily and rested her head against the wall behind, closing her eyes.

  ‘Are you planning to have a nap?’

  ‘No, just resting my eyes.’ Sissy sat up straight again and looked at her friend. ‘I’m tired, but much too awake to sleep, if that makes sense.’

  ‘Only too well.’ Muriel winked, her dark eyes small behind the lenses of her brown thick-rimmed NHS glasses. ‘Say, why don’t we do something fun? Wake ourselves up a bit.’

  ‘Something fun? Here? Like what?’

  ‘Contact the dead. Get them on their feet.’

  ‘What dead?’ Sissy already didn’t like the sound of Muriel’s idea.

  ‘Just think of all the people who’ve died in this place,’ Muriel said, sitting forward excitedly. Her brown hair was curly, styled close to her head, and when she fidgeted it hardly moved. ‘If we try to make contact we’re bound to reach someone.’

  ‘I’d rather we didn’t.’

  ‘Lillian Grey and Jeannie Todd have tried before. Right here. In this room. They got some old man come through, said he’d died of scarlet fever back in nineteen-oh-two.’

  ‘That’s silly,’ Sissy scoffed, fussing with the hem of her white uniform in a bid to look bored and unimpressed with what Muriel was saying. ‘It’s just an old building with a bit of history, that’s all.’

  ‘Oh come on, spoil sport. It’ll be a laugh.’

  ‘I’m not sure it would be at all. I mean, should we be dabbling?’

  ‘Crikey, it’s just a bit of fun. All we need to do is write the letters of the alphabet onto paper, with numbers from one to ten across the bottom along with the words yes and no, then we ask the spooks to answer our questions. Easy peasy, lemon squeezy.’ Muriel already had a piece of paper and pencil in her hand.

  ‘But what if Sister Howard was to catch us?’ Sissy complained, desperate to find a way out of Muriel’s mischievous plan.

  ‘Sister Howard rarely comes in here, you know that. Now stop being such a scaredy cat.’ Muriel used a small wooden table to rest on while she fashioned the sheet of paper into a makeshift Ouija board, then beckoned for Sissy to pull her chair up beside her. ‘What shall we use as a planchette?’

  ‘What’s one of them?’ Sissy asked, defeatedly dragging her chair over to the table.

  ‘The thing we move about on the board. Or should I say, the thing the spooks move about the board.’

  ‘I dunno, what sort of thing do you usually use?’

  ‘Anything I suppose. Got a coin?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Me neither.’ Muriel pointed at the cameo affixed to Sissy’s cardigan. ‘What about that?’

  ‘I’d rather not, it was my grandmother’s…’ But Muriel was already unclipping it. Sissy objected but the other nurse batted her hands away and placed the cameo on the paper.

  ‘Okay, put your finger on it and let’s make a start,’ Muriel said.

  Sissy sighed loudly but did as instructed.

  They both sat still for a moment, Muriel grinning and Sissy frowning, then Muriel, taking on a mock-sinister tone, asked, ‘Is anybody there?’

  They waited.

  Nothing happened.

  Sissy breathed out, realising she hadn’t expelled the air from her lungs in a while, nervous anticipation having held it there.

  ‘Are there any spirits that would like
to make contact with us?’ Muriel persisted.

  Again nothing happened.

  ‘Oh, I knew this was silly,’ Sissy said after a few silent moments had passed. She took her finger away from the brooch and sat back, relieved that nothing had happened. ‘Spirits indeed!’

  The brooch, still beneath Muriel’s finger, then slid across the paper and came to a stop on the word YES. Muriel gasped and pulled her hand away.

  Sissy regarded her friend with narrowed eyes. ‘Muriel Beasley you’re nothing but a tease, full of devilment. You moved that!’

  ‘I really didn’t.’ Muriel shook her head and there was something about her paled expression that Sissy didn’t like one bit.

  ‘Yes you did.’

  ‘I swear, I didn’t.’ Muriel was quick to regain her composure and she put her finger back on the cameo. ‘Come on, let’s try again.’

  Sissy stared down at the paper, her mind whirring. She didn’t move.

  ‘Go on! Hurry,’ Muriel insisted. ‘We’ll lose whoever it is.’

  Tentatively Sissy brought her hand back up to the table, her index finger coming to rest on her grandmother’s cameo.

  ‘Are you still there?’ Muriel raised her face as though whatever spirit might be lingering was floating above their heads near the ceiling.

  Nothing happened.

  ‘See, I knew you’d done it,’ Sissy chided.

  Muriel gave her friend a warning glare then looked again to the ceiling. ‘Are you an old patient of the hospital?’

  Wind spattered rain against the window pane and shrieked through gaps in the wooden frame. Sissy shivered. The brooch then moved to NO with such force she yanked her hand away and stared at it.

  ‘Put your finger back,’ Muriel hissed. She looked excited now, her initial fright waning.

  Sissy, still sceptical but persuaded enough to be scared, whined, ‘I’m not happy about this, Muriel. At. All.’

  ‘Oh don’t be such a big girl’s blouse.’

  Tight-lipped, Sissy touched the brooch again, her hand trembling. She listened to the low moan of wind outside. It was a lonely sound, like the separation anxiety of a pack animal left alone for too long.

  ‘Could you tell us your name?’ Muriel asked.

  They waited and the brooch slowly scraped around the paper in a big circle till it rested on NO.

  ‘Can’t you spell it out for us?’

  Again NO.

  Muriel was frowning now. ‘Are you a man?’

  NO.

  ‘A woman?’

  NO.

  ‘A boy?’

  NO.

  ‘Girl?’

  NO.

  ‘I don’t think whoever it is wants to communicate with us,’ Sissy said. But Muriel hushed her with an impatient scowl and asked, ‘Are you an animal?’

  NO.

  ‘Then what are you, for pity’s sake?’ Muriel blurted.

  The brooch began to move again, but this time it moved around the letters of the alphabet, halting on certain ones. Muriel snatched up the pencil with her left hand and made a note of each: T.H.E.O.N.E.T.H.A.T.H.A.S.N.O.N.A.M.E.O.R.F.A.C.E.

  ‘What in the world does that mean?’ she muttered, looking down at her own scribbled handwriting once the brooch became still.

  ‘The one that has no name or face,’ Sissy read.

  ‘Is that who you are?’ Muriel asked the space beneath the ceiling. ‘The one that has no name or face?’

  YES.

  ‘How bizarre.’

  ‘Very,’ Sissy agreed, growing increasingly intrigued by the whole charade despite herself.

  ‘But if it’s not a man, woman, boy, girl or animal, what else could it be?’ Muriel complained. ‘What on earth is nameless and faceless?’

  ‘An alien?’ Sissy suggested.

  Muriel laughed, a nervous sound. ‘Whoever heard of an alien making contact via the Ouija board?’

  ‘There’s a first time for everything, I suppose.’

  ‘Are you an alien?’ Muriel looked up at the ceiling.

  NO.

  ‘Oh I give up,’ she said, removing her finger from the brooch. ‘It’s impossible. Like a game of charades with my senile granny.’

  But Sissy, now enjoying the puzzle too much, kept her finger in place and asked, ‘Are you male?’

  NO.

  ‘It already said no to that,’ Muriel snapped, looking unreasonably cross.

  ‘It said that it wasn’t a boy or a man.’

  ‘Same difference isn’t it?’

  ‘Not necessarily,’ Sissy said. ‘Are you female?’

  YES.

  ‘Aha!’ She smiled, a little too smugly, at Muriel.

  ‘A female what though?’ Muriel sighed, exasperated.

  ‘Are you a creature of God’s good Earth?’ Sissy asked.

  NO.

  ‘What about a creature of God’s heavenly realm? Are you an angel, perhaps?’

  NO.

  ‘It’s a maddeningly impossible puzzle, that’s what it is,’ Muriel complained.

  But Sissy suddenly felt fearful, an idea forming in her head, bringing with it a creeping sensation of dread that clawed at her skin. She hardly dared ask but needed to know, ‘Are you a creature of darkness? A…demon, perhaps?’

  Muriel made to object, but the brooch jerked forcefully to YES. Both women shrieked and pulled their hands away. At the same time the wind roared, rattling the window in its frame.

  ‘This isn’t funny,’ Muriel cried, looking anxiously at the window.

  ‘I can assure you I’m not laughing,’ Sissy affirmed. ‘You said this would be fun! What have we done?’

  Muriel looked sheepish. ‘Maybe it’s a harmless demon?’

  ‘Is there such a thing?’

  ‘I wouldn’t know. Let’s ask.’

  Sissy shook her head. ‘No, I don’t want to. I don’t want to ask it anything else.’

  ‘Then I will, and then we’ll stop larking about and get back to work.’

  Sissy pondered this for a moment, then agreed.

  ‘Do you mean us any harm?’ Muriel asked, her voice small, lacking all of its former bravado.

  NO.

  She breathed out a lengthy sigh of relief and managed a smile. ‘See, we were getting our pantyhose in a twist about nothing.’

  Feeling none of the reassurance her friend gained from the reply, Sissy asked the supposed demon, ‘What do you want?’

  This time the brooch moved slowly amongst the letters of the alphabet, spelling out: H.O.S.T.

  ‘Host?’ Sissy asked. ‘What does that mean?’

  The brooch didn’t move again in response. Both women waited a few minutes, the wind harrying the window and jangling their nerves, urging them to make a decision. Eventually Sissy huffed and picked up the cameo and pinned it back onto her cardigan.

  ‘If I were you I’d get rid of that,’ Muriel said, eyeing it warily as she stood up.

  ‘It’s a family heirloom,’ Sissy retorted. ‘It was my grandmother’s, passed down to her from her grandmother.’

  ‘Heirloom or not, I’d throw it away. Or bury it somewhere.’

  ‘Whatever I do do I won’t be listening to another word you say Muriel Beasley, that’s for certain. It’s your fault that all of this happened.’

  The pair of them walked back to Ward Three in silence, and not another word was ever spoken about what they had invoked that night. Following her shift Sissy put her grandmother’s cameo brooch into a box and hid it out of sight, at the back of her underwear drawer. During the following weeks she seldom spoke to Muriel Beasley, the pair amicably drifting apart. Sissy started attending church more often, and became introverted and unwilling to socialise in her leisure time. Her rosy complexion took on a pallid tone and her eyes carried shadows beneath them all the time, even when she felt well rested. A blackness had shrouded her life, intensifying over the months, like great crows’ wings suffocating all of the wellbeing within her. She began hearing a voice inside her head, which she told nob
ody about, and she dreamt about a faceless female form each and every night. Sometimes she would forget large pockets of time throughout the day and Henry, her husband, would often imply that she had two personalities. He once wondered aloud whether she might be possessed.

  When Sissy fell pregnant with their first child she snapped back to her former self at last, blooming and becoming a much better, joyous person. Life was great once again for Henry and her and when their daughter, Eleanor, was born it was the happiest day of Sissy’s life. The worst day of her life followed three months later, when Eleanor passed away.

  Her daughter’s unexplained death caused Sissy to fall into a deep depression. Even when she fell pregnant again soon after, her spirits didn’t lift, and the voice in her head came back louder than ever. Sissy miscarried the second child at four months, but within three months was pregnant again. The third baby, Elizabeth, who looked just like Eleanor, was stillborn. Doctors said the umbilical cord had asphyxiated the infant. Sissy’s fourth and fifth babies ended in miscarriage at mid-way points during the pregnancies. Then her sixth baby, William, was born healthy; a vivacious little boy with whom she was scared to bond. By the time he reached the age of five months, Sissy was pregnant again and went on to have a healthy baby girl called Polly. The Dawson’s spate of bad luck seemed to have finally run aground and, despite the pains of the past, their lives picked up for a brief while. Sissy and Henry started to believe they might enjoy a happy family life after all. But that wasn’t to be. Henry came home one evening to find Sissy collapsed on the bathroom floor, the onset of some fever having taken its toll. Tragically she’d been bathing William and Polly at the time. Both children had drowned.

  Sissy was never the same afterwards. Neither was Henry. He couldn’t cope with the misfortune of having lost seven children, or indeed with Sissy’s increasing level of paranoia and split-personality. Sometimes she was a nervous, withdrawn shell of a woman who couldn’t be consoled nor communicated with and at other times she was a spitting, vindictive woman who wouldn’t be reasoned with. Henry became more and more distant, working longer hours and spending long spates of time at the pub just so that he wouldn’t have to be at home, and by the autumn of 1959 Sissy lost him too. She found him strung up in their front room, the cord of his dressing gown around his neck.