The Cure of Souls mw-4

by Phil Rickman

  Merrily found herself winding up the car window in response to a sudden sensation of the air itself being polluted by human greed, like poison gas.

  Don’t let’s get carried away, vicar…

  The traffic started to move again, and this time she made it all the way to Greyfriars Bridge without a hold-up.

  Hereford Cathedral sat at the bottom of Broad Street, snug rather than soaring. Behind it, the medieval Bishop’s Palace was concealed by an eighteenth-century and Victorian façade that made it look like a red-brick secondary school with Regency and Romanesque pretensions.

  This was Administration; it brought you down to earth.

  The morning had dulled rapidly and a fine rain was falling as Merrily parked the old Volvo next to the Bishop’s firewood pile close to the stone and timbered gatehouse, the quaintest corner of the complex. The view under its arch was back into Broad Street; you went through a door in the side of the arch and up some narrow stone steps and came out at the Deliverance office, with the Bishop’s secretary’s room next door, from where Merrily could hear people talking – two male voices. She didn’t know what this was about, hadn’t liked to ask on the phone because it had been clear that Sophie was not alone.

  Now Sophie appeared in her doorway. She wore a silky, dark green sleeveless dress and pearls. Always pearls. And also, this morning, a matching pale smile. She slipped out of the room, to let Merrily go in.

  ‘Ah,’ said the Bishop.

  The other man, elderly with grey and white hair, didn’t say anything, and Merrily didn’t recognize him at first.

  ‘We’ll have tea later, Sophie,’ Bernie Dunmore called out, and then lowered his voice. ‘We shall probably need it. Come in, Merrily, take a seat. You know Dennis, don’t you?’

  Oh God, it was, too. Since she’d last seen him, Canon Beckett had shed some weight and his beard. He looked crumpled and unhappy.

  ‘Dennis?’ Merrily went to sit in Sophie’s chair by the window, overlooking the Cathedral green and the traffic on Broad Street.

  ‘I, ah… imagine you can guess was this is about,’ the Bishop said. He sat across the desk in the swivel chair he used for dictating letters to Sophie, his episcopal purple shirt stretched uncomfortably tight over his stomach. The Bishop was looking generally uneasy. Canon Beckett just looked gloomy, sitting on a straight chair a few feet away, with his back to the wall.

  ‘Dennis’s presence offers a clue,’ Merrily said.

  ‘Merrily, did you go to see this girl Amy Shelbone on Saturday evening, when her parents were out?’

  ‘Well, I…’ Merrily glanced across at Dennis, who was inspecting his hands. ‘I went over with the intention of talking to her parents, actually. They were – as you say – out. But I met Amy in the garden. I tried to talk to her about – obviously you know what about, Bishop. I mean, Dennis has presumably filled you in on the background?’

  ‘The child behaved in a disturbed fashion during the Eucharist, as well as exhibiting symptoms of what appeared to be clairvoyance, plus personality changes… enough to convince her parents she was being, ah, visited by an outside influence. You, however, seem unconvinced.’

  Merrily nodded. ‘She did seem to have turned away from God, but it seemed to me more like disillusion. Or, if there was an influence, then it was an earthly influence.’

  ‘You didn’t offer the parents any suggestions as to how she might have become susceptible to whatever was influencing her?’

  ‘I wondered about a teacher, or a boyfriend.’

  ‘Boyfriend?’

  ‘But her mother insisted she didn’t have a boyfriend.’

  ‘Quite immature for her age,’ Canon Beckett mumbled.

  ‘The girl went to church with her parents yesterday,’ said the Bishop. ‘Did you know that?’

  Merrily raised an eyebrow. ‘No.’

  ‘Not to Holy Communion this time. To the morning service.’

  ‘She was all right, then?’

  ‘Dennis…?’ The Bishop swivelled his chair towards the Canon.

  ‘She was fine, as far as I could see,’ Dennis said. ‘I kept a close eye on her, obviously. She was a little quiet, sang the hymns somewhat half-heartedly. It seems she and her parents had had a long talk the previous night. After… Mrs Watkins’s visit.’

  The Bishop swivelled back to face Merrily across the desk. ‘The child admitted to her parents that she’d been caught up in certain activities involving other pupils from her school. One girl in particular.’

  ‘Activities?’ Merrily tilted her head.

  ‘You don’t know about this?’

  ‘Am I supposed to?’ Was she being naive?

  ‘Spiritualism,’ the Bishop said. ‘The ouija board. Making contact with… the spirits.’

  ‘Amy?’

  ‘Seems unlikely to you?’

  ‘It would have, at first. She really didn’t seem the sort. Far too prissy. But then—’

  ‘Prissy?’

  ‘Inhibited, strait-laced, unimaginative, if you like. But then, on Saturday night, she said – fairly contemptuously – that she didn’t see any point in trying to talk to God, but if she did want to talk she could talk to someone called Justine.’

  ‘Her mother,’ Dennis Beckett said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Her real mother. She was adopted by these people. Her real mother was called Justine.’

  Merrily closed her eyes, bit her lower lip.

  ‘The apparent opportunity to talk to one’s dead mother,’ said the Bishop, ‘would, I suppose, be sufficient bait to lure even a prissy child into spiritually dangerous terrain.’

  Merrily had come down with a bump that was almost audible to her. ‘I’ve been stupid.’ She felt herself sag in Sophie’s chair.

  ‘Have you?’ the Bishop said.

  ‘I should have made the connection.’

  ‘Why?’ asked the Bishop, a lilt in his voice.

  ‘Why?’

  She felt like crying. Driving into Hereford, she’d still felt high, swollen with… what? Faith? Certainty? Arrogance? She’d cast aside her scepticism, opened her heart, broken through – six hours passing like minutes.

  Tails. The coin kept coming up tails. She’d been given her answer.

  And it wasn’t the answer. It wasn’t any kind of answer. The inspiring and apparently mystical circumstances had obscured the fact that little had been revealed to her. It might even have been misleading.

  ‘Where did this happen? These ouija board sessions?’

  ‘You don’t know?’

  ‘You don’t have to rub it in, Bernie. I don’t know. The kid wouldn’t talk to me.’

  The rain was coming harder, rivulets on the window blurring Broad Street into an Impressionist painting. She felt a pricking of tears and looked down into her lap.

  ‘I really don’t think you do know, do you?’ The Bishop’s voice had softened. She shook her head. ‘Or the identity of the girl who led Amy into these spiritualist games?’

  She looked up into his fat, kindly face. His eyes were full of pity.

  The room tilted.

  ‘What are you saying, Bishop?’ She turned on Dennis Beckett. ‘What are you saying?’

  Bernie Dunmore shuffled uncomfortably. ‘Your daughter Jane goes to the same school, doesn’t she?’

  ‘Yes, she—’ It was as if her mouth were full of cardboard. ‘No!’

  ‘After the service, Merrily, Mr and Mrs Shelbone invited Dennis back to their house, where Amy admitted to Dennis that she’d been lured into what had become quite a craze at Moorfield High School for attempting to make contact with the dead. She said—You’d better relay the rest of it, Dennis, I don’t want to get anything wrong.’

  Dennis Beckett cleared his throat. He didn’t look directly at Merrily.

  ‘Amy told her parents, in my presence, that a Jane Watkins had approached her one day in the playground and told her that a group of them had been receiving messages from a certain… spirit… who kept aski
ng for a girl called Amy. Amy gave this – this Jane short shrift, until the girl told her the woman had identified herself as Amy’s mother, from whom Amy had been parted as an infant. Amy, of course, had always known that she was adopted.’

  ‘And she was then persuaded to attend one of these, ah, sessions, was she?’ said the Bishop.

  ‘Which, it seems, proved somewhat convincing – and immensely traumatic, apparently. The child claims she was able to communicate with the spirit of her mother – who gave her some very frightening information. Mr and Mrs Shelbone, however, declined to tell me what this information was.’ Dennis leaned back, as if exhausted, his head against the wall. ‘For which, to be quite honest, I was grateful. Suffice to say that Amy asked the Shelbones certain questions about her birth-mother and then proceeded to give them information about things which they did know but had never revealed to the child. Beginning with the significant disclosure of the mother’s name.’

  ‘Justine,’ Merrily whispered. ‘Oh God.’

  ‘They were so shocked to hear her saying these things that Amy could tell at once, from their reactions, that she must be in possession of the truth. All of which was quite enough to reduce both the girl and the parents to a state of absolute dread.’

  The spirit of a dead person.

  The Bishop said, ‘Did she tell them then, Dennis, about the ouija board sessions? Because—’

  ‘No, she didn’t. This initial exchange took place immediately following Amy’s… upset, during the Eucharist. When they got home, there was an attempt at a family discussion, which ended rather abruptly when Amy realized that her adoptive parents had concealed this – whatever it was – disturbing information from her. She became resentful and spiteful. She told them she was in contact with her real mother, but she didn’t explain how this had come about. She was, I would guess, behaving in a rather sly way: playing her parents off against her natural mother.’

  ‘Pretty unnatural mother, if you ask me,’ Bernie Dunmore spluttered. ‘So this, presumably, is what led to the adoptive mother’s request for an exorcism.’

  ‘Hazel Shelbone didn’t tell me about any of this,’ Merrily said tonelessly. ‘And as for Jane’s—’

  ‘It was only after Mrs Watkins’s latest visit that Amy explained, somewhat reluctantly, about the ouija board,’ Dennis Beckett said. ‘Which I would imagine carries less kudos than direct personal contact with one’s late mother.’

  ‘Do we know when the mother died?’ Bernie asked.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Not in childbirth, then.’

  ‘I don’t know, I’m sorry.’

  ‘Are they still asking for this exorcism?’

  ‘I was able to pray with the child,’ Dennis said.

  Merrily felt the Bishop’s glare this time. More than you were able to do.

  ‘I think it was sufficient,’ Dennis said. ‘But I’m prepared to go back.’

  ‘Look…’ Merrily fumbled for words. ‘I… I accept that I probably mishandled this from the beginning. And maybe I shouldn’t even have attempted to talk to Amy when her parents weren’t there. But I can’t accept that Jane’s in any way involved in this.’

  ‘Merrily,’ the Bishop said, quite gently, ‘I think I’m correct in saying that it wouldn’t be the first time Jane’s exhibited curiosity about things that—’

  ‘She would not do this.’

  There was silence, the two men looking anywhere but at Merrily. The door was open; Sophie, presumably in the Deliverance office next door, would have heard everything.

  ‘She’s my daughter,’ Merrily said. ‘I would know.’

  Bernie Dunmore pulled out a tissue, blotted something on his beach ball of a forehead. ‘You’d better tell us the rest, Dennis.’

  ‘Amy…’ Dennis Beckett half turned to face the Bishop. ‘I’m afraid that Amy maintains that Mrs Watkins was fully… fully aware of her daughter’s involvement.’

  Merrily shut her eyes, shaking her head.

  ‘And when Mrs Watkins came to see Amy on Saturday evening – when her parents were out – she warned the child very forcibly—’

  ‘What?’ When her eyes reopened, Dennis Beckett was finally staring directly at her, perhaps to show how much he wasn’t enjoying this.

  ‘—that she’d better keep quiet about Jane Watkins—’

  Merrily sprang up. ‘That’s a complete and total—’

  ‘—if she knew what was good for her,’ Dennis said.

  ‘It’s a lie,’ Merrily said.

  Bernie Dunmore breathed heavily down his nose. ‘Sit down, Merrily,’ he said. ‘Please.’

  Part Two

  When I am involved in the work of deliverance I admit my own ignorance…

  Martin Israel, Exorcism – The Removal of Evil Influences

  Church of England

  Diocese of Hereford

  Ministry of Deliverance

  email: deliverance@spiritec.co.uk

  Click

  Home Page

  Hauntings

  Possession

  Cults

  Psychic Abuse

  Contacts

  Prayers

  Hauntings

  Haunting or spiritual infestation of property is a complex problem which constitutes most of the work of the Deliverance Service. It falls into a number of clear categories and each case needs careful investigation before a particular course of action is undertaken.

  The following pages will attempt to explain the difference between the most common types of haunting: poltergeist activity, ‘imprints’ and ‘the unquiet dead’ and why each demands different treatment.

  12

  Everybody Lies

  ‘THE LADY OF the Bines in person?’ The Rev. Simon St John was slumped like a tired choirboy on a hard chair he’d pulled into the centre of the studio floor, his cello case open beside him. ‘Scary.’

  He hauled the cello out of its case. It was every bit as dented and scratched as a much-toured guitar. Simon drove the bow over the cello strings, and the sound went up Lol’s spine, like a wire.

  ‘It was scary at the time.’ He’d decided he had to tell somebody. It wasn’t so long ago that a vicar would have been the very last person he’d have opened up to, but there were aspects of Simon St John that made him more – or maybe less – than what you thought of as a normal clergyman.

  Lol had spent the night, as usual, alone in the stables. Prof had said he should move over into the cottage, but he felt more comfortable in the loft room above the studio. All last evening he’d been somehow expecting Stock to turn up, with an explanation of the newspaper story, but Stock hadn’t shown. And then, this morning, when the footsteps sounded in the yard, it had been Simon St John in jeans and trainers, carrying his cello case, looking like a refined version of Tom Petty.

  Prof had mentioned that Simon would often drop in on a Monday, to unwind after an entire day of being polite and cheerful to his parishioners. Before moving to Knight’s Frome, he’d been in some bleak sheep-farming parish in the Black Mountains, which thrived on threats and feuds and general hatred and where the vicar was expected to be hard-nosed and cynical.

  ‘But – am I right? – you didn’t know the story of the Lady of the Bines at the time you saw this woman,’ Simon said.

  Lol sat a few feet away, on the hardwood top of an old Guild acoustic amp he’d picked up in Hereford last year. ‘No.’

  ‘That is quite spooky.’ Simon’s bow skittered eerily across the strings. He winced. ‘And naked, hmm?’

  ‘And bleeding from superficial cuts, like she’d just run through some spiny bushes or brambles or—’

  ‘It’s how ghost stories are born,’ Simon said. ‘Give me your chord sequence again. B minor, F sharp…?’

  ‘Then down to E minor for the intro to the verse.’ This was the River Frome song, for which there were still some lyrics to write.

  ‘And you made a careful exit,’ Simon said. ‘Wise.’

  ‘I was thinking drugs, I
was thinking witchcraft. I was wondering, should I call the police in case she’s been… you know? But she was… smiling. She seemed relaxed. Have you ever met Stephanie Stock?’

  Simon pushed the bow over the strings of the cello in a raw minor key, recoiled. ‘Ouch. I’m just so bloody atrocious these days. No… when he comes to Church – and he’s actually been a time or two recently, the cunning bugger – he comes on his own. She’s a mouse, they say – quiet, goes off to work in Hereford in her little Nissan. Making the best of the dismal place, presumably, when she gets home, because she never goes to the pub with him.’

  ‘So, what do you reckon?’

  ‘Dunno, is the short answer. I don’t know what you saw. Why don’t you ring her one night while he’s out? Why were you naked in the old hop-yard, Mrs Stock?’ Simon lifted his bow. ‘No, wouldn’t be such a good idea. Anyway, it doesn’t change my view of the situation. He’s a lying git. “I need an exorcism, Si, soon as you can.” Jesus!’

  ‘That was what he was asking for when he came here? And you said no.’

  ‘Damn right. An Anglican exorcism, sanctioned by the Bishop of Hereford, would put God and the Church of England firmly on Stock’s side. Comes to a civil court case, I get called as a witness. Stuff that.’

  ‘But why would he then go to the papers? Why would he expose himself to public ridicule?’

  ‘You think that bothers him? He’s a PR man. He knows how transient it all is. News today, chip-paper tomorrow… except in Knight’s Frome. Here, it might send a slow ripple up the river… Still, what’s he got to lose?’

  Lol persisted. ‘OK… Prof suggests Stock’s making up the haunting bit to put pressure on Adam Lake to dismantle his big barns and stick them somewhere else. But that still doesn’t quite add up. Getting rid of the barns might put a few thousand on the value of the place. But when you think how many people’d want to live in a house well known as a murder site – and now even better known – at the end of the day, Lake’s going to be the only person really interested in buying it.’

  ‘All right.’ Simon leaned forward, letting his arms droop over the body of his cello. ‘I’ll tell you what I think, why I think Stock wouldn’t talk to Lake’s lawyer when the first approach was made. I think, in normal circumstances, he’d sell that place tomorrow. He’s a townie, an arch-townie. He hates it here. But I don’t think he can sell. Not to Lake, not to anybody. What did Stock say to you about the reason Stewart Ash left them his house?’