Nocturnes (Mary Hades Book 3)

by Sarah Dalton

  “Where do you think they’ve gone?” Lacey says.

  Willa hugs her knees tight. “Far from here, I hope.”

  We all stare at the grass for a little longer, with our sandwiches left untouched. Lacey burns bright and ethereal as the afternoon sun peeks through the clouds.

  “Have you seen Judith? The ghost?” I ask.

  Willa frowns for a moment. “Oh, so that’s why you were asking after her. You think the ghost who controlled the video is Judith? Well, I guess they both played the cello, so that makes sense.”

  “You haven’t seen her?”

  “No,” Willa says. “Only the video and music thing. Oh, and at Colleen’s party I heard cello music and saw the lights go off, but I was outside so I didn’t see much. Have you seen her?”

  I nod. “She’s seriously pissed off. But I can understand why. Grace was a complete bitch to her.”

  “And to you,” Lacey points out.

  “Perhaps the three of us can pool resources and find out what Judith wants?” I suggest. “I have the Athamé, so I can send her back to the spirit realm.”

  “What the fuck is going on?”

  We both bend back to see Jack standing above us on the hill, haloed by the sun. I have to shield my eyes with my hand, but I can see that his hands are rammed deep into his pockets, and he glares at Willa with a tight, tense expression.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” he says. “You told her?”

  “Jack, it’s okay. She’s like me.” Willa clambers to her feet, brushing dirt from her jeans.

  “What else did you tell her? Did you tell her everything?”

  Willa moves towards him, trying to placate him with her arms outstretched, but Jack shrugs away and sets off across the field. Willa follows him, offering us a sheepish smile as she goes. I’m left staring at Lacey, wondering if I can take everything in.

  Chapter Fifteen

  There’s a Facebook invitation waiting from Willa Maynard when I get home. My profile is now set to private, I’ve deleted Grace and anyone associated with Grace, but I still have to search through dozens of requests to find Willa’s invitation. Her cover photo is some obscure 90s female singer whom I have to Google. Her profile is in moody black and white. But her statuses are upbeat and positive.

  A message pops up almost immediately.

  Willa: Have you checked out Judith’s YouTube channel?

  Me: I looked at some of it last night.

  Me: Is Jack okay?

  Willa: He’s fine. He’s super sensitive about everything that happened with the cult.

  Me: That’s understandable.

  Willa: Is Lacey there?

  Me: She is.

  Willa: Tell her I say hello.

  “Willa says hello,” I say, turning to the bed, where Lacey sits staring at her fingernails.

  “Right.” She gets up and stalks the length of the room.

  Me: Lacey is unnerved by you being able to see her.

  Willa: Tell her it’s all going to be okay.

  Willa: And that she might be able to control computers as a ghost. How cool is that?

  “Lace?” I say. “Willa says everything’s going to be okay, and that you might be able to control computers. I guess that’s how Judith got that spooky video to play.”

  Lacey grunts a response.

  I manage to coax Lacey into watching Judith’s YouTube playlist in its entirety. The most recent videos are less about playing music and more about Judith’s personal thoughts and feelings. She talks to the camera up close, tearfully explaining that her face and arms are fat, but she’s not actually overweight.

  “… As you can see. I have a kinda fat face, and my hands and arms are chubby. I’m quite short. That’s my physique. I don’t overeat. Sometimes I eat more when I’m stressed, like when people are… are leaving those comments. I’ve actually put on half a stone since it happened. Before then, I wasn’t fat at all, so if you could just leave me alone.” She sniffs and wipes away a tear. “Because all I want to do is play some cello for you.”

  Background music starts off. It’s low, languid, and a sadness spreads over me. There’s something familiar about this tune, but I can’t put my finger on it.

  “Did you see that?” Lacey points to the screen.

  At first, I’m not sure what she means, but the closer I look, the more obvious it is. There’s another person in Judith’s bedroom. I can barely make out the crook of an elbow as it moves back and forth, as though playing a cello.

  “She’s not alone,” I say.

  “The music they’re playing… it’s the same as the music that came on in the common room.”

  The music cuts out. My computer distorts and a high-pitched humming emits from the speakers. I jump back from my desk, knocking my chair onto the floor. The picture on the screen distorts. YouTube comes back for a fleeting second, but then it’s gone, replaced by a fuzzy grey image. The blurriness gradually clears, like a zoom lens finding the sweet spot. My blood runs cold as the black and white picture slowly comes into focus.

  It’s a dim room… no, correction, it’s a corridor. Like a hospital corridor. I breathe in sharply. Not a hospital; this is our school, except it appears to be abandoned. Wallpaper peels from walls. Doors hang from their hinges. The camera pans back in a smooth, gradual motion, revealing further disrepair along the derelict corridor.

  I know what’s coming before I see it. The crawling sensation over my skin anticipates her arrival. But still, when she appears, every muscle in my body clenches tight. My teeth clamp together.

  The emaciated body drags itself along the corridor, moving towards the camera. I take a step away from the computer, as though I’m expecting Judith’s ghost—if it is Judith, after all, now that we know there are two cellists—to climb through the screen and drag me away with her cold, dirty fingers. This time there is no music, only my galloping heartbeat. There’s no crippling pain in my abdomen, and no sadness creeping over my skin. It’s just me and her, and I’m transfixed by the bones peeking from her sagging skin and the lanky hair that drags along the floor as she inches towards the camera. Her cracked fingernails grip the linoleum. She’s half insect, half person, and fully drenched in avarice.

  “Get the Athamé,” Lacey says with a hiss.

  Finally, I move. I hurry to the wardrobe and search deep in the back for the knife. By the time I have it, the emaciated body is almost at the camera. I swallow, but my throat is dry.

  Skeletal fingers grasp hold of the lens. The body pulls itself higher, so that her face comes into view. I can’t get a good look at her, as those lanky strands of hair obscure most of her features. I see only bones, grey skin, and slimy hair. Higher she comes: a withered wrist, famine-thin forearm, a stretched forehead.

  And then an eye.

  The eye remains, staring at me. The knife is heavy in my hand. My heart thuds. I can’t move.

  That eye.

  So bloodshot and dark. The skin droops from it, as though it has given up trying to hold her face together. It never blinks. It watches.

  Lacey throws herself at the computer, disappearing in a crackle of energy. I open my mouth to scream, but the picture changes. The ghost is gone. Lacey pulls herself back out of the computer and moves back to me.

  “I don’t think it’s Judith,” she says, echoing my own thoughts. “Which means we don’t know what she wants anymore.”

  *

  There’s a knock at the door after dinner. I open the door in confusion. No one ever comes to Ravenswood. I expect it to be Emmaline, as she’s the only one who would, but instead, Willa and Jack stand on the doorstep. Jack leans against the doorframe with his hands jammed into the pockets of his leather jacket. His copper skin is darker in the moonlight, whereas Willa is paler, almost moonlike herself.

  “We thought we’d come keep you company,” Willa says with a grin.

  “Yeah, but not for long. I’m going to a mate’s party.” Jack steps into the house without an invite, walks
straight into the kitchen, and takes an apple from the fruit bowl.

  Mum steps into the hall, carrying a load of washing. “Oh, hello. I didn’t know you had friends over.”

  “This is Jack and Willa,” I say. “From school.”

  “Nice to meet you, Mrs. Hades.” Willa curtsies.

  Baffled, my mum mutters, “And you, dear.”

  “We’ll be upstairs,” I say quickly, dragging Willa away from Mum. “Doing some early revision.”

  Mum’s smile is a little frozen as she regards Jack in his leather jacket, eating one of her apples. “Okay.”

  “Your mum seems nice,” Willa says on the way up the stairs.

  I laugh. “You should have seen her last month. It wasn’t pretty.” As we get into my room and shut the door, I say, “She was possessed by an old, dark spirit. She tried to kill me.”

  Jack freezes, mid apple bite. “We’re talking about this, then? The ghosts?”

  “I told you,” Willa says. “Mary is the real deal.”

  “You think I’m a fake?” I say, giving him my hardest glare. I turn on them both, head to my wardrobe and pull out the Athamé. “What about now?” My skin is warm with anger. “I rid this entire house of ghosts on my own. I fought them all.”

  “Ahem.” Lacey pops out from the shadows.

  “Okay, I rid the house of all the ghosts but Lacey, my best friend.”

  Jack starts laughing at this.

  Lacey leaps across the room, stands in front of him, and then reveals herself. “Boo!”

  Jack drops the apple and lets out a feminine squeal which has me and Willa doubling over in hysterics.

  Jack drops back onto the bed. Lacey waves at him, blows a kiss to us, and then goes back to her original state.

  Something about Jack freaked out, and no longer his arrogant self, gives me a delicious feeling of Schadenfreude. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

  He rubs the back of his head before bending down and picking up the apple. I gesture to the bin under my desk. “So I guess you aren’t full of shit after all.” He tosses the apple into the bin.

  “Don’t mind him.” Willa twists her hair around her fingers. “He just likes to protect me. People don’t often react well when you tell them you believe in ghosts.”

  I think about Grace and Colleen. “Yeah, I know.”

  “Did you watch Judith’s YouTube channel?” Willa asks.

  I attempt to suppress a shiver, thinking of the eye staring at me through the computer screen.

  “What is it?” Willa asks.

  “We don’t think it’s Judith anymore,” Lacey says for me as I sit down at my desk. “We saw someone in the background of Judith’s video playing the cello.”

  Willa shrugs. “That doesn’t mean anything.”

  “They were playing the same music that came on at school,” I say. I drag my nails across my arm, trying to stop the skin from crawling. Jack’s eyes find mine. I stop.

  “We should go, Will,” Jack says, gesturing to his sister.

  “Sorry we’re boring you,” I snap.

  “Don’t be an arsehole. I made a commitment to someone.” He gets to his feet and stares me down. My fingernails dig back into my skin.

  “One of your many conquests, is it?” I taunt. There’s no real reason for me to be mean to him, but I’m on edge. Every part of me is coiled tight, and I need some sort of release.

  “Yeah, maybe,” he says. He gets to his feet and leans over me. “Could be you if you play your cards right.” And then his eyes narrow. “That is, if you find a way to stop being a judgemental prude.”

  “Jack!” Willa exclaims. “Apologise right now.”

  But he only sneers. “I’m out of here.”

  It’s only when he’s left the room that I realise I’ve been holding my breath. Instead of feeling a release, I’m coiled tighter. I’m a cold, twisted wire. A mess of a girl.

  “I’m sorry about my brother,” Willa says. “He didn’t mean it. You just touched a nerve.”

  “Maybe he’s right,” I mumble. I rub my hand over my face.

  “Err, no,” Lacey says. “He likes you. I mean, come on, you could cut the sexual tension with a knife.”

  “Ew, that’s my brother.” Willa shudders.

  I shake my head. “No, he hates me. Anyway, he’s too much of a player. I see the guy with a different girl every night.”

  Willa laughs. “You’d be surprised. My brother is not what he seems at all. If anyone’s the slut in our family it’s me. I get way more girls.” She stretches out on the bed, dangling her booted feet above the ground. “There’s nothing wrong with being sexually free. If I don’t get laid for more than three days I go a bit insane.”

  “Do you have to rub it in?” Lacey says. “Erm, hello, too dead to fuck over here.”

  We all burst out laughing at that.

  “Have you tried it?” Willa says with a wicked glint in her eyes. “I mean, you can still touch things? Move things? Why can’t you touch another person?”

  Lacey’s mouth flaps open. Suddenly, I feel like an intruder in my own home. “No… I… never…”

  “Maybe one day you will,” Willa says.

  I see it in Lacey’s eyes: her desperation for human contact. Her face is raw, open, needy. Part of me wonders whether Lacey and Willa meeting is a good or a bad thing. Having someone else around who can talk to ghosts will share my burden, but what if it’s bad for Lacey? I watch them move on to another subject, laughing and joking, and all the time the cold wire inside me gets tighter and tighter.

  Chapter Sixteen

  When I come down for breakfast the next day, Willa is chatting to my dad about stars and chewing on a piece of bacon.

  “Ahh, Mary, I was just telling your friend here about Carl Sagan,” he says with a large grin plastered across his face. He has no idea that Lacey is prowling around the room like an invisible lion ready to pounce.

  “Apparently, we’re all made of star stuff,” Willa says. “Maybe that’s why we burn out and fade away so easily.”

  “Well, it’s a philosophical idea, but a good metaphor,” Dad acknowledges.

  I grab a piece of toast and slather it in butter. “Come on, we should go.” I grab Willa by the arm and pull her off the kitchen chair. “I’ll be late for registration.”

  “Have a good day, girls,” Dad says. His eyes are alive because for once he’s seen his daughter do something normal. For once I’m not talking about how I can see ghosts, or coming back from a psychiatric hospital or from the deep, dark North Yorkshire moors. I’m chatting with a school friend and he loves it.

  If only he knew the truth.

  Jack sits in the front passenger seat, leaning his forehead against the window.

  “What’s up with you?” I ask as I climb into the back.

  “Headache,” he says.

  “Hangover,” Willa corrects.

  “Ahh,” I say.

  Willa turns on her CD player and turns up the volume so that Nirvana almost deafens us. As she manoeuvres the car out of the drive, she sings along at full volume, shaking her long, strawberry blonde hair. Lacey hovers over the backseat doing the same. I can’t help but laugh and join in, while Jack moans quietly in the front seat.

  Before turning in to school, Willa turns off the CD and says, “Did you know Travis Vance is having a house party on Friday?”

  “So?” I say.

  “We should mess with him,” she says. “Lacey should haunt the shit out of him.”

  Lacey’s face brightens. “Hell, yes!”

  “Hell, no,” I say. “I’m not going anywhere near that knob.”

  “Don’t you have a ghost to stop?” Jack says.

  Willa shrugs. “We can do both.”

  “I don’t think it’s a good idea to mess with Travis Vance right now,” I say.

  “We could scare him so much he turns himself in for bullying you and all his exes,” Willa says.

  “I dunno,” I say.

&nb
sp; Willa turns Nirvana back on. “Listen to Kurt. Would he put up with a dick like Vance?”

  “Kurt shot himself.” I roll my eyes at her.

  “Exactly. He didn’t even put up with the world.” Willa pauses. “Okay, bad example. But seriously, Mary, you can’t keep putting up with twats like Travis. You need to take charge.”

  “Don’t listen to her,” Jack says with a groan. “She’s tapped.”

  But I’m not listening to Jack now. I’m thinking of Travis high-fiving his friends after putting up the film of Colleen almost naked. I’m thinking of him groping me before throwing a live spider on me.

  “All right,” I say. “I’m in. But first we need to do some ghost hunting.”

  I see Jack shake his head in the mirror.

  *

  It’s not hard to sneak into the music room after school. All we have to do is tell one of the music teachers that my piano at home is being retuned and that I have a practical exam outside school. She gives me the keys and tells me to drop them off in the school office before five.

  After the last lesson ends, I let Jack and Willa into the room and lock the door behind me. Willa gives me a thumbs-up before bouncing around the room in an excited fashion. The Athamé lies heavy in my bag, and I can’t help but think that Willa doesn’t quite grasp the severity of the situation. She and Lacey dance around each other while Jack stares me down with his dark eyes. This brother and sister couldn’t be any further apart. He’s the moon, cool and mysterious, while she is the sun, burning bright.

  “What are we doing here?” Jack says to me in an almost lazy drawl. His eyes remain hooded. I wonder if he’s hung over again.

  “Even though I don’t think the ghost is Judith anymore, I think that Judith might still be around. Everyone I’ve spoken to tells me about how sweet Judith was, and how she never had a bad bone. So I’m hoping she might help us with the actual ghost,” I say.

  “Right.” Jack rolls his eyes. “And no one here thinks this idea is completely insane? We’re talking about summoning ghosts.”