Midwinter of the Spirit mw-2

by Phil Rickman

  Then the staring-at-the-phone phase. The agitated For God’s Sake Ring, Huw moments. He keeps calling you. He wants to explain. So you should call him back. It doesn’t matter that he and Dobbs conspired against you. It doesn’t matter what he did. You need him. You need him to take it away. You need to call him now and say, Huw, I am possessed. I am possessed by the spirit of Denzil Joy.

  Yet it was not like that. She might look rough in the mirror, but her dull, tired eyes were not the sleazed-over eyes of Denzil Joy. She didn’t feel his greasy desires. She didn’t know him.

  Was not possessed by him.

  Haunted, though – certainly that. Useless to paper it over with psychology; she was haunted by him. He followed her, had become her spirit-stalker. Because she’d failed, that night in the General, to redirect his malignant energy, its residue had clung to her. She’d walked out of the hospital with Denzil Joy crawling and skulking behind her like some foul familiar. He was hers now. No one else had caught his disease.

  And she’d been unaware of it until – once again insufficiently prepared – she had been collecting herself for the assault on the crow-killer of St Cosmas. Collecting her energy. Then into the cocktail had seeped his essence.

  Was that what happened? Had yesterday’s holy-water exercise been a failure because it had been directed only at the bedroom – making the room safe – rather than herself?

  Because she was the magnet, right? She’d invited him – sitting by his bedside, holding his kippered hands. The female exorcist attracting the incubus, just as the priest-in-charge had invoked the lust of the organist who’d flashed at her from a tombstone.

  Today, she’d concentrated on cleansing herself. Leaving the answering machine unplugged, she’d set out on a tour of churches, a pilgrimage on the perimeter of Hereford. A full day of prayer and meditation.

  Finally, parking in a back street near the Cathedral School, and slipping discreetly into the Cathedral, sitting quietly at the back for over an hour while tourists and canons she didn’t know flitted through.

  She had not called Huw, or Sophie. Had resisted the impulse to enter Church Street and find Lol. She had left the answering machine unplugged. At four p.m., she’d returned to the vicarage and fed the cat and made a meal for Jane and herself. Then one more visit to the church before the drive – leaving plenty of time – to the Glades.

  It was not about proving herself as an exorcist any more. That was over. This was about saving her ministry.

  And her sanity?

  Leave sanity out of this. Sanity is relative.

  Edna Rees looked along the passage, without apparent apprehension, to where the bulb had just blown. ‘Surely that’s not the first time it’s happened to you, my dear?’

  Merrily said nothing.

  Edna shifted comfortably in her wicker chair. ‘Regular occurrence, it was, in Gwynne Street. Wherever he lived, it happened. So I learned.’

  ‘Bulbs blowing?’

  ‘Might’ve put me off if I’d known before I took the job, see. But you get used to it.’

  Merrily glanced along the line of bulbs. The loss of one seemed to make all the others less bright, as though they were losing heart. There was probably a simple scientific explanation; she should ask Chris Thorpe.

  ‘One week we lost five,’ Edna said. ‘I said, you want to charge them for all these bulbs, Canon. Well, expensive they are these days, bulbs. We tried those economy things – cost the earth, take an age to come on, but they’re supposed to last ten years. Not in that house, they didn’t.’

  ‘What else happened?’

  ‘Some nights…’ Edna pulled her skirt down over her knees, ‘… you just couldn’t heat that place to save your life, even with all the radiators turned up, the living-room fire banked all day. Wasn’t even that cold outside sometimes, see. And yet, come the night, just when you’d think it’d be getting nicely warmed up…’

  Cold spots?

  This passage had five doors, all closed. Closed doors were threatening. Doors ajar with darkness within were terrifying. Merrily guessed she just didn’t like doors. Otherwise, there was no sense of disturbance, no cold spots – and certainly nothing like the acrid, soul-shrivelling stench which had gathered around…

  Stop!

  She turned briskly to Edna. ‘Are you saying that he… brought his work home?’

  Edna looked at Merrily from under her bottle-green velvet hat. Her eyes were brown and shrewd, over cheeks that were small explosions of split veins.

  ‘My dear, his work followed him home.’

  She froze. ‘He told you that?’

  ‘He never talked about his work,’ Edna said. ‘Not to me; not to anyone, far as I know. But when he came back sometimes, it was like Jack Frost himself walking in.’

  ‘What did he do about that?’

  ‘Not for me to know, Mrs Watkins.’

  ‘No,’ Merrily said, ‘obviously not. I… saw you with him the other week, in the Cathedral.’

  ‘Yes,’ Edna said calmly, ‘I thought it was you.’

  ‘He was telling you to go away. He said there was something he couldn’t… couldn’t discuss there.’

  ‘Sharp ears you have.’

  ‘Is it none of my business?’

  ‘You must think it is.’

  ‘Why “here”? Why did he want to get you out of the Cathedral?’

  ‘For the same reason he wanted me out of his house, Mrs Watkins.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘Why are you asking me these questions?’

  ‘Because I can’t ask him. Because he’s lying in hospital apparently incapable of speech. Or at least he doesn’t speak to the female nurses.’

  Edna smiled.

  ‘Any more than he’d speak to me before his stroke. He froze me out, too, on the grounds that I wasn’t fit to do his job. His sole communication with me was a cryptic note saying that Jesus Christ was the first exorcist. There. I’ve told you everything, Edna.’

  It was what she wanted.

  ‘Merrily… Can I call you Merrily?’

  ‘Please do.’

  ‘Merrily, this began… I don’t know exactly when it began, but it did have a beginning.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I started to hear him praying, very loud and… anguished. I would hear him through the walls: sometimes in what sounded like Latin – the words meant nothing to me. He would shout them into the night. And then, backwards and forwards from the Cathedral he’d go at all hours, in all weathers. I would hear his footsteps in the street at two, three in the morning. Going to the Cathedral, coming from there – sometimes rushing, he was, like a man possessed. I don’t mean that in the…’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘And this was when he began cutting himself off: from men too, but especially from women. Would not even see his own sister. He would put her off – I was made to put her off – when she wanted to visit. He would not even speak to her on the telephone. Or to his granddaughters – he has two granddaughters. One of them brought her new baby to show him. He saw her coming down the street and made me tell her he was away. It made no sense to me. He’d been married for forty years.’

  ‘Does it make sense now?’

  ‘I have been reading,’ Edna said, ‘about St Thomas of Hereford.’

  ‘Thomas Cantilupe?’

  ‘He would not have women near him, either.’

  She fell silent.

  ‘But that was then,’ Merrily said. ‘That was the Middle Ages. Cantilupe was a Roman Catholic bishop. They weren’t allowed to have…’

  ‘I know that, but where did the Canon go when he went into the Cathedral? Where did he have his stroke?’

  ‘Cantilupe’s tomb.’

  ‘I can’t tell you any more,’ Edna said. ‘You had better do what you came for.’

  In fact, the routine for this kind of situation usually involved blessing the entire house, room by room, starting at the main entrance, the blessing thus extended to all who passed i
n and out. But Susan Thorpe was hardly going to permit that.

  If you couldn’t tie down a haunting to a specific incident in the history of the house, then you at least should ask: What’s causing it to happen now? Is it connected to the present function of the house, the kind of people living here? Old people feeling unwanted, neglected, passed-over? Confused, their senses fuddled…? Yet Susan Thorpe wouldn’t accommodate that kind of client. Any signs of dementia, they have to go. We aren’t a nursing home.

  You could spend days investigating this, and then discover it was a simple optical illusion. Merrily moved a little closer to the dead bulb’s bracket.

  ‘I don’t know what your son-in-law expected, but—’

  ‘Stuffed-shirt, he is,’ Edna said. ‘I hope I die, I do, before I have to go into a place owned by people like them. Pretend-carers, they are.’ Out of her daughter’s earshot, Edna’s accent had strengthened. ‘Poor old souls. Grit my teeth, I will, and stay here until I can find a little flat, then you won’t see me for dust.’

  ‘Good for you,’ Merrily said.

  It was quiet. No wind in the rafters. They stood in silence for a couple of minutes and then Merrily called on God, who Himself never slept, to bless these bedrooms and watch over all who rested in them.

  35

  Sholto

  HER HANDS TOGETHER, head bowed.

  Even the piano was inaudible up here, and in the silence her words sounded hollow and banal.

  ‘… and ask You to bless and protect the stairs and the landings and the corridors along which the residents and the workers here must pass to reach these rooms.’

  She was visualizing the old ladies gathered around the piano two floors below, so as to draw them into the prayer.

  ‘We pray, in the name of Our Lord, Jesus Christ, that no spirit or shade or image from the past will disturb the people dwelling here. We pray that these images or spirits will return to their ordained place and there rest in peace.’

  This covered both imprints and insomniacs, although she didn’t really think it could be an insomniac. There’d surely be some sign, in that case, some pervading atmosphere of unrest.

  ‘Amen,’ Edna said.

  Merrily held her breath. It had been known, Huw Owen had said, for the spirit itself to appear momentarily, usually at the closing of the ritual, before fading – in theory for ever – from the atmosphere.

  Mind, it’s also been known to appear with a mocking smile on its face and then – this is frightening – appearing again and again, bang-bang-bang, in different corners of the room…

  Although it was hard not to flick a glance over her shoulder, Merrily kept on looking calmly in front of her under half-lowered eyelids, her body turned towards the darkness at the end of the passage. From which drifted a musty smell of dust and camphor which may not have been there before.

  She waited, raising her eyes to the sloping ceiling with its blocked-in beams, and the filigree pouches of old cobwebs over the single curtained window. She straightened her shoulders, feeling the pull of the pectoral cross.

  It was darker – well seemed darker. As though there’d been a thirty per cent decrease in the wattage of the bulbs. Possibly something was happening, something absorbing the energy – something which had begun as she ended her first prayer. A mild resistance was swelling now.

  Merrily began to sweat, trying not to tense against the ballooning atmosphere. She wondered if Edna was aware of it, or if she herself was the only focus, her lone ritual beckoning it. When she spoke again, her voice sounded high and erratic.

  ‘If there is a… an unquiet spirit… we pray that you may be freed from whatever anxiety or obsession binds you to this place. We pray that you may rise above all earthly ties and go, in peace, to Christ.’

  That sounded feeble. It lacked something. It was too bloody reasonable.

  Belt and braces, said the awful Chris Thorpe, stooped like a crane and sneering.

  Yes, OK, there was something. Now that she was sure of that, there should perhaps be a Eucharist performed for the blessing of the house. It could be conducted by the local vicar, held under some pretext where all the residents could be invited. Those who were churchgoers would accept it without too many questions.

  The atmosphere bulged. She felt a sudden urgent need to empty her bladder.

  ‘May the saints of God pray for you and the angels of God guard and protect you…’

  Either the air had tightened or she was feeling faint. Resist it. She fumbled at the mohair sweater to expose the cross. As she pulled at the sweater, her palms began to—

  ‘Mrs Watkins.’

  Merrily let go of the sweater; her eyes snapped open. Edna Rees was pointing to where, at the top of the three shallow steps, a figure stood.

  ‘Please, there’s really no need for this,’ it said.

  Angela turned over six cards in sequence and then quickly swept the whole layout into a pile.

  But not before Jane had seen the cards and recognized three of them: Death… The Devil… The Tower struck by lightning.

  ‘I can’t do this,’ Angela said. ‘I’m afraid it’s Rowenna’s fault.’

  It was the same pub where the psychic fair had been held, but this time they were upstairs in a kind of boxroom. Pretty drab: just the card table and two chairs. Rowenna had to perch on a chest of drawers, her head inches from a dangling lightbulb with no shade.

  ‘I’m sorry, Angela,’ she said. ‘I really didn’t realize.’

  Angela looked petite inside a huge sheepskin coat with the collar turned up. She also looked casually glamorous, like a movie star on location. But she looked irritated, too.

  ‘I suppose you weren’t to know, but it’s one of my rules in a situation like this to know only the inner person. I don’t like to learn in advance about anyone’s background or situation, because then, if I see a problem in the cards, I can know for sure that this information comes from the Source and is not conditioned by my personal knowledge, preconceptions or prejudices. I’m sorry, Jane.’

  Jane heard the rumble of bar-life from the room below.

  ‘Angela,’ she said nervously, ‘that’s not because you turned up some really bad cards and you don’t think I can take it?’

  Angela looked cross. ‘Cards have many meanings according to their juxtaposition.’

  ‘Looked like a pretty heavy juxtaposition to me,’ Rowenna said with a hint of malice. Angela had already done a reading for Rowenna – her future was bound up with a friend’s, needing to help this friend discover her true identity – something of that nature. Rowenna had seemed bored and annoyed that the emphasis seemed to be on Jane.

  Jane said, ‘What was it Rowenna told you?’

  ‘I told her what your mother was, OK?’ Rowenna said. ‘On the phone last night. It just came out.’

  Priest or exorcist? Jane was transfixed for a moment by foreboding. ‘That reading was telling you something about me and Mum, wasn’t it?’

  Angela straightened the pack and put it reverently into the centre of a black cloth and then folded the cloth over it. ‘Jane, I’m not well disposed towards the Church. A friend of mine, also a tarot-reader, was once hounded out of a particular village in Oxfordshire because the vicar branded her as an evil infuence.’

  ‘Vicars can be such pigs,’ Rowenna said.

  ‘However,’ Angela looked up, ‘I make a point of never coming between husbands and wives or children and parents.’

  ‘Please, will you tell me what—?’

  ‘Jane.’ Angela’s calm eyes held hers. ‘When I look at your inner being, I sense a generous and uninhibited soul. But if your mother’s burden is to be constrained by dogma and an unhappy tradition, you really don’t have to share it.’

  ‘Well, I know, but… mostly we get on. Since Dad died we’ve supported each other, you know?’

  ‘Admirable in principle.’

  ‘Like, she’s pretty liberal about most things, but she’s got this really closed mind about… o
ther things.’

  ‘All right, my last word on this…’ Angela began to exude this commanding stillness; you found you were listening very hard. ‘It might be wise, for both your sakes – your own and your mother’s – for you to keep on walking towards the light. Don’t compromise. Don’t look back. Pray… I’m going to say it… pray that she follows in your wake.’

  ‘You mean she needs to get out of the Church.’

  ‘These are your cards, Jane, not hers.’

  ‘Or what? What’s going to happen to her if she stays with the Church?’

  ‘Jane, don’t put me in a difficult position. Now, how are things going at the Pod?’

  The shadow on the stairs spoke in a surprising little-girly voice.

  ‘Aren’t you going to introduce me to your friend, Mrs Rees?’

  ‘This,’ Edna said with an overtone of resignation, ‘is Miss Anthea White.’

  ‘Athena!’

  ‘Miss Athena White. Why aren’t you at the party, then, Miss White?’

  ‘At the piano with all those old ladies? One finds that sort of gathering so depressing.’ Miss White moved out of the shadows. She was small, even next to Merrily, wearing a long blue dressing-gown which buttoned like a cassock.

  Very tiny and elflike. Not as old as you expected in a place like this – no more than seventy.

  ‘This is Mrs Watkins,’ Edna said.

  Miss White inspected Merrily through brass-rimmed glasses like the ones Lol Robinson wore, only much thicker. ‘Ah, there it is. You keep the clerical collar well-hidden, Mrs Clergywoman. I say, you’re very very pretty, aren’t you?’

  ‘Thank you,’ Merrily said.

  ‘One had feared the new female ministers were all going to be frightful leather-faced lezzies. Come and have a drink in my cell.’

  ‘Now,’ Edna said, ‘you know you’re not supposed to have alcohol in your rooms.’

  ‘Oh, Mrs Rees, you aren’t going to blab to the governor, are you? It’s such a frightfully cold night.’ Light seemed to gather in her glasses. ‘Far too cold for an exorcism.’

  ‘Perhaps you could excuse me,’ Edna said.

  ‘Oh, do you have to leave?’