The Wayward Girls

by Amanda Mason

  ‘Yes,’ said Olivia. ‘Please.’

  Loo could feel her pulse thumping as Issy decided what to do next. It was coming back, the light floaty feeling from earlier on; she didn’t even need to close her eyes this time. Her heart pounded in her chest and she thought that if she let go of Olivia and Bee she might begin to float up above the floor, to rise up above the dusty stones.

  Very slowly Issy put the camera down on one of the tables and walked towards the circle. She didn’t want to, Loo could tell, but she couldn’t find a way to say no. Loo felt sorry for Issy now, sorry for all the times she’d giggled when Bee had said something rude about her behind her back. She could feel the words swelling up inside her, punched out by the rhythm of her heartbeat.

  Go now

  Go now

  Go now

  Simon pulled his hand away from Bee and stepped back, making space for Isobel between them. He took her hand and after a moment she stepped into place and held hands with Bee.

  The feeling grew stronger and her heart filled her up.

  Now

  Now

  Now

  Olivia’s voice was softer this time, further away. ‘We listen to our breath, to the rise and fall of it, and each breath brings clarity, brings peace, and we can hear you, we can hear you, Tib.’

  Loo let her head fall; she licked her lips and to her left Bee squeezed her fingers a little. Get on with it, stupid. To her right, Olivia spoke. ‘I can see her,’ she said.

  ‘Where?’ said Michael.

  ‘She’s here, she’s inside the circle, walking around, looking at us.’

  ‘What does she look like?’

  ‘She’s Bee’s age, a little older perhaps. She’s wearing a long dark dress, but with the sleeves pushed up. She has long blonde hair. She won’t stay still, I can’t quite … She must be cold. She’s looking for, for …’

  A way in, thought Loo.

  ‘A way in.’

  ‘Out, surely? A way out of the circle,’ said Michael.

  ‘No. Not that, a way in … to speak. Is that it, Tib? Do you want to speak?’

  Bee squeezed her fingers again, and Loo let her head fall forward and got herself ready, but the voice, when it came, wasn’t hers.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Tib, is that you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Bee was gripping her hand so tightly now, Loo could barely stand it; hot sparks of energy seemed to be pulsing through her fingers, burning her.

  Bee to her left, Olivia to her right.

  They probably didn’t even need to hold hands now, she thought. If they let go, there’d be little lightning strikes crackling between them, like sparklers on Bonfire Night. Olivia could feel it too. Loo was sure she could.

  ‘Can you see her?’ Michael’s voice was urgent.

  ‘No … I …’ Olivia was breathing heavily; it must have been the effort of holding on to Loo, holding her down. You can let go, Loo thought, it’s all right.

  It’s not me.

  ‘Yes,’ said Olivia. ‘She’s … there and not there …’

  ‘Tib,’ said Michael. ‘Where are you?’

  ‘Here.’

  Her voice was firmer, stronger, nearer. Loo raised her head, half-expecting to see her dancing around in front of her.

  It wasn’t dark in the barn, not properly dark, and they were all standing holding hands; opposite her she could see Simon and Cathy, and they were looking at Olivia. Olivia looked ill: her eyes were wide, panic-stricken, and her skin was beaded with sweat.

  ‘Do you want to talk to us?’ asked Michael.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘She’s there,’ said Olivia. ‘She’s … she won’t stay still.’

  ‘What happened to you, Tib?’

  ‘I saw. I saw her.’

  ‘What did you see?’

  ‘Her.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Her.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘With her knife. Sliced. Slashed. I saw.’

  She can feel their excitement, Simon and Michael. This is why they’re here, this is what they wanted. She can feel the way it makes Tib stronger.

  ‘Who? Who did she hurt? Why did she do it?’ asked Michael.

  ‘I saw.’

  ‘Stop it,’ said Cathy. ‘Stop this now.’

  ‘I saw her,’ said Tib. ‘Bitch. I saw her with her knife.’ She began to laugh. ‘I know what you did.’

  ‘Jesus, no!’ Isobel pulled away from the circle. ‘For God’s sake, Michael, you can’t let this go on, she’s just a kid.’

  ‘Come back to the circle, Issy,’ said Simon, holding out his hand.

  ‘No! It’s not right. Why can’t you see that it’s not right?’

  ‘Come back to the circle, Issy.’ Tib was making fun of them.

  Loo didn’t think she could hold on much longer. Her arms ached and her fingers were burning and anyway Isobel had broken the circle and that meant there was a way out now, or a way in.

  Tib didn’t need her any more.

  She pulled her hands free and watched for the sparks to jump from Olivia, to her, to Bee.

  Come back

  Come back

  Come back

  Her sister stood with her arms outstretched, grinning, daring Isobel to raise her camera, to capture her image now. She’s not herself, thought Loo, a phrase she’d heard her mother use, but never properly understood until now.

  ‘Come back to the circle, Issy,’ said Bee.

  33

  Now

  ‘Was there even going to be a new edition of the book?’ asks Lewis, looking around the room at their gear, the cameras and the monitors and the laptops.

  ‘No,’ says Nina. ‘Sorry, Lew. No, there wasn’t. He was planning on coming back, that bit was true. I just wasn’t sure why.’

  ‘So, you came to the farm instead,’ says Lucy.

  ‘Once or twice, yes. I couldn’t get into the house, but I had a look around the village.’

  ‘We’re supposed to be a team, Nina,’ says Lewis. ‘You can’t just use people.’

  ‘I was going to tell you, I was. But then if we got here and nothing happened … And it’s – complicated.’

  ‘Oh, of course it is.’ He sits down in the armchair, weary suddenly. ‘Fuck’s sake, Nina,’ he says.

  ‘So,’ Hal says slowly, ‘the question now is, what did Simon Leigh see in all of this that he hadn’t seen before?’

  ‘What?’ says Nina.

  ‘You said it yourself, you didn’t know why he was planning on coming back.’ Hal picks up a contact sheet. ‘But he knew about the second séance all along, and he’d kept quiet about it for years. He had no reason to come back, unless …’ He puts the sheet down, picks up another.

  ‘He must have seen something new,’ says Lewis.

  They clear everything from the table and begin to work methodically, setting everything out in rows, photographs, contact sheets, negatives, trying as best they can to put it all in chronological order.

  Nina sees it first. ‘Here.’

  It’s a snapshot of the girls standing by the front gate.

  ‘There’s nothing there,’ says Lewis. ‘Well, there’s you guys, obviously,’ he glances at Lucy, ‘but apart from that, I don’t see …’

  ‘There’s this,’ Hal says, pointing to the house. ‘This shadow here.’ He looks at Nina. ‘Is that it?’ he asks uncertainly. ‘But isn’t that Simon? I mean, it could be him.’

  Someone caught going out, or going in.

  They each pick up the next sheet in the sequence, examining every image frame by frame.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ says Hal. ‘Here.’ He holds out the sheet. The girls are still in the front garden, looking out over the valley. Loo is in the foreground, Bee is behind her and further back …

  ‘It could be a trick of the light,’ says Lucy. ‘The door’s open, the hall is in shadow.’ She takes hold of the paper. ‘It could be Cathy, or Dan, even.’

  ‘Could be,’ say
s Nina.

  Lewis finds one too, a smeary shadow looming behind Flor who is crawling across the mat in front of the Aga, absorbed in some private game.

  There are more with a shadow that doesn’t fit, that flickers in and out of the sequences of images, there and not there.

  Taken alone, each photo could be a mistake – poor framing, a miscalculated exposure. But it is always the same mistake, the same shape and angle, as if something is trying to get through. They set them out, then stand back, trying to take it all in.

  ‘Tib,’ says Lewis. ‘Right? He thought they had managed to photograph Tib, and not realised it. That was why he was going to come back.’

  ‘Jesus.’ Hal drops the photos he’s been looking at onto the table.

  ‘You said she wasn’t real,’ says Lewis.

  ‘She wasn’t. Not the one you’ve heard on the tapes, not the one Simon wrote about,’ says Lucy. ‘That was all me, us.’

  ‘But Simon didn’t know that, did he?’ says Hal. ‘He thought she was real all along, and when he found these photos, he thought he had his proof. Is that it?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ says Nina. She picks up one of the negatives and holds it up to the light before holding it out silently to Lucy.

  She can remember the day these pictures were taken. They had walked up to the tent, and Isobel had taken two or three shots in quick succession of them standing looking back down towards the house. In the negatives their dark hair appears white, their pale clothes heavy and dark. It’s the last shot, and she’s in the distance, looking away from the camera, towards the two girls. She is quite distinct. Reversed in the negative, a young woman in a white frock, with thick dark hair.

  The girl on the video.

  She hands the negative to Hal.

  He looks at it closely before passing it along to Lewis. Simon’s proof, bundled away by Isobel all those years ago. Hal doesn’t say anything; he looks sick.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ says Lewis. ‘If you faked her …’

  ‘We did,’ says Lucy. ‘We had made it up, all of it. Only gradually, that summer, things got … confused … and that last time, it was – different. It had always been me doing the voice, but sometimes … once or twice, towards the end, I didn’t really feel in control and then, that day in the barn, it wasn’t me Tib spoke through. It was Bee. I thought she was cross with me at first. I thought she was messing around.’

  34

  Then

  It was Cathy who spoke first, stretching out a hand to Bee, her voice soft, hesitant. ‘Bianca, sweetheart …’

  ‘No.’ Bee stepped back, out of reach.

  ‘Who are you?’ asked Simon.

  ‘I’m Tib.’

  She felt them draw back from her, all of them, and it didn’t matter that the circle was broken, it had filled her up, let her through and now they’d see, all of them would see. She wanted to dance. She wanted to fly up to the rafters. Maybe she would.

  ‘Who hurt you, Tib?’ said Olivia.

  ‘He did. She did.’

  Simon was squatting over his tape recorder, making sure that they were getting it, their proof. Isobel picked up her camera, but she wasn’t using it; she was clutching it like a little girl with her favourite teddy, as if it might keep her safe.

  And Cathy, Cathy was crying.

  Serve her right.

  ‘I don’t understand, Tib.’

  ‘Go on, go. If you’ve had enough, go. But don’t think I’ll take you back.’

  ‘Who said that?

  ‘That … bitch and her – her knife …’

  The barn door, which Simon had so very carefully pushed back against the wall, slammed shut. Up in the loft space the noise began, a steady pulsing rhythm, a leaden mockery of a heartbeat.

  She really could take flight now, and she knew it. She was laughing as Cathy shrank back from her touch; she was unstoppable, invincible.

  ‘Stop it,’ said Cathy, looking first at Michael, then at Olivia. ‘You said you could stop it.’

  She didn’t look like Bee any more. She looked … more than herself. Not a girl any more. She seemed taller, stronger, fiercer.

  ‘Bee,’ Loo said, although she didn’t know what to say next. They were going to let Tib go, that’s what Olivia had said; but this Tib didn’t want to go anywhere.

  Her sister stopped and turned slowly. Loo wiped her sweaty hands on her skirt.

  ‘Don’t,’ she said.

  ‘Don’t,’ said Bee.

  Up above them in between the rafters, the thudding went on, louder, faster, enough to shake the floorboards, to rain dust and grime down through the cracks. Loo wanted to tell them to stop, Dan and Flor, but if she did, then they’d be found out and that was still something to fear. She couldn’t imagine what they thought they were doing. Surely they’d heard Bee, surely they’d realised something had gone wrong?

  ‘What do you want?’ said Michael, raising his voice, conscious they were being recorded, still thinking he was in control.

  ‘I … I …’ Uncertainty flickered across Bee’s face and the knocking from the attic floor stopped.

  The silence that followed held for a moment as they switched places, Bee and Tib, on and off, in and out, and you could only spot the difference if you really looked, if you really knew her, but Loo could tell easily enough. It was all going to be all right, she tried to hold on to that thought, it was just a game, their game.

  The click of the shutter snapped the silence, a flash – and Issy never used a flash – blinding them as, shrieking, Bee hauled herself up the ladder and out of sight.

  They were all looking at Isobel now. who was looking at the camera in her hand as if it had a life of its own; so there was no one to stop her when Loo climbed up the ladder too.

  There were no windows in the loft. It was darker up there and for a second or two Loo was afraid that Bee might have vanished entirely. She stood still, her heart pounding, trying to work out what they were going to do next. Dan should be up here, Flor too; they’d be able to find a way out of this. Behind her the ladder rattled as if someone was testing it, trying to climb up it quietly, trying to catch them out. She ducked down and pushed, not daring to look back as the ladder clattered to the stone floor below and someone, Simon perhaps, swore softly. She hoped he was all right.

  ‘Oh, well done, Loo. How are we supposed to get down now?’ Bee’s voice drifted from the far end of the loft, where the air was thick and dark.

  ‘They’ll put it back,’ said Loo. ‘Someone will come and fetch us.’

  Bee sighed. ‘And what will we do then?’ she said.

  ‘I don’t know.’ Loo tried to creep quietly, lightly, across the floorboards. If they thought she was still near the edge, maybe they wouldn’t try again, not for a while, and if they stayed downstairs for a bit, then maybe Bee would stop the game of her own accord.

  ‘Where’s Dan?’

  ‘Dunno. Don’t care. He said he didn’t want to play any more. Because of the glass. Bloody Isobel.’

  Loo looked around, hoping Bee was wrong. Dan was always able to get Bee to calm down, but there was no sign of him. There were no places to hide; there were a few blankets in a corner, a couple of empty bottles, but that was all, no sign of the boys.

  They had made this loft their den this summer, Dan and Bee: they had taken to sneaking away from the house in the evenings, without Loo and Flor. Which was so unfair. Anyway, when he came back Joe would give the pair of them a good hiding and serve them right.

  If he came back.

  Joe, the father who was there and not there. Bee had told her stories, things she’d seen, things she’d heard, when they thought they were alone. But she was making that up, Loo was almost sure. Didn’t Joe always say she was an awful bloody liar? The look on her sister’s face when they broke in through the window.

  ‘God, Loo. You are so thick sometimes.’

  ‘Where did you get all that stuff from?’ Loo asked.

  ‘What?’

&nbs
p; ‘The story about Tib’s mum – that thing about the knife.’

  Bee looked at her blankly for a moment or two. ‘Nowhere,’ she said. ‘The same place you got the story about blood on the stones.’

  ‘I made it up,’ said Loo. ‘It just – came into my head.’

  ‘Yeah, well. Me too.’ Bee tapped her skull. ‘It just popped up in here.’

  But the bit about the knife still bothered Loo.

  It had bothered Cathy too.

  ‘What about Cathy and Joe?’ Loo asked.

  ‘I told you,’ said Bee, sighing, weary. ‘I saw her here, downstairs. I saw both of them, I could hear them too. He said he was going and all she had to do was – be nice to him.’ Bee slumped against the double wooden doors at the side of the barn.

  Something rapped sharply against one of the wooden beams.

  One.

  Two.

  Three.

  ‘Flor?’ said Loo, but there was no answer.

  ‘There’s no one here, Loo.’

  ‘Dan?’

  ‘Shut up, stupid. You’ll give it away.’ Bee looked ill, hot and clammy, strands of her long dark hair clinging to her face.

  ‘What’s wrong, Bee?’ She felt sorry for her, she looked so … lost.

  ‘They were yelling at each other and she picked up a knife.’ Bee smiled at her sister, not kindly. ‘There was blood everywhere, Loo. You should have seen it.’

  ‘Don’t.’ She was lying, she knew her sister was lying about the blood, but she wished she’d shut up all the same. ‘Please, Bee.’

  ‘Don’t call me that. It’s not my name.’

  ‘What is your name, then?’

  Bee rubbed at her face. Her hands were dusty, and she left long grey grimy streaks across her skin.

  ‘As I was walking on the stair, I met a girl who wasn’t there. She wasn’t there again today …’

  ‘Bee, don’t—’

  ‘… I wish, I wish she’d go away.’

  Loo could hear voices below them, deciding what to do, who to send up the ladder.

  ‘Where are they?’

  Dan and Flor should be there, banging on the floor, joining in, just like before. ‘Not here.’ Bee’s answer was punctuated by a sharp crack above their heads as something struck one of the rafters. ‘Not here,’ she said again and she began to laugh. ‘Dan said he didn’t want to play any more. He’s been a good boy and taken Anto off for a walk. Wanker. Anyway, we don’t need them, do we?’