Society for Paranormals

by Vered Ehsani

  “They told her to keep me hidden for a while, and then to change me,” he said. “They would tell her when to return me to my family, when Mother had submitted to their decisions.”

  I dug my fingernails — sadly too blunt to be of much use — into his skin but he paid no heed, neither to my fingernails nor to my turmoil.

  “Her pack leader was there,” he mused, his voice almost as quiet as Gideon’s, but it was a gong in my ears. “He was also the council’s head.”

  “You’re wrong,” I whispered and there was a choked sob in there, or was it a growl?

  Drew turned his face up to the moon, as if unaware or unconcerned about the trauma he was inflicting. “A big man. I remember that. He wasn’t unkind. He wasn’t trying to be cruel, and maybe he was a bit sad about the decision. But he gave the orders. They called him the Professor.”

  I didn’t notice the tears until later, streams of acid wearing through my face. I snatched the plate from him and slapped it against the side of his head, his shoulder, his chest. With each thump, I screamed, “You’re lying. You’re lying!”

  I spun around and up, stumbling away from him, not wanting to see his dazed expression, the sweet features of a little brother I had lost a long time ago.

  I threw the tin plate, wailing as I did. The plate spun through the air on the breeze’s invisible fingers, then glided to the ground where it rolled a bit further before collapsing at the base of the thorn tree.

  My breathing uncontrollable in my fit of emotions, I turned to face my brother, to protest his treacherous memory, to defend my benefactor and mentor, the one person who had been there to guide and protect me, who had given me a life and had always inspired me in my profession.

  But Drew was gone.

  Chapter 16

  Not even Gideon’s song could soothe me and I refused to reveal to him what had transpired. My voice was trapped in the quagmire of memories and emotions that Drew’s words had provoked.

  I refused to believe him.

  But could I risk not to?

  Long after Gideon had sung to me and left, I tossed and turned until, fed up with the failed effort of banishing the mental outline of a wolf, I lit a lamp and stalked about my room for a distraction.

  My restless mood followed me, worsened by a violent thunder storm and Gideon’s absence. The other occupants of the house slept while rumbles filled the night sky and made the air heavy. The storm suited my current state, a reflection really of all that had transpired of late.

  My fingers glided along the top of my wooden chest. Of late, I’d been less than tidy when storing my articles in it. Dresses, petticoats and stockings twisted about each other in chaotic clumps. I decided to set about sorting through it.

  I began to pull everything out of the chest in frantic, jerky motions, as if I could as easily pull out the turmoil of thoughts, emotions and memories that cluttered my inner being. The clothes piled about me and my arms only paused when my hands glanced against the cover of a book.

  Gideon’s book.

  He’d asked me to pack it when we were preparing to depart London. I’d stuffed it down to the bottom of my clothes chest and neglected to remind him of it. Circumstances and adventure had perhaps distracted the both of us.

  I brought the book out and set it on my lap. A voluminous tome, its cover was thick leather, so thick as to be inflexible. Its pages, tattered and frayed along the edges, were also denser than any other book I’d read. The text and diagrams were sketched in by hand, with different colored ink and by different people over time. The borders of some pages were annotated with a neat, fluid penmanship that I recognized as Gideon’s.

  “So this is your diary,” I murmured, stroking the cover.

  But it wasn’t really.

  Gideon had led me to believe it was his personal journal; as such and out of respect, I’d never expressed the least inclination to peruse the pages, even after his demise.

  Now I felt no such constraints.

  He’d lied to me.

  This wasn’t a collection of his personal and private memoirs. This was a collection of essays and recipes, by the look of it.

  As I had no intention of reading the entire volume, I focused on those pages that had interested Gideon the most, based on the amount of annotations he had made.

  By the time I’d skimmed through several sections, my stomach was all knotted and I marveled that I’d never questioned Gideon’s obsessive protectiveness of a diary, particularly one that looked like this. Who maintained his memoirs and recollections in such a ratty collection of old papers bound by such heavy leather?

  Why had I never investigated any of this?

  Because he manipulated you, a knowing voice whispered to me. He wasn’t naturally charming and persuasive; he was supernaturally so and not that different from Mr. Timmons in his abilities.

  I despised the knowing even as I acknowledged it. I began to shake as I pressed on reading. Now I better understood Gideon’s interest in me, a nameless orphan of no consequence in the world. Yes, the Society afforded me an allowance for my services, but that was not enough to attract any man, let alone one as eligible as Gideon.

  Despite his lack of name and wealth, he could’ve persuaded any woman to stand by his side at the altar, and her family would’ve allowed her. Such was his power of persuasion. Indeed, there was in London society a wide selection of the wealthiest and most beautiful (of which I was neither) who would nearly swoon when he graced them with a smile.

  Had he really loved me at all then? Possibly, I comforted myself. Eventually. But that hadn’t been the cause of his initial interest, of that now I was certain.

  My eyes blurred and I wiped my sleeve across them, lest tears smudge the ink of the pages I was reading.

  The contents were entries of the deepest magic, a record of attempts made and lessons learned in the pursuit of unnatural ambitions, a meticulous detailing of successes and failures.

  Much of these efforts would’ve been banned by the Society: the creation of zombie slaves; the imposition of commands onto the unsuspecting mind; the writing of unbreakable vows that would bind two people beyond mortal constraints; the extension of life beyond human limits.

  It was these last two that had captivated Gideon’s attention in particular. Those chapters, initially written by different authors, were heavily annotated by my late husband. Each of his additions was dated, and included descriptions of his own efforts and the confession of the ultimate source of his failures: he didn’t have a suitable partner.

  But with persistence comes triumph. One of the more recent notes, underlined and starred, read: Dilemma solved! Suitable subject found!

  I recognized the date at the end of that victorious statement. How could I not?

  It was the day I’d first met Gideon Knight.

  Chapter 17

  Early in the morning, I dutifully carried Drew’s slightly bent tin plate to the barn. I wasn’t at all surprised to find the loft empty.

  Jonas was there, feeding the horses and ox. He peered at me, his wrinkled face full of thoughts he wisely kept to himself. “The boy, he’s gone,” he said.

  He made no mention of my puffy, reddened eyes, the dark circles, the bits of uncombed hair sticking out from under my hat. He merely observed and let the compassion in his eyes speak the rest, for which I was grateful.

  I nodded and began to saddle Nelly.

  “Bee, please tell me what’s wrong,” Gideon whispered as he materialized beside me, leaning toward my cheek as if he could kiss the pain away as once he would have.

  “It’s nothing, Gids. Just leave it,” I snapped, yanking on the strap, forcing a cough from Nelly.

  “Beatrice, you can tell me anything,” Gideon insisted.

  “Not everything,” I said, the bitterness of too many dark secrets twisting my every syllable.

  Jonas, who couldn’t see or hear Gideon but was well familiar with my peculiar habits and even stranger companions, shook his head as he l
imped out of the barn. I wondered what he imagined from the one side of the conversation he’d heard.

  Before Gideon could poke any further, I led Nelly outside The coldness of a cloudless night still clung to the shadows as sunlight blossomed over the horizon, its rays bleeding the darkness away. In the distance, a solitary horse galloped in my direction, its rider’s skirt billowing about.

  Cilla.

  It could only be her, coming to visit her beloved Drew.

  I couldn’t bear to receive her, for I had no heart to deliver the news of his departure nor any sympathy to shoulder her distress. I had enough of my own to contend with.

  I jumped onto Nelly just as Gideon floated to my side. “Run like the Lightning Spirit taught you,” I ordered the horse, visualizing us racing across the open land.

  With a cheerful wicker, the horse leaped forward, leaving Gideon behind. I’m sure we were airborne for a time, but I felt neither the thrill of adventure nor of fear.

  Perhaps Koki would be doing me a favor.

  Such a deathly wish I had never entertained. It was that vision of willingly submitting myself to death that brought me out of the pit. I pulled at the reins and Nelly’s hooves thundered against the red soil, churning it up as she raced in a new direction, toward the Hardinge’s estate. I needed a sympathetic shoulder to cry on, I decided, and Lilly’s would do perfectly. Then I needed the truth.

  Mr. Elkhart knew more about the Society than I did. He’d alluded to a less benign aspect, but we’d been unable to pursue the conversation as he’d been in the midst of kidnapping and imprisoning me in a cave at the time.

  It was far too early for the Lord and Lady to be awake, but a gardener was outside and industriously pruning, something I hadn’t seen Jonas ever do.

  “Is Mr. and Mrs. Elkhart at home?” I asked breathlessly.

  The gardener stared up at me, amazed at whatever he observed but equally discrete in his response. “No, miss, they go to Naivasha, to the lake.”

  Of course. This was their honeymoon.

  Perhaps if I’d provided a different response to Mr. Timmons, I too could be there or well on my way. Perhaps I would’ve been planning our wedding instead of mourning the loss of my brother and my cherished memories of Prof. Runal.

  Dejected, I yanked Nelly about before the Hardinge family should see me and feel compelled to invite me in. I was in no shape for a social engagement. The abyss into which I’d sunk was a terrible place, littered with headless corpses, the crying of a little boy and the howl of a wolf. It stunk like a wet dog and was no place in which to drink tea with civilized people.

  Nelly meandered along and I paid no heed, wallowing as I was in regret, loneliness and that terrible killer: hopelessness.

  Only when Nelly ceased moving and began to devour the flowers of an angel trumpet did I look about me. We were on the edge of the railway camp, which was rapidly evolving from a tented settlement into a proper and permanent town, complete with shops, bars and a stray dog. Before me was a wooden cabin, solidly made, with an equally solid man standing at the doorway, gazing upon me with a countenance both stern and astonished.

  “Mrs. Knight,” Mr. Timmons said, those two words burdened with questions as he offered his hand to assist me in dismounting.

  The moment our hands met, I began to sob. The depth of my despair was such that I felt no shame at my behavior or frailty. Instead I allowed Mr. Timmons to lead me inside and seat me on a sofa, near which he happened to have most conveniently a ready pot of tea. Only as I sat did I recall that Cilla wasn’t around; now I was alone with Mr. Timmons in his home and this was most inappropriate, but I was too miserable and exhausted to leave.

  “I was about to set out to find you,” Mr. Timmons said as he filled a teacup and passed it into my shivering hands. “Gideon came by just now searching for you. He was most concerned regarding the state of your mind.”

  He watched me with an apprehensive look, as if he too wondered when my nerves would fail me and I’d collapse into fits. I sniffed and straightened my back.

  “It’s just that…” I sniffed again and slurped at the tea. There was nothing like that rejuvenating liquid to clarify the mind and steady the nerves. “Drew’s gone.”

  Mr. Timmons sighed. “Well, that’s to be expected really. I’m sorry. But it’s not your fault.”

  “Of course not,” I said sharply as I remembered hitting Drew with the tin plate.

  Mr. Timmons scratched one of his sideburns. “Well, well. Poor Cilla. I did try to warn her though.”

  I scowled, even as a more logical part agreed with him, for really my brother was half-wild, unable to sit at the dinner table without offending others with his uncouth eating habits. What kind of life would my dearest, sweetest Cilla have with a creature like that?

  Still, I wished Mr. Timmons would exhibit a tad more sympathy, even though Drew’s disappearance was only one aspect of my distress.

  “Well, if that’s all, I’m not sure why Gideon was so alarmed,” Mr. Timmons continued as I remained silent.

  “Maybe he cares how I feel,” I snapped.

  “Maybe he isn’t the only one,” Mr. Timmons retorted. “But it seems this sort of behavior is prevalent in the family: running away from people who care.”

  My neck twanged as I jerked my head up to face him. “It’s nothing of the sort,” I protested, wondering how he could possibly be thinking of my rejection of his proposal at a time like this.

  He leaned back in his chair, crossed one leg over the other and watched me. “I don’t wish to distress you further, Mrs. Knight…”

  “Well, you’re doing just that,” I said, my voice rising along with his eyebrows. “I can’t imagine why I came here. That stupid horse must have…”

  I bit off the sentence before I could finish it with ‘must have read my mind’, for an admission of that nature wouldn’t do at all.

  “Indeed,” he said, his previous warmth absent from his voice.

  “This isn’t about you,” I said, watching as a tear splashed into my tea.

  “Of course not,” he agreed. “But I do have to wonder how it is that you came here in your time of need, only to push me away. Again.”

  I almost informed him I’d actually gone to Mr. Elkhart first. I wanted to tell him I wished I’d come here, to him, first, and I would have, and how I wished desperately that things could be different, that I’d been thinking of him when Nelly changed course and brought me to his cabin.

  I couldn’t, of course, and as I fumbled about for a response, my half-delirious mind settled on words I’d promised myself never to say.

  “I don’t want what happened to Gideon to happen to you,” I blurted out.

  I slapped a hand over my mouth and stood up, slopping tea on my skirt in the process. I set the cup down firmly on the side table. “I should go. I’ve already overstayed my welcome.”

  Mr. Timmons rose. “According to the illustrious Mrs. Beeton’s words of wisdom on social etiquette?”

  “Exactly,” I said, astounded that he should know of the book and its contents.

  “Mrs. Beeton is a long way from here, Mrs. Knight,” Mr. Timmons said, blocking my way. “And I intend to understand your meaning. What happened to Gideon?”

  “Mr. Timmons, I need to leave,” I said, unable to look him in the eyes any more. I was desperate to escape. I tried to brush by him, but he held out his arm.

  “What happened?” he insisted.

  “Mr. Timmons, I really…” I blustered, fatigue from lack of sleep and tumultuous emotions disturbing my clarity of thought. Even my sense of balance was disoriented, to the extent I wasn’t sure if I was facing the door or a wall. “I can’t… I just…”

  “What happened?” he said in a raised voice.

  I stepped back, lifted my chin and shouted at him, “I. Killed. Gideon. Knight!”

  Chapter 18

  “You what?” hissed a soft voice behind me.

  I gazed up at Mr. Timmons. Those wide, stormy
eyes full of their own secrets mirrored my shock back to me.

  “He was here the whole time?” I asked past a sharp constriction in my throat.

  “Yes, he was,” Gideon replied in his whispered version of a shout.

  Whatever was a lady to do in such an awkward circumstance, in which her husband discovered she murdered him, save close her eyes and hope it’s all a cruel dream? That was precisely what I did then, although I held out little hope.

  “Gideon, I’m so…” I began in a feeble tone, made more so by my firmly shut eyes.

  “You’re what?” he interrupted. “Sorry? Devastated that your life is over? Oh, but that’s my life we’re talking about, my life that is over, my life that you ended.”

  I turned to him and beheld a face so enraged as to be unrecognizable.

  “Gideon, it wasn’t premeditated,” I said, as if that would appease him.

  “Ah! So it was a spur of the moment sort of thing then? A fit of passion?” He flung up his hands. “Well, that does make me feel so much better. Thank you for clarifying.”

  I mentally groped about for something, anything, to change the course of the conversation, and alighted upon the journal that Gideon treasured so dearly. It was irrelevant, but desperation and a terrible guilt do cause the mind to latch onto all manner of trivia.

  Gideon leaned closer to me as I struggled to speak. “When were you planning on telling me, Bee?”

  “When were you planning on telling me your little secrets?” I snapped back.

  His eyes narrowed as he glared at me, a sneer marring his features. “What distraction is this?”

  “I read your book, Gideon,” I said in a low voice.

  His jaw tightened slightly but he remained silent.

  “It seems you had some unusual interests and abilities that you failed to enlighten me on,” I continued. “Our vow, Gideon. It wasn’t a normal vow, was it? There was never going to be any parting after death, or even death itself. This,” I hurried on, inspired by shame to shift the accusations from me to him, “this was all part of some scheme you concocted, one you could accomplish because you weren’t a normal human. You merely required a partner who wasn’t quite human either, and you found her. Me. Did you ever even love me?”