“Ruby…Ruuuuuuby…. We see you…”
I am not listening. Not.
The bathroom, and this is kind of ironic, has no running water! He’s left some in a bowl for me to wash in. The mirror above it is cracked and rust-spotted with age. My face is slashed in two separate halves. Limp, light brown, wavy hair. A distorted image of a tiny person with pale blue eyes and jagged features in a dim room that squeaks with rats and scratching noises.
“Ruby…”
That’s not me, though really, is it? The face looking back? Is it? She looks different from what I expected, with that knowing look in her eyes and a sneer. A teenaged slut from the streets…someone I don’t know at all.
My head hurts - one pole-axe of a headache - and there’s this feeling that someone’s watching me. I keep winging round - a breath in my neck, a hiss of words over my shoulder…I mean, he said there’d be rats in my head and faces looming out of the walls like monsters; and my stomach would crush inwards and the pain, the nausea, would cripple me. He warned me and I know it’s just that. This fear can be bottled and put in a compartment. I have to be over the worst soon.
Who the hell am I, anyway? And does it matter? I deserve it.
Downstairs the windows are smashed and a waft of cool air ruffles my hair on the last rung of the staircase. A light bulb fizzes on and off. Jes managed to spark up the old generator but it’s hit and miss. Mostly we light a fire and have toast or boil up soup. I wonder why he’s left his family, to come here and look after me? But of course I know the answer to that one. Anything recent and I know. Not always at the time but certainly later because the pain between my legs is pulsing and sore. My feet are covered in dried mud and there are bruises on my wrists and the tops of my arms.
But it’s not that bothering me - I imagine I’m somewhere else I think - when it’s happening. What am I good for anyway? I must have been on the streets doing it, but smothering the shame with drugs. Is that what I did? Somewhere along the line I shot my brain in two and this is just the shell that’s left.
No, what really bothers me is other stuff. The faceless forms hovering about three feet above the ground - like monks only with no features - sort of drifting down corridors or in the corner of the bedroom. It’s usually when I’m half asleep I see them, and when I least expect the onslaught to start. One after the other then. Hundreds. Bad people, I can tell. Really bad - as malicious and cold as hell. Over and over and over.
Then sometimes, like now, a bottle top suddenly flies across the room or an empty lager can scuttles across the kitchen surface before dropping onto the floor.
Wait. Here it comes again: stomping boots upstairs in the room I’ve just been sleeping in. Clomp, Clomp. Clomp. Heavy boots. Workman’s boots. Clomp. Clomp. Now clomping downstairs. Following me.
Without warning the temperature plummets and the kitchen freezes. Outside I know the birds are singing; the brook continues to tumble merrily to the river, and sunshine glints through broken glass… and yet the room is darkening by degrees, shadows creeping along the walls. “Ruby, Ruby, Ruuuuuuuubyyyyyy….”
It is the drug withdrawal, isn’t it?
The kettle starts to boil but I hadn’t switched it on. Or had I? Light bulbs flicker …swinging gauntly from cables clinging to crumbling plaster. But it’s the feeling more than anything. Oppressive like someone’s at your back. Like when all your hair stands on end and you have to run and run like you’ve never run before.
Out into the sunlight. Into a lush, overgrown, dappled summer woodland. My heart hammering hard. It’s just the drug withdrawal. That’s all.
Over my shoulder, the old stone mill stands as it has for centuries, its windows like hollowed-out eyes, walls smothered in ivy.
I lift up my head. There, look - peering from the bedroom - a blurred, pale face looks directly at me. Someone who wanted me out of there.
***
Cloudside Village, Near Doncaster
“It’s been going on for months,” I tell her.
Her name is Celeste and she’s a spiritual medium who runs classes at her home in Cloudside near Doncaster. It’s a neat bungalow and her husband is an invalid in one of the bedrooms. The whole place is fitted out with handrails and wheelchair access.
Celeste is an older lady. Plump with dyed red hair the colour of Jessica Rabbit’s. Around her there is a halo of white flecked with gold. She’s got warm, brown eyes buried in a cushion of powdered wrinkles; and I feel like she’s so much older than she is - older than time even - and I can talk to her like no one else about this. I’m glad Jes mentioned her: said his own mother (a pickled walnut of a woman who’s spent her life swaying in the doorway of a painted wagon), swore she was the real deal - that she’d tell me if the mill was haunted or not.
“It’s like, I don’t know…” Oh God, how to explain it without sounding like a mad woman. “It’s like things explode when I touch them. It doesn’t happen when Jes is around - only when I’m there on my own - like someone’s watching - that sounds bonkers, doesn’t it? To be honest I don’t like being inside the mill at all - I think it’s haunted, I really do.”
Her eyes bore into mine and somehow I know she’s been there - knows what’s coming. “Tell me what happens, Ruby.”
“Well if I get up in the night they’re in the corridors.”
“Who?”
“Like, sort of monks in long, black cloaks floating off the ground. Hooded. Hissing they’re going to kill me. And they know my name too. It’s like running the gauntlet - you look down the long, narrow passageway and they’re all there, waiting with long fingers to touch me and pull at my hair. The atmosphere as well - it’s so menacing - I could wet myself I’m that scared. And then when I’m in bed just dropping off to sleep, or trying to…well it’s really dark down there in the woods with no streetlights or anything, so how come I see all these faces zooming into mine? And I mean right into mine - just centimetres off - some are covered in sores or they’ve got features missing; like they’re diseased or they’ve been shot through the head, or hanged so their eyeballs are bulging, and it goes on and on - hundreds of them. And then other times I hear my name being called and the sound of footsteps pacing up and down outside the door in heavy boots. Jes doesn’t wake up, so I keep thinking it’s just me and my imagination and the fact I’m coming off drugs. But…”
“You believe it’s real?”
“Yes, because I’ve been clean for a few weeks now. There’s other stuff too - sometimes what wakes me is a kind of frantic chattering, like excited children are on the bed. But when I open my eyes there’s no one there and it all stops. And here’s the really weird thing - when I look over at Jes his face seems to have changed and I don’t recognise him. I sit up staring at him trying to work out who the hell he is.”
“Have you ever experienced anything like this before?”
“I don’t think so but then I’ve wrecked my head with drugs, haven’t I? So now I can’t remember anything.”
“What would you like me to do?”
“Tell me I’m not going mad, I suppose.”
She reaches over and squeezes my hand. “It’s a tough call, Ruby, what you’re going through, but I think you have the gift of second sight - that in itself can take some getting your head around - it’s frightening and I should know. Look, I can do a reading for you if you like? If you think it would help? Or you could join my classes to develop as a spiritual medium yourself? It helps enormously to understand it all and be able to control it - to protect yourself. Have a think about it.”
The information sinks in. I don’t know. “A medium? Like, talk to dead people and stuff?” This isn’t what I expected. Not at all.
Celeste is watching me carefully.
The decision pops out of my mouth. “I think a reading. I’d really like to know who I am - what happened to me and where I came from. If you can tell me, then maybe I can go home again - to wherever it is I belong - and forget all about the mill completely?”
Celeste continues to watch me. Frowns suddenly. There’s something behind her eyes - a knowledge - I can’t say what. Then starts to shuffle the tarot cards. “I’ll try but there’s a block for some reason.” Eventually she asks me to cut the deck. Swiftly she spreads out a selection of cards before one by one, turning them over.
She doesn’t look up. Just stares for ages and ages.
She doesn’t want to tell me what’s there, does she? My heart pumps heavily. “What? What is it?”
When she finally lifts her gaze to mine there are tears streaming down her pillow cheeks. “I can’t tell you, Ruby. I simply can’t find the words..”
***
Chapter 10
Cloudside Village.
After Ruby had gone, Celeste sank onto the sofa. Unfocused, with heavy limbs, she sat as if in a trance. In all her years as a spiritual medium - most of her life, once she’d accepted that’s what it was and she was stuck with it - she’d never had an experience like it.
The encounter had left her utterly drained.
While the girl - what was she? Eighteen? Twenty? - had related her story of amnesia and how she had found herself living in a mill, which seemed to be haunted - her face and voice had kept changing. One minute Celeste had thought she’d been talking to a young woman asking for help, the next a cocky teenager had been sneering at her, only to be swiftly replaced by a fading expression, as if the girl was falling backwards inside her head - before another personality came into being. That she was damaged mentally was undeniable. The whole thing was extraordinary.
And that was just the visible stuff. The spirits who had come forward for Ruby, on the other hand - Celeste’s spirit guides - had shown her something else on top of that. All the time she’d been shuffling the cards, asking for guidance and protection, there had been a clear voice telling her this girl was special and very important. There would come a time when Celeste would need courage because this girl was here to teach the world a lesson.
What lesson?
A lesson, Celeste. A lesson.
That she herself would be part of that lesson was obvious, alas, the ‘how’ was shrouded in obscurity. Celeste screwed up her face in concentration. Perhaps her job was to help Ruby develop as a medium? The girl had described an explosive energy around her. Of kettles boiling up at rapid speed before fusing. Of light bulbs popping. Radios turning themselves on. Objects whizzing around the room. Was it the haunted mill, Ruby wanted to know, or was it to do with herself?
Celeste had heard similar stories many times. But whatever negative energy was trapped inside the mill, it was nothing compared to the energy Ruby herself emitted. What she’d seen when she looked at Ruby were crowds of ghost children, lurking in gloomy corridors. Small faces peeping out from behind barred windows. And the whispers - an omnipresent chattering. Almost like, she thought, a kind of children’s prison inside the soul.
Ruby had slunk forwards with her head in her hands, as she recounted the faces looming into hers when she tried to sleep. Of voices in her right ear, shouting out her name until she woke. Of a an elderly lady she knew to be her late grandmother, standing in the bedroom about three feet off the ground - the overpowering aroma of her lavender scent dizzying her senses. Of opening the wardrobe to find a bruised and battered woman in an apron looking straight at her - like someone caught hiding, blood dripping from a ravaged cheekbone. And so it went on. Just that morning, Ruby had been looking into a cracked mirror when it fell to the floor with her face still in it…
“I think you have a special gift, my dear,” she’d said, after looking at the spread of cards and realising she couldn’t do a reading for the girl. “Like me - you’re undoubtedly a medium.”
“So how does that work for you, then? I mean, things aren’t blowing up in your house, are they?”
“They used to. Especially when I was a teenager and I was scared. My radio would come on in the middle of the night and my mother’d be shouting through the walls to turn it off. The television blew up in the middle of a film. All sorts - hairdryers, bedside lamps… And I’d come home from school to find my bedroom in a blitz. I always got the blame: me and my mother had terrible rows. I tried telling my parents but I had to stop doing that - they were one step away from having me sectioned! So I kept it all to myself until one day I met someone who helped me. I’d gone to a spiritualist church and immediately I was told! It was a huge relief in some ways, and in others it felt like a life long burden - I knew life was going to be hard.”
“Weren’t you terrified though? I mean - I jump out of my skin when I walk into a room and someone’s sitting on my bed staring at me, and they’re like - white faced and really, really still, and the room’s so cold!”
“Very. And the more scared I was the worse it got. I was told that bad spirits are attracted to it. Like attracts like. So the more fear you emit - the worse it’s going to get! ”
“That’s cruel. I can’t take much anymore - my heart’s going to give out.”
“Well you’re attracting the worst sort at the moment. You can control that and I think that’s what we need to teach you right away. Today. You need to know how to shut it down - right now you’re like a beacon of light saying ‘yes please - come into my world.’ Ideally, I’d like you to come to my classes if you can, but let me explain it to you here and now just in case I never see you again.
“You are attracting the lowest of the astral planes. It’s what happens when people do Ouija boards or hold séances and stupid things like that. They don’t know who they are inviting into their lives. Ouija means ‘Yes’ and ‘Yes’ basically - in French and German. You wouldn’t just invite anyone into your home no matter if they were thieves, murderers or just downright nasty, would you? So why invite in all and sundry because they’re spirits? They can do you harm! Real harm! And many are used by the inhuman - the demonic - they can destroy your soul. It really is dangerous.”
Ruby shook her head, listening like a fascinated child to a bedtime story.
“These spirits can attach themselves to you, Ruby. Most people don’t believe in any of this until it’s too late. But you’ve seen it - you know it all exists. So you need to learn how to close down and you need to do it now!
“You have seven major energy points called chakras. Energy is channelling through you because yours are wide open and shining brightly - spirits are manifesting. Believe me, it can and will, wear you down and leave you open to all kinds of nasty things. You are already carrying some of these negative spirits with you - I’ve told them to go but they’ll be back as soon as you go home again. So imagine a brilliant, white light like a tube running up from your solar plexus to the top of your head….”
The lesson had lasted an hour and during that time she’d tutored Ruby on how to close off her energy channels so she could get some peace; enlightened her as to the difference between ghosts and the inhuman; and shown how to psychically cleanse herself.
“Are you religious?” she asked.
Ruby shrugged.
“Were you ever baptised?”
Ruby frowned and shook her head. “I don’t think so.”
“My classes are held in church and this is the address. You really need to come - it’s every first Tuesday of the month. I’ll write my number down too - in case you need me urgently.”
Ruby took the card and for a moment their fingers touched.
The spark travelled all the way up Celeste’s wrist and seemed to wrap around her heart. “Take care dearest child. Your journey is going to be a difficult one. But you are very important - you have a job to do and you will be rewarded by ‘them up there’ - they have great plans for you. Just believe me for now.” She smiled and imagined a powerful white light encapsulating the young woman in a bubble. It would keep her safe for a little while.
Ruby turned to go, looking over her shoulder as she reached the door. “And if I tell the bad stuff to go - it will, yes?”
“Believe it. Be strong!”
She never did get to tell her what she’d been shown when she dealt her cards. And frankly, it would be best if Ruby never got to find out, because there are some things a person should never know. Including herself, because what she’d seen would leave its mark.
Hopefully no well-meaning medical professional further down the line, would ever attempt to unearth it for the poor child, either.
***
Chapter 11
Leeds Forensic Psychiatry Unit. November 2015
Kristy Silver took the call as she hurried down the hospital corridor to her next lecture. She stopped and leaned against the wall, straining to hear, to understand. Jack McGowan’s garbled message - part English, part gobble-de-gook - left her open mouthed. He was cancelling again. Or at least that was what she thought he said. Not only that, but he sounded absolutely furious. How odd!
She’d particularly wanted to meet up because of what she now knew about the striking similarities between her client, Tommy Blackmore, and via Claire Airy - Ruby. It seemed increasingly likely there could be a history of child abuse in one of the outlying mining villages near Doncaster - a place called Woodsend. The police and social services would need to get involved quickly if her suspicions were correct. They were onto something and she knew it.
Listening to Jack’s message she had to hold the mobile away from her ear, trying to fathom the high-pitched angry words. This didn’t sound like the Jack she knew and admired: the medical director and consultant in forensic psychiatry who had mentored her as a specialist registrar and taught her so much - the grey-haired father figure who seemed to have all the answers, and if he didn’t then he’d sure as hell find out!
She’d even had dinner with him and Hannah one evening at their home - a large Victorian stone house set back from the main road out of Leeds. It was one of those old houses that swallowed up a fortune to modernise and furnish - unremarkable from the outside, with its swaying poplars and modest lawns, yet stunning inside. There were black granite work surfaces in the kitchen, complete with wall-to-wall glossy, white cupboards, an island, a double Belfast sink, and of course the ubiquitous aga; upstairs was a sumptuous black and white tiled bathroom complete with a huge gilt edged mirror, elegant slipper bath and luxury walk-in shower; there were long sash windows in every room with silk curtains looped into swags. Gorgeous, opulent, warm and homely. A home that oozed with taste and money. In the bedrooms lots of noisy kids rampaged around; and there was Hannah rosily pregnant again, her face glowing contentedly as she served up warm mulled wine by the fire. If ever there had been a picture of a perfect Dickensian style family - it was the McGowans.
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