The Madness Underneath

by Maureen Johnson

  “I like unusual,” I said.

  “That’s an excellent quality, and one that will certainly help, considering who we are. Now, if you’re going to go out, I think Mags has a coat that would fit you. And let’s find a hat and sunglasses as well. Devina can drive you wherever you need to go.”

  In the end, I was outfitted in a red coat, something they called a “bobble hat,” and a big pair of shades. When I looked at myself in the mirror by the door, I was greeted by a bright red buglike object in a big wool hat with a puff on the top. It was definitely not my usual look.

  There were two cars in front of Jane’s house—a buttery yellow Jaguar, clearly a classic from some other era, and a modern, more practical black car. We took the newer one.

  “Where do you need to go?” Devina said.

  I didn’t want her to take me directly to the flat, so I asked her to drop me at Waterloo station. Devina didn’t talk when she drove. She blasted music, and she drove fast. She tailgated, and she played chicken with every light, only screeching to a halt on red at the last moment. On the positive side, though, I did get there very quickly.

  “I’ll wait here,” she said.

  “I…um…It could be a while?”

  “That’s okay,” she said. “I have a book.”

  “No, I mean, really a while? I can get back on my own. No one’s going to recognize me in this.”

  Devina shrugged. As soon as I was out of the car, she sped off. I hurried over to the flat. I buzzed up and took the steps two at a time, slipping on some slick pizza menus and falling in the process.

  “Where have you been all morning?” Stephen asked as he let me in. “We’ve been calling. And—”

  “I was out,” I said. “Forgot my phone.”

  “Isn’t this exam week?”

  “I don’t have one now,” I said. “Can you just tell me what’s going on?”

  Boo’s eyes met mine from across the room. She took in the hat and the coat.

  “There’s been a death in the Wexford neighborhood,” Callum said. “About a five-minute walk from your building.”

  “The facts are these,” Stephen said, waving me to the sofa. I sat down as he picked up his computer. He clicked through a few documents. “Just before midnight last night, a woman named Lydia George went in to have her tarot cards read by a woman named Dawn Somner. Dawn was a psychic who operated out of her flat. The reading ended around quarter past. Lydia left Dawn’s flat and proceeded down the street while making a phone call. She was just on the corner, about twenty yards from Dawn’s door, when she heard Dawn scream ‘no, no.’ Immediately afterward, Dawn toppled headfirst out of the window. At this point, Lydia fainted. All of this is confirmed by a second witness, named Jack Brackell. He was standing there, directly opposite, waiting for a ride from a friend. It’s when we get to Jack Brackell’s story that it becomes of interest to us.

  “Jack Brackell had the vantage point. He saw Dawn open the window and that she was acting like someone being pushed or forced—his words—but that there was no one behind her or next to her that he could see. He also reports that Dawn shouted ‘no, no’ and then fell from the window. He ran to her at once, but it appeared that she was dead. He phoned 999 and remained on the spot. No one emerged from the building. The ambulance arrived four minutes later, declaring Dawn dead at the scene; the police arrived two minutes after that. They secured the premises. No one else was home in the other two flats. Her flat was found to be absolutely in order, no signs of struggle or violence of any kind. The case isn’t closed yet, but the notes indicate that it’s believed to have been an accident—that what Jack Brackell saw was Dawn trying to stop herself from falling. They think she probably got her dressing gown caught on the radiator when she was opening the window. The gown was long and had holes at the bottom. She struggled to get it loose and lost her balance.”

  “But you think different?” I asked.

  “Because of the proximity to Wexford and this detail of Jack’s, we think it’s worth looking into. I made you a promise. I told you we would keep you informed.”

  “And if there is something in there,” Callum added, “we need you.”

  We need you. Three little words.

  “If you want to come,” Boo added.

  “Of course I want to come,” I said automatically. There was no way I was going away with Jane until I found out what this was about.

  21

  DAWN’S FLAT WAS INDEED NEAR WEXFORD, OVER BY Goulston Street. It was on a street not often frequented by Wexford students, but I still hurried from the car to the door, well wrapped in my borrowed red coat and bobble hat.

  We searched the building first. It wasn’t a large building, so the checks were easy enough to do. Stephen gained admittance to the first apartment by showing his warrant card, while Boo jimmied open the locked door of another using a credit card. The basement was a storage area with no lock on the door. We found nothing—no ghosts.

  Dawn’s was the top-floor flat, the outside decorated with a doormat with a picture of the moon and stars and a piece of blue-and-white police tape. Stephen distributed latex gloves to Callum and Boo, but when he was about to hand me mine, both he and I seemed to realize the potential problem.

  “I suppose,” he said, “we don’t know if you can have these, do we?”

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “Well, the scene’s been processed, and it’s unlikely anyone is going to come back to have another look. Just be careful what you touch.”

  We ducked under the police tape one by one. The whole flat was thickly carpeted in a pinkish-salmon color and smelled of burning sage. The decorations were a bit wizardy—the walls had been papered in a pattern of white with small silver stars. The gauzy silver curtains, the small tables with hunks of crystals looking like strange moon fruit, the incense burners and framed pictures of astrological signs. Two widths of beaded curtain sealed off the rest of the flat—the kitchenette, bedroom, and bathroom. It was an all-in-one live and work space.

  “Looks like my cousin’s house,” I said. “Except more weird. Which is saying something.”

  Pictures had been removed from their hooks and neatly set on the floor, facing the wall. Three of the chairs had been turned upside down—not as if knocked over, but neatly flipped and placed in a row. A small decorative table had been set on top of another, slightly larger decorative table. The gemstones were arranged in a triangular pattern on the floor.

  “Is anyone in here?” Stephen called. “Anyone at all? Make yourself known.”

  That brought no response, not that I thought he was really expecting one.

  We all stepped a bit further into the main room. Callum and Boo walked over to the beaded curtain. Boo drew them back and looked through the kitchen, then she and Callum stepped through and proceeded on to the bedroom. Stephen had a look at the window itself, looking at the radiator at the base, the locks, how it opened.

  “No one here,” Callum said, poking his head through the beaded curtain.

  “Just have a look around,” Stephen said. “See if there’s anything in there that seems off.”

  I was just standing in the middle of the living room with nothing to do, so I went over to what I assumed was the reading table (it was covered in a purple velvet cloth). My cousin Diane, the one who operates the Healing Angel Ministry out of her house, loves tarot cards. She taught me to read them when I was twelve, when my parents had to go away to a seminar and I stayed with her for a week. While Cousin Diane was sure that the angels were speaking through the tarot cards, I was slightly more convinced that you just learn what the symbols are supposed to mean and make up a story. It’s actually really easy. You start interpreting, and you watch people to see if they are responding. You normally say something like, “There are three things going on in your life right now that you need to deal with.” There are always three things going on in people’s lives that they have to deal with. People will fill in the blanks for you and tell you
how amazing you are. I read cards at summer camp for two years in a row. I was so popular with the cards that I convinced my junior counselor to let me skip archery and gymnastics and sit in the games bunk and do readings. I am bad at cartwheels and shooting arrows, but I am good with tarot cards.

  It was odd how these cards were spread out—the entire deck on display. And there was something odd about them that I couldn’t place. Something was wrong with this deck.

  “Didn’t you say she had just done a reading?” I asked Stephen.

  “She had, yes.”

  “How long before?”

  “A few minutes.”

  This wasn’t how you stored tarot cards. Usually card readers stack their cards carefully, and they often store them in special bags or boxes. They don’t just drop them all over the table.

  “Can I touch these?” I asked Stephen. “Everyone who has had a reading has touched this deck, so it’s probably covered in fingerprints anyway.”

  “I suppose that’s fine. Just be careful.”

  The sleeves of the coat were slightly too long for me and covered my hands, so I slipped it off and put it on the table. I used one finger to slide the cards around, sorting them into major and minor arcana. The minor arcana are the ones like normal playing cards, with suits (wands, swords, plates, and cups) and numbers, kings, queens, and princes. The major arcana are the ones with the titles and the more complicated meanings—Death, Love, the Star, the Sun, the Wheel of Fortune. The major arcana are all numbered, and they go in a certain order. Twelve, the Hanged Man. Thirteen, Death. Fourteen, Temperance. Fifteen, the Devil. Sixteen…

  One was missing. The Tower.

  A lot of people think that Death or the Hanged Man are the cards in tarot to watch out for, but the real baddie is the Tower. And even though I didn’t believe in tarot cards, I took their significance seriously in order to do readings. The missing Tower gave me pause. I looked on the floor, the chairs. I looked on the chair and the shelves, anywhere a card may have been set down.

  Boo and Callum had returned from their examinations of the kitchen and bedroom.

  “Nothing,” Boo said. “It’s neat and tidy in there. This is the only room that’s been disturbed.”

  “A card is missing,” I said.

  “She certainly could have caught her dressing gown on the valve here,” Stephen said, pointing at the radiator. “Or she could have tripped over the cord of the floor lamp.”

  “A card is missing,” I said again, louder.

  “How do you know?” Callum asked.

  “I read cards,” I said.

  “You what?” Stephen said.

  “My cousin,” I explained. “Owns an angel ministry? She taught me. And a card is missing. Not just any card either. The Tower.”

  “It can’t be a coincidence that this woman is a psychic,” Boo said.

  Stephen got up and shook his head.

  “What?” Boo said.

  “I don’t believe in psychics.”

  “You see ghosts, and yet you don’t believe in psychics?” Boo asked.

  “Correct.”

  “How does that work?”

  “Because I have seen a ghost,” he said. “I have abundant proof of their existence. Whereas I have no proof that any psychic, ever, has seen the future. They work through a series of suggestions and guesses.”

  “I had my cards read, and it was dead-on,” Boo said.

  “Which doesn’t disprove my point.”

  I left them to debate the issue. People who do tarot often have books about tarot lying around. There were none in this room (which made sense—you don’t want to keep a copy of How to Read Tarot Cards around if you’re supposed to be an expert). No, you kept that stuff private. The bedroom maybe. I went through the beaded curtain, through the little hallway kitchen, into a very tight and dark bedroom with a claustrophobic floral wallpaper and a disturbing collection of stuffed animals lining all the surfaces. I found a pile of books by the side of the bed—books on crystal healing, color therapy, chakras. A bit more digging through the pile turned up books on popular psychology and reading body language. And sure enough, three books on tarot cards. I found the one with the best color reproductions of the cards and flipped through until I got to the Tower, and when I did, I actually let out a gasp.

  Stephen and Boo were still having at it when I came back in with the book. It took me several tries and a progressively louder voice to get their attention.

  “Listen,” I said, holding up the book. “What does this look like to you?”

  The Tower is an image of, as you might suspect, a tower. In many drawings, the tower is hit by lightning and is crumbling. But in almost every picture of the Tower, there is also the image of a person falling, usually headfirst. That’s how it was depicted in this book.

  “A woman falls headfirst out of a window,” I said as they gathered around. “The one card missing is the one with a picture of a woman falling headfirst out of a window. What does that say to you?”

  I was gratified by their stunned expressions.

  “Definitely not good things,” Callum said. “Nice one, Rory.”

  “And,” Boo said, “another connection to the cards.”

  “This is no doubt important,” Stephen said. “But I refuse to believe these cards are magic.”

  “Rory said she reads cards,” Boo pointed out.

  “Yeah, but I make it all up,” I said. “The cards all have some meanings ascribed to them, but the way you do the reading is to make up a story based on what you see. The cards can mean a lot of different things, so you can go off of what people tell you. I mean, I don’t know. Maybe some people have some ability, but I didn’t. And I found all kinds of stuff in her room about reading body language and things like that.”

  Stephen held out his hands as if to say, “This is my point.”

  “All right,” Boo said, holding up her hand. “Fine. Maybe whatever was in her flat takes offense to people who claim they are dealing with the spirit world when they aren’t? Maybe it was looking for a way to communicate. If you’re a ghost and you’re afraid, you can’t speak to anyone…maybe you look for someone who you think can see or hear you. You go to a psychic, and when the person can’t help you, you get upset.”

  “And you fling her out the window,” Callum said. “That does sound possible, at least.”

  “There is a logic to that,” Stephen said, frowning. “Something to consider.”

  “But…?” Boo said.

  “But what bothers me is the display,” Stephen said. “It’s so organized. The ghost we met in the basement was not organized.”

  “Different ghost,” Callum said.

  “Yes, but why go to all this trouble?” Stephen said. “The last one was, presumably, trying to protect its burial site. If this is a ghost, what’s it trying to accomplish? What’s it trying to say? Look at this. This isn’t an angry scene. It’s just a very odd one.”

  “Mental ghosts,” Callum said. “Bound to be odd.”

  “But not all ghosts kill,” Stephen said. “Before the Ripper, had we ever met one that killed?”

  “We hadn’t,” Boo said. “It’s true.”

  “But I’ve certainly met a few that could kill people,” Callum said. “Even if they weren’t successful, they were certainly capable. You forget I got this way because one tried to do me in with live electricity.”

  “I just think it’s odd that we have two deaths resulting from what would clearly have to be two separate ghosts,” Stephen said. “Given that the majority don’t kill, to have two for two—”

  “I’ll say it again: mental ghosts. From Bedlam.”

  “Not all mental patients kill, either, you know. Homicide is not the inevitable outcome of all mental impairment. And this scene…it’s just not right somehow. Why did this scene change after the police left?”

  He went over to the window again and opened and closed it, looking for some kind of answer in the motion.

  “
Do you know Charles Manson?” he finally said. “American serial killer from the late nineteen sixties? He had a large group of followers called the Manson Family who murdered several people on his command—random people. Strangers. The scenes were famous for their brutality and strangeness, and Manson planned it that way. He told his followers to kill everyone in the houses they went into and to leave behind ‘something witchy.’ So they did things to deliberately make the scenes horrific and perverse. That’s what this reminds me of. It’s something witchy. The death of a psychic. A death that mirrors the image on a tarot card. A scene that changes like a magic trick after the police leave, as if whoever did this knew someone else was coming afterward.”

  His phone rang, and he took it from his pocket. His conversation was short and terse, with a few “yes, sir”s and “I see” and then a deeper “I see. Yes. I’ll do that.”

  When he looked right at me, I knew.

  “Boo, Callum, would you mind going to the car?” he said. “We’ll meet you there in a minute. I have to speak to Rory for a moment.”

  There was an uncomfortable silence as Boo and Callum left us.

  “That was Thorpe,” Stephen said, holding up the phone, like Thorpe was actually inside and might reach out and wave to me.

  “Wexford has reported you as missing,” Stephen said. “You were last seen leaving with a bag at midnight by a prefect who is now, presumably, in a great deal of trouble.”

  “Funny story—”

  “It’s not a funny story. Rory, what the bloody hell are you thinking?”

  “I’m thinking that they’re kicking me out,” I said. “I told you I was failing. Then it was back to Bristol and then back home, where I go insane.”

  “Where were you last night?”

  “With a friend. I didn’t have a choice. You yourself said I couldn’t stay in Bristol. You know I can’t go back. I need to be here, right? Especially, you know, since there’s a big crack under the building that might be puking up dangerous ghosts, so…”

  “I’m waiting for you to finish that sentence.”