I Belong to the Earth (Unveiled Book 1)

by J. A. Ironside

  I'd missed Amy by the time I'd showered and got down stairs. No sign of Grace either. I wondered if Grace even knew where she was - and shuddered. I ate breakfast, leaning against the kitchen sink, checking the moor every few seconds. I wasn't sure what I expected to see. Somehow the quiet was more disturbing than the sense of greedy, watching eyes. I had no idea where Dad was. There was no reply when I timidly knocked on the study door. It was locked when I tried the handle. The silence was eating at me. I wondered if it was too early to go and see Mrs Cranford. Then I decided that I didn't care.

  I hadn't noticed, before, how neat Mrs Cranford's front garden was. The gate creaked as I closed it behind me. The air had a warm spring smell that made me think of sap rising in trees. A small pussy willow by the gate had fuzzy, grey-green buds on its branches already. I was abruptly glad that I'd made a bit more effort with my appearance today, digging out my good black jeans and putting on my favourite jumper, dyed in swathes of moss and sea green. I'd pulled my hair back in a ponytail, where fell it in loose dark curls between my shoulder blades.

  Impatiently, I rapped on the front door a second time. It was painted a light blue, at odds with the pebble-dashed walls and slate roof. Knowing Mrs Cranford, there was probably a reason for that.

  The door creaked open. Heat flooded my cheeks. I didn't know where to look. Ciarán stood, yawning, in the doorway, wearing nothing but ragged jogging bottoms. The sun glinted in his sandy hair, picked out flecks of gold in his hazel eyes and gilded his bare chest. I swore I could smell warm skin and honey.

  "Emlynn?" He peered at me from beneath his winged brows. "I thought I wasn't seeing you 'til tomorrow?"

  "Yuh…you're…nuh…not." Oh brilliant. That cleared everything up. Stop staring, you idiot.

  "I'm not seeing you today, or I'm not seeing you at all?" He was laughing at me.

  I blushed harder. For someone who had just woken up, he was way too quick. "You're not s-s-seeing me today," I mumbled.

  "So you're a figment, are you?" He crooked an eyebrow at me, grinning.

  My heart started galloping towards a distant finish line. Stupid heart. He uses that smile.

  I gave up trying to look him in the eye and spoke to the top left corner of the door frame. "I'm here to see Mrs C-C-Cranford."

  "I doubt she meant 8:30 in the morning." His grin broadened.

  Git! I was hot with embarrassment and he was enjoying it.

  "I c-can come back? When you're n- not here maybe?" I gritted my teeth.

  I was annoyed enough now to lock gazes with him. Of course! He was Mrs Cranford's godson. How many good-looking lads moved into this little nook of Yorkshire?

  Not that he was good-looking. Not that I thought so anyway. I glowered at him, my cheeks still flaming.

  "Easy. No need for the witch's eye." He backed up a step. "Aunt Mary is up. I didn't know she meant you, when she said she had a visitor coming. Thought perhaps me luck had changed."

  "Duh don't!" I warned, stepping past him.

  "Don't what?" He ran a hand back through his sandy hair looking bemused. It stuck up like ruffled feathers.

  "S-s- smile at me. I w-was warned about boys like you." With my nose in the air, I sailed past him into the parlour.

  "No-one can have warned you about me! I don't know anyone here!" He looked more comically bewildered than before.

  Recovering from the initial shock of seeing him, I was now enjoying wrong-footing him.

  "My G-Gran said n-never trust a ch-charming man."

  "So you think I'm charming?" The grin was back on, full force.

  I gave him the ‘I'm-not-impressed’ look, I reserved for the little boys I babysat for, before the accident. "She said the duh devil himself was a ch-charming man." I hooked an eyebrow up, daring him to contradict me.

  "I'm not sure that's a compliment." The grin faded was fading.

  "Nuh Neither am I!" I sniggered.

  "Ah you!" He threw a dainty cushion at me and I batted it aside.

  "N-no come back? Pity. I like a lad with s-something to say!" I couldn't help grinning. I was flirting. Me. I didn't even know I could flirt. Okay, so maybe he wasn't that bad looking.

  At that point, Mrs Cranford walked in with a tea tray.

  "Ciarán! Put some clothes on! For goodness sake. And throwing things at a guest too!"

  "Aye, sorry Aunt Mary." He nodded at me, like one fencer acknowledging a hit from another, and disappeared into the hall.

  Mrs Cranford winked at me. "Do sit down, Emily. I gather you are the young lady, Ciarán was talking about, when he got back from his walk yesterday?"

  Ciarán had been talking about me? I pretended I couldn't feel the heat rising in my cheeks again. If I ignored it maybe I wouldn't really be blushing.

  "Y-yes. W-we met."

  "So to business. Did anything happen yesterday?" Mrs Cranford handed me a cup of tea. I raised an eyebrow in the direction Ciarán had gone.

  "Oh don't worry about my godson. He'll have a shower and then go straight out, I expect. I told him I had things to do this morning."

  I felt a wave of relief and my stomach un-knotted. I really didn't want Ciarán to hear how much of a freak I was, beyond what he probably already suspected. I could have done without Mrs Cranford talking about Ciarán taking a shower though. My thoughts had scattered all over the place, like a dropped bag of marbles.

  Mrs Cranford watched me, waiting for me to finish ordering my thoughts. I braced myself. I could do this. I could be strong enough.

  "Suh so." I tried to smile but it felt strained, "Where do we g-go from h-here?"

  Mrs Cranford pulled a shoe box out of a cupboard and put it in my lap. I stared at it in confusion.

  "Open it, Emily." Her tone was grim.

  I slid the lid off and gingerly picked through the dry, rustling contents. A hot rush of shame spread up from my neck into my cheeks. My throat felt tight. I hadn't told her I couldn't read. What would she think of me? I dreaded the moment when her expression changed as she wondered why she had wasted her time on me. I would fake it. I glanced down at the box. Old yellowing paper, musty-smelling. Newspaper cuttings. Lots of them. Some had a strange, old fashioned font. Some had faded until they were tissue thin. I had no idea what this had to do with anything. My face grew hotter and hotter. In a moment, I would have to look up and Mrs Cranford would know I couldn't read.

  Then, just like the date on Kate's tomb, a word caught my eye.

  Killed.

  I didn't know why that one leapt out at me. The rest of the article may as well have been hieroglyphs. I thumbed through the papers.

  Killed. Killed. Killed.

  Over and over again, on almost every clipping, I saw that word. Then I noticed the pictures. Young girls, pretty girls. A different face on each newspaper cutting. Girls of about nineteen. My heart plummeted into my stomach, quicker than my brain was to work out the significance. Grace.

  I met Mrs Cranford's sharp gaze.

  "There were others of course." Her tone was matter of fact. "From before. I only started collecting those when I was a girl. There were dozens before then. God knows how many in the hundred or so years before that."

  I stared at Mrs Cranford in horror. Dozens? More? She couldn't mean…she just couldn't…And I thought of Grace's bleeding lip and the way that it had felt as if someone else was there as well as my sister. And Haze. I shuddered. I remembered how he had hated Grace and wanted to devour her at the same time. It was exactly what Mrs Cranford meant. With a suddenness that made my head swim, fury at Dad flashed through me. He'd brought us here. Just to get away from Mum, he'd brought us to a…a cursed house.

  "As you can see, those newspaper cuttings go back nearly seventy years."

  Well actually, no I couldn't. I opened my mouth to come clean, no longer caring what Mrs Cranford would think, but she was still talking.

  "It's always young girls, you see. It has to be young girls in that house. I think that's what h
e feeds on. What makes him strong." Mrs Cranford's voice was remote, as if she was helping me with a history project. "Our last vicar was a bachelor. There were no children. I thought that…well, without any girls to feed on…he'd weaken, fade until he wasn't a threat anymore. But from what you said the other day, it's happening again, even faster than before."

  "W-what's huh-happening? What's the P-Pattern? W-what did you mean by w-witness?" The questions crowded their way out of my aching throat. I wanted to be angry with her. It was cruel to drag me into this when I was already hurt and burdened. I wanted to ask her why she picked me. But my lips were numb and I already knew why. Mrs Cranford hadn't picked me at all. Grace, me, Dad even, we'd all walked into a trap, moths flying into a web. I just happened to be able to see the web. "Why?" I wasn't even sure what I was asking anymore.

  "Tell me what you've seen first, Emily. I need to know how much time we have. Then I'll try and explain. At least as much of it as I'm sure of." Mrs Cranford clasped her papery hands together. Wondering if it was to stop them shaking, I took a deep breath.

  "I f-found a cold spot on the stairs wuh when we m-moved in." I half cringed. Mrs Cranford merely nodded.

  "It's often on stairs or other crossing places. They collect impressions or memories, like grooves in a record. I don't suppose you really remember vinyl do you, Emily? But the grooves held musical code that was read by the needle on a record player. You're one of those rare people who can act as a kind of spirit-needle and read places." She gestured for me to go on.

  It made sense but didn't exactly reassure me. With a lot stumbling and stuttering, I told her about the first night in the vicarage. Trying to describe the revulsion I felt at the presence of the cold girl. I mentioned Amy's comment about the scene seeming familiar. Mrs Cranford's eyes narrowed slightly and my intuition flickered. Amy was on to something and Mrs Cranford knew what it was. The book, it had to be. We never did go back and look at it. I could have kicked myself. All those times I'd slammed it back on the shelf…

  I told Mrs Cranford about following the cold girl, who I'd mistaken for Amy, into the orchard. About the book that kept opening itself on my desk. I choked out the best description I could manage of how it felt to be Helen and what I'd seen. Mrs Cranford's carefully neutral expression tightened. Her lips thinned and her bright eyes disappeared into the wrinkles at the corners. She gripped the arms of her chair until her knuckles stood out like knotty, white roots. I told her about Haze, my face flushing again as I explained what I'd seen yesterday and how I'd slapped my sister. I finished with Grace's apparent memory loss. I felt wrung out and exhausted but better too. Lighter. I waited impatiently for a response. Mrs Cranford sat with her hands clasped under her chin, still as a tombstone angel.

  "Wuh well?" I rasped when I couldn't stand it anymore, "W-what does it m-mean?"

  Mrs Cranford looked up at me with haunted eyes. It was going to be very bad.

  "Emily, I'm not sure what to tell you, so I'm going to tell you a story. It's almost become folklore in these parts now. Lots of the older folk know the story but few put much credence in it. Doubtless because it hasn't been backed by a death for nearly thirty years. This though, is where I think the Pattern began." Mrs Cranford's voice sounded even wispier than usual, without its normal peppery edge.

  "Buh but you think? D-don't you know?" I was counting on her to have answers.

  "No, Emily. I'm afraid I don't know. This is the best I've been able to make out and probably as close to truth as we can get, over two hundred and twenty years later." She paused and worried her lip with sharp little teeth. Choosing her words carefully she went on. "There was a young girl who lived at the vicarage over two centuries ago. Catriona Elizabeth Weston. She was the only daughter of the vicar and a great favourite with everyone for miles around, for her beauty and her spirit. She was better known as—"

  "Kate," I breathed.

  "Kate," agreed Mrs Cranford. "She was a wayward girl. Her father was a hard man. He had been widowed young and had wanted a son. He didn't much care about his daughter and she ran quite wild on the moor. She was said to fear nothing, not even death nor the devil himself. Though that may be embellished storytelling." Mrs Cranford paused. I leaned forward in my chair.

  "She grew up with a servant girl, who her father, in a rare moment of insight or generosity, had taken in. Yes, Helen." Mrs Cranford nodded at my look of comprehension. "Helen was said to be the only one who would take no nonsense from her. I don't know how true that is. Kate's father, thinking his duty by his daughter done, turned the girls over to the care of his retainer, John, and a couple of kitchen women. Helen and Kate were playmates of a sort but only until the parish officials disposed of a young orphaned boy with a Mrs Mildred Greer. I don't know whether she was ever actually married but Mrs Greer was the village handy-woman. That’s what they used to call the village midwife or herbalist. She helped with births and deaths. She seems to have been a solitary sort given to spending her wages on spirits. No one knew where the boy came from. He wouldn't speak for a long time. That suited Mrs Greer, who had a sum paid her by the parish for the keeping of him. If Kate ran wild on the moor, then the boy ran infinitely wilder."

  "What w-was his n-name?" I couldn't help interrupting.

  "No one ever knew. Or if they did they never spoke of it afterwards. Mrs Greer called him Robbie but that wasn't the name his own people had given him." Mrs Cranford rubbed her forehead, eyes distant. "They grew up, Kate and Robbie, caring for no company but each other’s. Somehow Kate's father got wind of her companion. He sent her for an extended stay with an aunt fifty miles away – a decent distance in those days. It was his hope that Kate would become accustomed to finer things and forget her vagabond playmate, for her aunt was very well off. Kate was there for over a year."

  Mrs Cranford sighed. I wondered if she had some sympathy for the pair. "When Kate returned, things had changed. She had a greed for the richer things in life. The boy, Robbie, had grown into a man. What might be mischief in a child is often wickedness in an adult and he had a cruelty about him that some would term true evil. Dark in more ways than one - that was the saying. Of course that may have been small mindedness over skin colour and his Romani ancestry. Kate was selfish and greedy. She wanted to keep her wild boy but she wanted wealth and fine dresses too. Her cousin was a foppish sort, weak and white- handed, but he had fallen in love with her."

  "When she was seventeen, her cousin proposed. It was not only normal but encouraged to marry your cousin in those days if it was a good match," Mrs Cranford went on, correctly interpreting my queasy expression. "That way they ensured that the wealth stayed in the family."

  She paused, bright-eyed and brooding. This wasn't going to end well.

  Perhaps it hadn't ended at all but was somehow still playing. Like a record, eternally spinning just waiting for a young girl to come to the right place and act as a record needle. I shuddered at the image.

  "S-so what h-happened?" My pulse hammered heart was thudding in my ears.

  "She married her cousin." Mrs Cranford looked grave.

  "Clayton." I nodded. Finally that attic death scene was made sense.

  "Yes. The dark man—Robbie—swore a terrible revenge, so the story goes. He has waited and watched for her to come to him on the moor ever since."

  "B-but when she was dying…she th-thought he would come for her. She was sur certain. H-Helen was certain. She was afraid of h-him." I felt the Pattern like a living thing. A root system on a twisted tree, seeking life by any means possible. "D-did he come? Wuh what about Clayton?"

  "We don't know what happened. I believe Robbie either didn't come for her or he came too late. Either way, Kate, who had insisted on going home to the vicarage of her childhood to die, was found on the edge of the orchard one morning. Dead and cold. Helen, no doubt exhausted, had fallen asleep and not noticed her one time mistress was gone.”

  “Clayton, who had brought Kate back to die at her childhood home, which was
probably very distasteful to him, was in a fury with Helen."

  "He b-beat her." I said flatly. I remembered those cold, blue eyes. The raised fist.

  "It would seem so according to parish record – some diaries and papers kept by a curate -that Helen was too ill to attend church for a time. When she did appear in public, she never explained her bruises or her missing teeth. She kept quiet about the whole thing. But then, by the time anyone saw her in public of course, Clayton was dead."

  "Wuh what?" I felt winded.

  "Skull cracked, found on the moor. Some said he fell from his horse, some said he threw himself from a rock stack in his grief at losing Kate. And some said the dark man got him. We don't know. Kate died from consumption. TB. It was common enough. You've seen her grave."

  "What d-does any of that have to d-do with these?" I gestured at the newspaper cuttings in my lap. "And w-why muh me? W-what can I do when w-we don't even know for sure w-what happened?" I was sinking. I couldn't see how to solve this, flung from having an incomplete jigsaw to having one with too many pieces and no idea which ones were important.

  "Emily, I don't think you know your own abilities. Not yet. I believe you can solve this in a way no one else can."

  "Why?"

  "In time you may be able to guide the Dead as well as see them." Mrs Cranford compressed her lips. "It's a heavy burden and I'm sorry it's come to you. As for those poor girls, read what it says about them. The marks on them. Killed by strangulation or broken necks or blood loss – though no blood was found around the bodies. All of them malnourished and sick. Isn't it obvious what he's doing?”

  “The watcher on the moor you described is Robbie. He's trying to bring Kate back. And I believe that if you don’t stop him, nothing on earth can make him stop, until he gets what he wants."

  I looked at the pile of cuttings before stuffing them back in the box. "I kuh can't r-read these. I got a huh head injury in the accident. Now I can't ruh read. B-brain damage." That came out blunter than I'd intended

  "Can't you." It wasn't a question. Mrs Cranford gave me the slightly superior look of someone who knew something you didn't.

  "N-no I kuh can't!" I bristled. How dare she sit there and act as if she knew how I felt! I sprang to my feet, scattering newspaper clippings like autumn leaves. My head whipped from left to right, seeking escape. I had to get out.

  Mrs Cranford made pacifying gestures with her little bird-claw hands. I wasn't listening to her anymore. Why hadn't anyone done anything before? Seventy years? More? Why wait for me? It wasn't fair. I couldn't do it. I wouldn't.

  "Emily -"

  "Luh-leave me alone! I don't wuh want any more d-d-death!" I screamed at her before dashing to the front door and wrenching it open. She could just find someone else. I wanted nothing to do with this. Dangerous murderers who were dead and yet…not. I flinched and flung myself out into the daylight.

  Mrs Cranford didn't try to follow.