by Nina Milton
I’d had an overwhelming urge to get out of that place. I’d called to my animal guide and in no more than a flash, the scene changed. I was at my shamanic portal, where I set off for every shamanic journey. In it, a brook runs below a deep, mossy bank, mauve with heather. The water is very fast but brilliantly clear, and you can see the white stones that litter the brook’s bed.
When I arrived at my brook, my knees had given way and I’d collapsed onto the grass. A wet nose broke the surface of the brook. I’d gasped, then laughed. A raft of short whiskers and round, loving eyes. It was my spirit guide, an old male otter.
“I don’t think I can go back there, Trendle.”
“That was enough. You should do no more today.”
I had reached out to tickle Trendle behind his small ears, which he loves, but he dived out of reach with one splashing flick of his snakelike tail.
Now, I glanced up at Cliff, still sitting with his gaze on his slightly grubby trainers.
“Yes.” My voice sounded artificial in my ears. “That was all.” I passed Cliff the printout of my slightly abridged notes. “This is your copy. I’d like you to read it through to see if anything resonates.”
He glanced down at it. “I don’t think it means anything to me.”
“That shouldn’t worry us.” I was trying hard to be calm and professional, but beneath the bodice of my black dress, my heart was flickering like the candles.
He nodded and stretched his legs out. His ankles were suddenly exposed above black nylon socks, all knobbles and blue veins. He was too slim, and I wondered if he had recently lost weight, especially as it showed in his face, hollowing his cheeks.
“Would you like a hot drink, or more water?”
“You could fill that glass with whisky.”
“Sorry, I don’t—”
“It was a joke,” said Cliff. “A coffee would be great.”
I got into the kitchen somehow, and flicked the kettle on. I leaned against the worktop. I felt as if I’d just got out of my bed after a heavy night—fuzzy head, wobbly legs, a sick, empty feeling in my stomach. Maybe it was just my lack of breakfast, but I was glad of this reprieve. I needed to think everything through—Cliff’s story, Rey, Ivan, dreams, hens. But instead, I thought about Josh Sutton.
Josh had gone missing on Christmas Eve, almost three months ago, now. His family—mum, dad, big brother Branwell, and one set of grandparents—had gone for an after-lunch stroll on the Bristol Downs. Josh and Branwell were playing hide and seek among the bushes, according to the family. The Downs consist of mile after square mile of common grassy space that ends where the suspension bridge spans the river gorge, and it’s surrounded on the other three sides by the more opulent parts of Bristol. The Suttons, Josh’s family, lived in one of the nearby eighteenth-century terraces; the Downs would be their natural playground. I can remember being taken there as a kid. I lived in Bristol then, and it’s one of the nicer memories from my early childhood. Dotted across the grassy acreage are the natural-growing copses of trees and shrubs, a great attraction for kids and lovers alike. Kids, lovers, and rapists, in fact … it’s best not to venture alone over the Downs on the way back from a late-night party.
But this was the middle of a Christmas Eve afternoon, and no one was thinking bad thoughts. So when Branwell came over to his parents and said that Josh had got himself so well hidden, he couldn’t find him at all, his family thought it was a kid’s prank. But even with everybody searching, Josh couldn’t be found. By the time police and volunteers did a sweep search of the whole area, hope had already faded. Even the Slamblaster action toy that Josh had been clutching had disappeared.
There is never a good time to lose a child, but surely Christmas and New Year must be the worst. His parents’ strained faces became increasingly gaunt as they appeared, time and again, on the evening news. The search was spread over a wider and wider area, but the people of Bridgwater—myself included—still felt a long way away from the tragedy. At the start of January, Josh should have celebrated his seventh birthday. The whole country mourned him on that day. It didn’t seem possible that Josh would be seen alive again. A couple of weeks after his birthday, a party of walkers and a dog with a good nose stumbled on his body, left in a shallow grave in a remote part of the Somerset moors. Josh had been found fifty miles away from his home.
I gave a start. Cliff was standing right beside me. I hadn’t even heard him come across the kitchen, but now he was so close that his breathing had broken into my reverie.
“When a child dies, it always feels personal, doesn’t it?” I said. “My nephew is just a bit younger than Josh. Everyone will know a little boy like him. It’s an unspeakably compulsive story.”
Cliff forced a weak smile. “Thank you for that. I was beginning to think it was just me that was obsessed with the case. I’ve listened to every news story since he was found, bought every newspaper. While I was in the cells, the police searched my flat. They found all the articles I’d cut out in a file.”
“Why? Why did you do that?”
“I was hoping you’d tell me.”
“Hot drink first, I think.” I made a repeat of the earlier Barleycup and coffee (this time milk but no sugar), and we carried them back into the therapy room. I followed behind Cliff’s lumbering gait, which I suppose went with his extra height.
“They never announced how he died,” he said, without looking round. “I’ve read every newspaper report; they never said.”
“I hadn’t really thought of that before,” I said. “I suppose it is rather odd.”
“Not as odd as where he was found.”
“Because of those other bodies? The ones they found there ages ago?”
“That’s right.” Cliff returned to the client’s chair. The chair is a sun lounger, a little tatty around the edges, so I’ve draped it with a Celtic knot throw. I can adjust it from psychoanalytically prone to bolt upright, which was how it was now. Cliff’s trainered feet were solidly on the floor and he leaned towards me, ready to talk. “The papers can’t make up their minds. Sometimes the Wetland Murderer has returned. Sometimes it’s a copycat crime.”
“I don’t remember the Wetland Murders at all,” I said.
“They were twenty-three years back.”
“Ah. I would’ve been five. And I didn’t live around here.”
“I remember,” said Cliff. “I was eleven. All these little kids started disappearing. Their photos were plastered over the papers. Everyone got scared.”
“The new stories resurrected those old photos, didn’t they?”
“They’re loving it, the papers. Wallowing. Those killings were … gruesome. Even the children’s bones were broken. They were found with the duct tape still over their mouths.” Cliff broke off to take a swallow of his coffee and place it carefully on the floor by his feet. “Unbelievable.”
I felt the silence grow in the room. Cliff appeared to be the world expert on both these crimes.
“How did it all end?”
“I can remember seeing it on the telly. They found bodies buried on the moors. Matthew, Joanna, Nicolas, and John. Everyone poring over the gruesome details like ghouls.” Cliff shifted on his seat, almost tipping the metal frame. He was perched right on the edge of the chair like some flightless bird. It’s better to rest back on the lounger, but he seemed unable to relax. “They never found the murderer,” he went on, “but after a while, the kids round my way were let back out to play. I guess people thought it was over.”
“I wonder what makes someone do something so evil and then stop, all of a sudden?”
“Their consciences, I hope.”
I was silent for a while. “You remember it very well. The names and details.”
“You could say the whole year is burned on my memory. Dad was sick around then, then he died, and I never felt the same again.”
&
nbsp; I could see that Josh’s death might very well have brought back memories of Cliff’s own pain and loss, confusing past with present in his mind.
“In our first session, you said you felt as if something was making you depressed.”
“Yeah, well, the doctor calls it depression. But to be honest, none of the tablets he’s given me has done anything. It’s the mornings, mostly. At least, it always starts as I wake. I feel so … afraid … for no reason. Getting out of bed is impossible. That’s why I shelf-stack in Morrison’s. I do the night sessions. I don’t have to wake up till the evening, and if I’m lucky, the feeling of dread goes away more quickly.”
“Can you remember your dreams?”
“No. Never. I don’t have dreams.”
“Dreams often slip out of sight, but if we write down all the tiny fragments we remember, we can nudge our ‘dream memory’.”
I took a new softbound A5 book of unlined pages from a pile I keep in a drawer and wrote Cliff’s full name in the front. I flicked a few pages in and sketched out the room I’d visited on my journey. I belong to the Mickey Mouse school of art, but even I could draw a cartoon sack. Then I sellotaped the copy of my journey in beside it and dated the entry. I showed him the notebook.
“Each session, I’ll describe what I’ve seen in your spirit world in this book, and I want you to use it as a memory jogger in between sessions. If any thoughts or coincidences happen that take you back to the description of my journeys, I want you to put them down. Add all the dreams you remember. Leave the notebook by your bed and jot down even the tiniest scrap as soon as you wake.”
Cliff gave a snort. “Why should I to do that?”
“You’ve come here because you want to know why you feel so wretched all the time. Dreams are part of the shamanic work we’ll do together.”
“Okay, that makes sense.”
“I want to see you next Saturday,” I said, writing the date in the notebook and passing it to Cliff. He flapped it in his hand as if he needed extra air.
“What will you tell the police?” he asked.
“What did you tell them?”
He grimaced. “I see your point. I told them mostly everything I’ve just told you. They’ve allocated me a solicitor—Miss Smith. She’s insisting I should be careful what I say, but I hope I won’t have to say anything to them again. Surely they’ve done with me.”
I checked the time on my mobile, which was lying on the desk. I usually leave a good space between appointments—I never know just what’s going to happen in a shamanic consultation—but the doorbell for my next client was going to chime at any moment. I offered Cliff a handshake. His palm was hot with sweat. When he pulled away, I felt his hand tremble, as if he’d just received bad news.
It wasn’t until after he’d left that I realized he’d forgotten the sovereign—or maybe he’d thought I would need it again.
I reached out and laid one index finger on its cool, indented surface. Sometime during this next week, I would have to travel into Cliff’s spirit world again, and I was not looking forward to it one little bit.
FOUR
The following morning, I indulged an impulse and went to the Sunday car boot sale they always hold on Plum Lane—Bridgwater’s finest. I had appointments back-to-back from two until seven in the evening, so I reckoned I deserved the morning off. I fed my three sad hens. Juniper, Ginger, and Melissa peered nervously at me from their fox fortress. They reminded me forcefully of Cliff—how he’d turn his lips into a beak and the way the dark pupils of his eyes were tiny, bright dots.
I made the one-mile walk through the houses to Plum Lane, letting the sharp wind blow my cobwebs away. The sale was already buzzing when I got there. I pushed into the browsing, haggling crowds and began to trawl for bargains. Some of my favourite stalls are those I never buy from. I love the philatelist who turns up with albums and cellophane packets of brilliantly coloured foreign stamps, and the chap who sells rusty, archaic, and seemingly useless tools from a blanket laid on the ground, which is constantly surrounded by men of a certain age.
I sifted through the second-hand clothes, treated myself to a Will Smith DVD (he is on my “want to marry” list), almost won a fight over a cut-glass salad bowl, then made a beeline for my favourite stall, a chap who comes once a fortnight to sell CDs at amazing cut prices. Barty (as he’s called) will put a CD into his player and let you listen to something new. A beat pounded out and his stall was deep in punters.
I elbowed my way through the crowd and ran my hands along the racks, searching out artists I liked. I felt the close proximity of a sharp warm aura behind me just as my hand lighted on a Pet Shop Boys album. People do that at boot sales—breathe all over you as they try to snatch the bargain you spotted first.
“Bit before your time, aren’t they?”
I jumped, despite my early warning device. The CD flew up in the air. With a certain panache, Rey caught it like a discus.
I had no intention of ever clapping my eyes on Detective Sergeant Buckley again, but I’d forgotten how often the hand of fate takes a leading role in my productions.
“Have you been following me?”
He laughed. “We don’t have the manpower for that. I like coming here.”
I didn’t believe him for a moment. I had a feeling that our exchange yesterday had rankled with him. He’d gone out on a limb, despite what he’d told me about hunches, and it hadn’t paid off because I wasn’t prepared to play his sort of games.
“Want this?” He brought a fiver from his pocket and waved it at Barty.
“Will you stop?”
“Go on, let me treat you.”
I snatched back the CD, stuffed it onto the stand, and stormed off through the crowd. I knew he was following; he caught me up, sneaked in front, and held up his hands in defeat. “You really take this self-sufficiency thing seriously, don’t you?”
I couldn’t help smile at that, or help taking it as a compliment, either.
“Fancy a drink?” said Rey. “There’s a couple of tables by the burger van.”
It was a sure bet Rey would spend all his time trying to needle information out of me, but I did like his new-mown hair and the eyes that, in daylight, veered on the greenish side of hazel, so I gave a half nod. “Just a tea, please.”
“Come on then.” Rey hugged himself. “It’s cold work, car booting.”
He strode ahead. Today he was wearing a worn leather jacket that skimmed the belt of bleached, deliciously tight, unironed jeans. He scrubbed down well, did Rey Buckley. By the time I’d plonked onto one of the cheap plastic seats, he was on his way back from the van, both hands occupied with paper cups. I noticed that he’d left a carrier bag full of purchases next to his seat, an old clock resting on the top. Maybe he did car boot, after all.
I stretched out as he sat down, and under the tiny bistro table my foot nudged against his thick-soled boot. I snatched it back as if Rey were a live cable, which indeed, he must have been—a spark flew from him and shot through the centre of my body. I hid my warming cheeks behind my paper cup while I foolishly focused my gaze on his left ring finger. Naked skin, all the way down to the hairy back of his hand, which meant, in my calculating mind, that DS Buckley was either (a) single, (b) divorced, or (c) a man who chose not to wear rings.
“So, what’s your preference in music?” said Rey as he diligently poured packets of sugar into his black coffee.
“That has to be reggae. I have everything Bob Marley ever released.”
“Because he’s dead?” said Rey.
“What? Why d’you say that?”
“I’d just been wondering what this spirit world you were on about was like. Is it filled with dead people like Marley and Sid Vicious?”
His question surprised me. I’d expected him to badger me about Cliff, not start a philosophical discussion.
“
It isn’t like that. A lot of spirits have never even been human.”
“Whatever do they look like then?”
“Mostly what I encounter is symbolic. Sometimes I see abstract patterns, sometimes stories play themselves out, like allegories. Most of my spirit guardians look as if they come from another world, but sometimes they turn up in jeans and a baseball cap. They usually bring messages I have to interpret. Sometimes what they give me seems complex and coded; other times things fit together through coincidences that jump up and smack you in the eye.”
“I can’t see how it works. How come I don’t bump into these spirits when I close my eyes?”
“Good question.” I paused, because the chap from the burger bar had arrived with a sausage and bacon buttie on a paper plate and I was fascinated by the variation in sauces and dressings Rey was lavishing over it. “Most people can enter a trance. Actually we do it all the time. It’s that state of mind where we shut off from what’s going on around us even though we’re not asleep.”
“Oh, I’ve got that one off to a tee,” said Rey. “I use it when my mates start banging on about their wives.”
I bit back an overpowering desire to ask if Rey had a wife to bang on about. “Part of my job is introducing my clients to their own spirit worlds.”
“Could I do it?” said Rey, taking an oversized bite of his burger.
“Yes, sir, if you’d care to book an appointment …”
“I wouldn’t have to be ill or something, then?”
“Not necessarily. But I do do a lot of therapeutic work. Most of my clients are hoping I’ll solve their problems.”
“And do you solve them?”
I thought about Cliff—the enigma that seemed impenetrable and the cryptic symbols I’d been offered. Maybe this time I’d bitten off more than I’d be able to chew. “I guess clients are happy with what they get. A lot of my work is by recommendation.”
