by Nina Milton
“What sort of mood? Can you explain?”
He shook his head. He wasn’t wearing his hair in a ponytail today, and hanks the colour and shape of rats’ tails fell over his face. He brushed them back and tucked them behind his ears. Cliff liked his hair anything but shorn.
“Have you been writing down your dreams?” I was expecting an obstinate response and was taken aback to see the pain on his face as he yanked the notebook out of an inner jacket pocket.
“It’s not much. I was half asleep.”
“That’s good,” I said. “Best time to write down dreams, really.” I flipped through the pages and came to a double-spread of huge, black writing that sloped down the unlined pages. It was hard to decipher, but not impossible.
Man in my front garden, it began. Shirley tied him to the rose bushes with garden twine. I walked on up the street, scared the neighbours would think it was anything to do with me. When I went into Mrs. Harvard’s house, there was a hole in her kitchen floor …
I looked up, a huge, artificial smile covering my face.
“It’s a muddle,” Cliff said. “Shirley was a girl in my school. Haven’t seen her in years. The garden was hers—we used to go round there in a gang.” His cheeks darkened. “You know, play ‘mummies and daddies’. But Mrs. Harvard lives up the road from me. She runs a greasy spoon. I’ve never seen her kitchen.”
“Health and Safety’ll be after her, if she’s got a hole in it,” I said, hoping for a smile I didn’t get. “Be easy on yourself, Cliff, this is a pretty typical dream. Anyone could have had it.” I put the book on my desk. “The real breakthrough is that you had a dream and recorded it.”
“I guess,” said Cliff.
“How far away from your childhood neighbourhood do you live?” I asked.
“The other side of Finchbury.”
“You never fancied moving on?”
Cliff shrugged. “Where would I go?”
“Does your mum live there?”
“Yes, Mum’s still in the house I grew up in. She has her friends—Women’s Institute, Church Council, that sort of thing. My baby sister’s long gone; she’s a teacher in Guildford.”
“Tell me about your dad,” I said, thinking back to the sovereign.
“We had some brilliant times together, until he was taken down by leukaemia. He’d worked at Hinckley Point after he’d finished his apprenticeship in engineering. He left to start his own business. Mum was convinced that the power station caused his cancer. Not that they ever admitted liability.” He shifted his position until he was on the very edge of the tubular frame of the sun lounger, his bony elbows digging into his knees. The lounger creaked.
“You miss him still, don’t you?” When he didn’t answer, I moved quickly on. “We’ve agreed this is your Saturday appointment, Cliff. And as I haven’t yet journeyed for that session, I’m going to do that now, with you in the room. Usually, I get excellent results that way, so it can’t be anything but beneficial. Are you up for that?”
“Yeah, I suppose.”
I motioned for Cliff to get up so that I could lower the head of the lounger. “Okay, if you could just stretch out, Cliff, I’ll cover you with a rug. I’d like you to be warm and relaxed.”
“I can’t lie down on that.”
I was caught off guard, struggling with the ratchets of the lounger. I straightened up and looked at him. His hand was pulling at his mouth. His eyes were wide and suspiciously wet. Hanks of his hair had fallen over his face again.
“Don’t worry, I’ll talk you through the process before we begin. You don’t have to do anything—I’m going to be doing all the shamanic stuff.”
“It’s not the process. It’s that thing.” He pointed at my lounger. “I had an accident with one when I was a kid. I fell off. Had to be taken to casualty. It’s given me a bit of a phobia.”
I stretched my mouth into a smile. My lips felt numb. I had no idea why Cliff’s phobia made me feel so uncomfortable. “When you sit on it,” I observed, “you almost tip yourself off, you’re so close to the edge.”
“They’re easily unbalanced,” Cliff said, reasonably. “Quite dangerous, really.”
Yeah, I thought, just like escaped tigers or shifting sands. But all I said was, “It’ll be a shame if you can’t make yourself comfortable.”
“I’ll lie on the floor.” Instantly, Cliff let his lanky body down onto the laminate, seeming not to care that it would be hard and chilled.
I brought over some floor cushions, and he shifted to lie on those. He hadn’t taken off his trainers, and I could see grass and mud on the soles. Maybe he’d walked over my lawn. I covered him with the rug.
“Are you sure you’re all right down there?” I picked up his right wrist and wound a plaited cord around it.
“What’s that?” he asked, staring at the white, brown, and green strands of silk.
“It will join us shamanically,” I said. “It symbolises the three otherworlds—higher, lower, and middle planes of existence. All of which I can explore to find solutions.”
I turned off the lights but left the candle flickering on the central table, then pressed Play on the CD player. The disc was a recording of myself beating a goatskin drum over and over. Since the lounger was free, I settled myself onto it. The more relaxed I was, the better I would journey. I wound the other end of the cord around my own wrist. Now Cliff and I were so tightly linked, there was no doubt in my mind I would find his spirit world.
“Cliff,” I said. “Are you all right about this?”
“I expected them to come for me. I suppose that’s the reason I got in the car and came over here. I thought the police would take me in.”
“Why—” I broke off, because my throat closed over, paralysed for a moment. “Why d’you say that?”
“Morganswick is less than five miles from Finchbury.”
I nodded, trying to stay calm and clear-headed. The thump of the pulse in my ears didn’t help matters. “So,” I said, grasping the nettle, “where were you at three o’clock this afternoon?”
“Still in bed. I’m working tonight. I didn’t get up till four.”
“I don’t suppose anyone saw you?”
“No one sees you when you live alone.”
A grisly thought struck me. Cliff was genuinely obsessed with the murder of little Josh. Was that because his subconscious remembered his part in it? Had Cliff woken up at four, or had he been coming round after doing whatever it was he’d done to Aidan Rodderick?
As I struggled with this, I began to wonder if Rey and his chums were moving along the same line of supposition. Why hadn’t they already called on Cliff? Had he been watched since he was released on Saturday? Perhaps the police already knew that he’d not left his flat all day. I was sincere in hoping this was the case. As I lay down beside him, a dark scarf over my eyes, my heart cracked like a flag in a gale.
The drumming hit my ears, but the singing centre of its note entered my body through my solar plexus. For a moment or two, I could feel my client floating alongside, coupled to me by the silken umbilicus. I let the drumbeat reverberate around my mind and suddenly I felt the soles of my bare feet touch cool grass. I could hear the lullaby of the brook even before I saw it.
My spirit portal. The grass is tightly cropped by rabbits, which are shy, but I often spot them loping out of sight. The heather has a dusty, light floral scent. If I stay still, the choristers—blackcaps, robins, and thrushes—belt out their tunes. At night, when there is usually a cloudless sky showing the moon, a nightingale sings. On the opposite bank of the brook runs a thick line of wild hedge, always ablaze with colour. There is hawthorn, blackthorn, and the autumn gold of field maple. In winter sun, the dogwood glows like amber. I’ve been starting out from here since I first journeyed with my shaman teacher years ago. The paths that stretch from this place in every direction h
ave been forged by me on many journeys, and I never know when a new one will appear.
I settled onto the mossy bank of my brook, my bare feet dangling in the water. I could feel a tickling sensation. Trendle was licking my toes. His thick coat shone with water.
“Come on in,” he said, and I slid down into the dark green depths.
When Trendle guides me into the stream, it becomes bottomless—it reaches into the underworld where shadowy spirits live. Trendle swam beside me as I sank, stems of weed tugging at my hair and ankles.
“Here,” said Trendle, and I followed him along a narrow, unlit tunnel of water. I could barely see his fur glisten in the darkness, but I felt the flick his tail on my outstretched fingers. I let myself breathe in—there was no need to hold my breath in the water of the spirit world.
We came out into a muddy lane with high hedges of hazel and ash. The overhanging branches met above my head, winter bare and black. The lane was so gloomy, I had to squint to make out the silhouette of a cottage against the cloud-covered sky.
I knew we were close to the grim little room where I’d seen the sack of hair. I willed myself towards the building until I was standing outside a door, the sort of door country dwellings had in the olden days, with wide, ornate hinges, rusting at their edges. The door’s black paint was peeling and smeared with mud, as if someone had kicked at it. The name of the house was prominently displayed on an iron plate.
Brokeltuft Cottage.
I put my hand on the round knob of the iron handle. It was as cold as a summer drink. When I turned it, I heard the clang of a latch lifting inside. The door swung open. Carpetless wooden stairs rose up before me. A passageway led past them, into a kitchen that hadn’t been replaced since the Fifties. I could see the gas cooker and the kettle steaming on its hob.
“What … what shall I do, Trendle?”
“Go on.” The otter lay along my arm. His coat still dripped from the journey, although I felt bone dry. His voice was in my head. “We have to put fear to one side and probe this world if we want answers.” He twitched his whiskers and water drops flew from them.
Step by step I advanced along the passage. I remembered the menacing presence standing close behind me in the little room with the sack of hair. Would I find that presence in the kitchen? The whistle of the kettle became shrill. A girl stepped out of the shadows and switched off the gas.
“Want a cuppa?” she asked me.
I almost sobbed with relief.
“Take sugar?” she asked, appraising me briefly. She was not even my height, just a girl in her teens. I saw her platinum blonde hair clearly. It was dark at the roots and curling at the ends. But, as I often find on my journeys, her face was quite obscured, sort of wishy-washy. I’m never sure why I can’t see every detail in a trance clearly, but it is usually so. The girl slammed a cup without a saucer down beside the cooker and opened a larder door. She took out a packet of biscuits and sliced through the packet with a bread knife. The biscuits were thin rectangles, pale brown and studded all over their surface with black dots; little bits of crushed currant.
“Garibaldi biscuits,” said the girl. “That’s all there ever is. Bloody squashed flies. Makes you puke to think of it.” She snapped a thin slab of speckled biscuit between her thumb and fingers. “Go on, help yourself.”
I looked down at Trendle. “Is this a gift?” I asked, meaning should I take the symbol back to Cliff.
Trendle blinked once. “For you, dear,” he said into my mind.
“Bloody take one, will you?” The girl’s voice had changed. She wasn’t joking around any longer. “Take it and get outta here.”
I thought it wise to do her bidding. I didn’t even stop for confirmation from my guide. I ran along the passage, clutching a Garibaldi. The massive front door slammed behind me with a boom.
The light was fading fast into evening. I breathed relief out, and my breath whitened before me. I took a step, scrunching over dead leaves.
“This is Cliff’s spirit world, isn’t it?” I said to Trendle. “No wonder he feels like he does. It needs cleaning up.”
“We can’t do anything here today,” said Trendle. “Except leave the food as an offering to his guardians.”
It was good advice. I crumbled the biscuit as if feeding birds. My fingers felt sticky from the currants. “Surely we can help him? His spirit feels so … shattered.”
“You know that Cliff’s soul is in pieces. It’s going to take a long time to bring them together. Let’s walk with caution.”
I nodded. Trendle was my conscience, my inner reservations and gut feelings, as well as my spirit friend; I would listen to whatever he had to tell me.
I stared at the hedge on the far side of the lane. There was not a leaf or bud to be seen. I have a hazel tree in my front garden and at the moment it’s festooned with glorious dangly catkin earrings, but it was still deep winter in this place. I bent a sapless twig and it snapped off in my hand. “You’re not dead, are you?” I asked it. The wind rustled through the brittle branches in reply.
“Nothing here is dead,” said Trendle, soft-voiced. “Just debilitated.”
In the depths of the thicket was a single, perfect hazel catkin. The branches were rough against my hand as I reached in and let it rest on my palm like a caterpillar, a dusting of pollen staining my skin.
This was the sign I should take back to Cliff, something hopeful for the future. As I thought this, the drumming that was still vibrating at the back of my mind changed its rhythm, calling me home.
Cliff had fallen into a deep sleep. No wonder I’d been able to slip so quietly in to his world. Gently, I untied my arm from the braid that connected us and went into the kitchen to boot up my laptop. I recorded my journey, saved the file, and printed out a copy for Cliff. I crept into the therapy room and slipped the folded paper into his notebook. With sudden resolution, I drew a child’s representation of the cottage on the back of the paper, concentrating the details into the door, with its round handle and wrought-iron plaque.
Cliff let out a snore, and I dropped the pencil in alarm as the noise exploded into the silence of the room. Yet I didn’t want to wake him. He would have to work through the night, so it seemed good for him to catch an hour now.
I scrabbled for the pencil, thinking that I should also draw a representation of the catkin. But I realized I could do better than that. I crept away and let myself out through the front door. It was a drizzly evening. The streetlights splashed Renoir orange over the pavement. I breathed in the cool air. Against the low wall that separates the house from Harold Street, I’d planted a line of bushes—a pretty pussy willow, a Japanese maple, and a corkscrew hazel. At their base, daffodils pierced the soil like green lances, almost ready to open. I stepped over the soil to the hazel. The branches were laden with fine-haired golden fingers. I love to see passersby stopping to touch the catkins or put their nose to the pollen. The occasional delinquent will break off a couple of twigs and carry them away—these are usually elderly ladies, keen to plant them as cuttings. Despite these attacks, my trees are thriving.
As I plucked a single yellow catkin, a cry of anguish arose, as if the young tree wailed at its loss. I sprang around. The noise was coming from inside my house, a low growl that progressed up several scales until it wavered hysterically on a top note. It was a petition for the kind of help no one could offer, and it made my spine jangle.
I rushed in. Cliff Houghton was kneeling on the floor by my desk, vomiting into my waste bin.
“Cliff?” He looked up at me with bloodshot eyes, his pupils tiny pinholes at each centre. I grabbed some tissues and thrust them into his hand. “Come and sit down.” I helped him shuffle to the wicker seat and he fell into it, huddled with his arms tucked around his knees. “I’ll get you some water.”
On the way to the kitchen, I grabbed the bin he’d filled and dumped it by the kitchen
door. When I got back to him, he was babbling something incomprehensible. I could see the cold sweat like oil smeared across his face, and he was panting as if he’d run for miles. He gulped the water I offered. The skein of plaited silk dangled from his wrist like broken jewellery.
I bent over to loosen it. With a sharp movement, he grabbed my arm.
“What did you see?”
His tone was urgent; I knew I had to be as accurate as possible. “A house on a country lane,” I said, keeping my voice light. “Someone was there to offer me tea and biscuits—Garibaldi biscuits.”
“That place,” muttered Cliff. “I’d forgotten it. How did I do that? I don’t understand.” He screwed his fingers to his mouth.
My vision flickered. A gauzy veil fell over it, creating a double-image—a glimpse of Cliff’s otherworld self. I stared as his grey eyes seemed to travel back into his head until they were pools of murky water. The fingers round his mouth twisted the skin as if it were rubber. Grotesque growths protruded from his nostrils, green as sea cucumbers, writhing over his cheeks. As quickly as it came, the vision faded. I wasn’t able to speak for a moment, but he was still gripping my wrist like an iron band; without thinking, I yanked myself free.
I’ve been having these “psychic events” since I started to train seriously as a shaman. Despite the turnaround in my life, I was still as bad as ever at picking guys. A loser called Jon was my man back then—or at least, I was his girl. One night, sitting at a bar table, chatting, I saw the film of reality lift from his face. For a second or two, the otherworld Jon was revealed; snarling mouth, over-long canines, bloodshot eyes, flaring nostrils. I was so shocked I dropped my bottle of beer. I thought I’d seen the devil himself.
At the time, I hoped a moment like that would never happen again, but they’ve increased over the years, and now I welcome them. They are not all unpleasant. I might see angels behind the masks people wear, or the features of a trusting infant, and this understanding helps me work with my clients. Cliff was carrying a form of parasitic spirit. These “intrusions” are the leeches of the spirit world, and they attach to people in extreme circumstances. It didn’t mean that Cliff was the architect of appalling deeds. Rather, that he was troubled by shades of dread—that, some time in the past, his soul had been injured.
