Mary Hades: Beginnings: Books One and Two, plus novellas

by Sarah Dalton

  The sea.

  The waves spilled over the wall onto the main street. I’ve never seen them that fierce.

  I dug my heels in when I saw them. I needed you to stop, needed you to let me go. And then I began to beg.

  Do you remember me begging? Do you?

  I cried, I screamed, and I scratched your arms with my hands but you ignored it each time. Instead, you began to sing “Friday I’m in Love” under your breath. You pulled me along like I was a rag doll. We moved along the road towards the main stretch of beach.

  “No,” I said. “No, no, please. I’ll do anything, Su. I’ll do anything. No, no. Please stop.”

  I even screamed for help, knowing no one would be able to hear my screams over the sound of the wind roaring through the coast.

  “Time to get clean,” you said. “Time to clean what is dirty.”

  At the time I thought you meant me. I thought I was the dirty one because you hated me. It’s only now that I realise you were talking about yourself. It’s only now that I know what it was all about.

  It was because I saw you that night.

  I saw you with Ricky, and it did something to you. It made you feel dirty.

  It was all my fault. If I hadn’t been curious that night. If I hadn’t walked out and watched you in the car, you never would have done any of this. Sure, it could be that you were possessed by a demon. You could argue that there is a lot of evidence to suggest you were. But is it possible that everything happening that night was because of the guilt you felt? I’ve read so much stuff in the library about teenage girls and powerful hormones and powerful emotions. The guilt of a teenage girl has as much power as an erupting volcano. It spills lava out onto everyone and everything in its path. I believe that it can peel wallpaper and throw priests against the wall. I do.

  “Come on, sis,” you said as you dragged me through the wet sand. “Time to get baptised.”

  I think I knew even then that you intended to drown us both. That was your idea of cleansing—accepting death, stopping the sins of the future. I fought against you, screaming pointlessly into the wind. You faced me for the first time since you dragged me out of the house. Your eyes were normal again, but they were set with a determination I’ve never seen since, and I think if I did, I would turn around and run the other way as fast as I could.

  “Do you think God will let us into heaven?” you said. “Do you think He will love us?”

  You meant will He love me?

  It was guilt. You felt guilt.

  “I don’t know,” I replied, too young to know what you meant. I was too afraid. Too young to decide what I believed in, whether I thought heaven existed.

  I still don’t know, sister. Not even after coming so close to finding out. I’m one of those people who will never know. Maybe I will treat my life as though heaven is right here on Earth. Maybe I am that person.

  When the first wave crashed into us, I lost my footing and you pulled me up. For the briefest of moments I thought that maybe you had had a change of heart and you didn’t want to kill us after all. But then my stomach sank as you pulled us further into the freezing water. I gasped and my heart almost stopped when a larger wave collided with us, higher up our waists this time.

  You did not seem affected by the cold at all. Your jaw was set. Your teeth clenched together. You moved through the waves with relative ease.

  “Susan, please,” I begged. “I don’t want to go. I’m cold. Take me home. Please.”

  “No,” she said. “You think I’m evil. You all think I’m evil.”

  “We don’t,” I said. We had gone past the waves now. We were in water up to my chest and just below yours. “I promise we don’t. We’ll help you. Daddy comes home soon. He’ll sort everything out. You’ll see.”

  “I saw them, you know. Mum and that… that man. I saw them together on the sofa. It was the day I went home early from school with a bug. It was foul. They are foul.” You paused. “Is there a demon inside me?” I hardly heard you above the sound of the sea. “Am I with the devil now?”

  “I don’t know,” I shouted. “Let’s go home and find out.”

  “I hate you,” you said. You looked at me then and I saw no demon inside you. Just you. “I hate you and I don’t know why.”

  “I love you,” I replied.

  For the briefest of seconds everything went quiet and still. The wind dropped. The sea almost calmed. We were still. You stared at me. You had wet hair and wet cheeks from the sea spray. Your lips were blue with the cold. A smile twitched at the corners of your mouth.

  “I love you too,” you said.

  And then you pushed me under the water.

  At nine years old I hadn’t felt much pain. There was the time I cracked my head open falling off my bike onto the curb. That hurt pretty bad, although I went unconscious quite fast. There was another time when I trapped my two fingers in the car door and they went purple. That hurt too.

  Nothing has hurt this much ever since. Nothing. I’m telling you, Su. Burning lungs and almost drowning is a bitch. And you were a bitch to do that to me.

  Perhaps I will feel pain like that again. Probably sooner rather than later.

  The panic was indescribable. Consuming. I need to live. I want to live. I need to live. This can’t happen. No. No. This can’t. I must change it.

  I heard it then. I heard our song, and I saw us dancing.

  We’d drifted away from the beach and my feet no longer touched the sea bed. I struggled in your grip. Finally, I remember going limp. A sense of calm washed over me. But in the calm was blackness. I felt dark all over.

  You let me go, but I wasn’t dead yet. I had just enough energy to force myself to open my eyes and force myself up. I vomited into the sea and then gulped in air, desperate for oxygen. My lungs ached. My chest was on fire with the pain. Your eyes widened when you saw me. I coughed and coughed.

  I hit you. I hit you over and over, screaming as loud as I could. I screamed at you over and over. Your shocked face just took it all in. To your credit, you took your punishment without even fighting back.

  All of a sudden you broke down. You began to sob. Your tears mingled with the sea water as we bobbed up and down.

  “I’m sorry,” you said. “I don’t know why I did it.”

  For a long time I didn’t know why either, but now I do. Now I am the age you were when you tried to drown me. I know what you felt. I understand the shame and the dirt. I know what it’s like to feel like that, and to have all the adults in your life tell you that it’s wrong. I have a lasting reminder, too. I will never escape the choice I made.

  It’s wrong. We shouldn’t feel like that. We shouldn’t ever be made to feel like that.

  We tread the water whilst staring at each other, shivering from the freezing cold. Your chin wobbled and tears flooded your eyes. We clung to each other then. In an instant the past was forgotten and we were just two sisters terrified for their lives. We had drifted away from the shore, and now we had no choice but to try and swim back to the beach with the wind and the tide pulling us away.

  “Susan, I can’t… I can’t swim that far,” I said, my words disjointed by how much I shivered.

  There was pity in your eyes. We both knew I was a terrible swimmer. I wouldn’t even jump into the shallow end of the pool. I’d only ever taken my armbands off twice.

  “I’ll help you,” you said. And your eyes set back into that determined look, but this time it gave me comfort.

  You tucked me under one arm, and with the other, the broken handcuff still on your wrist, you fought against the water, dragging us forward. With each stroke we were pushed back by the sea. You paused and coughed up water. Then you steeled yourself and continued.

  “Kick out your feet!” you yelled above the sound of the gale.

  I kicked furiously. I moved my legs as fast and as hard as I could. My calf muscles protested and I kicked on.

  Each time we got a little further, the sea pulled us back. But
we didn’t give up, you and me. The sea didn’t stand a chance against two girls in the middle of their awakening. You remained that volcano-like force, spewing yourself forward and against the tide. We coughed and we spluttered and we pressed on. We fought, Susan. We fought harder than we ever had before. And we fought together. It wasn’t against each other. It was for each other.

  In the years that have followed that night, our lives have often been separate. Yet there have been these odd occasions when we’ve come together as strong as we were when we swam back to the shore. And in those moments we have shared a bond that can only be broken by ourselves. Why is it that we keep breaking that bond over and over again?

  We beat the sea, sister. We thought we would drown more than once, but we didn’t. We made it to the beach a little broken, but not beaten. We shivered. We fell to the wet sand together.

  A screech ripped through the wind, and two figures ran towards us. At once I saw the billowing cassock of the priest and my throat thickened. No more. No more of it. I struggled to my feet and stepped between him and you.

  “No! She is my sister. Leave her alone.”

  “She is the devil, child. I must separate her from the presence inside her.”

  You pushed yourself up onto your knees and you faced the priest. I believe it was as far as you could move.

  “No, not anymore,” you said. “I’m Susan. I’m me.”

  The priest stepped forward and examined you. He poked and prodded your face. He pressed the crucifix into your chest.

  “I think it’s true.”

  Mum rushed forwards and flung her arms around you.

  But it wasn’t over yet.

  You went to sleep, and it was a long time until you woke. And when the hospital saw your handcuffs, they assumed the worst. That started the interviews with Child Services. Over and over I was sat in a room with a stranger, describing everything that had happened. Except that I lied. I had to or they would have locked Mum up. Maybe you think she should have been locked up, I don’t know. What would someone else have done in that situation? I think she made a bad choice, but I can’t hate her for it.

  I said that you did it to yourself and that you had a breakdown. When it came to describing what happened in the sea, I left out the drowning. And there you have it, sister. I at least spared you that.

  For days you stayed in that hospital bed, sleeping. You had drips going into your body. Part of me wondered if you were like a moth in a chrysalis and whether you would come out a new person.

  I was right.

  When you returned to us, you were different. You had lost your smile, Susan. You had lost your spirit. I think that bedroom brought bad memories for you, because you redecorated the lot, removing every trace of personality and creating little more than a blank space of white walls. You spent all your time studying. You stopped listening to music, and you stopped reading for pleasure. You threw away all your make-up and your short skirts and your costume jewellery.

  You didn’t drink or smoke or even drink coffee.

  You hardly left the house and your friends grew more and more frustrated with you until they finally gave up.

  From that moment on I saw you strive for normality. It was your mission, to be in control of a boring, mundane existence. You were determined that you would work hard, find a husband and have a family. That was your new ambition, and having fun didn’t factor in.

  I get it. Susan, you need control because you lost it in such a colossal way. Sometimes I think you were possessed that night. I think some sort of spirit latched onto your guilt and blew it out there. But it was you talking that night. It was you. And it breaks my heart that you felt that way.

  I was so happy for you when you got married. I wanted you to love it, to relish it, and yet you couldn’t. It was just another day for you. Another day to control.

  There have been glimpses. There are times when the old Susan peeks through the mist. I want to grab hold of it and force it out of you. But I can’t. And right now, you are back in that determined phase. You have seen the next stage of normality that you must achieve, and you will not let anyone get in your way.

  And, because of another decision I made, because of curiosity again, I think I may have lost you forever.

  Yes, I had sex with Ricky Fuller. Yes, I’m having his baby.

  It wasn’t supposed to happen this way, Su. I’m sorry. I got the same urge you did that night when I walked outside and saw you in his car. But you know what? I refuse to feel your guilt. I refuse to turn myself into a crazed, possessed woman because I made a mistake.

  No one wants to talk about it, do they? It drives me crazy. I watch films and it’s all about how men want it, how men are obsessed with it. Well, I wanted it too, and I took it. Does that make me so bad? Does it make me a whore?

  Maybe people only care because of this baby.

  I won’t control her, Susie. I know you would, but I won’t. I won’t make her feel guilty for anything. I will tell her that she was conceived in a moment of pure, hedonistic pleasure. I will not tell her that her father is that dullard Ricky Fuller. He doesn’t want anything to do with my daughter anyway. I will tell her that he was a beautiful, romantic man from a faraway county.

  I have to go now because Lila is pressing on my bladder.

  Sister. I think of you always. I see you in my dreams, and in my nightmares. I love and I hate you, just as you love and hate me. I suppose I don’t forgive you for that week. But I would not change a thing. Never. Because then we would never have fought together, and we would never have won.

  Possess

  By

  Sarah Dalton

  Possess

  Sarah Dalton

  EBOOK EDITION

  Copyright © 2014 Sarah Dalton

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this work, in whole or in part, in any form.

  This is a work of fiction. All characters, events, organizations and products depicted herein are either a product of the author’s imagination, or are used fictitiously.

  Cover Design by Sarah Dalton

  Stock images from Depositphoto.

  Prologue

  A sigh spread through the house. It began from some unknown place—an ancient, shadowy location—and it moved with purpose, working its way through the night, rustling the leaves of the trees that line the drive, passing the long front lawn and causing the tree swing to rock back and forth. Back and forth. It hesitated for the briefest of moments, waiting in front of the tall town house standing ahead with windows gleaming in the light of the full moon. Like a long moan it climbed the front steps and slipped through the keyhole into the hall. Had anyone been awake, they would have felt the pulse in the walls and the way the presence filled the rooms. The great exhale.

  Up and up from the foundations it went, moving between bricks, under floorboards, seeping through cracks, passing the spiders lurking in dark corners. It flowed over stacked books and children’s toys, over the copper kettle and the lace shawls. It seemed all places at once and yet never there. It seemed always and forever and non-existent.

  In their bedrooms the people turned. They sniffed in their sleep, half-conscious of the change. A man curled up his lip and sneezed, his nose tickled by his moustache. Next to him, his wife rolled over and let her arm hang down from the bed. A girl of thirteen lay on her back with her mouth open, breathing calmly. But when a cold chill caught at her fingers, her throat closed and she gulped in the bitter air, gulping down the sigh along with it. She rolled over and her breathing returned to its regular rhythmical state. Down by the kitchen slept a housekeeper. She was middle-aged with greying hair. Curled around her fingers was a string of beads. When the sigh passed over her, the beads dropped to the floor, taking the crucifix with it.

  And lastly, one little girl of eleven years old sat up in bed. She rubbed her eyes and blinked into the gloom. It was an unwelcome darkness, somehow a living thing, throbbing with energy. She reached for her candle and the
box of matches by her bed. When the flame was lit, she calmed, her muscles loosening and her chest relaxing. She placed the candle on her bedside table and reached under the bed for a small box. After pulling out a drawer from the box, she removed a small notebook and pencil.

  May 12th 1847. Tonight is our first night at Ravenswood, she wrote.

  *

  I fell asleep this afternoon. With the sunlight streaming in through my skylight, I decided to stay in my bedroom and relax. I laid my head down on the pillow and I tried to read a book. It was a romance novel about a girl falling in love with a boy, you know, the usual: meet-cute, different classes, secret kisses. Their parents didn’t approve, of course. It’s one of those Romeo and Juliet types, except without as much stabbing and poison. Mum lent it to me and it seemed like a fun read for a Sunday. Only I drifted into a slumber after two chapters.

  Then the unease set in.

  Whenever I wake, my dreams are always fuzzy. There are small scenes that stand out, but the narrative drifts away as soon as I wake. This time, the image that remains clear in my mind is of a swarm.

  Not bees or birds or butterflies. It was unlike any living creature in the world. It resembled a gathering of large dust particles, but very dark, similar to bits of black rubber or flakes of coal. They congregated and moved as though they belonged together. At first they were far apart. I didn’t see them because they disappeared between clouds in the sky. It was like being in the gloom during twilight. But once they began to move, I found myself transfixed.

  The closer they got, the more of a dark lump they formed, and the more the unease spread through me, lifting every hair on my skin. My throat went dry. My stomach turned to water.

  You might think that it sounds ridiculous. You might think that I’m hyper-sensitive or silly. But it wasn’t so much the sight of the swarm, it was the way it made me feel.