by Sarah Dalton
Mum doesn’t answer.
“I can see and hear you, you know. Who are you and what are you doing in my house?” I direct at the shadow.
She darts away as Mum pushes me into the living room. All the curtains have been drawn, plunging the room into a dreary murk. Gone are the crisp white walls and bright sunshine. The paint peels. A dank patch of damp spreads from one corner. The carpets are sticky and dirty. This house is possessed as much as my mum. A sense of suffocation spreads over me, tightening my chest.
“I worship the dark one,” the shadow woman says. “This is his house. You are nothing but a usurper.”
“Be quiet!” Mum says.
She throws me to the floor and paces the room, her limbs moving in jerks. “This body is giving in. I need to move into a stronger one.”
My heart pounds in horror as I watch my mother walk up and down. I was right. She’s dying. The spirit is killing her. I need to end this, fast. My fingers move to the Athamé at my hip, concealed behind my sweatshirt.
“She moved!” says the shadow woman. I’m beginning to realise that this person must be Miss Stevens from Liza’s diary. “I think she has a weapon.”
In a blur, Mum is on her knees at my side and I shy away from those bulging eyes. The sight of her frightens me to my very core, so that I freeze up for a split second, but once I take control of myself again, long enough to ignore the sight of her yellowed teeth, the bloody cracks in her lips, and the empty pools of blood where her fingernails should be, I yank the Athamé from my pocket and wield it in front of me. Mum shuffles away and I climb to my feet.
“What is that?” Miss Stevens says in a voice more like a sigh.
“Nothing to concern you.”
Mum flies at me with a hand hooked into a claw. I leap back but not before she scratches my cheek.
“No!” I yell. “You won’t win.” I arc the Athamé to form the first symbol but Mum’s claw returns to swipe at me. I duck from her blow, staggering back, half off my feet.
Miss Stevens floats towards me with her arms outstretched. Her ghost form is too weak to hurt me, but she manages to connect a palm to my face, catching my already stinging wounds. I shuffle away from them both. Mum moves straight through my symbol of protection as though it never existed and my heart sinks. It won’t be that easy.
I find myself stumbling into the kitchen. The cupboards all open at once and the pots and pans fly out. A plate smashes at my feet. The taps turn on, gushing water into the room. The blinds draw on their own, plunging me into yet more gloom. A frying pan swoops past me, hitting the breakfast bar.
I don’t know how much more of this I can take. My heart hurts. I’ve been scraped raw by it all. The tears finally come as everything begins to look impossible.
“That’s right,” says Mum. “Let it out, sweetheart.”
I close my eyes and the house evaporates from around me. I am tiny, a toddler. We’re on the street outside my old house, where I’ve just fallen face first from my trike. The sun is bright and I realise it’s late spring because the magnolia tree is in bloom. I’m pointing at my mother, who leans across me, fussing over a slightly grazed knee. I’m crying, screaming at the top of my lungs, but it isn’t because of my knee. Behind my mother’s head floats a swarm of black dots. They resemble bees, or tiny midges, except they’re not any kind of insect, just a swarm of dark energy, waiting; waiting patiently.
The road, the sun and the swarm fade away. This time, it’s long ago. Ancient times. The sound of chanting in a tribal language fills the air. All around me palm trees and tropical plants shake with the force of dancing feet. The swarm pulsates in the centre of a ring of women. All are painted, wearing minimal clothing, dancing and waving their hands in the air. The beat of a drum pounds in rhythm with the pulsating swarm, pulsing and pounding and pulsing until I clamp my hands around my ears. A loud scream rips through the vision and then I’m in Ravenswood. But this isn’t the Ravenswood I know. It’s new, and yet old, very old. I’m in the living room, where the television has been replaced by a blazing log fire. A woman sits in a rocking chair clicking her knitting needles, unaware that the swarm gathers above her.
The rest of the story is told in flashes so terrible my body convulses with the urge to vomit. This woman, whoever she is, lets the swarm into her. She calmly walks through to the kitchen and takes a knife. Then the flashes show me blood, violence, the innocent faces of children. When she’s done, the knife has one more throat to slit. Her own.
Whoever that was, she had nothing to do with Liza. It must have been the crime in Ravenswood that shocked the people of Ashforth, causing the house to be sold cheaply to Liza’s family. My heart aches for poor Liza, an innocent child caught in the middle of this evil. I need to learn how her story ends. Instinct tells me to put my hand on the cold floor of the kitchen, and the house shows me the rest.
The walls have eyes.
Chapter Nineteen
The house is alive. Now I realise where the spirits have been hiding all this time. They’ve been trapped within the walls, pulsing energy through every room. When I place my palm to the floor I feel them all, good and bad, the possessors and the possessed. Before the house shows me more, I lock eyes with Mum and sense the power radiating from her.
“Go on, then,” she says. “Watch.” Her eyebrows raise as she smiles, cracking more of my mother’s skin.
I close my eyes. I’m back in my room.
The door swings open and in she walks, the devil wearing my sister’s skin. I should be terrified but all I can think is, poor Lottie. My poor beast of a sister. What I would give to have her kneel next to me whispering naughty stories that she knows will upset me.
“Your housekeeper killed my servant,” she says in a snarl. “So I choked her to death.”
“Bess. Lottie, no. This has to stop.”
“Mama is dead, Bess is dead, Miss Stevens is dead. It’s just you. And me.”
“Lottie, please stop this. I know you can hear me. I know you are in there somewhere.”
“Lottie?” the girl shrugs her shoulders. She walks across the room in slow and deliberate steps. I watch her feet, transfixed by them. Amazed that this girl can look so much like my sister, move so much like her. “I don’t know any Lottie. I only know death, and pain. Do you understand how long I have lived? Over a thousand years, little girl.”
“You’re not alive,” I say, surprised at how strong my voice sounds.
Lottie’s eyes flash. “I am alive as long as I am inside your sister.” She carries on in her path towards me. I stand my ground, determined to not be afraid anymore. This devil killed my mother, my Bess, my Bailey. “If you think that love exists, you are wrong. Humanity is a plague on this earth. I can’t stand it. I can’t stand the reek of you, the disease of you.”
“Bess sacrificed herself for me. That’s love. Real love.”
“And what about Mama? She didn’t love you,” Lottie sneers.
“Mama did love us. She was afraid, that’s all. She made a mistake. I forgive her for that, and you would too, Lottie. I know you would.”
“Forgiveness is weakness.” She stops in front of me, and I repress the urge to cover my nose with the sleeve of my dress. I have never experienced a stench so bad, not even when Bess left the kippers out in the sun by mistake.
“Forgiveness is beautiful,” I continue. “It is what makes us human.”
Lottie imitates me with a cruel sneer, twisting my voice into a high-pitched little girl whine. For some reason, it angers me. It angers me so much that I want to fight her. I shove her with both hands and Lottie stumbles backwards.
She tilts her head from side to side and I hear a crack in her neck. “What do you think you’re doing? Don’t you comprehend who you’re dealing with? I’ve taken many souls tonight. I am stronger than you will ever be.”
“It doesn’t matter,” I say. “It doesn’t matter if you take me. Lottie, it will mean I will be with you again.”
I step around my sister and
walk confidently out of the room. “Come on.” I turn and gesture to her.
Baffled, Lottie, or rather the demon or spirit inside her, follows me out of the room. I stand at the top of the stairs and take her hand, ignoring the dried blood on her fingers. The blood of my loved ones.
“It’s going to be okay, Lottie,” I say. “Look, there’s Mama waiting for us. And Bess.”
“What are you doing?” Lottie tries to jerk her hand away. Her bloodshot eyes are red-rimmed and fearful. “Why are you doing this?”
“You’re going to kill my sister anyway. At least this way we can do it together.”
Lottie’s gaze moves to the stairs, understanding what I intend to do.
I watch Liza leap, taking Lottie with her, and I watch her broken body hit the front door after they roll together to the very end of the staircase. When Lottie’s eyes glaze over, a black swarm lifts from her body, through her nose, her eyes and ears, and it finally leaves her. Liza lies beside her sister, their hands still clasped together.
The days go by. A key is placed into the lock of the door, and the man outside opens it to find the dead. A father grieves for his lost family, and the swarm gathers around him. But he cannot face life without them. He takes a length of rope and swings from the banisters.
I open my eyes and look once more at my mother. “How did it feel? That one glimpse of love?”
Her mouth twitches, but she says nothing.
“Liza gave you her love even though you were going to kill her sister. You felt it, didn’t you? She held your hand. She ended your pain for just a moment.” I climb to my feet. “What is it that you really want? Do you want to possess me so that you can feel love again? Do you want to live longer, to have the opportunity to be loved and love, like everyone else on the planet does?”
She opens her mouth and screams. With that scream comes the black tendrils described in Liza’s journal. But I’m too quick with my Athamé, chopping them away before they wrap around me.
“You don’t want me dead—”
“Don’t be so sure,” she says, watching me beat back her evil creations. “Your soul would give me a lot of power. With your soul I can go out and find someone even stronger.”
“Not in that body you can’t. Look what you’ve done to my mother.”
She grins. “Will you cry over Mummy? I’m going to tell you a little secret about Mummy dearest. But first, I want something of yours.”
One thing I never thought I’d see in this lifetime is my mother climbing up a wall and launching herself at me whilst roaring so loud I’m completely dumbfounded. Her bloody claws reach out for the Athamé, but I swat her hand away. She lands on top of me, knocking me to the ground with a thud. I resort to scrappy kicks, trying to knock her away from me. My stomach twists as I fight my own mother. I can’t bear the thought of hurting her. It’s too much. What if this kills her before I can get the spirit out of her?
She drags her nails across my collarbone and grabs my knife-wielding wrist with her other hand. I try to wrench my arm out of her grip but she’s too strong. Fighting every instinct to protect my mum rather than hurt her, I plunge my teeth into her shoulder. Mum cries out and I let go, horrified with the idea of hurting her. She slaps me hard across my face with the back of her hand, and my mouth fills with blood.
“I’m not your mother,” she says. “I’m not your mother.” Her hair drops in clumps on top of me, and her skin cracks. She slaps me twice more, and as my mind begins to fog, the shadow version of Miss Stevens floats into the room.
She kicks me in the side and I finally give up. I drop the knife. Mum retrieves it and stands, leaving me battered and bruised on the floor. “Now, that wasn’t so difficult, was it?” she says, standing over me. The last thing I see is a foot coming towards my face.
*
I wake with the overwhelming feeling that the house has finally absorbed me into its blackened soul, and that I’ve become trapped within it. I can’t move. Everything is dark around me. I’m in a small room, and there’s a rancid stench in the air.
A flame lights and two faces stare at me through the darkness. One is the dying body of my mother, cracked, broken, bruised, rotting. My stomach lurches at the sight of her. I want her, need her, to have the comfort of her arms once more. The other face is that of the shadowy Miss Stevens, a ghost so weak she can barely create a form. Weak people follow bad leaders. I hate her almost as much as the spirit who has possessed my mother.
I’m tied to a chair, my legs and arms bound. Lacey is nowhere to be seen, still stuck in the wall of my bedroom, I suppose. If I lose my mum and my best friend for good… I don’t know what I’ll do. But things aren’t looking great for me, either. Maybe they’ll last longer than I will. Maybe it’s my turn first. I hope I don’t become a ghost. I would rather eternal sleep, or eternal peace, whichever comes to those I send on with my Athamé.
Mum lights a candle and leans back on her chair. I glance around me. The walls are brick, the floor stone. We’re in the cellar of the house, the one that frightened our electrician. Cobwebs hang in the corners. A spider with long, spindly legs scuttles along by my feet. I kick it away. I can see why the electrician hated it here. There isn’t anything particularly frightening about it. All cellars are dark and damp. None of them are nice. But being here frightens me in the same way I was frightened when I was on the moors, and when I faced Gethen in Magdelena. A creeping sense of dread. A toe-curling sensation of wrongness, that only bad things will come if you stay in this place. You read stories about people who have a sudden urge to leave a store a few moments before a gunman comes in and shoots innocent people. That’s the only way I can describe this cellar. It’s as though the house is warning me that it’s not a safe place to be.
Very gently, I move my hands. They’re tied behind the chair in tight knots. It’s a long shot, but I have to do something, so I concentrate on loosening them.
“Susan tells me you’re frightened of spiders,” Mum says with a sick grin. “She tells me that you stand on the sofa and scream every time you see one.”
“I was little then,” I reply. “I’ve seen much worse than spiders since then.”
“Susan tells me about the time you told her the Things you see. She remembers it very clearly. She even remembers the pale colour of your skin. You see, it frightened her as much as it frightened you. Susan believes it might even have frightened her more than you. The problem is, Susan has tried so very hard to stay away from the dark. She’s worked very hard at it indeed. But you, Mary, you see zombies and ghosts, and that’s not very good for Susan at all. She can’t have that. Not after she’s worked so hard to have a normal family.” Mum claps her hands together, causing me to flinch away. “Off to the nut-house you go! Is that what they call them now? I try to keep up with the modern-day slang so I can fit in.”
“Did you possess Beryl? Did you make her sell the house?” I ask.
Miss Stevens giggles, covering her hand with her mouth coquettishly. The sight is so absurd that I could laugh along with her.
“Of course I did,” Mum replies. “Clever, isn’t it? Bet you wouldn’t have thought about it. I bet you, with your powers and your special aura, wouldn’t have been so intelligent as to do such a thing. I’ve been watching you for a while. Oh, I stay at Ravenswood most of the time. The place has such a… a… power. It draws me in. But that doesn’t mean I haven’t ventured out, looking for possibilities.”
“My dreams,” I say. “You’ve been trying to possess me in my sleep.” I carry on working the knots, wiggling my wrists. The knots are tight. I’ve barely even begun. I have to keep her talking.
“You’ve got quite a barrier over your mind,” she continues. “Impressive, really. But it isn’t going to last forever. However, before we work on that, I feel the need to tell you more about Mummy dearest.”
Chapter Twenty
“Susan tells me it happened before you were born. She was a year younger than you are now. Your mother was a
real heartbreaker. She had a bad-boy boyfriend and she loved it. She was a free spirit back then, if you can believe it. You can’t believe it, can you? I can see it on your face. Well, never mind, that part isn’t important. What is important is that she lied to you. She told you that she didn’t believe you. She made you feel like you were crazy. She left you alone to deal with your problems when she could have helped you. But she lied the entire time, because, Mary, your mother has been possessed before.”
It’s as though someone has pulled the safety cord from around me. The rug from under my feet. The wool from my eyes. It’s all gone. All of it. “What?”
Mum stands. “Susan is a liar. She does believe in ghosts. She’s fully acquainted with ghosts. She’s met at least one in her life. She understands exactly what it’s like. The thing about Susan is, she’s weaker than you. She let herself be taken by the spirit, out of shame, weak character, whatever.” She shrugs and walks around the cellar, moving in and out of the light from the candle.
“Mum doesn’t believe in ghosts,” I say. “You’re the liar.”
“Susan knows you would say that, because Susan knows you’re a better person than she is. She knows that you believe in your friends and family, that you’re loyal and you support them no matter what. Susan doesn’t know about your dead friend, but I do. Not many people would let their dead friend carry on existing when they have an Athamé in their possession.” Mum waggles the knife in her hand. “You can send Lacey off whenever you feel like it, but you wouldn’t do that, would you, Mary? You would rather Lacey chose to go. I’m telling you, Mary, that ghost girl is never going to leave. She’s going to carry on haunting you until you’re an old woman with a grown-up family, and she’s going to get more and more bitter every year. One day she’s going to kill. She’s going to kill because that’s what spirits do. They get vengeful and they get jealous and they want nothing more than to have other souls join us.”
