by Rose, M. J.
“Have you ever noticed how you can spot a stranger as soon as you see one?” the woman asked. “I don’t mean a stranger as in someone you haven’t yet met—like us—but someone who will forever remain a stranger to you? Someone you know you’ll never be able to understand or communicate with. It’s actually the very same ability that helps you quickly identify kindred spirits.”
“Yes, I have noticed.” Jac nodded.
“So it’s happened to you?”
When Jac had first met Theo Gaspard seventeen years before, she’d felt that instant bond. And years later when she’d met Griffin North she’d felt it again. They’d connected to each other in some deep, unfathomable way almost instantly. It was a connection she was still struggling to break. They couldn’t be together. They didn’t belong with each other. She had to find a way to stop mourning what was not meant to be.
“When it does happen, you need to trust your instincts,” the woman said.
“Why did you say that?” Jac was startled. It was almost as if the woman had been reading her mind.
“No magic, I’m afraid. I’m a therapist. I know how to read people. I was watching your expression,” she said. “If I said something that disturbed you, I’m sorry.”
In Jac’s bag was a bright-green leather notebook from Hermès. Her mother had bought it for her on her thirteenth birthday. “To write down your dreams and your nightmares,” she’d said. “Because if you write them down you make them real, and then you can control them instead of the other way around.”
The trick hadn’t worked for Audrey. Not even her own poetry had saved her. Nonetheless, Jac continued doing what her mother had suggested. And when she got to Blixer Rath, Malachai had encouraged her to continue keeping the dream journal. He’d even added a suggestion: to also keep a running list of the coincidences she encountered. So she’d turned the notebook around and going back to front, started to list them.
“One day,” Malachai had told her, “you’ll be able to read over your lists and see your life’s path. At each important juncture you can look back and understand what brought you to the next point. But understanding your journeys isn’t the only goal; you need to be in the moment and live them. When you are well enough to do that, my job will be done.”
Every year, Jac bought a refill for the Hermès journal from their store on Madison Avenue. She had eighteen of them in a steel filing cabinet at home. These days, in the front of the books, she kept ideas and notes about myths for her work. In the back she still listed coincidences. Even if she never went back and looked through them, it had become a habit.
Somewhere far off, a foghorn sounded and resonated across the water. A cry of warning. More human-sounding than machine.
“What kind of therapy do you practice?” Jac asked.
“Jungian.”
She wasn’t surprised. Things the woman spoke of had suggested it. “I thought you might. Jungian therapy is something that’s been part of my life for a long time,” Jac said, just as the foghorn sounded its warning again.
Despite her years of traveling, she was still a nervous traveler. Not so much because she was afraid of planes crashing, trains derailing or boats sinking, but because the idea that she was on an unknown path, filled with endless potential wins, wonders and disasters, overwhelmed her.
“Are you visiting Jersey on vacation?”
“No, for work,” Jac said, brightening.
The woman’s bracelet had worked its way out from under her sweater.
It was three braided ropes of blackened twisted gold. It looked very old and reminded Jac of the Celtic artifacts Bullock had shown her.
“Let me guess,” the woman said, appraising Jac. “Most people who come to the island for business are in finance . . .”
From her research, Jac knew Jersey was one of the few offshore banking capitals of the world. Although there were fewer than 90,000 inhabitants, the island had forty-five banks and 32,000 registered businesses. There was in excess of 189 billion pounds deposited on the island at any one time.
“But no . . . finance is too soulless for you. I should know, my family owns a bank. My father ran it. His father before him. My nephew runs it now. Cold, cold business. You try to be stoic like that, but you don’t manage it well, do you?”
Jac noted the shift from the business to personal and laughed. It was the best description of herself she’d heard in a long time. Exactly the kind of thing her brother would have said about her.
“Ah, I know what you’re doing here,” the woman said, still trying to figure it out. “You’re chasing your fate.”
“What do you mean?” It was such a curious comment, Jac thought.
The older lady smiled. Her green eyes twinkled. She was enjoying herself immensely now.
“Well, you aren’t wearing a wedding ring or any jewelry. So it appears you’re unattached. Not much luggage. You haven’t pulled out your cell phone the whole time we’ve been on the boat. No checking for texts or emails means no urgent, pressing matters, business or personal. No strings tethering you to people or places. That’s the obvious part. The not so obvious part is that you have all the hallmarks of a seeker. I’ve known a few in my time. I’ve even been flattered to have been called one. You chase special knowledge. You find threads of connections and then share them with the people who need them. I can read it in the way you’ve been looking out past the boat’s railing, how you looked at me, the questions you ask, but more importantly, the ones you don’t.”
Jac was slightly uncomfortable that a stranger was analyzing her but she was also intrigued by how perceptive the woman was.
“Don’t mind me. It’s an occupational hazard.” Opening her pocketbook, the woman reached inside and then handed Jac a small card. It was heavy stock, engraved with a heraldic design of a large bird that could have been a phoenix or an eagle. Under that was her name—Minerva Eastmond—with a phone number and an address in St. Helier’s Parish, Jersey, Great Britain.
“This is my office number and address,” she said. “If you need anything while you are here. A cup of tea, books on historic folklore, or just a friendly face. I have a lot of maps too. Old ones especially. The family has a large collection.”
“Thank you, I may take you up on that. I’m here to do a bit of exploring.”
“It’s one thing to be shown the path. Traveling it is something you can only do on your own.”
This whole conversation was surreal, Jac thought. “What made you say that?”
“We all share a consciousness. We breathe in each other’s air. Sometimes two souls can see each other’s shadows even when the sun isn’t out.” Minerva looked up at the fogged-out heavens. “It’s sunnier in Jersey than any of the other isles. But we’re having a bleak spell just now. A fog like this can linger for days. And if it turns cold, the damp can get in your bones. It’s almost as if after the summer rush of tourists, the island wants to rest, so she pulls closed the shutters and locks the door. It shouldn’t stop you, though. Sometimes I think secrets prefer the mist. We have a lot of hiding places here, not just our banks but the caves. They are our real treasure. That’s where the island myths are most alive.”
The deep sonorous foghorn blasted once more.
“We’re coming into port now,” Minerva said. “It’s good to come home.”
Jac searched the morass for any sign of land or buildings or boats, but all she saw was a thick gray wall of shadows.
Eight
SEPTEMBER 14, 1855
JERSEY, CHANNEL ISLANDS, GREAT BRITAIN
Being haunted is frightening. That, I might have guessed. But I never could have imagined how debilitating and exhausting it would be. I feel as if I am being consumed, suffocated and overwhelmed. Oh, how much attention all the spirits crave. And how clever they are to tempt me, promising to imbue me with powers. I have become addicted to their adoration. Terrified by their intensity. What a sacred horror I feel in their presence.
Some of the spirits no
longer constrain themselves to visit during the séances but now come to me afterward. By disturbing my sleep night after night they play havoc with my temperament. I cannot shut my window or my door on them. Walls are not barriers for these bloodless creatures. I cannot keep them at bay.
For the last four nights, one has been bolder than any of the others.
It begins with odd noises once the house has gone to sleep and all the lamps are extinguished. Floorboards groan, windows creak. My belongings stir even though the shutters are closed tight. Papers fly. And slowly a light fills the room, a brightness not of this world. In its center is the woman the islanders call La Dame Blanche.
She visited the table once last year and then not again till the day after I saw you on the beach. Since then she has returned each day. And not just to the séances. This prehistoric coquette calls on me in my room, teasing me while I dream, causing me to awaken. Standing before me, this ancient temptress, who is as beautiful and skilled as any Parisian whore, offers me her favors. In exchange she wants what the Shadow wants—for me to write poetry in her honor.
I know I can never satisfy my longing for a ghost. The thought alone is madness! But I crave her. I want to experience her in the way that only mortals can experience each other—with taste and touch and smell. But she has none of these. She is shadow and smoke. Knowing that makes no difference. My passion won’t listen to logic. And so my poetry fills with her. My sleep has begun to suffer. Day after day, I find myself desiring to commune with the dead more than with the living.
And I am no longer alone in being aware of her. La Dame’s spirit is so strong she is seeping through the membrane between the corporeal world and the fantasy world. My barber claims he saw her skulking around our house late one night as he made his way home. The grocer’s boy claimed to have seen her while making a delivery early one morning when it was not quite light out. Terrified, he ran away and hasn’t been willing to make any more deliveries to us.
Have you heard the local legend of this Woman in White? She’s one of the Druid myths that the islanders are so fond of retelling.
About one and a half kilometers from my house at Marine Terrace an imposing menhir rises from the ground. This is one of the great standing stones of Jersey, dating back to Druid times. Of that there is no question. What is less certain is the legend connected to the stone. It is said to be the vessel for the lady’s spirit, her prison during the day, where she pays penance for her crime. Only at night is she allowed to roam the island; at the first rays of sun, she is sucked back into her jail.
La Dame murdered her child. In our séances she had admitted as much and claims she is the first woman on Jersey to have killed her own infant. Her punishment has lasted for the last three thousand years, and she imagines that her soul will be forever imprisoned in the great standing stone.
Yesterday afternoon she visited our séance once again, talking of eternity, infinity and the sentence she was serving for her crime. Afterward I retired to my room and spent several hours transcribing her conversation, hearing her voice in my mind and writing down all the details she shared. As I worked I became more and more heated and uncomfortable. I opened the windows to let in the breeze, but no sooner had I done so than that infernal barking started up. The noise was a terrible distraction. But when I shut the window, I found myself almost unable to draw breath.
Throwing down the pen, leaving the paper on my desk without putting it away, I fled down the stairs and out the front door. Gulping fresh air, I raced to the beach. I needed to be by the sea, far away from the Lady’s smothering soul and the sound of the hellhound.
I had walked for only fifteen minutes when I heard a man call out to me.
“Monsieur Hugo?”
I turned to find the head man of the honorary police force, the connétable Jessie Trent. His silver-tipped baton caught the moonlight and gleamed.
“Good evening, Connétable.”
Trent was a tall, fit man with deep lines around his eyes and perennial frown lines crossing his forehead. I ran into him often during my nocturnal rambles, and over the last two years we’d talked about everything from the political problems on the island to the difference between sons and daughters. His first wife had died in childbirth three years before, after delivering their fifth son. He had remarried; his new wife had recently given him his first daughter. He always struck me as an unusually responsive father: there was always a child’s plaything sticking out of one of his pockets to bring home to his brood, and that night was no exception. I noticed a bit of red cloth tied in such a way that it resembled a dog.
“Have you been out walking long, sir?” Trent asked.
“Not more than a quarter of an hour. Is there a problem?”
“Did you hear that infernal racket?”
“The hounds? Yes. Why?”
“There’s a child that has gone missing. Her mother said there was a dog barking near the house. It has everyone nervous. You know islands like ours are full of fool legends. We’re out looking for the little girl.”
I’d heard a lot of the folklore about the dogs on Jersey. The most often repeated involved a black dog that roamed the cliffs of Bouley Bay in the parish of Trinity. Walkers who have encountered the hound claim he circles them at great speed and then simply disappears.
“Whose child is missing?” I asked.
“Tom Meecham’s. Do you know him?”
“The fishmonger?”
Trent nodded. “Lilly is a pretty thing. Just ten years old last week.”
He spoke about her as if he knew her and he probably did too. If I was correct his oldest was about that age.
“How long has she been missing?”
“We can’t be sure. Lilly went to bed along with her two sisters around seven o’clock when Mrs. Meecham settled down to do mending. About an hour later she heard a dog barking outside the cottage. It didn’t sound regular to her. Or to her dog, she said. He started pacing by the windows and growling. It was disturbing enough for her to get up and go around closing up. When she reached the room where her children sleep, their window was open and Lilly’s bed was empty. First she searched the cottage. Then the garden and the lane. Lilly’s a good girl, and very attached to her mum. If she had heard her calling, Lilly would have come out. When she didn’t, Mrs. Meecham sent one of the boys to the tavern to tell his father. Meecham came straightaway to me. Children don’t go missing often in St. Helier. Of course we have our runaways who stow away on boats, but never as young as ten, and boats don’t leave port at night.”
“Is it possible that Lilly just went out to find the barking dog? She might be especially sensitive to how distressed that hound sounded. I know I was.”
“I do think exactly that. But the question is, was the hound distressed or vicious? And while looking for him did she venture too close to a cliff? Or the sea? Did she fall? Is she hurt?”
“If there’s a search party under way, Trent, I would like to volunteer my efforts and those of my sons if need be.”
“And I’ll gladly accept,” he said. “If my men don’t find her tonight we’ll knock on your door at sunrise.”
“No, please at least let me help tonight. I wouldn’t be able to sleep now anyway, knowing what you’ve told me.”
Trent found me a stick that would work like a baton and said he was glad to have me. “If that dog’s rabid, it’s better if I’m not alone. I’ve split all the men up in teams, but we were an odd number.”
We set off down the beach.
“I know there’s crime on the island,” I said. “Fights, drunken brawls, thievery, but are there many unexplained crimes here? Have there been many murders?”
“She’s a missing child, Monsieur Hugo, not a dead one.”
But I had a feeling—one I wished I didn’t have—that she was dead. Or was soon going to be dead if we didn’t get to her.
“Don’t be letting your imagination get ahead of you,” Trent continued. “A man such as yourself who writ
es fine books and plays might think of the most dramatic scenario, but this is probably just a little girl gone missing while searching for a dog she heard barking.”
The island’s honorary police force of one hundred and fifty-seven men was divided into twelve parishes. St. Helier, having a robust population of over twenty thousand people, had almost thirty police. All of them and others, men like myself who’d heard about Lilly’s disappearance, were walking the roads, searching fields and forests, climbing the rocks, exploring the caves on the beach, all calling out the little girl’s name.
Lilly . . . Lilly . . . Lilly . . . The chant filled the air and became a solemn refrain. Sometimes sounding like a hymn to hope. Other times a funeral dirge.
The night grew chilly around us. We walked for a long time, making a huge circle, and then returned to St. Aubin’s bay. Elizabeth Castle was in sight. The castle can only be accessed by foot at low tide and we’d missed that. We looked out and wondered aloud if the little girl might have gotten across the sandbar earlier. The ruin is impressive during the day and foreboding at night. Especially that night. The fog was rolling in, diffusing the moonlight. But within ten minutes we lost sight of the castle as a dense mist descended. Trent insisted we curtail our search and resume in the morning. There was really little choice. We could no longer see one foot in front of the other. If we took a step too far we could go off a cliff or fall into a crevice.
The fog was so heavy that within minutes we had lost all sense of direction. “There’s no use trying to find our way back,” Trent said in exasperation. “We’re too close to the rocks. In this soup we could come to great harm.”
“What do you propose?” My face was dripping with condensation. My hair was soaked through as if it were raining.
“We need to try to get away from the sea and inland just a bit.” Trent stood still and breathed in deeply. “To the right up here, there’s a field of some kind, I think. I can smell the cow dung. We should be safe enough.”
