Banish

by Nicola Marsh

  Considering how fast Mom had gone downhill in the months after I’d turned twelve, I couldn’t help but wonder if she’d deliberately protected me from the oncoming storm.

  A storm I was riding straight back into as the bus headed for Broadwater.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  AN UNSEASONABLY WARM breeze ruffled my hair as I loped up Main Street, thankful I’d arrived around midday during the predictable lull, when there were few people around. One shopper exited the grocery store, two women entered the hairdresser’s and a bunch of oldies sat outside the diner, gossiping over cooling tea. I avoided making eye contact with anyone, focusing instead on the sliver of lake visible at the end of the street as I trudged towards home.

  Home.

  The label rolled around my head, conjuring up visions of open fires and toasting marshmallows and hearty meals. Laughter on Christmas mornings, lazy lie-ins on Sundays and curling up with a book under a towering oak.

  Sadly, the only one of those fanciful yearnings I’d indulged in over the last few years was reading a book, usually under the covers late at night when I’d tried to lose myself in a fantasy world far removed from my reality.

  Hating the nervous pounding of my heart, I reached the end of the street and slowly turned my head to the left, catching my first glimpse of the house. I’d always loved it: the duck-egg blue rendered walls, the alabaster window frames and trimmings, the front bay window, the russet tin roof. Even the flaky white picket fence and rusty gate hanging off one hinge were endearing.

  It was what went on inside the house that made me want to turn back and re-board the bus for New York City.

  Feeling like a stranger, I stepped through the gate, careful not to make it squeak.

  I needed the upper hand to feel more in control, relying on the element of surprise, though I assumed Angie had rung ahead and informed Mom of my impending homecoming.

  I dragged my duffel up the path, dumped it along with my backpack outside the back door and pushed through the open screen.

  My breath caught when I saw Mom, sitting in her favourite canvas chair at the other end of the sunroom, with Demeter scampering in his cage at her feet. Degus were as exotic as chinchillas for a witch’s familiar. Trust the Wood sisters to be different.

  Demeter’s nose twitched as he lifted his head and looked in my direction. Personally, I would have preferred a cat but the little guy, who looked like a cross between a rat and a guinea pig, had grown on me. Mom never said where she’d got him. He’d just turned up one day about six years ago, following her around like she had him on a string.

  Later, I’d been glad, for having Demeter around seemed to calm Mom when the voices were at their worst. Her routine of cleaning out his cage, filling his nesting box with shredded paper towels and hay, and changing his thick chewing branches never failed to settle her jumpiness. Sometimes, I’d see her watching Demeter run on his exercise wheel, her lips slightly curved upwards at the corners—the closest she got to a smile—a definite contentment about her.

  Something I could never bring her, sadly.

  Mom didn’t turn as I entered, her profile surprisingly serene as she studied an open book on her lap.

  Unexpected tears stung my eyes and I blinked them away. How many nights had I cried myself to sleep, wishing I could understand the demons that plagued my mom, wishing I could help, wishing my life was different? Too many times. And I’d be damned if I wasted time now wishing for futile things that would never happen.

  As I stepped into the sunroom the unfamiliar scent of floor polish and jasmine hit me and I baulked. That’s when I tore my gaze off Mom and looked around for the first time.

  When I’d left, the floors had been peeling like the walls, the faded parquetry pattern embossed on the boards all but invisible. Now, the black diamonds contrasted strongly against the grey and the whole thing had been polished to a soft glow that made me scared to tread further.

  Glancing around, I noted other changes: the newly painted lemon walls and blue door, the hall table cleared of years’ worth of newspapers and a cut-glass vase filled with fresh jasmine. The flowers jarred the most, as incongruous as discovering my mom sitting quietly and not pacing the house trying to climb the walls.

  With the cloying tang of jasmine in my nostrils, I shook out my hands, unkinked my neck from side to side like a prizefighter about to enter the ring, and strode down the hallway.

  “Hey, Mom.”

  She lifted her head, the sun slanting on her clean hair, picking out highlights in the strawberry blonde pixie cut.

  I hadn’t seen her hair anything other than lank and dull and hanging in unwashed strands around her shoulders for years, and seeing the beautiful colour halfway between Angie’s auburn and my darker reddish blonde brought a lump to my throat.

  I stopped next to her chair, unsure whether to hug her and feeling like blubbering because of it.

  Mom smiled. “You’re home.”

  That’s when I got the biggest homecoming shock of them all, for Mom looked at me with complete lucidity, her hand steady as she touched mine.

  My mom had spent the last few years in a daze, her eyes perpetually glazed. And during that time she had never, ever touched me.

  Resisting the urge to bawl, I tolerated her touch for a second before squatting to give Demeter a scratch through the cage wire, and then sitting opposite her.

  “You look great,” I said.

  She didn’t preen or pat her hair or smile, normal reactions to a compliment. Then again, since when had my mom been normal?

  “Thanks. And you look…” Yep, that’s Mom, as articulate as ever. “Older.”

  “Tends to happen when I’ve been away six months.”

  She didn’t flinch from my sarcasm but a vein in her jaw pulsed.

  “So what’s with all the changes? I go away and you get your act together?” I waved my hand around. “Clean up the place?”

  “Long overdue.” Her calmness was a new addition too and it unnerved me as much as the other changes.

  “Let me get this straight…” I folded my arms and slouched against the armrest. “You’ve mooned around in a catatonic state for the last five years, letting me take care of you, virtually ignoring my existence, either drunk or talking to air most of the time and when I leave you get a new lease of life.”

  I shook my head, tears of resentment blinding me. “Nice, Mom. Way to go on making me feel good.”

  Slivers of pain stabbed at the studied indifference I’d shrouded myself in to face this reunion, cutting deeper than I could have thought possible. Shattered, I hung my head, willing the tears to evaporate, like the last lingering hope I’d harboured that I might actually mean something to my mom.

  “Alyssa?”

  I shook my head, unable to look at her until I’d composed my face into an expression other than devastated.

  “It’s time you knew the truth.”

  The quiver in her tone was nothing new; she’d increasingly spoken with fear over the past few years, like anything she said would be latched upon as a matter of national security. But the underlying thread of steel was new, like a mother taking control of a recalcitrant child and that, more than anything, got through to me.

  Dashing a hand across my eyes, I raised my head, the sorrow darkening her eyes to midnight as surprising as her newly acquired backbone.

  “The truth?” I sneered, my bitterness bubbling beneath a veneer of resistance. “This’ll be good.”

  To her credit, she didn’t sag or waver or collapse into a wailing heap. She sat there, her spine rigid, head held high and eyes clear, staring at me with a solemnity that was seriously starting to spook me.

  “Are you dying?” I was so stunned by the changes around here; maybe I wasn’t seeing the obvious? “Is that why you’ve tidied up round here? Getting your stuff in order?”

  This time, tears of regret burned the back of my eyes. “What I want to know is, if I hadn’t come back, when you would have told
me—”

  “Stop it, Alyssa. I’m not dying and you need to be quiet and listen.”

  My mouth dropped open. She’d never spoken to me in anything other than hushed tones, when she acknowledged me at all. To have her snap at me was as disconcerting as walking into this alternate universe that used to be my home.

  I folded my arms in mute rebellion and glared my consent.

  “You’re not going to like what I have to say, nor will you believe it but considering what you’ve been going through it’s time you acknowledged it.”

  My skin prickled at her nebulous it. I knew where this was heading. Angie had been in her ear, telling her about my so-called talent for seeing dead bodies.

  “Mom, cut the crap—”

  “Don’t you dare talk to me like that.”

  Another maternal rebuke that gave me whiplash with its severity and I almost grinned. How pathetically needy was I, that any form of acknowledgment from my mom, even the brunt of a sharp tongue, was better than being ignored?

  She took in a deep breath and blew it out slowly. “I’m sorry you’ve had to live with my…eccentricities these last few years.”

  Is that what the mental health professionals were calling madness these days?

  “I was selfish.”

  My ears only just caught her murmur and I narrowed my eyes, watching her, waiting.

  She gnawed on her bottom lip, the first hint of vulnerability I’d seen since I’d arrived. “I should’ve sent you away but I couldn’t bear to lose you earlier than I had to.”

  Her despondency made me swallow another sarcastic retort as I waited for her to continue.

  “You’ve heard of clairsentience?”

  I shrugged my indifference, curiosity piqued despite my foul mood.

  “It’s a psychic feeling, the ability to feel things that are intangible.”

  I compressed my lips tighter. She really didn’t want to hear what I thought of that theory.

  “I don’t have that.” She sighed and waited.

  What for? Applause?

  When I didn’t speak, the sadness in her eyes darkened.

  “I’ve been dealing with clairaudience.” She pointed to her ear. “Psychic hearing. I can hear things that are inaudible to the physical sense of hearing.”

  Damn, I knew I shouldn’t have left that DVD of The Sixth Sense lying around a few years ago. If she said, “I hear dead people”, I’d crack up for sure.

  She dragged in a breath and I noticed the slightest tremble in her hand as she unconsciously pleated her cotton capris.

  “I don’t just hear voices from the other side.” Her voice hitched and I couldn’t help but feel sorry for her. “I hear victims.”

  Despite the sunshine heating the sunroom, a chill slithered through me, leaving goosebumps in its wake.

  “Wicca legend says that trauma, shock or abuse can cause part of a victim’s soul to become ‘stuck’.” Her mouth down turned in sorrow. “That’s what I hear, the constant begging of stuck souls wanting to move on.”

  Shit.

  I knew Mom had been in a bad way all these years but walking into the serene normality of this house today had lulled me into a false security.

  She wasn’t better. She was a thousand times worse.

  I liked it better when she didn’t articulate her crazy delusions.

  She cleared her throat and her fingers moved from her pants to pluck at the ends of her peasant blouse. “The thing is, these souls become more agitated when near a soul retriever, because the retriever has the ability to reunite the stuck part with the soul so it can depart peacefully.”

  I’d heard enough.

  “Look, Mom, I’m glad you’re looking better but I can’t listen to any more of this—”

  “A soul retriever first manifests power around the age of twelve, just a flicker at first, that progressively strengthens over the teenage years. This newly awakening power drives the lost souls crazy as they clamour to be healed so they can move on.”

  I stood so fast my feet tangled in the wooden frame of the chair and I kicked it away, sending it slamming into the wall. My dread had blossomed into full-blown panic at what Mom was implying.

  Maths had always been my strong suit and by my swift calculations she’d become a hermit and started talking to thin air about five years ago.

  When I turned twelve.

  A week after Mom had that Skype argument with Angie.

  Mom’s disclosure certainly shed a whole new light on “she has a right to know” and “believing is forewarned”.

  I covered my ears with my hands. “This is bull—”

  “I should’ve sent you away but I couldn’t bear to have you face something so big on your own.” Her words filtered through my fingers and I lowered my arms to my sides, staring at her in disbelief.

  “Let me clue you in, Mom. The only something big I’ve faced over the last five years is living with your insanity and your alcoholism. I’m not the one with the problem. You are.” I yelled so loudly the windowpanes shook, my body buzzing with a shot of adrenalin that begged me to flee.

  “I drank to drown out the voices,” she said, her calmness pissing me off as much as her loony story. “The older you got, the louder they grew.”

  Fury flooded me to the point of dots dancing before my eyes. I couldn’t see, couldn’t breathe, and my hand flew to my throat to pull away my high-necked top to facilitate airflow before I passed out.

  “You’re. Blaming. This. On. Me?” I spat each word at her.

  She shook her head. “Never. I’m just trying to explain so you understand—”

  “All I understand is you’re freaking nuts!”

  Pushed past my limits, I thrust my face up close into hers. “How about now, Mom? Hear any voices? Any victims begging you to set your soul retriever daughter on them? Huh? Huh?”

  I fisted my hands to stop from pushing her, shoving her so hard she’d tumble backward off the chair. I wanted to—damn, I wanted to, my arms tingled with it—but I whirled away in disgust instead.

  “What would it take for you to believe me?”

  I wanted to ignore her whispered plea as the anger seeped away, soul-deep weariness replacing it, and I shook with the effort of remaining upright. With my sight firmly fixed on the door, I swallowed the lump of sorrow wedged in my throat.

  “Nothing. There’s absolutely nothing you can say to convince me that any of this is true.”

  I’d taken two steps towards the door when she spoke.

  “What if I tell you Noah is one of the victims waiting to move on and I can prove it?”

  My heart broke a little bit more.

  I wanted to believe her, believe in her. I wanted her to help me find answers. I wanted to believe one iota of her supernatural stuff so I could justify all the creepy things that had been happening to me.

  I wished she could hear Noah. I wished she could prove it. But I’d given up on wishes where Mom was concerned a long time ago, so I did the only thing possible.

  I kept walking.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  MOM FOLLOWED ME. All the way to my room, which was freshly painted like the rest of the place.

  I tried to slam the door so I could break down in peace but she wouldn’t let me. And that’s when I really lost it. I yelled and screamed and threw whatever I could lay my hands on, the frustration of the last five years spilling out in a torrent, directed at the one person I thought deserved it.

  Her passivity served as kindling to my rage as she stood in the doorway, not even ducking when I let fly with books and stuffed toys and old CDs. Luckily I’d always been lousy at sports and most of my shots flew wide, but when one of the books caught her on the corner of her eye and blood trickled out, I collapsed onto the bed and sobbed, curled up in a foetal ball.

  In the midst of my despair I sensed rather than saw her close the door and come sit next to me, her hand smoothing my back the exact same way I used to do to her when she’d almost passed
out after a bad binge.

  The sobs increased until I was choking with them, my body shaking and aching at the same time. But her ­comforting strokes never stopped and eventually my sobs subsided to hiccups and the trembling stopped.

  “I’m so sorry, baby, for lumping all this on you. But with what’s been happening, you’re safer knowing.”

  I squinted up at her from between swollen eyes, the blood on her face adding to my embarrassment over the hissy fit. Now all the resentment towards her had leeched out of my system, I actually felt like I could listen. Not believe, but listen.

  “Angie told you?”

  “Uh-huh. Sounds serious.”

  I toyed with lying to her for all of two seconds before realising I’d come this far, she might as well know everything. “I didn’t tell Aunt Angie everything.”

  Her hand stilled, resting on my shoulder. It felt kinda nice. “There’s more?”

  “Hmm-mmm.”

  Her hand resumed its soothing stroking and I almost purred. “Tell me everything,” her wary expression that of someone used to rejection and still expecting it. “I’d like to help if I can.”

  As far as olive branches go, it was the first thing she’d said since I’d got here that made sense, and that I was willing to accept. The whole soul retriever theory? Not buying it.

  “It’s kind of a long story.”

  The corners of her mouth curled up, the closest I’d come to seeing my mom smile in years. “I’ve got all the time in the world.”

  “Okay.”

  While I liked having my back stroked, I needed to sit up for this, so I scooted into a sitting position and hugged my knees to my chest. Her hand rested on my foot, almost like she was afraid to let me go now I’d finally calmed down.

  “I’m dating a guy, a musician, who emailed me a song he wrote just for me. Nothing unusual, cos he’d been sending me music videos for a few weeks before that, but this one was special, after our first date.”

  The wistful yearning had returned to her face, as if she missed not sharing the normal mom–daughter stuff. The feeling was mutual.