by Sam Short
“Because it’s the truth,” said Hilda, her voice deep again. “I attempted to take control of Hilda, but she was too strong. I had no chance, and I’m glad I didn’t. I’d always wondered if the whole thing about sneaking into this dimension, and taking control of a human, was morally justified, and it seems it wasn’t. It’s quite an evil idea, if I’m being honest, and I’m not evil. I was led astray by a demon who is evil. That one over there! In the body of the man who was screaming! He’s evil, not me.”
“Not evil?” said Sergeant Spencer. “You’re a demon! You’ve possessed a woman!”
Reuben gave a little cough. “Excuse me, Sergeant Spencer. I’m a demon, and I’m not evil. Not all demons are innately evil. And I’ve technically been possessing the body of this bird since Esmeralda brought me from the other dimension and placed my energy within it. It’s very possible that Baskill — Basil, and Mrs Raymond are sharing a body. Peacefully.”
“It’s entirely possible,” said Mrs Raymond, her voice her own again. “And I’m having a wonderful time with Basil inside me. I’ve never felt healthier, and I have the senses of a superhero! Basil and I could hear the cries of his rowdy companion all the way from my garden, where we were doing early morning yoga. We were in extended puppy pose when we heard the screams. We rushed here straight away.”
“Why did you rush here?” said Henry, narrowing his eyes, his pupils magnified by his spectacles. “To come to the aid of your fellow demon, perhaps? To set him free? Or to revisit the scene of your heinous crime?”
“Crime?” said Hilda, confusion furrowing her brow. “What crime, Henry Pinkerton?”
“The murder of Tom Temples!” snapped Henry. “You can’t fool me, demon. I’m not stupid! This is an act. Hilda is not speaking to us! We are listening to the false utterings of a demon.”
“It’s me,” said Hilda. “Really. It’s me.”
“I don’t believe you, demon,” said Henry. “And this isn’t the first time you’ve been back to this spot since the two of you malevolent entities arrived from The Chaos. Is it? You came back looking for your partner on Tuesday night, didn’t you? Under the cover of darkness. And when you discovered his skeletal remains, you couldn’t control your rage! When you stumbled upon poor Tom Temples digging for gold in the dunes, you took your anger out on him, and bludgeoned him to death with his own shovel! And when I’ve cast you from Hilda’s body, demon, the poor woman will have to live with the memory of what you forced her to do to a fellow human being, for the rest of her days. You’ve taken Tom’s life, and you’ve ruined Hilda’s!”
“Of course I didn’t kill Tom Temples!” said Hilda. “I wasn’t even aware that the poor man was dead! I’ve been very busy this week, becoming accustomed to Basil’s presence in my mind. I haven’t had the time to keep abreast of town affairs. Poor, poor, Tom. I liked him. You must believe me, Henry! You’re talking to Hilda — Basil does not control me, and we certainly did not kill a man!”
Henry turned to Sergeant Spencer. “If she moves, use that Taser. I shall return momentarily.”
“Where are you going?” said Millie.
“To get the stone of integrity,” said Henry. “The same one I used on you, Millie. It doesn’t work on humans, but Hilda has a demon within her. She is, at the moment, a paranormal person. The stone will work on her and allow us to get to the truth. It will tell us if she speaks honestly, or lies to our faces.”
“Go and get your silly stone, Henry,” said Hilda, adjusting her headband. “Basil and I have nothing to hide!”
A whip crack marking his departure, Henry was gone, leaving Hilda staring at the space he’d been standing in. She glanced around at the rest of the people watching her, her eyes travelling to the pouch on Sergeant Spencer’s belt. “I did not kill Tom,” she said. “And you won’t need that weapon today, Sergeant Spencer. Not to use on me.”
“Why did you come here today, Hilda?” said Judith.
“Because we heard the screams,” said Hilda. “I told you. The demon in that man’s body over there is emitting high pitched sounds, along with the shouts and screams that you could hear. He was calling to Basil.”
“And you came to help him?” said Sergeant Spencer.
“No!” said Hilda. “We came here to make sure he didn’t do any harm to anybody. Basil had hoped that his bones would have been dust by now! We were shocked to hear his screams — it could mean only one thing — that he had possessed a human host! We rushed here when we realised! Basil wants to send him back to the dimension he came from, don’t you, Basil?”
Hilda’s voice deepened once more. “I do indeed,” she said. She moved towards Peter Simmons, and raised her voice. “Did you hear that, Krackanagromit? I’m going to make sure you return to where you belong. You’ve always led me astray! I’ve tried to be a good demon, but you wouldn’t let me be good. Well, now I’ve found a new companion. A kind and caring companion, and I won’t be needing you any longer! You can go back to the dark and find another idiot to manipulate!”
Peter Simmons’s face darkened, and he opened his mouth wide, struggling against the handcuffs and emitting an angry screech which hurt Millie’s ears.
“He’s not happy,” said the demon within Hilda. “He’s promising vengeance.”
Another whip crack echoed across the dunes, and Henry appeared with a pouch in his hand. “I can assure you that he won’t be getting his vengeance,” he said, opening the leather pouch and retrieving an orb from inside. “Hold out your hand, please, Hilda,” he ordered.
Hilda did as Henry asked, the stone glowing amber as it touched her palm. “I can feel it vibrating,” she said.
“That’s because it’s working,” said Henry. “And soon, it will give us the truth.” He pushed his glasses along his nose, and stared into Hilda’s eyes. “Are you in control of Hilda’s body, demon?” he asked.
Hilda frowned, and answered in a deep voice. “No, and neither do I wish to be. She is my friend and can speak for herself. I have no control over her.”
Reflected in the thick glass of Henry’s spectacles, the stone glowed a bright blue, shimmering and flickering as Henry asked a second question. “Did you kill Tom Temples?” he said.
“No,” said the voice of Basil. “Hilda and I did not kill Tom. We killed nobody, and we have no intention of ever harming anybody. You need not fear our relationship. You need not fear me.”
Emitting a gentle hum as it throbbed an even brighter blue, Henry plucked the stone from Hilda’s outstretched hand, and placed it back in the pouch. “You speak the truth. The stone is never wrong. I am sorry I doubted you,” he said.
“And Basil can stay? In this world? In my body?” said Hilda.
“I see no reason why not, Hilda,” said Henry. “It is with your consent that he dwells within you. It is nobody else’s right to tell you what you may do with your life, and as Basil seems benign, I believe he poses no risk to this world or its occupants. The stone was quite adamant that you spoke the truth.” He looked at Peter Simmons, as the captive man gave another angry shout. “The demon within him, on the other hand,” he said, “must be banished from this dimension. I will arrange to have him transported to Spellbinder Hall, where I will free Peter from his unwelcome guest, and send the demon back into The Chaos.”
“Do you think he killed Tom?” said Hilda. “The other demon, I mean?”
“No,” said Millie. “That would be impossible. The demon had already begun to decompose before Tom was killed, and it would have been dust by now if Peter Simmons hadn’t touched it and become possessed by it. The demon didn’t kill Tom.”
“Then who did?” said Hilda. “Do you have a suspect, Sergeant Spencer?”
“No,” said Sergeant Spencer. “We don’t. We have no suspects, and no leads. It’s still a mystery. A mystery I want to solve as soon as possible, but until we do, life must go on as normal.”
Chapter 20
Reuben woke Millie from a deep sleep, his beak cold on her ear. “Time to get up,” he
said. “Judith is here, and she needs your help.”
“Help with what?” Millie said. “It’s Saturday, and Sergeant Spencer said that until he had any further leads on the Tom Temples’s murder, he was focusing on routine police work. What does Judith want?”
“You’re supposed to be the mind reader, not me,” said the bird. “You tell me.”
“I can pick up on some thoughts, Reuben,” said Millie. “I’m not a mind-reader, and anyway, it’s not a gift I like to use. It can be upsetting, sometimes.”
“I didn’t want a speech, Millie,” said Reuben. “I was saying it in jest. I just want you to get out of bed so you can make me breakfast. Everything’s back to normal — I’d like to revert to normal meal times again, if that’s not too much trouble?”
“Everything’s not back to normal, really, Reuben,” said Millie, swinging her legs from the bed. “We don’t know who killed Tom.”
“Apart from that little detail,” said Reuben. “Everything else is, though. There’s not a campervan in sight. There are no skeletons in the sand dunes. Mrs Raymond and Basil seem very happy together, Henry removed the demon from Peter and sent it scurrying back to The Chaos, you and George still haven’t spoken since that ridiculous argument, and I have a belly which is going to rumble its way out of my ears if it’s not fed soon. That’s normality enough for me.”
Millie smiled. “Me too. Come on then, let’s go and see what Judith wants, and then I’ll make some bacon.”
“And eggs?”
“And eggs,” said Millie.
Reuben fluffed up his plumage. “And tonight? Are we going to do… our thing?”
“Pizza and wine?” said Millie.
“No,” said Reuben. “You know what I mean. The pearl of wisdom. I think we should use it tonight. You said we’d use it last night, but then you said you were too tired. I really think you need to do it, Millie. I think it will change your life. For the better.”
“Maybe,” said Millie, glancing at the envelope propped up against her bedside lamp. “Just, maybe.”
Throwing her dressing gown on over her favourite sleeping shirt, Millie entered the living room to find Judith standing next to the fireplace, dressed in a white hoodie and shorts, with an apology in her eyes, and a police file in her hands.
“What’s that look for?” said Millie. “What are you going to ask me?”
“I’m sorry to wake you so early at, erm…” She glanced at her phone. “Half-past seven, but I need a favour? If you’d be so kind?”
“What sort of favour?” said Millie.
“Dad updated the missing person file for Jill Harris yesterday,” she said.
“The missing mother,” said Millie, switching the kettle on. “And how can I help you with that?”
“I phoned Jill yesterday to tell her, and she asked if I could take it to her today. At eleven o’clock. On a Saturday,” said Judith. “She’s expecting me.”
“And you can’t, so you’d like me to do it for you,” said Millie, smiling. “Of course I will. I had nothing else planned.”
“Thank you,” said Judith. “It’s for Dad, more than me. I just go along with it, to make him happy.”
“Go along with what?” said Millie.
Judith smiled. “It’s this thing we do together — every year. It’s like an anniversary, but I sometimes forget, like I did this year — hence me phoning Jill Harris and arranging an appointment on a Saturday of all days. When Dad came down for breakfast this morning dressed in his shorts and his Bexington Zoo t-shirt, I pretended I’d remembered. I went upstairs and changed into my zoo shirt, then I told him I was just nipping out to get some sun-cream as it’s going to be so hot today, and rushed over here on my bike. I didn’t want to cancel with Jill, the poor woman, and I think Dad would be gutted if he thought I’d forgotten our thing again.”
“Okay,” said Millie. “I definitely don’t mind helping you, Judith, but I will be needing help with something myself.”
“Anything!” said Judith.
Millie frowned. “I need to know why your father came down to breakfast dressed in a Bexington Zoo t-shirt. Then I need to know why you put a zoo shirt on, and then I need to know why zoo t-shirts are an important factor in the story you just told me.”
Judith smiled. “It’s nice, really,” she said. “When Dad adopted me as a two-year-old, and brought me to Spellbinder Bay when I was three…after the accident… you know.”
Millie approached Judith and put a hand on her arm. “You don’t need to talk about it,” she said. “I’m sorry for asking, I didn’t think it would dredge up bad memories.”
“Don’t be silly,” said Judith. “The bad memories were from a time before Dad adopted me and brought me here. Those memories are locked in one box, and the memories I have of my time in Spellbinder Bay are locked in a different box. I’m rummaging through the second box today.”
“I understand,” said Millie. She did understand. The two boxes in her own head may not have contained the awful memories that one of the boxes in Judith’s head contained — the memory of accidentally killing her own parents with magic, but her two boxes each held memories of a different part of her own life — one box brimming with ten years worth of memories of the time before her mother died, and the other box containing the memories of the fourteen years afterwards.
Judith placed her hand over Millie’s. “So, when we moved here, lots of people in town were very supportive of me and Dad, especially the paranormal community — who knew of my history. There was always somebody at our house. I was only three, but I still remember all the cakes people brought for us, and all the meals they cooked. I don’t remember who they all were. I was young — all their faces have blurred into one over time, but they were kind people.”
“A real community,” said Millie.
“It was… is,” said Judith. “And they arranged things, you know? Community picnics on the beach, day trips — that sort of thing. Things that would help take a three-year old’s mind off her past. As I grew older, the visits to our house became less frequent, and the picnics and day trips stopped, but Dad and I still took our trips together. Especially to Bexington zoo. I used to love it there! Dad would take me once a month until I was six or seven, then once every six months or so, and now it’s once a year — on the same day — or the closest Saturday to it.”
“Today,” said Millie.
“Yes,” said Judith with a grin. “Dad has turned it into our day. He’s very big on it — he never forgets. We’ve only missed it twice, and that was because of Dad’s work, but he always took me as soon after the day we’d missed as he could.”
“It sounds like a lovely tradition,” said Millie.
“It is,” said Judith. “If you like zoos.”
“But the t-shirts?” said Millie. “What’s that all about?”
Judith laughed. “There’s a gift shop at the zoo, and Dad buys us both a t-shirt from it every time we go — it’s the last place we visit before leaving the zoo. Then we wear the shirts he’s bought the next time we go. So the shirts we’re wearing today, are the shirts he bought us last year. It’s silly, really, but Dad loves it.”
“And is your shirt under that hoodie?” said Millie, raising an eyebrow.
“It is,” said Judith. “Would you like to see it?”
“Naturally,” said Millie, taking a step backwards, and smiling as Judith unzipped her jacket.
“The arrow on Dad’s shirt is pointing the other way,” said Judith, rolling her eyes as she revealed the grinning face of a chimpanzee, with an arrow below it, and the words, I’m with that cheeky monkey.
“That’s so funny!” said Millie. “You’re lucky to have a father like that, Judith. I hope you both have a lovely day at the zoo, and don’t worry about your appointment with Jill Harris. I’ll be there on time.”
Chester Harris opened the door. Dressed in scruffy clothing, his eyes bloodshot and his hair dishevelled, he looked ill. “Hello?” he said.
/>
“Hello, Mister Harris,” said Millie. “I’ve come to bring your wife the updated files concerning her missing mother. My colleague spoke on the phone with her yesterday. She made an appointment for eleven. My colleague couldn’t come, so I’m here instead.”
“Oh, yes, right. Come in, I suppose,” said Chester. “She’s in the kitchen. Would you mind showing yourself through? You remember where it is from the last time you were here? I was just going upstairs for a lie-down.”
“Yes, I remember. Thank you,” said Millie, stepping into the hallway and closing the door behind her as Chester began climbing the stairs to her left.
“You’re welcome,” said Chester, his back to Millie as he reached the top of the stairs and vanished into one of the rooms.
Giving a gentle knock first, Millie pushed the kitchen door open. “Hello, Mrs Harris,” she said, speaking to the lady sitting at the table, a mess of pieces of paper and envelopes in front of her.
“Oh, hello!” she said, getting to her feet. “Please, come on in, and call me Jill. Would you like a cup of tea or coffee?”
“A coffee would be lovely,” said Millie. “Black, no sugar, please.”
“I was expecting the other young lady,” said Jill. “Not that it matters, of course.”
“She sends her apologies,” said Millie. “She couldn’t make it.”
“That’s fine. I hope that husband of mine was polite when he let you in,” said Jill, grabbing two mugs from a cupboard. “He’s been like a bear with a sore head this last week.”
“He was fine,” said Millie. “He did look a little tired, though.”
“He’s not sleeping, you see,” said Jill. “He’s got something on his mind, but he refuses to tell me what. He’s adamant that he’s okay.” She winked. “Men, hey?”
Millie sighed. “Indeed,” she said. “Men.”
“You’ve got a man problem, yourself?” said Jill.
“Sort of,” said Millie. “An unresolved argument. It will work itself out, though.”
