by S. C. Ransom
I quickly retrieved the bag from the bin and silently ran upstairs, carefully shutting my bedroom door before upending the contents of the bag on the floor. It didn’t take long to find the card. Small and white, it had a little logo with St Paul’s in the corner.
Reverend Veronica Waters
I looked at the phone numbers, then scrambled to my feet to get the letter from my desk. The mobile number was the same. I sat back down with a thump. It was her, but what did it mean? And why was she so keen to talk to me? There was only one way to find out. I picked up my mobile and punched in her number.
“Hello, Reverend Waters here.” The voice was warm and friendly.
I swallowed hard. “It’s Alex.” My mouth was so dry it was barely more than a whisper. There was a sharp intake of breath then a momentary silence.
“Alex, thank heavens! We really, really need to talk. You know who I am, don’t you?” Her voice became more guarded.
“I’ve just worked it out.”
“I’m sure it’s a shock, but we have no time to waste.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m not able to talk right now. I’m on the train to Shepperton.”
“What! What do you think you’re doing?”
“You kept running away; what else was I supposed to do?”
I couldn’t have her coming to the house, not with my mum still bustling around downstairs. “Not here,” I muttered, thinking fast. “I’ll meet you at the garden centre down the road.” I didn’t really want to be anywhere alone with her, and the garden centre would have plenty of people wandering about.
“I’ll be there in about an hour,” she said.
“I’ll tell Callum to meet us there. He’s off gathering at the moment.”
She was suddenly sharp: “Just us, Alex, that’s really important. There are things we need to discuss that we shouldn’t share with anyone just yet.”
“Well, I’m going to tell him that I’m meeting you. He’ll get worried.”
“Please don’t tell him, or any of the other Dirges, anything about this. At least listen to what I have to say first. What harm can it do?” She had a very firm, no-nonsense tone.
“That attitude’s got me in trouble before,” I muttered, mainly to myself, remembering the time Catherine fed me a load of lies about Callum and drove a wedge between us. “OK, I’ll see you in a bit. Go to the café in the garden centre.”
The phone went dead. I slumped back into the futon, massaging my temples to get rid of the headache that was threatening to make an appearance. Why did everything have to be so complicated? I hated not being straight with Callum: there had been too much of that over the last few days. I wondered what could possibly be so desperate that she couldn’t tell me on the phone, and why she was so determined that I didn’t tell the Dirges about her. She hadn’t exactly been hard to spot before, hanging about at St Paul’s all the time. But there was no way to work it out; I was just going to have to wait.
There was plenty to occupy me. I started to search the Internet for information about Lucas, but it was difficult to get hold of anything in addition to the basics of the original story. The facts about his life were very sketchy as they were from so long ago, and some of it seemed to be made up. I was almost ready to give up when my phone beeped with a text.
I reached over to see who it was, hoping for a light-hearted distraction from one of my friends.
Hi, hope you got home OK. Will be in Richmond tomorrow, was wondering if you fancied a drink? Max x
The memory of Max’s easy smile caught me off guard and for a moment I was overwhelmed by the possibility of doing something normal with someone uncomplicated. I sighed as I reread the message.
“That’s a big sigh. What have you found out?” Callum’s silky voice was back in my head and I smiled. Whatever other rubbish was going on, he was there for me. And he didn’t need any more pain.
“Oh, nothing, that’s the problem,” I said, smoothly flicking the phone off and reaching for the mirror. There was a tiny hint of suspicion on his face and for a moment I wondered if he had seen the message, but there was no way I was mentioning Max again, not after the last time. “I’ve got to go and do some dull chores too, so I’ve only got about twenty minutes.”
“Ah well, this will have to do for now.” His long fingers traced a path down my arm. “Much as I’d like to sit and do this all evening, I don’t have that long before I have to do more gathering too. Is there no more news about Lucas? Didn’t you manage to find out anything else?”
“No,” I said, angling back the lid of my laptop so that he could read the screen. “Look, nothing useful at all. They don’t seem to have published any information about how he went missing, or any of the details of how he died. It’s all very odd.”
“At least we can be sure it’s him. That photo is pretty creepy.” He nodded towards the screen as I scrolled through a couple of items. “So according to that, he had been a Dirge for fifty-three years.”
“So it seems. How long did he think he had been there?”
“It’s really hard for us to tell, and I didn’t spend a lot of time talking to Lucas, but Matthew guessed about twenty-five or thirty years. I asked him earlier,” he added in response to my sharp look.
So he’d been there twice as long as they thought, then. I made a mental note, but didn’t think it was fair to bring it up. Callum was ahead of me though. “So although I think I’ve been here about ten years, in reality it could be longer. Much longer. I could easily be twice your age.”
“There’s really no point in worrying about that, is there? I can’t bring you over anyway, not now.” My voice caught on the last bit and I dropped my gaze.
“Hey, none of this is your fault, you know. In fact, you’ve given every one of us hope.”
“What do you mean? If you’re talking about Catherine I have no idea where she is, and she won’t help anyway. That’s if she was telling the truth about being able to in the first place.”
He paused for a moment and then spoke so softly I had to strain to hear. “You can set us free, Alex. You can release us all.”
I stared at him in horror. He meant every word. I finally found my voice. “You can’t mean that. I’m not going to kill you!”
“But you have to. Matthew will be coming to ask you, to arrange the details.” He smiled at me gently. “Don’t forget that we are already dead. All you’ll be doing is moving us on.” He stroked my hair with his featherlight touch, an unreadable look in his eyes. “You’re our only hope. Matthew wants you to do it as soon as possible.”
I sat back, aghast. How had this happened? They wanted me to murder their entire community.
Callum continued to sit there, the strange look on his face. I couldn’t sit still, so leapt up and started pacing my small room. I could see in the mirror that he was watching me, waiting.
I finally slumped back down again. “Is that what you want, really?” I asked in a small voice.
“No, you daft girl, what I really want is to be over there with you, real and alive like Catherine, but I have to face facts.” His kind tone turned bitter.
“I can’t do it to you, Callum. I just can’t. I can’t hurt you so badly that you end up looking like you’ve been tortured to death!”
“Not even if I ask you to?” He looked at me unblinkingly. “You love me, Alex, I know, but at this point it’s our only sensible choice.”
“I’m not going to discuss this. There’s no way it’s going to happen. I’m not going to line you all up and inflict that on you one by one.”
Callum shut his eyes for a moment, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Fine, let’s leave it for now. But we will need to talk about it again, and soon.” He paused for a second as we heard Josh walk past my bedroom door, then carried on in a quieter tone even though there was no way Josh could hear him. “In the meantime, have you been able to find out anything about the dodgy vicar woman?”
“I’ve been concentr
ating on looking for reports on Lucas,” I whispered back, avoiding answering his question. “Did you have any luck at the cathedral?”
“None,” he said gloomily. “All I can do is follow her if I happen to see her. I can’t go rummaging through the files and find out where she lives, I have to wait for someone to leave it out and that could take forever.”
I hesitated for a second, but decided to give Veronica the benefit of the doubt. Another few hours weren’t going to hurt. “I’ll keep looking until I have to go out. There has to be some information about her somewhere.” I made a move for the laptop, as if I was about to start searching.
“Leave that for now – let’s just sit for a bit. I think we deserve it after the day we’ve had.” In the mirror I could see him holding me tightly, his left arm with its amulet across in front of me and superimposed on my right arm, his head behind my right shoulder. Even the day of worry and pain hadn’t affected his staggering good looks. My heart leapt into my mouth as I watched him. I still couldn’t believe that someone so beautiful and so kind wanted me. And what was even harder to believe was that he truly wanted me to murder him.
I wasn’t going to let that happen. If Veronica couldn’t tell me something useful then I was just going to have to find Catherine, wherever she had disappeared to.
I persuaded Callum that I needed to go and do my chores, and he went off gathering. Part of me hoped that he would follow me and see Veronica as it seemed so unreasonable to keep it from him, but I resisted the temptation to give him a hint. As I walked up the road to the garden centre I kept trying to imagine what it was that she wanted to hide from the Dirges, but could come up with nothing. Not wanting to be late, I arrived in the café in plenty of time and crept along behind the racks of pot plants to find somewhere to watch unobserved, wanting to check her out when she arrived.
But she was early too, and was at a table facing the entrance, hands folded in her lap. She wasn’t reading or checking her phone, but was just sitting watching the entrance intently. There was something strange about the way she sat, as if she was used to waiting. I wondered again what she could possibly want to tell me and why she was being so weird about it. I watched her for a couple of minutes, but it really wasn’t going to get me anywhere; the only way to find out what she wanted was to go and ask. I stood up straight, tossed my long hair over my shoulder and walked purposefully into the café.
As Veronica saw me a huge smile lit up her face, doubling the lines etched in her skin. “Alex! You came. I’m so pleased to see you.” She stood up and took a step forward.
“Hello, Veronica.” My smile was more guarded and she immediately pulled back from what might have been an attempt to hug me. Until I knew what she wanted I was determined to be cautious.
“Please, Alex, do sit down,” she said. “I’ll get us some drinks. Coffee or tea?”
“Coffee, please.” I sat at the small table while she went to the counter. She wasn’t wearing her cassock or even a dog collar, just ordinary old-lady clothes. She looked particularly unthreatening, and a bright-yellow light flickered above her head. She returned with the drinks and a couple of large chocolate-chip cookies.
“So, Alex, here we are at last. It’s good to have the opportunity to talk.”
I nodded briefly, wanting to hear her story first.
“So you know who I am then?”
I stirred my drink for a few moments, wondering how to put it. “I don’t know for sure, I’m just trying to join the dots, but I know that a Dirge called Veronica was able to escape years ago, and I’m guessing that was you.” I looked at her. “Am I right?”
“Yes, that was me. It’s a long time ago now.”
I nodded and sat back, considering her for a moment. She had a weathered face, one that looked like it had seen a lot of life, the wrinkles forming well-worn creases on her forehead and around her mouth.
“You managed to come over safely then?”
She nodded, rubbing her wrist absently. There was an old scar still puckering the skin there. “Safely for me, anyway,” she said, looking at the floor.
“You killed someone.” I kept my voice as low as possible so as not to attract attention. “You knew what you were doing.”
“I know, and I live with that every single day.” She looked back up again. “You’ve got no idea, no idea at all about how bad our lives are as Dirges. We would all have done anything to escape, anything, and all I expected was oblivion. Now I live with the perpetual guilt.”
“It’s a shame that Catherine didn’t have quite the same take on things,” I muttered.
“You know Catherine?” she asked sharply.
“Of course! She nearly killed me trying to escape.”
Veronica looked at me in surprise. “It was your memories that brought her over? So how are … I mean, you’re alive. How did that happen?”
“It’s a long story. Before we talk about me, I’d like to know what’s going on. What have you been following me for, and why didn’t you sign the note you sent?”
She took a sip of her tea before answering. “I didn’t know what you knew and how you would react. I thought it best not to do anything that might alarm or panic you, and thought my name might do that. I thought you’d just call the number out of curiosity and I’d get the chance to explain before you told anyone.” She looked up from her cup. “I assume you’ve not said anything to your parents?”
“Huh, too right! They would have had the amulet off me instantly.” I considered her warily. “So tell me what you know about Catherine then, as we have her in common at least.”
“I’ve been waiting a long time for Catherine, or someone like her. Every day I scour the papers, looking for reports of people plucked from the river, people with no memories. I also have access to some of the reports from the river police, given my position, and I routinely visit all the nearly-drowned when they are in hospital, just in case. But I never had any luck. I’d almost given up hope when I visited a woman who had been rescued from near Blackfriars Bridge and was recuperating in Guy’s Hospital. She had no visitors and the staff were concerned because she had such violent mood swings. It was clear as soon as I saw her scarred wrist and started to talk to her that she had been one of us, that she was a Dirge.”
I realised that I was fidgeting with the spoon on my saucer and, not wanting my nerves to show, carefully put it back down before sitting on my hands. “What did she say?”
“The talk didn’t go as well as I’d hoped. She’s a troubled soul, and was obviously struggling with the memories she had inherited.”
“Good; she didn’t deserve them anyway,” I huffed, unable to keep the dislike out of my tone. “So come on, what happened next?”
“She got pretty upset, and the staff suggested that I leave it until the next day. But when I went back she had discharged herself and gone. I’ve had no sign of her since then.”
“She came to find me instead, to start making my life unbearable. Was that because of something you said? Did you tell her something that made her give me all that grief?” I could feel my voice rising so made a determined effort to keep it down. I leaned over the table towards her. “What was it you said to her that didn’t go well?”
“It’s a long story, and I think I’m going to have to tell you a bit about my history for it to make sense to you. Is that OK?”
I looked into her eyes and saw only compassion there. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to, well, you know.” I stumbled over the words, knowing that it was time to start sharing. “It’s just that Catherine made my life a complete misery for a while, and I’ve no idea why.”
“Thank you, I’ll explain it as well as I can.” Reverend Waters took a deep breath. “When I was a Dirge, when I was … like them, I wasn’t very nice. I can remember all of that so clearly, but like all the others, nothing from before.”
“Nothing at all?” I couldn’t help interrupting. “When you came over didn’t you get back the memory of how you ended up
as a Dirge? That’s what Catherine said she’d got.”
Veronica gave me a rueful smile, her weathered face folding into soft lines. “You know, perhaps I would have done if I had been sober enough to remember anything. But it seems that I fell into the Fleet in some sort of alcoholic haze. There’s nothing to remember.”
I stared at her, stunned. “What? What do you mean?”
“I was a mess, that’s what I mean. I was obviously a needy, addictive type before, and that didn’t change when I found myself stuck with the others in St Paul’s. I had been young and beautiful and I became very, very angry. I spent my life stalking the bars and clubs of London, feasting on the memories of those who were busy drinking there. I found I enjoyed the drunken memories rather more than the sober ones.”
Looking at the well-groomed elderly woman next to me I found it hard to picture her stalking drinkers and preying on their alcohol-sodden thoughts. I struggled to find something to say as she paused, waiting for my reaction. “I know, I don’t look the type, do I?”
“How long is it since you came back over?” I said at last.
“It’s been many, many years. When I was a Dirge I was in my twenties, I guess, but a lot of water has passed under the bridge since then. So now, I don’t actually know how old I am, but I’ve been here for over forty years.” She paused, looking out across the room but not seeing the other people in there. “Over forty years of waiting to try to do what’s right.” The last was just a whisper and I struggled to hear her. “And now you’ve arrived, and we can fix it all!” Her sudden change of tone startled me.
“I’m sorry, I’m not sure I understand.”
“Not to worry, Alex, not to worry. I’m getting ahead of myself. It’s just so exciting to be back close to the amulet again after all this time.” She looked at my wrist. “May I?” she asked, lifting my hand.
“Umm, sure. I’d just rather not take it off, if that’s OK with you.”
“Quite understand, quite understand,” she muttered as she started examining it closely. I was struck by the familiarity of her actions, moving the amulet back and forth as if to catch the light, and was horrified when I remembered why. I had looked at the amulet like that when I had been trying to get it off Rob outside the office in Soho. As subtly as I could I drew my arm back in, forcing her to let go.
