Circle of Nine: Circle of Nine Trilogy 1

by Josephine Pennicott

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Winter has dragged itself into spring this year. The seasons are out of order, slipping slowly through my hands. Frost laces the early morning ground, the sky is an unnatural ice-grey.

  A week ago, large hailstones the size of my fists fell from the sky.

  I wish I had never come to the mountains . . .

  When the coven relocated to Katoomba it made sense to follow. But now we are no more. The coven has long since scattered, flung into the air. They are lost to me, and have become a memory. All that remains is the portal that we created together.

  What year is it? The numbers mark nothing to me now. Time is so meaningless when you know that they are near. They are waiting.

  I regret only that I had to leave the child.

  I wander through this house night and day, listening, allowing fragile ghosts to slip through my bones. Khartyn is calling me, but I refuse to answer the call!

  Let her sing me into dust. Into space, if it comes to that. I am afraid for the child.

  Oh, I have fantasies and foolish dreams of escaping. Phillip has sent me postcards from his chateau in Villefranche-sur-Mer. Together, perhaps, we could unite against them. But it is dangerous to whisper their black names, to bring them further into being. I have to take responsibility.

  Late at night I have watched him. He drops, dripping light from the moon. He dances for me in the garden while the shadows watch, and lightning flashes from his mouth, from his feet. He is a nightmare. A vision. A dream. Gleaming bone antlers. Antediluvian eyes.

  But if he has come, then they are here.

  And the child is no longer safe. Even from the wind.

  Winter was so cold this year, my heart froze to red ice.

  I wish that I had never come here. I had hoped the mountains would keep them out. But now, they only keep me in.

  If I could, I would have given her my eyes to guide her so that the night, the darkness, would forever be a friend.

  Yesterday, large chunks of my hair fell out in my hands.

  Extracted from Johanna’s Diary — October

  *

  I jumped as a loud knocking erupted. ‘Jesus!’ I scrambled off the bed where I had been reading the journal and peered from behind a heavy, plum-coloured drape, my heart pounding. There was a police car in front of the house. I groaned. What now? I still had a sour taste in my mouth from the questions that I had had to endure from the police after Johanna’s body had been found. As if I could have been responsible for that sort of mutilation.

  Even so, I was quickly eliminated from their enquiries because at the estimated time of Johanna’s death I had been attending the opening of my disastrous art exhibition in Sydney. I still had painful memories of the last visions that the police had unknowingly revealed to me.

  ‘Nothing new has come up yet, Miss,’ the two detectives had informed me. ‘The autopsy hasn’t been released yet, but we’re flying a forensic expert over from the UK, a specialist. It’s a mystery, but we’re working on it. Don’t you go worrying. We’re doing everything possible to catch the person or persons responsible.’

  There were details that they didn’t tell me. Even if I couldn’t read minds, the expression in their eyes would have given them away.

  ‘It’s a mystery, Miss,’ they told me blandly. But their eyes said so much more, something like: Damn creepy as hell, in fact. No signs of a struggle, a horrible expression of fear on her face and no blood in her body! It’s the bloody Twilight Zone, Miss.

  I stared at their enigmatic, relatively youthful faces and wished, not for the first time, that I didn’t have the ability to read minds. There were details that I didn’t want to know.

  The knocking intensified. Swearing under my breath, I hurriedly checked my reflection in the mirror over my wash-stand, and headed downstairs.

  ‘Coming!’ A feeling of apprehension uncurled within me. What the hell could the police want with me now?

  CHAPTER NINE

  Inspector Richard Owens studied Emma as she busied herself making a pot of tea. A pretty enough girl, he thought, although a bit too pale. She looked like a city girl, slightly unhealthy-looking. She looked like she could do with a good airing. She seemed slightly nervy, chewing on her lip and thinking before she answered anything. She was, as he had expected, the arty student type. It wasn’t the most earth-shattering of deductions on his part — after all, she was still wearing her paint-splattered work clothes. But he’d had acquaintance with her type many times before. A steady stream of artists and writers had been moving to the mountains from the cities for years now. They were all cast from pretty much the same mould as far as he was concerned — Bohemian, vague, and probably stoned half the time. Trying to pin the arties down to exact dates and times was a nightmare. Inwardly he gave thanks that she was not a suspect. He would hate to see her on the witness stand.

  She didn’t really resemble her mad old aunt, however, and yet there was something about the way she would look at you, her dark eyes appearing to glow golden. As if she could see right through you.

  ‘So how’s it been going, Emma?’ he enquired breezily, attempting to put her at ease. ‘Settling into life in the sticks all right?’

  ‘Yes, thank you, Inspector.’

  Her tone was lifeless, flat. He wondered if she ate properly. She seemed slightly backward. Bloody eccentrics. Her clothes were all black. Even her socks. All the occult paraphernalia that the police had uncovered in the house, all that weirdo artwork. How any rational adult could run around practising spells and doing God-knows-what in the nude was beyond his reasoning.

  His kids loved her aunt’s book, but there was no accounting for taste. Children love anything bizarre. He wondered if the niece shared her aunt’s interest in witchcraft and naked angels. She looked normal enough, despite her obvious vagueness, but he rather doubted she was a normal young woman by his yardstick. After all, eccentricity and madness tend to run in families.

  He leaned forward to address her. ‘I wanted to ask you if you’ve noticed anything unusual here? I know you weren’t close to your aunt in recent years, but is there anything that you might have observed that is, well, out of character for Johanna? Anything at all. Don’t worry if it seems small or insignificant.’

  Emma looked right through him. Colours vibrated out from his body — surprisingly vivid colours, a beautiful rose-pink shade. She was becoming entranced just watching it. His thoughts became her thoughts too easily. The shining had returned. He was worried about the case. He was concerned about her, living alone. The case bothered him. Too many detectives from Sydney, and experts from the UK patronising him and disparaging his methods. For all their expertise there had been no real progress. It was a messy, open-ended case, the kind he hated with a passion. He worried about his job too much. The worry would eventually kill him. He would die of a disease that he would never trace back to his continual stress and worry from his job.

  He was a kind man. A good man. Colours flowed in green and pink arcs as he drank from his cup of tea. Breaking the spell after a few protracted moments, Emma found her voice.

  ‘I’m sorry, Inspector. There’s been nothing out of the ordinary.’

  Richard’s brow furrowed as he left Emma’s tangled driveway. His instincts had alerted him she was withholding information. A gut feeling told him she was in danger. Throughout their short, strained conversation he had been trying to pin down the enigmatic shadow that occasionally passed over her face. Where had he seen that expression before? He was half-way back to the police station before he realised. He’d seen it on the face of the young constable who had first sighted the desecrated body of Johanna. It was fear that danced so elusively over the girl’s pale features, a mask of pure fear.

  CHAPTER TEN

  I sat on the couch staring straight ahead, listening to his car back out of the driveway. I had spent his entire visit in a kind of trance, my attention entirely preoccupied with concepts far more urgent, and less prosaic. As I sat
there listening to the policeman go through the motions I suddenly noticed that the mural had changed again.

  There were two small figures that hadn’t been there previously. They were roughly sketched in, and stood near each other in the foreground of the picture.

  Disbelieving, I rubbed my finger over them in awe. Had I missed them previously? But no, I had scrutinised every detail of this mural when I first noticed that the zebras were moving. A thought struck me: was I working on this mural in my sleep? Perhaps all the stress and trauma of the last couple of months had caught up with me, and I was sneaking downstairs trying to finish an incomplete artwork of my aunt’s. Perhaps I believed that if I finished what she had begun, it would form some mystical type of reconciliation between us. Then, an even creepier thought.

  What if Johanna herself was finishing it?

  That did it. I started walking around the house turning lights on wherever I went. It was only late afternoon, but I couldn’t bear the thought of the coming night.

  A longing for my familiar life back in Sydney came to me. I wanted to sit down in front of the television watching ‘The Simpsons’ or ‘The X-Files’, anything. A desire to get back in touch with Effie came to me. Our fight over me moving here was so stupid and petty, it should never have happened. We had been friends for so long that it was pathetic that I was now carrying a grudge against her. I shouldn’t have expected her to attend Johanna’s funeral service, it wasn’t as if she had known her. With a small grimace, I remembered Effie’s reaction to the murder.

  ‘You damn lucky dog!’ Effie exclaimed when she first heard the news. ‘Why couldn’t someone murder one of my relatives?’

  She had changed tack quickly upon noticing my expression. ‘Well, it’s not as if you were close to her. Think of all the money you’ll make when you sell the house.’

  For a second I had been reminded of my mother. The same pink, greedy mouth. The pretty, self-centred face. The manicured nails. I hastily brushed the image aside as I sat among her fluffy cushions and soft toys. The Kinks played softly on the Greatest Hits radio station as Effie prepared to go out. I watched her, half-irritated and half-amused by her comments.

  ‘You have to admit it,’ she said as she curled her eyelashes. ‘Maybe a hundred years ago you were fond of the old dear, but it’s really the most amazing stroke of luck. Do you know how much real estate is worth in the mountains? I mean, Jesus, look at you, Em! You’re stone broke all the time working in that bloody bookshop. And your art won’t bring you any real money. Now you can sell this house in the mountains and hopefully have enough for a down payment on a nice unit in Sydney.’

  She buttoned a blue satin blouse over her uplift bra, nodding to herself as if that was the final word on the matter.

  ‘Maybe I won’t sell it. I could relocate and live there.’

  I had been teasing, of course, but even as I said the words I felt a spark ignite inside me. I realised that was exactly what I wanted to do. Effie spun around to face me, blue eyes wide in shock.

  ‘Don’t be mad, Em! You’re not serious! You’ve got to be in the city to promote your work! You know, go around art galleries and attend exhibitions,’ she finished lamely.

  ‘And pay my share of the rent for you and Geoff, too, you mean,’ I teased.

  ‘Well, that too,’ Effie conceded with a grin. ‘No, Em, don’t even think of it! You can’t bury yourself in the mountains! You’re introverted enough now! I mean, it’s just not normal to go for so long without a good fuck the way you do! All right,’ she said, noticing the strained expression on my face. ‘I know that bastard Ben hurt you by running off with Lisa, but that was a couple of years ago. You have to let go of it some time! There’s lots of men who are interested in you, but you freeze them all out. Anyway, what if the occult group fasten themselves onto you?’

  I grimaced, hating her bringing up Ben. ‘Don’t tell me you really believe that devil worship stuff, Effie!’

  Effie had stared into the mirror, and although she continued doing her make-up I could tell she was stealing glances at my reflection, thinking about me. Her feelings flooded my mind: that I looked like a wisp of smoke, pale and wan, almost a ghost! There was also a wriggling unease beneath her calm. Johanna’s death, whether she let on or not, had spooked her, too.

  ‘Well, something sucked all her blood out, didn’t it?’ Effie said quietly.

  We were total opposites, Effie and I. Her idea of a good night was to hit the nightclubs; mine was staying at home with a good thriller. She needed people, loved to be the centre of attention, while I was perfectly happy in my own company. There were times when it made me uneasy how much she resembled Jade, especially when she would deliver one of her lectures about looking after myself, that I would never catch a man if I didn’t dress the part, etc. But she had a kind heart, and was very loyal to the people that she cared about. I remembered one of the last times that I had experienced the generosity that she normally hid beneath her brittle sex kitten act.

  It was meant to be the greatest night of my year. But the moon must have been in the wrong position, when I had experienced that disastrous exhibition in an obscure co-op art gallery. I was mortified to see my precious paintings placed right at the back of the gallery near the toilets. It gave me a strange sense of shame, as if an unseen power had judged my work and found it wanting.

  When the pretentious inner-city art crowd eventually noticed my paintings — about the same time as the cheap chardonnay hit their bladders — my three small oils which I had slaved over for the past year were received with utter derision.

  ‘A poor man’s Chagall!’

  ‘My kid of five could do better than that!’

  Finally, of course, came the inevitable comment I hated above all others.

  ‘She’s not a patch on her aunt, is she? Now there’s talent!’

  Effie had hissed when I described the debacle to her later that evening. ‘Bloody stuck-up plebeians! Don’t you let them worry you, Emma, they’re the same kind of soulless morons that wanted Van Gogh run out of Arles!’

  My flatmate was right, of course, but their remarks had already seeded in my mind and were hard at work producing an abundant crop of self-doubt and pity. Then, just as my feelings of inadequacy in the face of my aunt’s reputation as an artist were peaking, the self-same paragon, Aunt Johanna, died. Going out in the most melodramatic way possible — murder. It wasn’t even a regular slaying. The tabloids had a field day. They revelled in the extraordinary and gruesome details. Occult murder of famous Sydney artist! the headlines had screamed. Satanism in the Blue Mountains!

  Johanna would have loved the notoriety. Well, perhaps only the Johanna of my imagination. I wish I had known my flamboyant aunt well, but over the years she had, just like her sister, my mother, become a stranger to me. I did grieve when I first received the news of her horrible death, but I realise now I was really grieving for my childhood and those precious early memories that were suddenly mere faint wisps, like the fading detail of an old and damaged photograph.

  Effie, however, had been a real support to me. Initially, anyway. She even postponed a screen test that she was offered for a deodorant commercial. As a struggling actress/model, that was a very big deal to her.

  I had needed all the support I could get, for although the details of Johanna’s murder had shocked me, it was more the shock of a death of a familar stranger. In a way, a bigger shock was the subsequent news that I was the sole benefactor of Johanna’s effects, which included her artwork and her Blue Mountains cottage.

  My mother was overseas at the time — she often was — and was uncontactable by her own choice. The last I heard of her was a scribbled postcard from South Africa as she enjoyed a romantic safari with the latest young boyfriend. I was relieved she wasn’t home. Her venom over her exclusion from Johanna’s will would have been intolerable. The authorities were trying to contact her, but I crossed my fingers and hoped that her safari would continue indefinitely, or at least unt
il I had come to terms with the news myself.

  Jade was the most impractical person and would be no help handling the media or the funeral details. I hated to admit to myself that I couldn’t forgive my mother for terminating those monthly visits to Johanna’s. So many times I fantasised over the years I was secretly Johanna’s child, the result of a tragic switch at birth by evil fairies. I hated to think that the blood of my simpering, impractical, fluffy mother ran through my veins.

  Let her live in ignorance of her sister’s death! I had thought with a savagery that frightened me. As she had kept Johanna from me in life, now I would keep her sister from her in death. For it was only after I was informed of my unexpected legacy that the haunting thought began to dawn on me that I must have meant more to Johanna than I had ever realised. Now with her violent and unexpected end all hope of any reconciliation was shattered.

  All the old resentments I had harboured against Jade for so many years returned with a vengeance, including the major barrier to there ever being a close relationship between us. Jade did not share the shining.

  I had become withdrawn, couldn’t face work or answering the telephone to curious media. But it had been Effie who had helped me with all the practical details. She had cooked me simple meals, arranged for an old friend of Johanna’s, Helen, to fly over from Perth to help with the funeral arrangements. I was regretting our subsequent arguments badly now. The only excuse that I had for myself and my reactions was that she had reminded me so much of Jade!

  The phone was ringing. A harsh, unnatural sound in the silence of my memories. I ran from the lounge room to the hall to pick it up. I knew, even before I spoke, who was on the other end.