Writ in Water

by Natasha Mostert

  His heartbeat quickened. Could this be? Could this truly be? He suddenly knew what this place was she had brought him to. The portal. She had described it to him and on the basis of that description he had even attempted a drawing, but he had never thought he’d live to see it himself. Exhilarated, his heart bursting with love and gratitude, he turned to find her.

  She had disappeared.

  His eyes probed the shadows around him but she was gone as though she had been merely a ghost. Only the crow was still there. It sat on the floor a few paces away from him, squat and unmoving, beady eyes glowing red in its head.

  For a moment he felt as alone as he had ever felt in his entire life. But then he took a deep breath. He would make her proud of him.

  Slowly he turned on his heel and looked about him. Set within the wall were doors. Thirty, to be exact.

  Thirty doors. Behind one of them the prize. But which one was he meant to open?

  He hesitated. Why couldn’t he remember? He had never visited the portal before but he should know the answer. Which door?

  The doors stared back at him, relentless in their similarity.

  Which door must he choose? Remember… but the certain knowledge which had guided him throughout the earlier part of his journey had deserted him. And he knew he would never be able to retrace his steps.

  He was lost.

  Terror-stricken, he spun around. Which door? Which door? He tried to control the panic which was taking possession of his mind. No! Stay calm.

  But which door? Which door?

  He tried to empty his mind of all emotion. To breathe with discipline. To decide. And, like the answer to a prayer, one of the doors opened a crack…

  The relief was overwhelming. Stepping forward, he placed his hand on the door, pushing it wide open.

  He screamed as a cacophony of sound and movement slammed into his brain with the force of a freight train. The onslaught was so intense, he was unable to process the information, unable to make sense of the images hurtling towards him like a giant fist. It was as though someone was pouring information into his brain at lightning speed, an avalanche of images and emotions filling up his head, only his mind wasn’t big enough—not nearly big enough—to contain it all. He stared, unable to blink, eyeballs dry, lips stretched painfully over his teeth in a grotesque smile, feeling his mind collapsing under the stupendous weight of the information dumped into his brain all at once. It was as though he could suddenly see underneath the skin of his body and watch as every individual organ inside him pulsed and laboured against the massive attack. He was going insane. And the horror of it was that he knew it.

  His mind popped like an overripe fruit. Bright globules of blood ran down the insides of his eyes.

  Quiet.

  Peace. Like moonlight on water.

  Water. He was floating on his back in a swimming pool. His mind was blessedly still.

  He heard music. A violin. And looking up at the sky, there was the moon: heavy and swollen, caught in the arms of a tree.

  But he was becoming tired. His body felt paralysed on one side. The water pulled at him. He turned his head to where the house loomed black against a charcoal sky. The only light came from behind the French doors. A woman’s figure was silhouetted against the buttery glow.

  She stepped into the garden. Thank God. He knew she would never abandon him. His eyes filled with tears of gratitude.

  Her face was still masked. Her breasts were like ice cream against the green velvet of her dress. A pendant was swinging from her throat: a thin silver chain from which dangled a charm in the shape of the letter M. On her shoulder was perched the crow.

  Help me. Rescue me.

  Her pale white fingers reached out to him.

  And pushed his head under the water.

  The crow shrieked. With a wild flap of its wings it swooped to the side, alighting on the overhanging branch of the tree.

  Her grasp was soft but her fingers were steel. His nose and mouth filled with water. He was drowning. His chest was on fire. She had one hand on his shoulder, the other on his head. He tried to twist away from her, to loosen the hand holding him in a gentle death grip.

  She pushed his head down again. Oh God, no. Why? He had followed the rules perfectly… perfectly…

  He couldn’t fight her. He didn’t have the strength. And his body was so sluggish, so heavy. He was starting to sink.

  She lifted her hand: a gesture of regret. The water was blurring her figure, but as he continued to spiral downwards their eyes locked.

  Why? His mouth opened and closed fish-like, the water drowning his words. Why? Why?

  CHAPTER SIX

  Sunlight, splinter-sharp in his eyes. His body no longer chilled by water but bathed in sweat; around him the comforting familiar environment of his loft apartment. For a few moments Gabriel sat without moving. One part of his brain knew that the ride was over, that he was safe at home, but another part of him was still reeling from the experience he had just been through.

  His mouth was stretched wide and he had to make a conscious effort to relax his face. He was sitting in his armchair next to the window, the picture of Robert Whittington on his knee. It was quiet in the apartment but the air seemed alive, as though he had just screamed and the sound of his distress was still lingering in the room.

  Clumsily he got to his feet, clutching the photograph. Frankie. He needed to talk to her. Rather urgently.

  As he dialled, he squinted at the numbers she had written on the back of the picture. He seemed to have problems focusing. He dropped the picture on the table top and saw that his fingers had left damp smudges on the photograph’s glossy surface.

  The sound of the ringing reverberated inside his head. A click. A crisp, ‘Whittington residence?’ The slightly officious voice of a well-trained manservant.

  ‘I’d like to speak to Cecily Franck, please.’ He found to his surprise that he had trouble speaking.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ The voice sounded pained.

  ‘Cecily Franck. I mean Whittington. I’d like to speak to her.’ His tongue was unbelievably sluggish. No wonder the asshole on the other end of the phone sounded so disapproving. He probably thought there was a drunk on the line.

  ‘Tell her it’s Gabriel. And that it’s urgent.’

  A doubtful pause. Then, ‘Please wait. I’ll see if Madam is available.’

  You do that, you twit, he thought. Placing his hand against his forehead he found it dripping with sweat. In fact, his entire body was drenched. And his brain… his brain felt like mashed potato.

  It seemed that Madam was indeed available.

  ‘Hello? Gabriel?’

  ‘Frankie.’

  ‘Gabriel? What’s up? You sound strange.’

  ‘Maybe you should come over.’

  ‘Why? What’s wrong?’

  He started to laugh weakly. ‘A ride. I’ve slammed a ride.’ For some reason it suddenly seemed funny.

  An even longer silence this time. When she did speak, her voice sounded tight, as though she was trying to rein in her excitement. ‘Wait for me. Don’t go anywhere. Wait for me.’

  ‘Believe me, the way I feel now I’m not going anywhere.’

  Just before she hung up she asked, breathlessly, ‘Gabriel… is he alive?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ He remembered the feeling of drowning: the heavy legs, the fire in his chest, and then the blessed feeling of letting go as he spiralled downwards. It had certainly felt like the end of something.

  ‘Well, was it at least a good ride?’

  ‘Good?’ He thought of the nightmarish journey, the insane images which had battered his mind. ‘Again, I don’t know. Just come, OK? We’ll talk when you get here.’

  He replaced the receiver in its cradle, his mind still on the question she had asked him. A good ride?

  Well, that depended now, didn’t it? If by ‘good’ she meant ‘detailed’, then yes, it had been a spectacular ride. The best ever. But if by ‘good�
�� she wanted to know if the ride made good sense, then no, afraid not. Of course, remote viewing was not exactly like baking a cake. Images and emotions accessed during a ride were often ambiguous.

  But this was beyond weird. He had never slammed a ride this nightmarishly surreal in his entire life. That journey through the house—if such a vast space could be called a house—had been bizarre in the extreme. And was that a murder he had lived through? A death? The scene had a curiously stylised feel about it—a woman with, of all things, a crow on her shoulder and the moon hanging in the sky like something from a Chinese woodblock print. But the physical agony he had endured had certainly felt real enough.

  And why had the ride happened at all?

  He most definitely had not planned on slamming this one. His subconscious mind must be more engaged with Robert Whittington’s disappearance than he had thought.

  Shit, he had a screaming headache and his brain felt very, very stupid. Did he always feel this disoriented afterwards? Surely he used to snap back a lot faster? He couldn’t recall the tremendous bone-draining exhaustion that now gripped every limb. And lurking at the edges of his consciousness was still the horror he had experienced during the ride; the fear.

  He got to his feet, to find that he was actually incapable of walking in a straight line. With difficulty he steered his way into the kitchen. Opening the fridge, he removed a jug of iced water and, without reaching for a glass, started drinking from the lip. At least this was something he remembered: this raging thirst, which always followed a ride. The water splashed down his chin as he drank greedily and clumsily.

  By the time she arrived he was feeling better. Not good, but better. Her first words, however, were not encouraging.

  ‘My God, you look terrible. Are you all right?’

  ‘Actually, no. I feel like crap. Sit down.’

  Frankie balanced herself on the very edge of the couch, her eyes never leaving his face. ‘So, what happened?’

  ‘I…’ He stopped.

  She leaned forward in anticipation, but for a moment he felt at a loss. Where to begin?

  ‘Well?’ She was impatient now.

  At the door, he supposed. That’s where he should start. He would begin at the door with the strange-looking coat of arms.

  • • •

  She hardly blinked throughout the entire time he talked and she did not interrupt. But now she spoke, her voice tired.

  ‘So he was killed. Someone drowned him. This woman.’

  ‘Probably. The feeling of drowning was very real.’

  ‘What I don’t understand is how she managed to overpower him. Robbie was slender but he was no weakling. Physically, he should have been more than a match for her. And he was a strong swimmer. It was his exercise of choice—he used to swim laps at the Queen Mother Sports Centre at least twice a week. He always said water was where he felt most at home. Why didn’t he put up more of a fight?’

  ‘His brain was damaged, remember. When I was in the pool one side of my body was heavy—like a stroke victim’s. I think Robbie’s brain suffered a trauma of some kind and that it affected his motor coordination as well.’

  ‘Well, at least you saw a house. That’s always promising. That’s a firm reference point.’

  ‘A house, may I remind you, which has, among other things, rooms housing fields of butterflies and blind monks. And something called a portal.’

  She frowned. ‘Could be symbolism.’

  ‘Could be insanity.’ He paused. How to explain to her the incredible sensory overload he had experienced? ‘That one moment when I opened the door inside the portal was like nothing I had ever experienced in my entire life. I felt insane. It felt like my brain was on TCP; as though it was frying inside my skull.’

  ‘Well, maybe that’s what it was. Maybe Robbie tried some kind of hallucinatory drug and he overdosed.’

  He shook his head. ‘I thought of that, but I don’t think so. The weird thing is that during this ride I was conscious of great discipline. I was walking from room to room in strict order. There was a set sequence, which required enormous mental focus. I didn’t just open doors at will. There was a definite pattern. Some doors I left closed—on purpose. And I must have opened hundreds of doors. Thousands.’

  ‘Thousands?’

  ‘Hundreds of thousands, maybe. I know: it’s madness. And there was this one phrase which kept going through my mind like a mantra: the order of places, the order of things. As though it was some kind of guiding principle or prime directive, or something. Despite the chaos, there was an incredibly tight discipline to the journey—not like being spaced out at all. At the beginning of the ride I was in control and it felt good. It was as though I was being tested and the fact that I was able to choose the correct door every time was immensely empowering. Except that towards the end of the ride—when I followed this woman—I lost it. And shortly afterwards I found my brain going into meltdown and then I woke up in a swimming pool. Oh, hell.’ He sighed. ‘This is crazy stuff. Maybe you’re right. Maybe this was some kind of acid trip. It was certainly a rush.’

  ‘It sounds like a fantastic ride.’ There was a hint of wistfulness in Frankie’s voice. It reminded him of the surprise confession she had made the last time he saw her. There were times my envy was eating me up. All those years ago when they were together—happily, he had thought—she had been resentful of his RV skills. He still couldn’t equate such an emotion with the young unassuming Cecily Franck he had loved. He rather wished she hadn’t told him.

  She spoke again. ‘What about the woman?’

  He thought for a moment. ‘She was real,’ he said slowly. ‘She was real. I could sense her as a person. Yes, definitely. Which makes it even less likely that we’re talking drugs here.’

  ‘I don’t suppose you made any ideograms?’

  He shook his head. She was referring to a practice followed by many remote viewers, who while viewing would allow their hand to engage in a kind of automatic doodling which captured the images accessed during the ride. He rarely worked that way. Still, drawings were sometimes useful.

  He got to his feet and walked over to his work desk. Opening a drawer, he removed a pad of paper and a pencil and started to sketch. A circle on top of a cross, the circle intersected by a smaller half-circle; the whole thing set against the background of a rose in bloom. He was not great at drawing and his rose looked more like a battered daisy, but it would do. After a few seconds he returned to where Frankie was waiting.

  ‘Remember I told you about the coat of arms I saw? On the door and on the wall leading to the portal? Well, this is it. At least, that’s what I remember from the ride. Maybe it will remind you of something about Robert.’ Without much hope, he held the pad of paper out at her. ‘Does it ring a bell?’

  ‘My God.’ She stared at the drawing.

  ‘What?’ His voice sharpened. ‘You know what it is?’

  ‘Robbie had this tattooed on the inside of his right arm—above the wrist.’

  ‘Why? Was he straight? It looks to me like the symbol for female sexuality.’

  Frankie smiled. ‘This symbol has nothing to do with sex. It’s a combination of several astrological symbols into one. He called it the Monad or the Monas, something like that. Monas, if I remember correctly. But exactly which symbols and what they mean, I don’t know. But, Gabriel, that’s not important. What is important is that this symbol is based on the coat of arms at Monk House.’

  ‘Monk House?’

  ‘The Monk sisters.’ She looked up at him, excitement in her eyes. ‘Morrighan and Minnaloushe Monk. Robbie was friends with them. They live in this big old rambling red-brick house in Chelsea. I’ve only been inside a couple of times but I remember the coat of arms. It’s everywhere. I asked Robbie about it and he told me that it dates back to the sixteenth century, and it was something to do with the Monk family.’

  Gabriel looked at the drawing again. Sixteenth century. The design looked remarkably modern for the 1500s
. ‘It still doesn’t make sense.’

  ‘Believe me, very little of what Robbie did made sense. But the letter on the chain round the woman’s neck in your ride was an M, which means it could belong to Minnaloushe or Morrighan. And the Monas coat of arms points to Monk House.’

  ‘Surely the house doesn’t have a swimming pool?’

  Frankie’s eyes were stricken. ‘As a matter of fact, it does. One of the very few outdoor pools in Chelsea. It’s not big, but it’s deep. We had a pool party there last summer. That was the first time I met the sisters.’

  For a moment there was silence between them as they considered the possible implications.

  ‘The house itself is quite fascinating, really, in a rather gloomy way.’ Frankie grimaced slightly. ‘There’s a very impressive library but I certainly don’t recall seeing butterflies or fantail doves flying around. And I rather doubt there were self-mutilating monks hiding behind the doors.’

  ‘And no pet crow, I take it.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘You said they were friends with Robbie.’

  ‘Actually, for the last nine months or so he was constantly in their company. And I always thought they had something to do with his decision to move out of our house into an apartment of his own.’

  ‘Daddy probably didn’t like it, did he?’

  ‘Quite the opposite. William approved of the friendship. About the only thing he did approve of where Robbie was concerned. He thought the sisters had a stabilising influence on Robbie.’

  ‘Did they?’

  She shrugged. ‘I guess so. Robbie seemed content for the first time I knew him.’

  Something in her voice was not right. Gabriel leaned forward. ‘Why don’t you like them?’

  ‘I never said I didn’t like them.’ Her tone was defensive. She was actually scowling. Gabriel suppressed a smile. Women. Time to change tack.

  ‘Morrighan and Minnaloushe Monk. It sounds like something from a riddle. Their parents liked the unusual. Why not Mary and Mabel, I wonder?’