Little Eden

by KT King

  Sophie asked her spirit guides to show her the story between John and Melanie. Her mind travelled back in time and she could see their life together run through her head as if she were watching a film. Pictures came and went, and she could feel their emotions and sense what they were thinking too. Sophie related the outline of what she saw to the others in hushed tones. “I can see Melanie, she is standing in a Victorian drawing room waiting for someone,” Sophie began. “I get the feeling she’s at a dance because she’s wearing an elaborate evening gown with puffed sleeves and she’s holding a large lace fan. She has fresh flowers in her hair. I can hear music in the distance and a feeling of a party going on in another room. Now I can see John coming into the room to meet her. He is smartly dressed, but seems furtive and hurried, as if he shouldn’t be there. He kisses her…ooooo…I say, it’s very passionate!” Sophie giggled. “I didn’t think people were supposed to kiss like that in those days! Now John seems to be proposing to her and she accepts.”

  Sophie let the film fast-forward, stopping it at the point at which Melanie and John were taking their vows. “They’re getting married. It’s a bit odd because it’s in a room above a London pub, not in a church. I get the feeling it’s not exactly legal, but she doesn’t seem to mind.” Sophie fast-forwarded the film again and then nodded. “They live in a tiny two-room house. I can see Melanie has three children, two toddlers and a baby, and she seems to be sewing gloves for a living. She looks poor and thin. The room she is sitting in is dimly lit and I can feel how cold it is in there. Much of the plaster has come off the walls. It’s dingy and smelly and…oh, yuck…there are cockroaches everywhere and rats too! She doesn’t look happy.”

  “Where’s John?” Lucy asked. “Why are they so poor?”

  “More to the point,” India said, “Why did she kill him?”

  “Living in squalor with three kids and a bunch of rats - I reckon I would have thought of killing him sometimes too!” Sophie said. “But wait, oh dear…”

  “What?” Lucy interrupted.

  “John is already married!” Sophie replied. “He has another family. They live in a wooden-clad house near the Thames. I can see his other wife and he has, one, two, three…six more children. They have a bigger, much nicer home. There are curtains at the windows and painted shutters on the outside. His wife is plump and simply but cleanly dressed. He seems to own his own horse and cart. He’s a sort of delivery man.”

  “A bigamist and a white van driver,” India laughed. “No wonder she ‘done him in’.”

  Sophie fast forwarded again to see more of Melanie’s past life story. “The second drowned man, Henry Slight lived next door to Melanie in that horrible dreary tenement,” Sophie whispered. “He found out that John was already married and told Melanie. Henry agreed to help her bump off John!” Sophie frowned and said sadly, “I can see Melanie and Henry at the lake near the chateau in Little Eden. It’s a dark night and the London fog is thick in the air. They can move about unseen. They have brought John there in his own cart and he’s hidden under some empty grain sacks. John’s still breathing but he’s unconscious. Melanie and Henry tip his body into the lake together.”

  “What about Henry?” India asked. “How did he end up dead in the lake too?”

  Sophie closed her eyes again to see. “Henry and Melanie have just tipped John into the water; Henry seems to want to kiss Melanie. She pushes him off. He gets angry. Oh no! He is demanding sex in exchange for helping her kill John. Henry is trying to force himself on her. She’s struggling to get him away from her!”

  “Oh! Poor Melanie!” Lucy said.

  “Don’t feel too sorry for her - she has just killed someone,” Jimmy reminded her.

  “So!” Lucy replied. “Should she be raped as a punishment for her crime?”

  Jimmy shrugged.

  “She was guilty after all,” India sighed. “Poor Robert! I think he was still hoping his mother, Melanie I mean, would turn out to be innocent and it had all been a terrible mistake.”

  Sophie had another look at what had happened that fateful night over one hundred years ago. “Melanie finds a stone beside her on the ground and hits Henry on the head with it!” Sophie grimaced at the frightful scene she was seeing. She was almost overwhelmed by the fear emanating from the pictures, but she tried to detach herself emotionally and just report back what she was witnessing. “He dies within seconds. Melanie seems to panic for a moment and then comes over all calm. She just rolls him into the lake to join John. Then she brushes herself down and takes the horse and cart and drives away.”

  As she finished her story, Henry’s spirit began to disappear into the light, but he did not dissolve as John had done. Instead, he rose upwards to the top of the shaft of light and an elderly man sporting a white beard appeared - he did not look happy with Henry at all. He put some handcuffs on Henry then marched him off into the white mist and was gone.

  “I think St Peter came to get him.” Sophie said. “That’s two down. One to go!”

  The third man, Leonard Hand, seemed overjoyed to see Melanie. She did not seem so happy to see him, however!

  “Leonard betrayed her,” Sophie told the others. “I can see him with her by the lake. She is finely dressed now. She looks as if she has a lot of money. Oh wait! I get it! This is several years after she killed John and Henry and she is married to Bobby Bartlett-Hart now. Leonard is her lover. He promised to run away with her, but he changed his mind at the last minute. That’s why I felt he was a cad! Oh dear, poor Melanie! She is devastated! I can see her waiting for him in the moonlight. There is very strong karmic-love between them. It feels so deep and passionate. She really believed he loved her.”

  “Yes, I can feel it too,” Lucy whispered. “There is so much love. So much passion!” Lucy felt an unexpected pain in her chest. “But, so much pain.”

  “How did Melanie kill Leonard?” India asked.

  “Same as Henry!” Sophie replied. “A blow to the head, but this time with a broken branch from one of the oak trees, and then she pushed him in the lake.”

  “I suppose once you have a winning formula, why change it?” Jimmy chuckled - a little too loudly.

  With much persuasion from St Hilda, Leonard and Melanie forgave each other, and he floated upwards into the light. Instead of waiting for Melanie to join him however, he was met by the spirit of another attractive young woman, and he walked off with her, a grin on his face, without looking back.

  Melanie, enraged at being rejected yet again, fell back down from the white light portal before she could dissolve into it and began to move about jerkily, in a hideous manner. It was a most unnerving and unnatural sight to see Melanie’s contorted body writhing and slithering into itself, as if she were devouring her own being. Sophie watched as Melanie imploded into herself and disappeared into nowhere before anyone could stop her.

  Lucy saw the look of shock and then disappointment on her sister’s face. “What’s happened?” she asked.

  Sophie shook her head in despair. “We lost Melanie! She disappeared before we could get her over to the other side. She’s still on the loose and madder than ever. But, I don’t know where she’s gone!”

  “Great!” Lucy said, on hearing the bad news. “So all this was for nothing?”

  “No! Not for nothing!” Sophie told her. “The spirits of John, Henry and Leonard have been released from limbo and into the heavenly realms tonight. And the more we clear from that lifetime, the better chance we have of getting Collins and Jennifer to change their minds about selling!”

  “One question,” India said. “If Melanie is now Jennifer Bartlett-Hart, who are these men? Now, I mean, in this present life - in 2012?”

  Sophie scanned her psychic mind for information. “I’m being told that John Quick is now...” she paused for a moment to make sure that she had got the right information…“Robin Shaft!” Sophie screwed up her face
as she realised who Henry Slight had reincarnated as… “Oh my god, you’ll never guess who Henry is now!” she said to the others.

  They all looked at her, unable to guess and eager to hear her reply.

  “Who?” Lucy urged her.

  “Only Marcus Finch!” Sophie replied.

  “No way!” Lucy exclaimed. “That explains a lot!”

  “Who is the third man, Leonard Hand? Do we know who he is?” India asked again.

  “I don’t know,” Sophie replied. “But I do know something! I know where Alice is!” She went to the door and pulled it open. “Come on!”

  Chapter 23

  ~ * ~

  “Alice is in the old air-raid shelter on Quaker Lane! Minnie! Quick, run to the Café and tell the others,” Sophie urged her.

  Minnie raced off, her being the fittest of them all, and burst through the Café door to find Robert was back from his latest search.

  “How do you know she’s there?” Robert asked her. “The shelter hasn’t been accessed in years.”

  Minnie was out of breath and had a stitch. She tried to explain, “Marcus used to be Henry Slight…one of the men in the lake…Sophie sent them all to the other side…Henry, aka Marcus, told Sophie…where Alice is!”

  “My god! Robert exclaimed, throwing down his coffee. “Damn it! Cubby! Come on!”

  The two men sped off into the grizzly night. When they reached the statue of the air raid warden Robert could see that the metal door had been recently disturbed. Cubby yanked it open.

  “Shh!” Robert whispered. “I’ll go first, you follow, but be quiet!” They climbed down the ladder but being ‘quiet’ was easier said than done! The metal ladder creaked and groaned as he used the first step. Robert decided to use the sailor’s technique and slid down using just the sides. Then Cubby did the same, but he went a little too fast and shot off the end and crashed into the opposite wall!

  “Shhh!” Robert told him as he helped him up. They strained to hear any sign that Alice was still down there, but the bunker felt eerily silent. They could see a very faint light coming from beyond the first passage and tiptoed towards the end of the first corridor. Cubby drew his pistol. Robert gestured for Cubby to freeze. Then he signalled one, two, three, with his fingers and together they spun around the corner to surprise Marcus and rescue Alice!

  Cubby put his gun down in dismay. They were confronted only by the once majestic statue of Mother Mary, lying shattered into several pieces on the cold grey concrete floor. The oil lamps were still burning but there was no sign of life. They scanned the whole room, but neither Alice nor Marcus were to be found. Robert picked up Mother Mary’s head and Cubby picked up her left arm, which was still holding the dove. They gently and reverently laid her dismembered body upon the altar. Disappointed, they took a lamp each and looked in every corner of the bunker, in all the bunk rooms, and corridors, until Cubby finally fell over Alice’s library books. “Over here!” Cubby shouted from near the ladder. Robert rushed to see what Cubby had discovered and the two men looked at each other. Their hearts went cold. They feared the worst.

  ~ * ~

  Marcus and Alice had been in the bunker together for several hours. To Alice it seemed like days. Marcus preached and prayed and then preached and prayed some more. He talked about taking her to a safe place in the middle of the night.

  Alice went through all the emotions a human can experience and was close to hysterical at times. I would kill him, she thought, If, I was strong enough, or if I had a gun. She wanted to run away, but she knew there was no way she could get the metal cover off the top of the ladder, even if she made it up that far. In desperation, she looked up at Mother Mary and wondered how she could look down on such a horrible person and still smile. But then, Alice had an idea flash into her head, and she could not believe she had not thought of it before! Alice called out with her thoughts to Lilly for help. Lilly, she called silently, Help me, help me, help me! She immediately felt a cool breeze waft against her cheek and that was all the sign she needed. She knew that the angels and Lilly were close to her and that they had heard her call.

  In her mind Alice heard Lilly’s words, ‘Pretend to agree with him, gain his trust’. Alice wasn’t too keen on the idea, but the words were repeated over and over, so she gave in to them and as soon as she made up her mind to play along, her tears stopped, and she felt a wave of calmness run over her.

  She decided to pretend she was in a school play and that she was a princess captured by an evil king. She had to escape from him by becoming a Jedi*. Good always wins over evil, she thought. Lilly’s voice came into her mind again, whispering, ‘Tell him you are hungry and thirsty’. Alice felt neither, but out loud she said, “Daddy, I’m hungry and thirsty.”

  Marcus looked annoyed. “You can’t be hungry before God. He is all the succour we need.”

  “Please, Daddy!” Alice pleaded, and then added theatrically and quite convincingly, “Have mercy upon me. I am just a child. I know God wants me to go with you to America, but I can’t wait ‘til midnight to eat Daddy, it’s past my dinner time now.”

  Marcus seemed taken aback by her words and it mellowed him somewhat. He didn’t suspect her motives at all. He always underestimated women and children. He was a little unsure of how to deal with children. He knew that bribery with food worked however, and he saw it as an opportunity to look like the good guy.

  “There’s a vending machine at the skate park, just down the street, Daddy. It’s not far. We could go and see what’s in it?” Alice said, as meekly as she could, and looked up at him with her best ‘please, please, please’ face.

  Marcus didn’t want to risk her being seen so he told her to stay put and that he would go to the vending machine alone. “I’ll be two minutes,” he told her. “That’s all. Two minutes.” He reluctantly left Alice alone and climbed the ladder, exiting surreptitiously onto the grass above.

  As soon as she heard the door clang back down, Alice didn’t waste any time. She begged Lilly to help her again. “What should I do now?” Alice whispered out loud, looking at Mother Mary again. “What should I do?”

  In answer to her question, Alice saw a tiny flash of blue light to her left, followed by a small white floating orb, which appeared from behind the altar and hovered in the air for a few moments. “Lilly, is that you?” she whispered, and she felt in her bones that it was. Alice went to where the orb had been and stood in front of the panel of saints. “Now what should I do?” she asked. Involuntarily, she placed her hands onto the feet of the first saint. As if her hand had a power all of its own, it began moving down the side of the wooden screen and she felt her fingers disappear behind it. She was shocked to find that there was actually a wide gap behind the panel and that it was not the back wall of the chamber after all. She felt the urge to go round the edge and realised that from the front it was an optical illusion. In reality the saints stood proud of the concrete by quite a few inches.

  Alice squeezed herself between the wall and the screen. Once she was in the gap, she was plunged into pitch darkness. She tried to keep her courage and slowly shuffled herself along until she fell backwards a little. She didn’t like to get so close to the concrete. Its coarse texture and lifeless cement grey colour made her flesh creep. When the short wall came to an end she had popped out of the narrow channel into a deep doorway. She turned around and felt a wooden door barring her way. She tried to open it but found it was locked. Finding her chance of escape suddenly snatched away from her, she nearly burst into tears, but then a wave of lightness came over her and she almost felt dizzy. She remembered a dream she had had two nights ago but had forgotten all about until this moment. In the dream she had seen a locked door in the trunk of a tree. St Hilda had been holding the key, which she gave to Alice just before she woke up.

  Quickly, Alice squeezed herself back the way she had come and peered around the corner to see if the coas
t was clear. Not hearing or seeing any sign of Marcus, she looked up and down the row of saints, willing one of them to be St Hilda. One was St Margaret and another was St Katherine, there was St Oswald, St Aidan and St Olaf. She frantically kept looking until there, thank god, at the other end of the screen was St Hilda, who was carrying a bunch of wooden keys in her hands.

  Alice heard the door to the shelter being opened again and she panicked.

  With her heart beating ten to the dozen and her stomach feeling as if it couldn’t screw itself up any harder, she searched and scratched around St Hilda, desperate to find a key. She frantically scrabbled around in the dust and dirt at St Hilda’s feet. Cobwebs covered her hands. She held her breath and tried not to scream when a huge spider crawled over her fingers. She shuddered and tried to tell herself she was on one of those TV shows where celebrities have to endure trials with bugs and spiders and snakes. She told herself, I can do this, I can do this. Get me out of here! She pushed her tiny hand as far behind St Hilda’s feet as she could, grimacing at the yucky feeling beneath her fingers. Finally, she felt something cold and metallic. It was a key! She tried to pull it out, but it was too big to fit through the gap. She heard Marcus coming down the ladder. She pulled and pulled but it was no use - the key was stuck between St Hilda’s ankles.

  Alice took a deep breath and let go of the key for a moment. As she heard Marcus approaching down the corridor, she grabbed the key again, and this time it seemed to change its angle slightly, and came out with ease. She took her one chance, and as quick as lightening, she slid herself behind the panel again and slipped into the hidden doorway.

  Leaning back against the door, Alice could hear Marcus shouting for her from the chapel. She was afraid to try the key in case he heard the noise. She hardly dared even breathe and put her hand over her mouth, afraid she might let out a squeak or a sigh. She could hear him calling her name. Then, his angry voice seemed to fade into the distance a little. She was about to try the key when she heard his words become louder again, but this time he was saying her name in a kinder tone. “I’m not angry with you, Alice. Where are you, my dove? I have chocolate and crisps for you. I have a can of lemonade!”