Harvest

by Steve Merrifield

  Rachel rested her cup on its saucer. “I understand entirely. It’s very good of you to support your wife in something that you don’t really believe in, especially at a time as painful as this. I’m not a charlatan though, Brian. I don’t ask for any money for what I do. All I ask is for you to suspend any criticism and preconceptions for just a while and believe for just a moment.” Rachel watched Brian nod and smile and his frame sank slightly as he disarmed himself. She knew now was the time to lay her cards on the table. She settled her cup on its saucer and held it still on her lap as she approached a difficult subject. “I have to say one thing. I am here to help you find some kind of lead for the ongoing investigation. However, I would appreciate it if you didn’t ask me to try and contact Emily.” Rachel smiled weakly. Death sat uncomfortably on her shoulder as she prepared to elaborate. “If I disclosed that I could contact her, I imagine non-believers would judge me as being cruel in taking away your hope of her being alive. I also suspect that any scepticism you have about my abilities would be reinforced by your need to believe that she is alive, and you would doubt what I say until there was tangible earth-bound evidence. If I found that I couldn’t contact her, you might take what could simply be a limitation of my ability as reinforcement of your hope of her being alive. Disclosure either way would ultimately offer you little comfort.” She watched them both wilt guiltily, as if uncovered in some crime.

  After the weight of the expectations had lifted, the three chatted for a quarter of an hour about Rachel’s beliefs, the twins, life in the flats and did a complete circle back to how they still had no leads towards finding little Emily, and how the Chambers’ prayed that she was alive. The conversation ran out as the emotions took hold of Claire and Brian. To escape the awkwardness, Rachel asked where Emily was last known to be before she went missing. Claire stood up and led the way to the bedroom while Brian remained on the sofa, his head in his hands.

  Rachel stood with Claire before the children’s bedroom door. With no window to provide natural light, it was dark at that end of the hall. Claire put her hand on the door handle, but turned hesitantly to Rachel and chewed at her bottom lip.

  “There’s something I haven’t told anyone. Only Brian, and he says it’s silly. Some funny things have happened lately. We used to have fish in our tank in the lounge. The night Emily went missing they all went crazy, flitting erratically, flinging themselves around the tank. I could hear the fish hitting the glass. The fluorescent light was flickering too. That’s the moment I heard one of the girls scream and I found Emily had gone. Afterwards, when the police had gone and we were alone again, that was when I noticed… The fish. They were all dead, floating on the surface.”

  Rachel then listened to Claire explain how Amy had been stuck in her room. Claire nudged the door to the bedroom and it drifted off its catch and opened effortlessly without the need for the handle to be turned. “It was as if Amy had been holding it shut; but she wouldn’t have been able to stop me opening it. I’m sure there was light in here – not from the light bulb. It was green. I got Amy out and she was terrified. What should she be terrified of?

  “There is something else we hadn’t told the police,” she whispered conspiratorially.

  “Go on,” Rachel urged as the hairs on her neck tingled.

  “The night Emily went missing, me and Brian had settled for the evening…”

  “Don’t, Claire,” Brian interrupted pleadingly, announcing his presence in the hall.

  “The front door was locked.” Claire looked at Rachel for a reaction. “We are nine floors up.”

  Rachel looked from Claire to Brian who couldn’t hold her gaze, then to the children’s room before returning to Claire, giving herself time to absorb this new information. Claire was putting voice to something she had only dared to share with her husband, and it was clear that even in that limited audience it created conflict. Brian was obviously uneasy that Claire had told Rachel, knowing how outlandish it sounded. “You believe Emily just vanished: into thin air?”

  Brian withdrew to the lounge and she heard him drop heavily on to the sofa in resignation. Claire shied away from Rachel’s searching gaze.

  “I don’t know what to believe any more,” Claire said, not really giving the definite answer Rachel wanted.

  “I’m hardly going to criticise what you believe, Claire: I’m the one that talks with those that have passed on.” She half-laughed trying to lighten the situation but stepping round the dreaded catchphrase “I see dead people”. The Sixth Sense film had a lot to answer for. “Some of what you have described could be related to poltergeist activity. I’m sure you know about those, thanks to the movies. You have young children, and poltergeist activity tends to centre on them. They are hypothesised to be manifestations of psychic energy, or mischievous spirits drawn to a child, depends on your beliefs as it’s hardly a science that can be empirically tested either way. What doesn’t fit is what you haven’t said, but only hinted at and I have never heard of that outside of books and films. However, your daughter is missing and I’m not here to dispute the facts. I’m here to give some insight if I can.” She draped a comforting arm around Claire, which she hoped went some way in softening the impact of her non-commitment towards Claire’s belief.

  “Why don’t you show me where Emily used to sleep,” Rachel said, hoping to escape the obstacle before them. “That’s the last place you saw her, yes? Tucked up in bed?”

  Claire nodded and pointed to the bare mattress. “The police took the sheets and covers. I can’t bring myself to remake it.”

  Rachel glanced around the pink room scattered with dolls and fluffy toys. She looked back to the bed. The little girl who had slept there should have still been there, sleeping her dreams, playing with her toys. She should be with her family, not missing, not away from the family and the mother who loves her and misses her and wants her. Not taken from her bed. The empathy welled within her and she coughed gently to clear her throat.

  Rachel looked up from the bed into the eyes of an old woman in a purple polyester housecoat sitting on the edge of the opposite bed. She was in her late sixties, with tightly curled grey hair and large glasses. She held a bunch of white roses out before her. She looked at Rachel and then pointed to a spot in the middle of the floor with grim concern. As Rachel looked back to the woman she found she had gone.

  “Brian’s mother is still with you, isn’t she..? I mean she is still alive.” Rachel barely waited for Claire to agree. “You named Emily after your mother, didn’t you? She died before the twins were born.” Claire nodded, perplexed and speechless. Brian appeared in the doorway, his eyes red and raw from his crying, listening stoically to Rachel’s words. “Your mother is looking after the family, you know that, Claire? She loves you both and she has brought you some white roses. She said you like them.” Tears ran down Claire’s face and she nodded in acceptance of what had been said. “For some reason she indicated that point on the floor.”

  Claire struggled to concentrate on the present, and focussed on the carpet. She coughed to clear her throat. “Amy was pointing to that spot when I found Emily had gone. I don’t know why – or what she saw.”

  Rachel got up and surveyed her surroundings. Even without the guidance of a spirit there was a sense of loss in the room. The emotion hung in the atmosphere like mist. Her ability did not bring her total recall of events from the past, but she had found she could sense empathic feelings from things. She could glimpse the past from sensing the strong emotions and thoughts that anchored a moment or an event in space. Things that could help identify what had happened in this room, and who it was that might have been involved.

  “Did Emily have a favourite toy?”

  Claire picked up a large doll from a chair by the door. “Miss Daisy. They both played with it.”

  Rachel was glad to be back on track in her involvement but her mood plummeted at the thought of sensing if Emily actually had passed. She hated the thought of being burdened with tha
t knowledge. She reached out for the doll and took hold of it.

  An overwhelming sensation of nothingness swept through Rachel’s senses, as if her mind’s eye had suddenly rushed through a maze into a dead end. She turned away from Claire, uncomfortable with her desperately searching stare. The doll had a past connection with Emily, she could sense how it was valued and cherished by the girls, but the connection felt cold.

  It signalled an ending.

  Curiosity suddenly rushed into her, but it felt displaced, not her own emotion: as if she could observe the sensation outside of experiencing it. The feeling was quickly replaced with terror and this time Rachel did experience the emotion. The feelings weren’t coming from the doll. She looked down to her feet and found she had wandered into the middle of the room where the apparition had pointed to and she instantly understood the feeling: Emily had been on this spot and she had seen something that night – something that had caught her interest then terrified her.

  It took all of Rachel’s control not to scream, not at the feeling she experienced, but at what was there with her – somehow within the residue of emotions from that night something was looking back into her mind.

  It dragged its presence through her head like glass raking her flesh as it reached into her.

  The attack tore viciously at her psyche sending her reeling, staggering to one side. The instant she left the space that had been indicated by Claire’s mum and Amy, the emotions and the presence were gone.

  Emily had been on this spot, moments before she had disappeared. Someone else had been there too. Yet Rachel thought that to call it a person wasn’t right; it wasn’t a “someone”, but a “something”’. Whatever “It” was, and whatever had happened, Amy had seen it all.

  In her lifetime, Rachel had sensed more spirits than she could count or recall, even those spirits whose humanity had been whittled away by their torment and anger, but she had never experienced anything like the “thing” she had just encountered. Whatever it was, it was powerful, like a thundering avalanche of raw undeveloped emotion. There was also no language to the thoughts. It had been animal-like. Purely primal.

  It had felt malevolent… Evil.

  “You got something didn’t you!” Claire leaned close and looked about her as if she too would see something, some new clue that had been imperceptible until Rachel had unlocked it. “What did you see? Is she…”

  Claire’s words trailed off. Rachel knew what Claire couldn’t ask but longed to know. Rachel was glad to have set her boundaries, for the detachment she had felt from the doll told her that Emily’s connection to this world had ended. She couldn’t find her words or gather herself from her experience and was relieved at the stupor she found herself in. Claire’s face sharpened into concern at Rachel’s bloodless appearance. Rachel’s focus widened as the numbness of the shock subsided and she became aware of a cold clammy veil on her body, and her arms and her legs became rooting weights. She allowed Claire to support her arm and guide her stumbling feet down the hall into the lounge.

  Despite being seated, Rachel swayed slightly and Claire embraced her to support her. The care and intimacy of the action left Rachel uneasy considering the knowledge she had about her daughter but couldn’t share. “I’m sorry, Claire.” She decided to escape with a broad truth. “I couldn’t get any idea of what happened.” Rachel felt Claire’s arm slide from her shoulder as she moved to crouch at her feet, but any relief at being free of Claire’s kind gesture was short lived.

  Rachel knew from what Claire had said that the phenomenon had occurred around Amy after Emily’s disappearance. Rachel now knew from her experience that something unnatural had been present during Emily’s disappearance. Did the connection indicate a pattern? Did that mean this wasn’t over? Did that mean Amy wasn’t safe, and might share her sister’s fate? They were questions that she couldn’t share with the family yet she imagined they were also Claire’s fears and nightmares.

  If Claire’s idea that it was a spirit that had “taken” the child were to be believed, then how was it possible? Where had she gone? Rachel’s defiant inner self was riled, how could “it” be stopped from doing it again? Rachel shrugged off her fear and anger for Amy’s safety, what Claire believed went against everything Rachel understood. It bordered on Hollywood fiction – if not the beliefs of insanity.

  “I think you were right, something was here with Emily,” Rachel reluctantly and diplomatically conceded before the tug-of-war in her head could drag her in another direction. “I can’t say what happened that night. I don’t know how to believe,” she stumbled to change her words, “don’t know how to understand it – how this could happen as you believe it has. But I feel there is something more to this…” Rachel hesitated as if the words were too difficult to speak. “Perhaps a malignant spirit or some paranormal activity that I have not experienced or heard of before.” She could not help sounding doubtful, but Claire didn’t respond to her tone.

  “If something happened to Emily that’s related to the lights and strange things that have been happening, then these things are still happening. So where does that leave Amy?”

  Rachel found the responsibility was back firmly with her again, but couldn’t answer. There was so much uncertainty, and so much she couldn’t accept. “I don’t know,” she stated simply, once again relying on the truth in the face of an awkward question. “I don’t have any explanations for you.” Claire and Brian shared looks again over the same response they had from the police. They didn’t need to hear it again.

  “I am uncomfortable with what I am going to suggest.” She paused as she considered the enormous demand it made of their family at an emotional time. “With what you have been through, I don’t want to be intrusive on you –” she stepped around what she wanted to suggest. “But what you have described warrants investigation.”

  Rachel observed Claire search Brian for his opinion and support but received a blank stare in return. Rachel understood that this was being left for Claire to deal with.

  “I’m going to lay my cards on the table.” Rachel made eye contact with both of them and held their gazes a moment. “I have a friend at a university; a technical boffin. He has access – well, unofficial access – to university equipment: cameras, motion detectors, temperature sensors and lots of other things I couldn’t hope to explain to you – I have to ask him to set the timer on my video so don’t even get me started on what other things he may have.” She laughed flippantly. “Friends have used him before to set up investigations on supposed hauntings. However, this is a difficult time for you and I know everyone values privacy. That’s where the investigation might be unwelcome. It involves cameras being in nearly every room…” she paused allowing what she was saying to sink in. “Usually everyone stays over in the place under investigation, but the last thing you want at the moment is a group of people sitting around your lounge. I think it can be done by remote though; I will have to ask Dave about all the technical side. It all tends to go over my head you see.” She passed a hand over her head in a mime of her inability to understand.

  Claire laughed and Rachel was pleased to disarm any tension within her, but Claire’s laughter subsided abruptly and her mood was abandoned in mid-air as if she had forgotten what laughter was and its sound and presence startled her. Rachel thought how lonely and empty that laughter had seemed in the home where the family’s loss echoed so cavernously.

  Brian frowned and cut in. “Have you ever seen anything on your investigations?”

  His question stumped her; she was unsure if it was genuine interest or bare-faced scepticism. “I see things all the time, Brian. However, I doubt my experiences will convince you of the spiritual world. I can be just as sceptical as you when I hear second-hand accounts or see an unexplainable image in a photo that I have had no part in taking. After all, you have to rely on someone else’s word that it’s genuine. Even I have the sceptical voice inside me. The day someone finds something that’s conclusive proof i
s the day it will be on the news and front page of every paper. Even then there will be doubt. I have seen film footage that has passed tests at photo labs and been unexplainable, but is unlikely it will make it to the attention of the general public or create a rethinking of what we think we understand. You will always get people that will say it was set up at the time the picture was taken – all lighting, mirrors and wires. You can do so much these days with modern technology.” She wanted him to know that she wasn’t blind to understanding scepticism and she wasn’t beyond having her own doubts when it came to the paranormal, his wife’s claims were a perfect example of that.

  “So it helps to be a believer?”

  “Yes, quite. And I don’t mind from a spiritual or religious perspective, just simply that in the absence of conclusive tangible evidence, it helps to be open-minded. People with open-minds are at a greater advantage at explaining things that are ambiguous or difficult to understand. What’s different here is that whether we want to believe or not, ‘something’ is happening and if we can get some evidence of activity, it isn’t going to help with the police or anyone else, but it might go some way towards confirming your suspicion that something unnatural is going on here. That might take you closer to the truth, whether that truth lies more in my field or has more of a rational explanation. Enlightenment is not much to offer you. But at the moment all you and I have are questions.”

  For a few minutes there was silence. Claire sat back with her husband and searched his eyes for any sign that might indicate what path his thoughts were on. Rachel could only see the cloud of loss that glazed his eyes.

  Brian broke away from her gaze and cleared his throat. “I trust my wife. I love her and if she says she believes something beyond our comprehension and understanding has happened then I can only agree, because I have lost a daughter and I don’t have any way to explain her disappearance. I have to trust her.”