The Resurrectionists

by Kim Wilkins

  She pulled on her dressing gown and headed for the lounge room to open the curtains. Was it her imagination or was she walking straighter, taller, this morning? “I’m psychic,” she said out loud, then laughed at her foolishness, held out her hand to an imaginary new acquaintance: “Pleased to meet you. I’m Maisie Fielding and I’m psychic.”

  She spent a moment gazing through the window surveying the weather: the freezing sky had descended, embracing the world in mist. Trees were tall shadows behind the veil. But the mist was not so thick that she couldn’t see Sacha’s van pull around the corner, heading towards her house.

  “Oh, my god!” she squealed in horror. Wet hair, red nose, blackhead, only in her dressing gown. She had roughly ten seconds to fix it all.

  She raced into her bedroom and fumbled for some concealer, quickly pulled on a black skirt and cardigan. A knock at the door.

  “Just a second,” she called, quickly towelling her hair and pinning it back. Her reflection in the bathroom mirror scared her. She looked a mess.

  “Just a second,” she said again, heading back to the bedroom and trying again with some hastily-applied mascara. She ran her tongue across her teeth. No time to clean them. She would have to remember not to breathe on him.

  “Hi, Sacha, I wasn’t expecting you,” she said.

  “Can I come in?” No apology. No explanation.

  “Sure.” She stood aside and let him through, locked the door behind him. “I’m just making a cup of tea. Come down to the kitchen.”

  He followed her to the kitchen where he sat down, clearly more comfortable than she was. “I forgot to take that stuff for Oxfam the other night. Thought I’d pick it up today instead.”

  “Thanks, that’s great.” She switched the electric kettle on and got out two cups.

  “You look nice,” he said, nearly flooring her.

  “Thanks. I don’t feel nice.”

  “You have a cold?”

  “Yes.”

  “Best to get it out of the way early in winter. Do you need anything? I can go up to the chemist for you.”

  My hero. “No, I’m fine. I think the worst of it is over.” The kettle whistled. She made two cups of tea and then joined him at the kitchen table.

  He took a sip of his tea and then sat back, considering her. “So, what kind of a weekend did you have?”

  “An interesting one. Somebody put a rock through my front window.”

  “Kids? Vandals?”

  “Locals. Or at least a local. He called me a witch too.”

  Sacha raised his eyebrows. “They must have you confused with Sybill.”

  “Were they afraid of my grandmother?”

  “I think so, yes. Sometimes they did nasty things: threatening letters and the like. Were you scared?”

  She shook her head. “Not really. He seemed like a bit of a bumbling idiot, really. I was more irritated. Bewildered, even.”

  “They’re afraid of you, Maisie.” She loved the way he said her name. He made it sound French or something.

  “They needn’t be.”

  “But they are.”

  She sipped her tea, staring into middle distance, thinking about what Adrian had told her. “Maybe…” She trailed off and didn’t finish her sentence.

  A few seconds ticked by. “Maybe what?” Sacha said at last.

  She focused on him. Eyes met eyes. She couldn’t be safe as long as he met her gaze so evenly, didn’t deflect her interest. “Maybe they do have a reason to be afraid of me. Maybe I am like Sybill.”

  “In what way?”

  “I just heard why my mother and my grandmother didn’t get along.”

  “Tell me.”

  So she did tell him. Because of his background she felt she could trust him, that he would understand. Adrian had thought her crazy to believe what Sybill had said, but Sacha wouldn’t. His mother and Sybill had formed a bond over magic and fortune-telling.

  When she had finished, Sacha sat quietly for a moment considering her.

  “What’s the matter?” she asked, her stomach dipping. “Do you think I’m crazy?”

  He shook his head. “Me? Never. I grew up at spook central.”

  “Then what’s the matter?”

  He leaned forward, spreading his hands, palms upwards, on the table. “While it’s true that psychic gifts are supposedly inherited, I just have a bit of trouble believing that you didn’t know.”

  “But I did know. Or at least I did when I was younger. But then I got sick and…” She shrugged. “It stopped happening.”

  “Are you very intuitive? Know what people are going to say next? Know who’s on the telephone before you answer it?”

  Maisie shook her head with an awful sense of deflation. Sacha’s mother was psychic, and he had known her grandmother well. If he didn’t think she had the Gift, then she probably didn’t. All her hope went rushing past her fingertips.

  “What about dreams? Do you dream things that happen?”

  “I used to.”

  “Yes, you used to. But now? In the last few years?”

  Again she shook her head. “Not really. Though I had a spooky dream in the bath the other night. And it seemed like I was remembering something.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah.”

  He nodded. “Remembering what?”

  “Something bad. But not something that had happened to me.” She snapped her fingers, optimism returning. “And straight after I felt sick. Nauseous.”

  He finished his tea and took the cup to the sink, leaned his back against the cupboards. “If you do have this ability, why would it make you sick?”

  “You mean that’s not normal?”

  “Not from what I understand. Something bad must have happened to you to have such a strong reaction to it. But you can probably overcome it if you know what you’re doing.”

  Maisie sighed. “Here’s the problem. I don’t even know where to start. You know, to develop it.”

  “I know a little about it.”

  Excitement layered upon excitement. “You do?”

  “Yeah. My mum tried to teach me. Unfortunately, I have no psychic ability. Or at least very little beyond a slightly heightened sense of intuition. She was very disappointed in me.”

  “But you could teach me what she taught you?”

  He shrugged. “I could try. But if you don’t have the Gift, I can’t help you.”

  “We can try, though.”

  “Sure. Here, let’s do a little experiment I used to help your grandmother with.” He moved across the room and grabbed his chair, brought it around next to hers and turned her to face him. The touch of his fingers on her arms, even through the sleeves of her cardigan, made her heart race. They held that pose for a moment, he holding her upper arms, she gazing, scared-rabbit like, into his face.

  “Close your eyes,” he said softly.

  “Um…okay.” Nervous laughter. Get a grip, Maisie. She closed her eyes.

  “I’m going to get you to open up your energy centres. Ever done that before?”

  “No. I don’t even know where my ‘energy centres’ are.”

  “That’s fine. Most people don’t.” He laughed. “I always forget how ridiculous stuff like that must sound to someone who didn’t grow up steeped in it.” His hands left her arms. “Take a few deep breaths…Good. At the base of your spine is a red light. See it spinning?”

  “I can’t see anything.”

  “Visualise it. You’re a musician, you must have some imagination.”

  That stung. She concentrated, tried to imagine the red light.

  “Now open it up. Imagine it, I mean.”

  She followed his instructions as he described coloured lights all over her body, opening them up when he asked. Perhaps it was the deep breathing, but she was feeling very relaxed, almost buzzing with a sense of well-being. When he had taken her right to the top of her head – violet – he let her sit for a while, breathing deeply.

  “Maisie, you�
�re open.”

  He was turning her on. “Yeah, okay.”

  “I’m going to ask you to do something. Don’t think about how to do it, just do it, okay?”

  She nodded.

  “Show me your Gift,” he said softly, darkly.

  From somewhere inside her, a bubble of energy seemed to rise. Sacha grabbed her hands, placed them palm to palm against his own.

  “Let it come,” he said.

  Without even knowing what she was doing, she opened her mouth and dropped her head back. A wave washed over her and broke along her skin. There was a sound like a popping, and Sacha pulled his hands back.

  “Ouch!”

  She opened her eyes, came back to the kitchen. Feeling mildly embarrassed about what had just happened.

  What had just happened?

  “You zapped me,” Sacha said, rubbing his palms together. “You were on.”

  “On?”

  “On. As opposed to off. Sybill was right.”

  “Then I am…?”

  “I’m sure of it. I only wish I could get in touch with my mother, she’d love to teach you. But I have no idea where she is at the moment, so you’re stuck with me.”

  Sacha as teacher? It was dazzlingly appropriate. Her feelings of excited anticipation about her psychic power matched her feelings for him exactly.

  “I’ll work so hard,” she said.

  “Do you feel sick?”

  “No.”

  “If you do it properly you shouldn’t get sick. Can I tell you something, Maisie?” He hadn’t moved his chair, but he leaned back, out of the danger zone.

  “Sure. Anything.”

  “I don’t want to scare you.”

  A little thrill licked at the base of her neck. She placed a hand there, rubbed the skin. “Go on.”

  “I’ve been around when my mother opens up, and Sybill. They’re both…light. The energy seems bright, yellow almost.”

  “And?”

  “You’re not. I don’t know if that means anything.”

  “What colour am I?”

  “You’re dark. Really dark. It kind of frightened me at first.”

  Her skin crawled. “I…”

  “Don’t worry. It might mean nothing. Perhaps it’s an auric cast. Ma would be able to tell me. She’ll probably call soon.” He rose from the chair and stretched his arms above his head, yawning. “I’d better get going. Where’s all this stuff you want me to take?”

  She helped him load armfuls of old clothes and bric-a-brac into the back of his van. When they were done, he turned to her.

  “I didn’t scare you, did I? I shouldn’t have said anything.”

  “No. No, really I’m fine,” she lied. She folded her arms over herself. She hadn’t bothered to put her overcoat on and it was freezing out here. And although she fancied him like mad, she didn’t want to give him a conspicuous nipple display.

  “Okay. Well, I’ll see you again soon. I’ll look around my flat for any of my mother’s books.”

  “Thanks.”

  In a second he was revving up the van and taking off down the main street. She shivered and turned to go back inside. Aching with fear and excitement and desire.

  Maisie went directly to her grandmother’s bookshelf and began checking the spines for titles about psychic development. Then she checked the cupboard beneath the shelf and found masses of rubbish. Amongst it, she located several books about chakras and meditation and theories of the Afterlife. She sat amid piles of junk, leafing through the pages for a few hours. She tried a couple of the meditation experiments, but they didn’t work for her. That was okay, she was only new at it after all.

  Setting the books aside, she decided to tackle the other piles of stuff looking for anything specific Sybill might have written down about psychic development. She found only old exercise books full of recipes and budgets, lots of badly written poems and stories, sketches, lists of phone numbers, and junk mail. And mouse shit. Plenty of that. It may as well all be thrown out. After the culling, she checked her watch; it was half past three and she had forgotten to have lunch. She filled an empty box with the rubbish and left it near the door.

  Something seemed out of place but she couldn’t quite put her finger on it.

  Of course. Tabby. She hadn’t seen the cat since this morning. She must have slunk out the front door when Sacha had come in. Maisie went to the laundry and opened the door, expecting to see the cat sitting there waiting. But the back garden was empty.

  “Tabby!” she called, walking outside. A frosty wind from the north had blown all the mist away and now teased at the treetops. The cat was nowhere to be seen. Maisie went back inside and closed the door. Yes, a cat flap would have been a great idea. Tabby would probably scratch and miaow if she wanted in, but the cottage felt kind of lonely without her.

  Maisie toasted a sandwich and made some potato wedges to go with it, read a book while she ate, then cleaned it all up, and still Tabby wasn’t home. It was well and truly dark outside now. She put on her overcoat and gloves and walked once more to the laundry.

  Something’s wrong.

  The feeling was powerful, convincing. She tried to dismiss it. Maybe she’d spent too much time today reading books about the supernatural. She left the back door open in case Tabby returned and headed into the garden to search.

  The cat wasn’t under the rosebushes, or up the oak tree, nor was she anywhere in the front garden or along the street. Maisie turned and headed back through the trees that led down towards the cliffs, calling all the time. Fine wet branches caught on her clothes. The air was heavy with the smell of wet, mouldering foliage.

  “Tabby! Come on, girl. Where are you?”

  She could hear the sea grating against the rocks. Surely Tabby couldn’t have gone over the cliff. She dreaded the idea, but felt she should check anyway. At the cliff’s edge she looked down and saw nothing except phosphorescent seaspray.

  “Tabby!” she called, and her voice was carried away behind her by the wind. She turned on her heel and slowly headed back.

  Halfway through the wood, a shadow suddenly detached itself from a tree and sprung out at her, hissing madly.

  “Tabby!” Maisie cried, bending to pick up the cat.

  Tabby hissed again and clawed out wildly, leaving a scratch across Maisie’s cheek. Maisie dropped her and put her hand to her face.

  “Ow. Bitch…”

  Tabby ran off towards the cottage, her tail bushed up and her fur on end. Maisie ran after her. Maybe she’d been injured. That would explain the wild behaviour. Maisie found her waiting, low to the ground, a few paces from the back door, looking warily inside.

  “Tabby? Are you hurt?” Maisie kneeled and hesitantly reached out to stroke her head. Tabby fixed her gaze on the doorway, flicking her tail suspiciously. Maisie checked her over quickly in the dark, squeezed her paws and gently pulled her ears, but she didn’t react. A faint smell of something rotten clung to the cat, as though she may have rubbed herself on a dead animal.

  “Okay. Come inside,” Maisie said, having satisfied herself that the cat was probably fine. But as she headed into the house, Tabby crawled a few cautious steps backwards and wouldn’t come in.

  “Tabby?” Maisie looked from the cat to the cottage. It seemed very dark inside. A few seconds passed. She collected herself. Just go in. She strode into the laundry, switched on the light. Nothing, still dark. The bulb must have blown. She went to the kitchen and tried the light there. Again nothing. The pit of her stomach grew icy.

  Probably just an electrical fault. The display on the microwave was blank and the fridge wasn’t humming. An old place like this probably had dodgy wiring. It was only a matter of calling an electrician and it would soon be sorted. But first she needed candles.

  Fumbling around in the dark, she dug inside Sybill’s witch’s chest for candles, then felt in her top drawer for matches. By candlelight she looked in the phone book for an electrician nearby, then picked up the phone to dial.
r />   No dial tone.

  “Shit!” she said, slamming down the phone. This was too creepy. No lights, no phone, the cat wouldn’t come inside. She was just contemplating going down to the pub to ask for help when she heard a noise from the kitchen. Like four or five laboured breaths. Wet and eager.

  “Tabby? Is that you?” She took one of the candles and rose from her chair. It wasn’t Tabby, she knew it wasn’t Tabby. She didn’t want to go anywhere near the kitchen. If only the lights were working. If only she hadn’t left the back door open. She was frozen to the spot, listening hard for the sound again, but all was silent. No amount of willing herself to calm down could bring her to go to the kitchen. Her heart thudded madly in her throat.

  Suddenly, lights came on again and the noise stopped. Maisie let out a huge breath she hadn’t even realised she’d been holding.

  “Thank god,” she muttered. She turned on the lounge room light and blew out the candles, then went through the rest of the house switching lights on. The kitchen, when she peeked in, was thankfully empty. She had panicked over nothing. When she got to the laundry, she called for Tabby again.

  “Come on, girl, it’s all right. Just an electrical fault.” Tabby still refused to come in, and Maisie closed the door on her. When she was hungry enough, she would let Maisie know.

  But she hadn’t checked the telephone. Perhaps there had been a local outage and the exchange had gone down. She went back up the hallway and reached for the phone.

  The candles were still burning.

  “What the…?” She had put them out, she could remember it clearly.

  Okay, no need to panic. Perhaps she hadn’t blown hard enough or something. She tried again. They were definitely extinguished this time. She checked the phone. The dial tone was back, everything was normal. She checked the candles again. Definitely out. Smoky trails led from their wicks.

  Calm down, Maisie.

  God, she hated, hated, being alone.