by Kim Wilkins
What had Virgil seen in the graveyard? Okay, so he was delirious, he was out of his head on opium. But the description was so familiar: a brown, cloaked figure which stuck to the shadows; wet, anxious breaths.
A ghost. A ghost that had been haunting Solgreve for centuries, a ghost who liked to hang out in her back garden. She supposed if she could believe in her own psychic power, she could believe in a ghost. Suddenly she felt vulnerable, without protection. Couldn’t ghosts walk through walls? Or was that only in movies?
She went to the bookcase and placed the diary pages in the iron box with the others she had found. Snapped the lid shut. She sagged against the bookshelf. The wine bottle was now nearly empty. Was she drinking too much? How much was too much? Surely a few extra glasses of wine around Christmas time didn’t amount to a drinking problem.
All right, focus. She felt a bit dizzy from the alcohol, but she had to concentrate on the problem at hand. She was being haunted, but she was psychic, right? Maybe she could make the ghost go away, especially as she thought she knew why the ghost was bothering her in the first place.
“Sybill,” she said under her breath as she went to the bedroom. Her grandmother probably had good reason at the time for what she did, but Maisie was going to undo it. She flipped open the witch’s chest and ploughed through to the bottom, where she found the spell scrolls. She pulled them out one by one and read them. Most of them meant as little to her now as when she had first read them. Except for one.
I call the black presence.
Maisie held the scroll in her left hand. This must be what had attracted the ghost. She hesitated for a moment. The figure was, after all, cloaked in brown, not black. But she assumed that figurative speech was probably common in magical practice. The ghost was a creature of the shadows, no matter what colour it wore.
She had no real idea how to reverse the spell, but thought tearing it up would be a good start. She went to the lounge room and threw the paper and a little bag which accompanied it onto the fire. The house filled with the sick-sweet smell of burning herbs. She returned to the witch’s chest and read through the other spells again. One of them in particular was nagging at her.
Across the miles I touch her heart and tell her to come.
A realisation that this was about her; Sybill had known about Maisie and her Gift. If her grandmother couldn’t contact her through the ordinary channels, what with Janet being such a bitch about it, perhaps she had tried another method to reach her. Maisie sat back and read the spell over and over. Had her grandmother, in fact, touched her heart and told her to come? Was that why she was here now, and not holidaying in Italy or France? Something about that thought made Maisie uncomfortable: like her free will was no match for Sybill’s magic. She screwed up the piece of paper and threw it and the accompanying bag of herbs towards the bin. It bounced off the rim and landed on the floor next to her boots.
Maisie packed the items back in the chest, pulled herself to her feet and switched the light off, then went to the window to watch the snow falling outside. Oblique moonbeams lit up the white lawn, making it resemble a sickly kind of daylight – shadows too deep, a grey cast over everything. She thought about Georgette’s diary and the advanced age of some of the villagers being attributed to Flood’s magic. Did that magic still linger in Solgreve? She thought about Sacha and how he had offered to help her find her psychic power; her vague sense that she was betraying Adrian and her family. But most of all she thought about Sybill, this grandmother she had never known. Grandmothers were supposed to be kindly ladies who baked cakes and smelled of lavender, right? Not enigmatic witches, with cluttered cupboards, who defiled graves. For the first time, Sybill’s eccentricities did not delight Maisie. Although part of her wanted to respond fondly to the idea that Sybill had loved her enough to want her in her life, she couldn’t help feeling she had been manipulated. And it was a feeling she didn’t like.
“But you don’t know anything about this guy!” Adrian sat on the edge of the bed, phone in his hand, talking to Maisie a million miles away. She had just told him she was heading off to London for New Year’s with her grandmother’s gardener. It didn’t seem safe at all to Adrian. He felt the uncomfortable tickle of sweat across his stomach. It was a stinker of a day – humid and hazy.
“Adrian, he was a good friend of my grandmother’s. He’s not going to murder me.”
“But you only just met him.”
“I’ve spoken to him a few times. He came over and helped me get rid of some of Sybill’s old things. Believe me, he’s completely trustworthy.”
“I don’t know if I like this, Maisie. Why can’t you spend New Year’s with Cathy?”
“She’s in Edinburgh. I doubt she’ll be back in time.”
Adrian sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “Just be careful, okay?”
“I’m always careful,” she replied, “and really, Adrian, he’s just a nice, ordinary guy. It’s very thoughtful of him to invite me. I would have been alone otherwise.”
That in itself seemed suspicious to Adrian. Why would this guy invite her to London if they hardly knew each other? “He probably fancies you. He probably wants to get into your pants.”
“Adrian!”
“Well, who wouldn’t? You’re gorgeous.”
“You only think that because you’re my boyfriend.”
“Well? Do you think he fancies you?”
“No. I’m sure he doesn’t,” she said emphatically.
“Women can never tell. You should give me this guy’s name and phone number. You know, in case I don’t hear from you again – that way I’ll know where to send the homicide squad.”
Maisie laughed lightly, then dictated the name and number to him. Adrian scrabbled on his bedside table for a pen and paper, and copied the details down. “Okay, I’ll try not to worry. As long as you promise to call when you get to London – and give me the phone number where you’re staying.”
“Of course.”
“And as long as you promise not to like him better than me.”
“Adrian, now you’re being silly.”
“How old is he? Is he good-looking?”
“He’s about your age. I guess he’s okay-looking. I hadn’t really noticed.” Was her voice getting snappy? Was she annoyed with him? “But you’re an opera star. There’s no comparison.”
“I’m sorry, Maisie. You’re just so far away and I’m afraid of losing you.”
“You won’t lose me,” she replied, softly. “I love you.”
“I love you too.” He stood up and walked to the window, careful not to pull the phone off the table. “God, it’s so hot here.”
“How hot?”
He pushed the window open all the way and leaned his upper body out. Not a breath of wind came to his relief. The cicada chorus was in full, grating voice. “About thirty degrees. And sticky. You know how it gets.”
“Well, it snowed here yesterday.”
“It sounds like heaven.”
“You’d hate it. You’re always going on about how the humidity’s good for your voice.”
“It is. And speaking of singing, I’m off to Auckland on the sixth of January now, instead of the eighth.”
“You must be looking forward to it.”
He turned around, leaned his back against the windowsill. “Ah, I don’t know. Everything kind of loses its gloss when you’re not around. Why don’t you come back early? Fly to Auckland? I could give you full body massages every day.”
“I don’t know,” she said slowly. Which was encouraging. At least it wasn’t an outright no.
“Come on. I miss you. We should be together.”
“I don’t know if I’d come to Auckland. I’d be bored to death – you’d be out all day. And it’s probably crappy student accommodation. It would just make me depressed.”
“Well, come home to your parents, then. I know Janet would be glad to see you home.”
Maisie laughed. “I doubt that very much.”
/>
“You know, I can be back in Brisbane by about the eighteenth. I can skip the last week of the program,” he said. While she was open to the idea he had to push his advantage. He missed her and he was worried about her. “Why don’t you change your flight to come home then?”
“Well…”
“Just think about it.”
“Okay. Okay, I’ll think about it.”
Maisie greeted Thursday morning with mixed feelings. Yes, she was looking forward to London, to hanging out with gorgeous Sacha, to savouring the sweet, sweet tension of being close to him. But she was sick with dread, too. Being with him for such a long period of time…what if she was accidentally revolting? The body was such an unreliable vessel, capable of producing all kinds of offensive by-products. The great thing about a long-term relationship was being used to one another. She and Adrian had been sharing a bed and bathroom for so long now, they were incapable of offending each other.
And what about Adrian? He really hadn’t wanted her to go with Sacha, and would like it even less if he knew how she felt. But he trusted her, obviously. Which meant, more than ever, that she had to fulfil his expectations.
Not that she was considering doing otherwise.
While she waited for Sacha (she was ready nearly an hour early), she phoned and left a message with Cathy’s boarding house to say she’d be away for a while – guiltily. Then she called Perry Daniels’ office to let him know she was in London for a week. The insurance claim was still pending on her front window and she didn’t want the solicitor to think she’d skipped town.
Business taken care of, she sat back to wait.
Sacha’s van pulled around the corner at ten to eleven. Outside, the snow had started to melt and turn dirty, and the sun shone on it from a long way off. Maisie placed a hand over her chest. Guard your heart. It was just a few days in London with a friend – nothing more.
Tabby was at the door miaowing already. She recognised the sound of Sacha’s van. Maisie waited until after he had knocked before she opened the door.
“Hi.”
“Hi,” he said, coming in and closing the door behind him. He was wearing a deep red pullover and jeans. Maisie’s eyes measured out the length of his legs. “Did it snow?”
“Yes, but only for two nights,” she replied, picking up her small suitcase.
“Not at Christmas?”
“No, unfortunately.”
“That’s a shame.” Tabby was winding between his legs.
“Do you think it would be safe to leave the heating on for Tabby?”
“Probably. But she’s coming with us.”
“To London?”
“No, just as far as York. I’m leaving the van at my friend Chris’s house and we’ll catch the train down. I hate driving in London. Tabby can stay with Chris too. Cats hate being alone.”
“And is this friend okay with having the cat stay?”
“Yes, I’ve already asked.”
“Okay then. Let’s go.”
She did a last-minute check of door locks and electrical items and then they headed to the van. The upholstery was tatty, the foot-well was full of junk, the dashboard was cracked, and over it all was the smell of diesel and dirt. Tabby went happily into the back, where she walked around a few times sniffing the carpet and looking for bugs in corners. Sacha slammed the sliding back door shut then came round to the driver’s side.
“London here we come,” Sacha said, buckling his seat belt and starting the van.
Maisie turned to check on Tabby as they pulled away from the kerb. She had settled down on top of an old T-shirt scrunched up near the left wheel arch. Maisie watched the cottage disappear through the back window.
“What’s the matter? Homesick for Solgreve already?” Sacha asked.
“Hardly,” she said, facing the front. They were passing the abbey now, and it made her think about Georgette and Dr Flood. “Sacha, do you remember how many pieces of the diary Sybill found?”
“Three, I think.”
“Any idea where the third one is?”
“No. Maybe there wasn’t a third one. I really can’t remember.” He glanced at her quickly. “Sorry.”
“God, it could be anywhere in that house. I’m not cleaning the place as much as excavating it.” She leaned her head on the window as they left Solgreve and headed towards the motorway out on the moors.
“What did you do for Christmas?” he asked.
“I went to York for Christmas Eve, but I was back here alone on Christmas Day.” She edited out the part about trying to find him on Christmas Eve, and crying into a wine glass Christmas Day. “How about you?”
“I went down to Manchester to visit an aunt.”
Great! He hadn’t been with a gorgeous girlfriend. Maisie watched his hands on the steering wheel.
“Actually,” he continued, “my mother called. I told her about you.”
Maisie was stupidly flattered that he had been thinking about her while she wasn’t around. “And?”
“She wants to meet you, but she’s stuck over in Wales at the moment and won’t be up here for a few weeks. But you never know. Ma turns up at odd, unexpected times.”
“I’d like to meet her. I think I need her advice on something really scary that happened to me.” This was her lead-in to telling him about the haunting last week, but he continued as though he hadn’t heard.
“I asked her about the colour thing. You know, how I said I got a sense of dark colour around you, not yellow like her.”
“Yes?”
“Apparently it’s to do with intensity.”
“Oh. So the brighter the colour, the more intense the power?”
“No. Other way around – the darker the colour.”
“That doesn’t make sense.”
“That’s what Ma said. She said Sybill would have been really jealous of you. She had spent her whole life developing and learning to use her powers, and she was extremely adept. But you were born with a raw power of great intensity.”
She studied his profile for a few moments, taking all this in. “So, I’m more powerful than Sybill?”
He shook his head. “Not at the moment, you’re not. You barely know how to use your Gift. You have virtually no stories to tell about psychic experiences in your life. It’s like the power is buried. Ma says you’re quite old to be starting to develop it, that it may even be too late.”
Her stomach tightened. “Too late? But that’s not fair. How was I supposed to know?”
“You should have known. We can’t figure out how you didn’t know. People with way less power than you know as early as six or seven, or if not, then puberty will set it off. You should have known.”
“Damn.” Maisie leaned her head back on the seat.
“But we can still try to develop it. We’ve got a whole week together and a whole house to ourselves.”
Maisie liked the sound of that. “Okay. Where are we staying?”
“You’ll see when we get there. Anyway, what happened to you that was really scary?”
So he had been listening. “I don’t know,” she said, suddenly nervous of sounding like a fool. “You might laugh at me.”
“Something supernatural?” he asked.
“Yes.”
They were passing through a small town now. Sacha gently applied the brakes as an elderly lady in a lilac headscarf started to cross the road in front of them. It had snowed more heavily here, and a thick white blanket lay over grey stone fences and evergreen trees. The elderly lady safely on the other side of the road, they began to move again.
“You know,” Sacha said, “your reluctance to talk about supernatural things is probably one of the reasons you can’t access your power. As those pop psychologists always say, ‘you’re in denial.’”
“I’m just not used to it. If I told this stuff to Adrian he’d have me committed.” That came out with rather more vehemence than she’d intended. Was it to impress Sacha, or was it because she was angrier tha
n she’d realised with Adrian for not taking her seriously?
“You can tell me,” he said, softly. Almost conspiratorially.
So she recounted for him the evening Tabby had gone missing and how some asthmatic phantom had played with her electricity. He listened carefully, not saying a word until she had finished.
“You must have been terrified,” he said at last.
“Of course. I still am.”
“Leave your doors closed from now on.”
“Are you trying to tell me deadlocks can keep out spirits?”
“Not usually. But Sybill had cast a protection spell over the house. It’s probably still active. She spent weeks working on it. An open door is like a gap in the spell.”
“Is that why she doesn’t have a kitty flap?”
Sacha laughed. “Maybe. Just keep your doors and windows closed after dark. And Tabby can probably fend for herself if she runs off.”
“I found a spell in Sybill’s chest: I call the black presence.”
“Might have something to do with it. Maybe she was calling it to banish it. I don’t know.” He gave her a brief smile. “Sorry, I’m not much help to you, am I?”
“No, no. You’re a great help. I’d be all alone in this otherwise.”
It took just under two hours to drive to York through the North Yorkshire Moors National Park, some parts of which were still under heavy layers of snow. Maisie was proud of herself for conversing with Sacha as though he were a normal human being, and not a minor deity. She was almost certain he wouldn’t be able to tell from talking to her that she spent upward of three hours a day fantasising about him. It wouldn’t do for him to know that. She could barely admit it to herself.
Frosty York greeted them around one p.m. Maisie thought guiltily of Cathy, wondering if she was back from Edinburgh yet, but decided that all bets were off when a girl was a universe away from home at New Year’s. She had to grasp social experiences as they were offered, without any moral obligation to keep old friends (especially ones who were never really friends) company.
“Chris lives just up this street. We’ll leave the van here and walk up to the train station, okay? It’s only a couple of blocks.”
