by Kim Wilkins
“Are you in trouble, Ma’am?”
I looked up, bewildered. Then I remembered that for once I was well-dressed and must look like a person worthy of attention.
The driver was concerned. “Ma’am?”
“I…”
“Where are you going?”
“Whitby.”
“I have room inside. I’m taking packages to Whitby.”
Now I had stopped walking, my legs threatened to give beneath me. The driver got down off the coach and helped me inside. “Shall I take you to a doctor, Ma’am?”
“No, no. Take me to a guesthouse.” Then, remembering my manners, I reached for the money inside my stays and held it out in a handful. “I can pay you.”
God bless him, he was a good man. “Now you put that away. You’re sick and you’re lost, and I’m going to Whitby anyways.”
I did as he said, and he closed the carriage door. It was cramped inside, filled with packages. I was hot, burning up, but I began to cool as I sat there among the packages, the motion of the carriage lulling me. Eventually, I slept.
I have known so much pain, Diary. I dare not even turn to the beginning of this book and read over the pages which record earlier happiness, for the contrast would be too much to bear. I can only take comfort in knowing that I have done the right thing, that Henri will have a good home. Why, by now, he may very well be settled with his new family, amongst warmth and merriment, receiving kisses and cuddles. He may fret for me for a while, but he will soon forget me. There is not very much of me to remember.
Though I wonder if he had resembled Virgil more, would I have kept him?
It does not pay to wonder about such things. I have sufficient misery. It would have been selfish to keep him under any circumstances. I will rest here in Whitby a few days, for this guesthouse is comfortable and clean. Then, later in the week, I will return briefly to Solgreve to rescue my wedding band. After that? Well, who can know the future.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Wednesday, 21st January 1795
I wonder, do houses have memories? This old cottage, here in Solgreve, for instance. Have events to which it has been witness imprinted themselves upon the walls and then seeped into the bricks and foundations to lie there, dormant, for years?
This shall be the last thing I shall ever write. One can achieve an awesome state of clarity when one realises one is truly the plaything of Fate. It is simple. One says, “Oh, I see, so now I shall die and that shall be an end of it,” and one accepts it. I am to die on a Wednesday. Strange. I have never held a particular prejudice against Wednesdays.
The pressure of the last few months has bent me and bent me and bent me, but finally I am broken. If what I write seems bled of feeling, it is because I have no capacity left to feel. You will soon understand.
I spent a few days in Whitby. Every night I dreamed of Henri and would wake in tears, craving the sweet scent of his breath or the bestowal of one of his little, wet smiles. I told myself again and again it was for the best, and tried to diminish my sadness by imagining him ensconced in a grand house with maids and cooks and warm arms to hold him.
During the days at Whitby, I would take long walks along the beach, through the town, and sometimes I would sit for hours in the markets, no matter that it was cold. I would watch the actions and listen to the conversations of others and take comfort in their mundaneness. I know not how many conversations I overheard about the best way to preserve apples or the possibility of more snow before the end of winter. But it was quite a different conversation that I heard the morning before yesterday which has broken me. Imagine, had I left earlier, had I chosen the opposite end of the market to sit, or had I decided to linger upon the beach, I would never have known.
Two women stood near a stall selling fish oil, and they conversed about their husbands and their daughters and the coal man, and then one of them, a large woman in a grey dress, said, “My niece from York has written me a letter this morning.”
“How is she?” said the other.
“She is well. But she had a sad tale. An abandoned child was found dead on the steps of the church near her house.”
Upon this moment my blood turned to cold angles.
“Oh, no. The poor child. How old?”
“Just a babe. Tiny little thing.”
And upon this moment I thought, it could not possibly be Henri. For he was warm and sleepy when I left him. This must be some other unfortunate child whose mother was not careful enough.
“Did it freeze to death?”
“No, it suffocated. The mother had wrapped it so tight, in a mourning dress of all things.”
And upon this moment I knew it was my child about whom these women spoke, as though he were just an object for their brief consternation. The horror was indescribable.
“A mourning dress? Fancy.”
“My niece said the rector told her the child was weak and sickly to begin with, as though it had starved a while first.”
“Its mother must have been a madwoman.”
A madwoman. Yes, perhaps I am. The women walked in another direction and I sat like a statue, for I feared moving. To move would be to fall to pieces. I resisted, and still do, resist the images that wish to draw themselves in my mind. It will do me no good to know how long Henri lived after I left him. If it was quick, or if he cried or struggled, or if the rector was only a few minutes away when his little heart stopped beating. It will do me no good to wonder had I been less tired, less oppressed by grief, whether I would have made a better decision about Henri’s future, or even if I would have been attentive enough to notice that the clothes were too close around his face in the basket, that he need only turn his head to be smothered in my mourning dress. The lot has been cast. I have been dealt my Fate.
And so, you see, they are all dead, all those whom I dared to love. I sat at the market for hours, and I wished nothing so much as to die too, but that would be an end to my suffering and I deserve much worse than to die. I deserve to contemplate daily, hourly, eternally, that I suffocated my own child.
I returned to Solgreve, bought back my wedding ring, and have had a day or two to decide upon how I shall punish myself. And I have decided.
This morning I visited Mr Edghill the surgeon to make a purchase, and then I mailed a letter to Edward. It said simply that Henri was dead and that I had returned to Solgreve, to the seat of my last happiness. And here in Solgreve, I wrote, I intended to die also. Mr Edghill had given me poison for mice and I would take a large dose that very afternoon (which is today, which is a Wednesday) and I requested Edward come to bury me as soon as possible. Bury me in my own garden and plant a rosebush over my bones and not tell a soul, so that Flood will never know I’m there and I can stay in the ground.
Buried in Solgreve. A fitting punishment. But Edward does not know that, and nor shall he. Virgil’s letter I will stitch into the binding of my Diary to follow this last entry. I shall not send it to its designated recipient, for it reads like the speculations of a madman. I know everything in it is true, of course, for I have seen the Wraiths and met with Flood and know that such things as are beyond explanation exist in the world. But I cannot expect others to believe it.
And as for you, Diary, you who have been my indifferent companion through all that has befallen me, you are to remain after me as my memories, as the house’s memories. I shall take you to pieces and hide you in the foundations and the walls. And perhaps some day somebody will find you and read about my life and have a little sympathy for me, a woman who chose eternal torture to punish her guilt. Lying deep in the earth.
A letter to the Constabulary:
Virgil Marley, St Mary’s Lane, Solgreve.
17th December, 1794
Dear Sir,
I write of acts, arcane and heinous, which take place in Solgreve. A certain Doctor there, named Aaron Elijah Flood, has his residence in the foundations of the ruined Solgreve Abbey. In his chambers, he performs mystical science desi
gned to prolong human life. Flood himself is over three centuries old. Others in Solgreve can expect to live to at least one century in age, with good health and no pain.
The price to be paid for this prolonging of life is dear. One thousand years ago, Solgreve was a site for heathen worship. Three priests in this godless religion cursed the ground in Solgreve for their own wicked ends. The curse works in this manner: normally, the soul of a man departs the body upon the point of death and begins its journey (no man knows, still, where this journey leads). If a body is buried in Solgreve, however, the flesh acts as an anchor for the soul. The soul is called back to the body and buried with it, thus denying it its true passage: no heaven nor hell, no rebirth nor rejoining the vast spirit of the Universe. By far the most horrifying aspect of this entombment of the soul is the soul’s awareness of its lot. They are buried forever and they know. The unfortunates interred in the earth in Solgreve are as though buried alive, trapped forever in their graves, conscious that they may never leave. Misery has saturated the ground in this village.
The benefit of this curse for the heathen priests, and now for Flood, is that the souls may be extracted and used for other purposes. The soul, you see, is a small sliver of eternal power. With these pieces of eternity trapped, Flood draws upon their power to prolong his life, and grants immaculate health to the villagers in exchange for their co-operation in his art.
The extraction of souls was taught to Flood by the three heathen priests, whom Flood calls the Wraiths. He called them up from their graves (they were killed and buried here during the Christian conversion) and now they work for him. In exchange, Flood uses Solgreve’s evil magic to find ways to bring them back to life. They are gradually gaining more density, but are a horror to behold, being composed of old bones and evil.
I have read Flood’s writing on extractions, which he calls “soul magic”. I do not comprehend entirely, but will include here, if my memory will serve me, some of the lines which I have read:
“To use its power, the soul must be trapped where the practitioner can see its light. One takes an appropriate vessel, with one hand on the body and one on the vessel, and calls forth the soul with these words: spirit flows from right to left. A practitioner must be an adept of many years’ standing to be effective in this wise. Once the soul is immured and visible in the receptacle, the receptacle need only be caressed to release its power into the practitioner’s hands.”
Beyond the many bodies in Solgreve Cemetery, Flood sometimes imports bodies from other places and buries them shallowly in his chambers, long enough to perform soul magic. Their bodies are then dumped in the poor’s hole. Flood also dissects many bodies, for he is curious to know to which fibres of the body the soul is attached. I do not believe he has yet found this answer.
The local Reverend, Brodie Fowler, is complicit in this black art, as are other local authorities (including constabulary and physicians). This village feeds off the despair interred in its soil for a few selfish years of extra life. Dr Flood must be arrested and forced to relinquish his soul magic, if an eternity of atrocity is to be averted.
Yours in truth
VIRGIL MARLEY
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Maisie stopped reading and looked up. Mila’s mouth was open in shock. Sacha said, “Read the letter again, Maisie.” She did so.
“It’s too awful,” said Mila, finding her voice at last. “Too unspeakably awful.”
“Do you think it’s true?” Sacha asked.
“Why wouldn’t it be?” said Maisie. “The rest is true. We’ve seen the Wraiths, we know Flood is still alive, we know the village is obsessed with the graveyard, why should we start doubting now?” Her mind kept returning to Virgil’s phrase, the unfortunates interred in the earth in Solgreve are as though buried alive. What would it feel like to be trapped in the ground? Frantic? Terrified? Desperate? She thought about her grandmother, her ambitions for the Afterlife. If Sybill was still stuck there in the ground, she wasn’t progressing towards eternal bliss as she had hoped. She must be mad with despair. And she’d only been dead four months. What of those who had been trapped in the earth for centuries?
“But what can we do?” Maisie said, closing the diary and putting it to one side. “I’ve scarcely a week left.”
“You have to do something,” Mila said firmly. “You have to rescue Sybill.”
“Me? Why me?”
“It’s your path. Don’t you see, this is why you’ve been brought here.”
“What can I do?” Maisie demanded. “This problem has been around for centuries. Sybill couldn’t fix it, why me?”
Sacha touched her wrist. “Don’t worry, Maisie, we’re in this together.”
Maisie didn’t look at him, kept her eyes fixed on Mila.
“It’s your path,” Mila said again.
“I don’t even know what that means.”
“You should. You’re given your power for a reason.” Mila picked up the diary and opened it once more to the letter. “And the only way to defeat magic is with like magic.”
“Meaning?”
“You’re going to have to perform some soul magic of your own.”
Maisie felt a tremble start in her ankles and was glad she was sitting down. “This is what Sybill was doing out in the cemetery, right? She wasn’t vandalising the graves, she was trying to dig someone up, to extract a soul.”
“She must have been,” Sacha said.
“We’ll never be able to get into a grave. The way the villagers watch the cemetery, and the Wraiths, it’s simply impossible.”
Sacha shook his head. “Not impossible. We don’t need to go to the cemetery.” He tilted his head towards the back garden. “We have Georgette.”
The knock on his bedroom door surprised Adrian, because he’d assumed he was home alone. Janet and Roland had gone out for dinner. But when he glanced at the clock by his bed, he realised it was after eleven. He had been immersed in his vocal score for five hours.
“Come in,” he called, closing the book and placing it neatly on the side table.
Roland opened the door. “Sorry, didn’t wake you, did I?”
“No,” Adrian said indicating the score. “I was reading.”
Roland glanced at the cover. “Congratulations.”
“Thanks.” Adrian had just been cast in his first lead role with Churchwheel’s: Manrico in Il Trovatore.
“Can I have a quick word with you?” Roland said.
“Sure,” Adrian replied.
“Janet and I just had a chat over dinner. We know you and Maisie are interested in buying a house this year.”
“That’s right.”
“We’ve decided to sell one of our investment properties and lend you the money. You’ll still have to pay it back, of course, but we won’t charge you interest.”
Adrian sat up, excited. “Roland, that would be wonderful. I don’t know how to say thank you.”
“We want to give you a head start. It’s tough now for young people.” Roland looked at the ground then up at Adrian again. “Janet has a small condition, though.”
“What is it?”
“Maisie must be employed full-time before we’ll lend you the money.”
“Just full-time? Not full-time in music?”
Roland laughed. “Well, that’s what she wanted to stipulate, but I told her she’s being unreasonable. Maisie is an adult, if she wants to work somewhere else, that’s up to her. But it would have to be stable, full-time work. Janet’s worried that she’ll become lazy and dependent. Of course, if you two were to decide to have children, we wouldn’t expect her to work.”
“I can’t wait to tell Maisie,” Adrian said.
“We’ll put the place on the market after the weekend,” Roland said. “If we’re lucky, we might have it sold in a couple of months and you kids can start looking for a place of your own.” Roland glanced around him. “You’re both getting a bit old to be living here. You need your own space.”
“Exactly,” Adrian answered, realising he sounded too enthusiastic, but not bothering to check himself. “That’s what I’m always saying to Maisie.”
Roland smiled and nodded, said goodnight and left. Adrian reached immediately for the phone. Could life get any better? The perfect job, a new home on the horizon, and Maisie coming back in a little over a week. He couldn’t wait to get started living.
When the phone rang at about one o’clock on Thursday afternoon, Maisie was dozing in the chair by the fire. Sacha had put the fireplace back together before heading off to work, and Mila was somewhere in the back room, reading or perhaps sleeping. They’d all had a late night. Maisie sat up with a start and reached for the receiver.
“Hello?”
“It’s me.”
“Adrian, hi. I wasn’t expecting to hear from you.”
“I have good news.”
Maisie tucked her legs up under her, made herself comfortable. “What is it?”
“Your parents are going to lend us the money to buy a place of our own.”
Yes, she supposed that under ordinary circumstances, that was good news. It wasn’t Adrian’s fault that at the moment all she could think about was whether or not she wanted to try to solve the problem in Solgreve, or just run away from it. She feigned excitement. “Really? That’s great.”
“Isn’t it?”
“What’s the catch?”
Adrian chuckled. “You don’t trust your parents.”
“I don’t trust my mother. What’s the catch?”
“You have to be in full-time employment.”
“She didn’t specify which kind of employment?”
“No. I think Roland convinced her it would be a bit harsh to demand you go back to the orchestra. But still, you’re going to have to get work as soon as you come home.”
