by Kim Wilkins
Sacha was climbing to his feet behind her. She glanced away from the Wraiths to check on him and in that instant they closed in, their speed unnatural and horrifying. In an automatic movement, she took her fingers away from the lantern and held them out, an instinctive “stop” gesture.
A loud electric crack followed. Maisie felt a shock in her fingers, thought for a second she saw pale phosphorescent lightning running along her hand. The crack was followed immediately by a howl of pain. No, two howls of pain, for both the Wraiths had stopped and were screaming: a deafening, black sound which made Maisie want to cover her ears. But she stood firm, her hand in front of her, her whole arm shuddering with fear. The earth beneath her feet began to shake, tree branches swung all about her. Around the Wraiths the ground seemed to grow darker, as though a shadowy maw was opening up where they stood.
“Oh, god,” Maisie cried, afraid to blink.
A swirling, sucking noise came from the black earth, a gathering force scarcely two metres from her feet. Then, suddenly, amid screams and a ghastly deafening hiss, the Wraiths disappeared, both sucked violently into the ground.
The noise ceased abruptly. Maisie stood, still holding her hand in front of her. Her breathing was loud in her ears. The ground had stilled, the dark space closed over. She could hear the sea again, the graveyard was empty but for her and Sacha.
“Maisie?”
She didn’t answer him. He stood next to her, gently pushed her arm down.
“Maisie, I think they’re gone.”
“Then I…I did it?”
He looked around them, ventured a relieved smile. “Yeah, it looks like you did.”
It seemed she drew breath for the first time in an age. “Oh god. Oh, thank god.”
“But we don’t know for sure if they’ll stay put.”
“Can you walk?”
“Yes. Not very fast. I’ve definitely torn something.”
“The guy’s not supposed to sprain his ankle, you know. I’m sure that should have been my job.”
They laughed cautiously, boldly.
“I can do it, Sacha,” she said. “If I could do it to them, I can do it to him.”
He bent to pick up her glove. “Let’s get it over with then.”
They hurried towards the abbey, Sacha hobbling on his injured leg. Her earlier fear had been displaced by an almost demented sense of relief. A voice of reason, way back, told her she was being too confident, that she needed to keep a cool head. But her nerves were in too much turmoil, her heart too close to bursting, to listen to reason.
Dirty snow still lay over the ruins of the abbey. Maisie led Sacha to the corner spire, where an iron door had been fitted.
“Here we are.”
“Are you ready?” he asked.
“Yes, I think so. Maybe I’m on a roll.”
“Go on then.”
She touched the lantern and then put her fingers out to the lock, expecting the same electric pop, expecting the door to open sesame. Nothing happened.
She tried again. Again, nothing.
“Maisie,” Sacha said softly. “Magic for like magic, remember.”
“Yes.”
“This door isn’t locked with magic. It’s just locked.”
“Shit.” She turned to him. “Any good at picking locks?”
He shook his head. “No. I don’t suppose they teach you that at music school?”
She didn’t smile. “Quick, let’s get back in the shadows. People might be able to see us from here.”
They ducked back behind the ruins, facing the cemetery.
“I can’t believe this!” Maisie said, setting the lantern on the ground. “Just when I think I know what I’m doing, just when I feel I can beat this –”
“Don’t despair. We’ll think of something.”
“What? What can we do? Try to break in? It’s close enough to the road for some concerned citizen to see us, and then we’ll have Tony Blake all over us. I simply cannot fucking believe this!”
Maisie and Sacha stood in the path of the wind, frozen to the bone, trying to force their minds to turn over the problem.
Second passed, minutes. Then Maisie looked up, shook her damp hair out of her eyes. “Sacha,” she said, “how about we pay a visit on the Reverend?”
He was waiting for a tap at the window – one of the Wraiths come to fetch him. They would wait until late, but he found himself sitting on the edge of his chair from nightfall, hoping that the awful tapping wouldn’t come at all, that Maisie had left and they had sensed the house was empty – for they could sense such things – and given up. So when the knock came and it was at the front door, not the window, he was bewildered. He rose cautiously and went to answer it.
“Who’s there?”
“Reverend Fowler, let me in.” A female voice. She sounded desperate.
“Who is it?”
“It’s Maisie. Please, you have to let me in.”
What to do? Was she running from the Wraiths? Could he leave her on his own doorstep to be torn apart by those creatures? Before he thought better of it, he was unlocking the door. Two people pushed in. He stumbled back. Maisie and the young man – yes, it was Sybill’s gardener – entered the room and closed the door firmly behind them. He backed away, trembling.
“Please, Reverend. We’re not going to hurt you,” Maisie said. She held an antique lantern in her right hand.
“I…I –”
“Just stay calm. Is there somewhere we can go to talk?”
He felt helpless, confused. “I shouldn’t talk to you,” he said.
“We’re here now. You have to talk to us,” the young man said.
He indicated towards his modest lounge room. They flanked him as they went forward, as though afraid he might run. Which was his instinct, of course. They gently propelled him towards an armchair. Maisie kneeled in front of him, the young man hovered nearby.
“Reverend, this is Sacha,” Maisie said.
The Reverend looked up at Sacha and then back to the girl. “What do you want with me?”
“You have to get us in to Flood’s rooms,” she said urgently.
Flood’s rooms? How much did she know? This was a nightmare.
“I can’t. I don’t know what you’re talking about. Who is Flood? What do you mean?” He could hear his own unconvincing tones letting him down again.
“Reverend,” Sacha said, and the Reverend was surprised to hear his voice gentle and patient. “We know everything.”
“We’ve destroyed the Wraiths,” Maisie said. “It’s all over. Just get us into Flood’s rooms. You know it’s for the best.”
“For the best?” He imagined how he must look to them, a bewildered old man. It made him angry enough to fight back. “For the best for whom? Not me. Flood has a temper. I’m not going to goad him.”
“The Wraiths are gone. What more can he threaten you with?”
“Gone? How can they be?”
Maisie held up the lantern. “Soul magic. You know what that is, don’t you?”
Soul magic. Two words which were light, musical, even inspiring when separated. But together they horrified him. “Soul magic isn’t real. It’s a tale told to children to frighten them.”
Maisie and Sacha exchanged glances. Their consternation unsettled him. “Don’t say anything else,” he said. “I beg you, don’t say anything else.”
“Reverend, you know what Flood does, don’t you?” This was Maisie. He met her dark brown eyes anxiously. She looked solicitous, concerned. This wasn’t Sybill, who tried to tell him things to manipulate him. Outrageous things. Things he never wanted to hear again.
“Please,” he whispered. “Please, don’t say any more.”
“But you’ve been involved all this time,” she continued. “You must know.”
He put his hands to his ears. Long ago – how old had he been, seven? eight? – his father had told him something, an awful tale of eternal burial alive, and how it had to happen to protect himself and his friends. But t
he Reverend had convinced himself it was a fairy tale. And when evidence had mounted up over the years – including Sybill’s attempts to communicate with him – he had fallen back on that conviction. It was below the surface, just a few inches below, that the conviction could not be held. These young people were mining through those few inches now, and he couldn’t bear it.
“Stop!” he said. “Don’t say any more.” Sacha impatiently pulled his hands down. “To be buried in Solgreve is to have your soul trapped in the earth forever,” he said. “That’s how you stay healthy even though you’re ninety-eight.”
“No. Doctor Flood has a special scientific way of –” “Reverend, Doctor Flood is over five hundred years old. How do you think he’s doing that? Eating a lot of soy products?”
“Sacha, go easy,” Maisie said. “He’s an old man.” “He’d be dead if he wasn’t feeding off the souls in the ground. He’s a fucking vampire.”
“Don’t, don’t,” the Reverend said putting up his hand. “Please, let me think.” He screwed his eyes closed, more to keep helpless tears from falling than from any need to concentrate.
Was this it? The Reverend was a practitioner of mysticism as much as any new-age guru or sage. He should recognise the end when it came. He was the last of his line, and that may have been for a reason. His father’s nightmare fairytale came back to him. It was true, of course it was true and he had always known it. He was ninety-eight. His entire life he had been denying this awful truth for fear it would send him mad. Well, what if he acknowledged it? And what if, instead of letting it send him mad, he fought against it? She had soul magic, she had defeated the Wraiths. Maybe it was time to throw in his lot with the opposition, with this strange, black-eyed girl who could have been his granddaughter.
“Reverend?” Maisie said quietly. “Are you okay?”
“If you force me, I have no choice,” he said.
“We don’t want to force you,” Maisie said. “We don’t want to hurt you.”
“If you force me,” he said again, more emphatically, “I have no choice.”
He opened his eyes. Again the two young people were exchanging uncertain glances. He watched as their realisation evolved.
“If we force you –” Sacha said.
“I have no choice,” the Reverend finished for him.
Maisie nodded at Sacha. Sacha bent over and pulled the Reverend from his chair, twisted his arm – very gently – behind his back. “Okay, where are the keys to the door in the abbey spire?”
“I’ll show you,” the Reverend replied. “Only don’t hurt me.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
Maisie dreaded leaving behind the warm comfort of the Reverend’s house to go out into the freezing weather once again. She was so tired, every joint in her body ached, and she wasn’t at all sure they were doing the right thing. They had to wait ten minutes while the Reverend got dressed – he was a most obliging hostage – and found his key.
“Can we trust him?” she asked Sacha in a hushed voice while the Reverend was pulling on his gumboots.
Sacha shrugged. “He wants to help. Though I can’t believe that he didn’t know what Flood was doing.”
“Perhaps he never questioned it.”
“We don’t have a choice in any case.”
The Reverend shuffled back up the hall and resumed his position in front of Sacha who, to complete the charade, held the Reverend’s arm behind his back. Sacha could barely walk and would be easy enough to escape, but the Reverend was determined he would only help them if it looked like he was being forced.
“I have an idea,” the Reverend said.
“What is it?”
“I’ll get him to go in his second chamber and you two can go and do whatever it is you have to do. He may never even know you’ve been.”
“How are we going to do that?” Maisie asked patiently.
“I’ll go on ahead, knock on his door, make up a story. You wait on the stairs. While he’s in the other chamber, you run down and…” He trailed off, frightened, “and do what you have to do.”
“All right, Reverend,” Sacha said, “but don’t think of messing us around, okay? You may be too old to be scared of dying, but we have a freshly-dug pit in Maisie’s back garden which would fit you nicely.”
The Reverend went pale. Maisie picked up the lantern and showed them to the door. “After you,” she said.
The rush of the sea was almost deafening now, the wind thrusting their breath back down their throats as they stepped out into it, heads down, and made for the abbey. The Reverend looked left and right nervously. When he noticed Maisie’s lantern glowing dimly, he gasped.
“Is that…?”
“God, you didn’t even know the wall in his room is made of souls?” Maisie said.
The Reverend looked away, focused ahead of him, placing one foot deliberately in front of the other. It was clear that Sacha was in great pain but trying to hide it, limping badly. Great, she was about to confront a five-century-old evil force and she had a senile old man and a cripple for backup.
But she had the lantern. She had Georgette’s soul, and she could work the magic. If the Reverend could indeed get Flood out of the room, it would just make it that much easier. Destroy the wall, set the souls free, and Flood would die.
They approached the abbey in the dark. The Reverend fitted the key in the lock and the door swung open, revealing the trapdoor. He pulled up the ring and beckoned to them. By now, he was visibly terrified. His body trembled and his voice was a nervous whisper. “You’ll have to be quiet and stay on the top half of the staircase. Otherwise he’ll sense you.”
Maisie grabbed him by the shoulders. “Reverend Fowler, you have to pull yourself together. He’ll be able to tell there’s something wrong otherwise.”
He nodded.
“Take some deep breaths,” she said, taking his hand. “You’re doing the right thing.”
“I’m frightened,” he said and his whisper was nearly carried away on the wind.
“I’m frightened too,” she said, “but there are souls here who have been trapped in the ground for centuries. We have to set them free. You’re nearly a hundred years old. This might be the most important thing you’ll ever do.”
He nodded, clung to her hand as they descended the stairs. About halfway down he dropped her hand and turned to them, motioned them to be quiet, and continued on his own. Maisie and Sacha stood on the step, waiting in the dark. If the worst happened, if the Reverend betrayed them, they were close enough to the exit to run for their lives.
She heard knocking, a door opening, a voice – Flood’s – say, “Are you come to tell me she’s dead?”
Maisie’s skin crawled.
“Not yet. The Wraiths haven’t come for me yet.”
“Then what are you doing out of your home? I instructed you to –”
“Doctor. Tony Blake saw somebody break into the abbey spire.”
A pause. “What?”
“Somebody broke the lock and came down here.”
“How long ago?”
“Ten minutes. I came straight away. But there’s nobody in the tunnel.”
“And nobody has come to my door.”
“Perhaps it was the girl,” the Reverend said. Maisie could have cheered, hearing how convincing he sounded.
“Why would she be –?”
“Do you have any bodies next door? Any extractions waiting to be performed?”
There was a flurry of motion. “Quick. If she’s in there we still have time to stop her.” A door opening. Maisie cautiously advanced a few steps. The entrance to Flood’s chamber stood open, the other door was just closing.
“Now,” she hissed in the dark. She and Sacha hurried up the tunnel and into Flood’s chamber, closing the door as quietly as possible behind them.
“God, it’s pitch dark,” Sacha said.
Maisie tried to use the lantern as a torch. She made her way past benches crammed with devices and receptacles and ex
periments – just a clutter of inexplicable dark shapes – to the wall of souls. Sacha stood by the door.
“Quick, Maisie, the Reverend won’t keep him forever.”
She raised her left hand and moved to touch the glass bricks. As though a powerful magnet was attracting it, her hand dropped to a brick in the centre of the wall. Her fingers stuck to it as though glued. She had a sudden and overwhelming sense of a feminine presence, old and wise, caring and immeasurably proud. It electrified her, filled her up, made her gasp.
“What?” Sacha asked. “What’s the matter?”
Tears burst from her eyes, her stomach clenched against the profound and devastating emotion. “It’s my grandmother.”
“There’s nobody here,” Flood was saying. Reverend Fowler pressed his back against the door.
“Perhaps she’s already gone.”
“I’d be able to sense if somebody had been here.” Flood turned and peered at the Reverend. He had the advantage, he could see in the dark. In this room, there wasn’t even the benefit of the phosphorous wall – (God help him, were they really souls?) – to see by. Or perhaps it was better that way. Perhaps there were things in here he did not want to see.
“Well, maybe Tony was mistaken,” the Reverend offered.
Flood shook his head. “What is this about, Reverend? Do you want to hide from the Wraiths, hide from your promise?”
“No, no. I just…”
Flood was walking towards him, making to leave the room. The Reverend stilled his quaking knees and stood firm, determined to give Maisie as much time as possible. If she could set the souls free, Flood would be incredibly weakened, perhaps even destroyed. Nothing to be afraid of then.
“Out of my way,” Flood said.
“I –”
“Linden, what is this all about?” And in that instant, he could feel his own mind give up its secret to Flood. In the next instant, he felt the blow to his head.
“You mean to see me destroyed?” This was Flood’s voice, coming from a long way off. The Reverend realised he was on the ground. Flood spoke again as he stepped over him. “You’re a fool, Reverend. She’s only a girl.”
“She’s only a girl,” the Reverend echoed. He saw Flood’s feet heading towards the first chamber before unconsciousness dragged him under.
