Shadow Music

by Elisabeth Rose

  “Come.” He faded and although she waited he didn’t reappear. She sat up and tossed the covers away. There was only one place he could mean. Their secret place in the oak grove.

  Miranda flung off her night gown and dragged on a skirt and blouse. She listened at the bedroom door and heard the murmur of voices as Tyler and her father sat smoking in his study. The door was open. She’d never sneak passed unobserved. Out the window. It wouldn’t be the first time although on the other occasions she’d been quite a bit smaller.

  She clambered through, hitching her skirt up unceremoniously. Something ripped as she slid across the sill, then she was slipping along the side of the house hoping Tyler’s dog wouldn’t catch her scent, out through the kitchen garden to the lane at the back of the house and away down the road toward the churchyard.

  The sky was pitch black, covered in cloud and with the distant growl of thunder. The storm was approaching and this time might make good its promise. She paused briefly considering whether to run back for a coat. No. Too risky. Miranda hurried on, finding her way by instinct. The road shone paler than the darker grassed verges and she followed it rather than cut across the fields. There would be too many ditches and fences to navigate.

  The heavy bulk of the stone church loomed on her left and she quickened her pace as she caught glimpses of pale tombstones rising out of the blackness. A wind sprang up, hot and restless, rustling the leaves in the trees overhanging the church, scraping branches, disturbing the dead. It tugged at her skirt and whipped her loose hair around her cheeks so that she felt the bony skeletal fingers scraping and pawing, clutching and clinging.

  Miranda ran, panting and sobbing with fear until the church receded behind her and she caught the familiar, earthy, agricultural smell of cows coming from the fields beside the road. Jenkins’s dairy farm. She slowed to a walk and wiped her face with shaking hands. Two large drops of rain plopped onto her sleeve. Then another and another thudded into the dust at her feet and brought welcome coolness. She lifted her face to the black sky. The drops increased in number. Soon she would be soaked to the skin.

  A crack of lightning split the night around her. She shrieked and scampered through the gap in the hedge as a gigantic thunder clap deafened her ears. The storm was upon her and she ran in sodden skirts, stumbling and falling as she struggled toward the shelter of the oak grove. And Piers. Her hair hung limp, plastered over her head, blinding her in the driving rain. She slipped and fell again, lying breathless and exhausted in the soaked grass, the stinging rain pelting down on her back, a million tiny hammer blows.

  “Piers.” Her voice was weak in the cacophony around her. She clutched at tufts of grass to pull herself up. Her long skirt tangled itself around her leg, she fell again after two steps but rose and staggered on toward the dark mass of trees, only twenty or thirty yards away. The wind was furious now. The giant trees groaned and creaked. Tall branches whipped and twisted in agony tortured by the relentless wind and the torrential force of the rain.

  She slipped again as she reached the first trees and crawled on hands and knees into the blackness of their shelter. All sense of where she met Piers on those idyllic, hot summer afternoons had fled. Unfriendly and alien now, the oaks, unwilling to accept her, to allow her to witness their torture by the elements. She clung to the nearest trunk. It shuddered under her cold wet hands as she pulled herself up to stand, dragging in heavy, gasping breaths of air, staring with fearful eyes wide against the darkness. In Hell. All around the wind screamed against the roar of the rain and the crash of thunder. Occasional flashes of lightning shocked the darkness and the grove glimmered in shades of black and grey, contorted and unrecognisable. Tears streamed down her face mingling with the rain which still soaked her to the skin despite the relative shelter of the trees.

  “Piers,” she screamed. “Piers.”

  She barely heard her own voice. He would never hear her. She had to go deeper into the grove. Miranda let go the gnarled trunk and with arms outstretched stepped tentatively forward.

  She grasped another tree and fumbled her way around it with numb fingers. As she moved further from the edge the force of the rain diminished although she knew the storm raged just as strongly outside.

  A branch crashed down somewhere to her right. Miranda clung to her tree as a new fear assailed her.

  “Piers,” she cried again. “Piers, where are you?”

  Another branch hurtled down. Miranda sobbed in terror. Her tree shuddered and twisted as if to release itself from her grasp. She let go and ran blindly, panic-stricken, her one thought to get out away from the trees, out into the open where at most she would be soaked with rain. A low flailing branch struck her a numbing blow and she felt warmth on her cheek as blood flowed. Dazed she stumbled on, deafened by the roar of the storm and the shrieks of the trees, her sense of direction completely gone.

  ****

  England, 1999

  Martin drove Jessica’s silver-grey Saab confidently and well. They left the city early after lunch, hoping to reach Cutting Marsh by nightfall. Drizzly grey rain fell in London but as they left the outer suburbs it stopped, giving way to an icy wind which bowled vast boulders of grey-black cloud across the sky.

  “Where will we stay?” asked Nina from the backseat as they sped along the highway southwest toward Dartmoor and Plymouth.

  “I rang Rupert and Georgina but they’re away in Greece for the winter. We can visit Broome Hall, though. Mrs. Turner, the housekeeper said we should stay at Blackstone Cottage. It’s a B&B. She said she would arrange it.”

  “That’s very helpful of her,” said Martin.

  “Her sister runs it.”

  “Even more helpful.”

  “A lot of the villagers have ancestry going back centuries in the area. A visit to the churchyard could be informative,” said Jessica.

  “Miranda could be buried there,” said Nina.

  “She probably is,” Jessica replied calmly. “Poor soul.”

  “This weather’s atrocious,” interrupted Martin, peering out through the windscreen at the lowering grey-black clouds ahead. The wind had picked up since they left the city, buffeting the car. Trees whipped wildly in a tormented dance by the roadside and visibility decreased rapidly as the storm clouds approached. Even as he spoke the first drops of icy rain splashed onto the windscreen. The headlights of oncoming cars shone bravely through the misty gloom.

  “Would you like to stop?” asked Jessica.

  “No. We should go as far as we can, I think.” Martin clutched the steering wheel as an extra strong blast threatened to pluck the car from the roadway. They and their fellow travellers slowed to a crawl as the rain hit, each relying on the small red pinpoints from the tail lights of the car in front.

  Nina shivered inadvertently even though the Saab’s heater worked extremely well. The closer they got to Cutting Marsh, the less comfortable she felt. The uneasy threatening dread had coalesced into a sick lump of fear sitting heavy in her belly.

  “How much further?” she asked.

  “We’re about half way,” answered Jessica.

  “With any luck we’ll drive through this,” said Martin. The rain thundered onto the roof of the car, deafening them so they had to shout to be heard. Several more timid travellers had pulled to the roadside to wait out the cloudburst but Martin battled on, straining to peer through the curtain of water revealed by the straining wipers. Visibility was reduced to mere feet. It seemed to go on forever.

  Then suddenly it was over. The drumming on the roof eased to a more normal patter and they could see the car in front clearly again. A farmhouse appeared across the fields on the left and a road speed sign loomed before them, then a large sign with destinations and distances.

  “Plymouth 47 miles,” read Martin. “Nearly there.”

  “I could do with a strong cup of tea,” said Jessica. “How about you, Nina?” She looked over into the back seat. “Nina, what’s the matter? Pull over, Martin.”

&nbs
p; Martin screeched to a halt on the safety strip, lights flashing and leapt out of the car to wrench open the back door and clutch Nina in his arms.

  “Nina! What is it?” Eyes closed she lay in his arms, face pale, completely unresponsive.

  Jessica pressed fingers to Nina’s wrist. “Her pulse is strong.”

  “Piers, you bastard,” hissed Martin.

  “Do you think it’s Piers?” Her surprised face turned to him, damp hair wisping into her eyes, drops of rain on her eyelashes.

  “Yes. It’s Piers all right.” Martin lay Nina across the seat and pulled her coat over her. “Come on. Let’s get to Cutting Marsh. I want to settle this.” He closed the door with a gentle click and got back into the driving seat. Jessica scrambled in and fastened her seat belt.

  An hour later they drove into the village of Cutting Marsh.

  Chapter Twelve

  Rain pelted down, stinging her skin with tiny darts, blinding her, forcing her to her knees in the mud of the field. She clutched at the grassy tussocks and hung her head, shielding her face from the onslaught, gasping for breath.

  Piers voice was in her ears urging her on, calling to her, “Come. Come to me.”

  “I can’t,” she whimpered and fell full length on the rain-sodden grass as a blast of wind knocked her sideways. She struggled to stand and staggered a few steps before the wind and rain caught her again to hurl her mercilessly to the ground once more. The noise of the storm deafened her. The wind shrieked and howled like a living thing and thunder roared and ranted all around. A shaft of lightning cracked the darkness apart and she caught a glimpse of a grove of dark forbidding trees looming through the rain and mist.

  Nina stared in horror.

  “No,” she screamed, “No,” and turned desperately to flee. Away from the trees, away from the darkness and the unnamed terror she knew lurked within.

  “Mira, Come to me. Mira,” cried Piers.

  “Piers,” she screamed. “Piers, save me. Where are you?”

  Again she fell and the rain drove relentlessly down. Nina closed her eyes and wept, her tears mingling with the rain to wash the mud from her face as she lay sprawled, helpless and weak in the midst of the pasture. Her fingers clutched feebly at the sodden grass under her hands, her cheek fell in despair on the comfortless tussocks.

  “Nina?”

  Warmth. A gentle featherlight touch of fingers on her cheek. Dry softness beneath her body.

  “Nina?”

  Her eyes flickered open. Soft yellow light. Warm, cosy something covering her. A man’s voice, loving and concerned. Nina? Who was Nina? He was…Piers? No.

  “Martin?” she whispered. Tentative, trying out the name.

  “Nina, thank God!”

  She was scooped up into an embrace so tight she had to struggle to loosen the grip so she could breathe. He let her down gently onto the pillow. Nina. She was Nina.

  “Where are we?” Her eyes wouldn’t leave his face, the relief was so strong. Martin, her Martin sitting on the bed holding both her hands tightly in his. She smiled weakly and he leant forward and kissed her. A hint of moisture glistened in his eyes as he sat back.

  “We’re in Blackstone Cottage, Cutting Marsh,” he said. “What happened?”

  She frowned, thought hard. “I was in a field in the rain. A storm like today except it wasn’t a winter storm, I don’t think. It wasn’t icy cold just soaking wet. Drenching rain.” She closed her eyes. A tremor shuddered through her body. “I was terrified. There were trees. I was looking for Piers.”

  “Did you find him?”

  Nina opened her eyes and stared around the room. “No. He kept calling me.”

  “Is he still with you?”

  She shook her head. “This cottage is ancient.” The walls were made of lumpy white painted plaster with dark wood beams in the low ceiling and a door which didn’t quite fit the frame. “It’s lovely.”

  She sat up and swung her legs over the side of the bed, a small double one covered with a patchwork quilt in triangles of pinks and reds. A posy of dried flowers stood on a plain wooden cabinet by the bed, and a chest of drawers against the opposite wall was adorned with a large china dish and jug. Bright floral curtains were drawn across the window. The wind buffeted the outside of the cottage. Trying to get in?

  “Where’s Jessica?”

  “Downstairs talking to the landlady, Mrs. Wookey.”

  “What on earth did she think when you had to carry me in?”

  “We told her you’ve been ill and fell asleep in the car.”

  “What’s the time? How long was I…” Gone? Dreaming? Lost? It wasn’t any of those things.

  “A couple of hours.”

  “Oh. Martin,” Nina whispered. A ground swell of fear built up instead, choking her, crushing her. “What’s happening to me?”

  He held her hand tightly. “I think you were right this morning,” he said slowly. “I think Piers thinks you are Mira, and that he’s succeeded in reincarnating her as you. Don’t ask me how it works. It’s crazy but…”

  “It’s happening,” she finished. She pulled her fingers free and lifted both hands to examine them. Both dry and clean, no mud or grass stains. Her body was warm. “It was so real,” she whispered. “The trees. They were terrifying. I thought—I knew—I would die there.”

  Martin pulled her close and she rested her head on his shoulder. A steely core of determination formed inside his belly as he held her. Piers would not take her away from him. He would protect Nina with his life if necessary. He heard Piers’ voice suddenly—not in reality, a memory—saying “Mira, my life, my love.” Piersʼ love for Miranda had endured beyond the grave, had turned from something beautiful to something obsessive, destructive and dangerous growing ever stronger.

  Martin gritted his teeth. Piers had to be stopped, laid to rest, banished, exorcised, killed again or whatever it took. And they had to find a way of destroying the music.

  “Are you hungry?” He loosened his grasp slightly. Nina straightened up.

  “Starving.”

  “Mrs. Wookey doesn’t do dinners but there’s a pub just down the road, she said.”

  “Sounds good. My first English pub.” She gave him a shaky smile.

  Martin grabbed her again and held her tight. “I don’t know what I’d do without you,” he whispered, his cheek on her hair. “I thought I’d lost you. You’ve no idea how…when you opened your eyes…”

  “I know. You’ve no idea how I felt when I realised it was you and I was back.”

  Nina responded fervently to his kiss but Jessica tapped tentatively on the door and called softly, “Martin?”

  “Hold that thought,” he whispered.

  ****

  The storm had passed next morning but heavy, grey clouds hung threatening and gloomy with rain not far away. At breakfast in the tiny dining area Jessica suggested they walk to the churchyard first and then, if the rain held off, walk up to Broome Hall.

  Mrs. Wookey provided two large golf umbrellas for Nina and Martin, and with Jessica clutching her bright yellow one they set off. The churchyard was on the far side of the village, a ten-minute walk through chill, damp air with their breath steaming. Ancient trees, skeletal in their winter bareness, stood like sentinels beside the path leading to the main entrance of the squat grey building.

  The church faced away from them on this road so they entered the small graveyard surrounding the church, from the side. Martin opened the old wooden lych gate in the low stone wall.

  Nina stopped, breathing hard.

  “What is it?” He and Jessica immediately closed in, peering anxiously at her face.

  “Nothing. I had déjà vu. Just a bit unnerving.” She tried a feeble smile to reassure them. Martin took her hand and they moved on.

  The ground was soggy. He had to let go her hand because if anyone stepped off the narrow path their boots sank into the spongy grass. Cold drops of water spattered from the overhanging branches as the wind tugged and teased.


  Nina’s feet took her to the left along an overgrown narrow gravelled path toward a small cross-shaped tombstone leaning at an angle, moss-covered and stained with age. Jessica and Martin followed wordlessly. She stopped and looked down knowing with a chill of foreboding what the words would be before she read them aloud.

  “In loving memory of Amelia Miranda Sung Templeton. Born May 29th 1852. Died in childbirth October 15th,1874. Always loved, never forgotten.”

  Suddenly she was kneeling beside the neatly kept grave with the sun beating hot on her head. “Hello Mama,” she whispered, then turned her head to see a man on a tall, bay horse watching her over the stone wall.

  “Miranda’s mother.” Jessica’s voice cut in softly. Nina blinked—wet, cold, grey day, neglected grave at her feet, Jessica beside her saying, “I wonder if…” and then, “Here’s her father.”

  She indicated the next tombstone, a rectangular stone standing firmly in the damp grass. “Daniel Alfred Templeton, born 1842, died 1911. How sad for him to bury first his wife and then his daughter so young.”

  Nina shook her head as the brief images faded. Neither Martin nor Jessica appeared to have noticed anything odd in her manner. She stared at the place by the wall where the man had been, and shivered. His appearance frightened her. The eyes narrowed with suspicion, and the relentless heat contributed frustration and anger but it wasn’t just that—he looked merciless. Nina knew she knew him well but his name escaped her. The horse too was familiar, big and brown, broad-chested and strong…

  She looked down at Miranda’s father’s grave. An overwhelming and profound sense of sorrow swamped her but, curiously, she had absolutely no prior knowledge of the inscription. She was positive of that, whereas Amelia’s grave was familiar.

  “But where’s Miranda?” The question burst out. “Wouldn’t they bury families close together? And wasn’t there another child?”

  She began walking slowly along the overgrown path, peering intently at the inscriptions. Martin had wandered further through the rows of dismal stone crosses and memorials. The grass grew long and ill-kempt in this corner of the graveyard. Three large pine trees along the wall gave an even more gloomy aspect.