Beyond the Dark Waters Trilogy

by Graham West

  Mum. I must be driving Dad insane. He’s leaving food outside my door. I’m so sorry, Mum, I know you wouldn’t want this, but I can’t face anything. Every time I close my eyes, I see HER eyes! What does she want?

  I feel trapped here—that’s weird cos the door is open. Even when I go for a pee, I feel this thing gripping me. It’s like fear—a voice screaming and telling me to get back in my room. I’m going mad, Mum, and I’ll end up in one of those loony bins with a straitjacket! They’ll talk about me as the girl who thinks she’s possessed. People don’t believe in all that devil stuff these days. You’re either sane or insane, a regular kid or a psycho case. xxxx

  My father had always considered humankind’s obsession with therapy to be a substitute for the faith it had lost. The art of prayer, and the peace it brought to the troubled spirit, had been buried beneath a wave of scepticism. I wasn’t sure if God, in whatever form He existed, would be listening but it was worth a try. After all, I owed it to the old man; I owed it to my girl. So I closed my eyes and began to pray.

  If God merely existed in the mind and we were quite capable of summoning Him in times of need, resulting in an overwhelming sense of comfort and well-being, then it was still worth a try. It was an exercise in self-healing. Maybe they were right, but I found myself hoping that a greater power existed—someone who was watching over us, waiting for a call.

  Chapter Eight

  Dear Mum,

  I was there again last night. In the room. I walked in this time—right up to the window, but I can’t remember if I bothered to look out. I felt as if she was there, watching me. The book was open on the desk. It’s a diary, Mum. I tried to read the page but my eyes wouldn’t focus. Then her voice came from the corner of the room.

  She was so weird. “It is not yet time, my daughter,” she said—funny how I can recall her exact words as if they are recorded in my head. Why did she call me her daughter? Is she an ancestor trying to reach me? What does she want? When I turned, she just smiled, but it wasn’t a normal smile. It was really creepy. “You can only read my words in the world in which you now exist.”

  When I looked back, the diary was closed, and this time I could read the words on the cover: THE DIARY OF AMELIA ROOT. I woke up shaking. I’ve let her in. I’m so sorry, Mum xx

  The rain washed down the windscreen as I flicked the page.

  Mum.

  I’m going crazy. I saw myself in a white padded cell with the ghost of Granddad pacing up and down. He was crying, and I felt so bad. It was only a short dream. I must have drifted off reading some stupid novel about a girl who can’t stop shopping. Anyway, I tried to stay awake last night. I was too scared to sleep!!! DIDN’T WORK! I watched a couple of movies, but even they couldn’t keep me going all night. I must have passed out at about three in the morning and Amelia was waiting for me.

  Honestly, Mum, these aren’t just dreams. I know it sounds mad, but I feel like I’m walking into another world like those kids in Narnia. I loved those books, by the way—guess you remember how I made you read them to me every night and I’d fall asleep dreaming that you and Dad had brought me a pet lion!!!!!! I wish I was that kid again.

  Amelia didn’t say anything to me last night. Her eyes were red and her face was so white. The room smelled like a drain. I didn’t know you could smell things in dreams, but I did. There was a mattress in the corner. I hadn’t noticed it before. It was where she slept, and I think that was all she wanted me to see. When I turned back, her face was blue and rotting. I screamed but there was no sound. Then she vomited but it was just like water. She’s showing me something different every night, hoping I can build a picture. I can’t tell Dad. He’ll just tell me that I’m having nightmares cos of losing you and Hanna, and I can’t tell him about the stuff at Kelly’s, can I???

  There were no kisses, just a picture of a pair of eyes that sent chills running the length of my spine. What was the stuff with Kelly? What had she done? I turned the page.

  Mum.

  I’m so scared!!! Please help me. I’m trapped!!!! Last night, I was there in the room. Amelia was lying naked on her mattress, her head covered by a sheet. There was blood on her thighs. As I bent down, she reached up and grabbed my hand. Her nails were long and sharp as hell. I screamed. It was so horrible. I pulled back the sheet to find a skeleton with skin hanging off the bones. I tried to scream once more, but this time I coughed up bile. When I woke up, I found a cut on my hand. The room was freezing, but when I felt the radiator I burned by hand. xxxxx

  I couldn’t get warm. She’d followed me. I could feel her in my bedroom. I could even smell the damp. She wants something from me…but what? And why? Do you remember those horror movies with Freddie Kruger? Do you think something like that could really happen? xxxxx

  My heartbeat had quickened as I read the untidy scrawl of a girl who had won a neat handwriting competition only two years previously. Freddie Kruger, strangely enough, flooded my mind with pleasant memories of those evenings sitting in front of the TV with a heavily pregnant Elizabeth covering her eyes as a succession of wary teenagers met their maker on the end of Freddie’s bladed hands.

  We had been, in our own opinion, good parents, but to our eternal shame had lapsed, occasionally allowing a young and restless Jenny to snuggle up next to us on the sofa and watch the mutilated murderer as he embarked on his killing sprees. I read on.

  Mum. The only comfort I get is that I know that there is a life after death! I know that the ghost of Amelia Root has found a way through. Last night, I had a long and dreamless sleep, yet this afternoon, I dozed off listening to some music. She was waiting for me. She was kind of normal this time. Her skin was pale and smooth. She called me her ‘only child’. What does she mean? Maybe I look like her daughter, because she looks so young! I need to know who she is! I’ve researched on the internet—nothing!

  The car shuddered as a sudden clap of thunder shook the ground. The rolling black clouds seemed to be within reach of my fingers as I opened the window, feeling the rain cool my face. I wound the window back up and sat for a moment with my eyes closed as the water ran down my cheeks. I had remained sceptical of people’s obsession with spirits and ghosts, but in truth, I held a deep-seated and healthy fear of all things to do with the unknown.

  Now it appeared that there could only be two explanations for Jenny’s bizarre behaviour: either Amelia Root really did exist and my daughter was being stalked by her spirit, or—and in many ways, this was worse—Jenny was suffering some kind of mental breakdown.

  Five years ago, I had been a helpless bystander, watching the gradual decline of Jack Jessop, a regular at The Keys. Jack was one of those eternally buoyant characters who seemed to be top of everyone’s guest list when they threw a party. Jack drew people like a magnet, and I often listened to him telling his tales with a natural wit and warmth that I admired yet left me with an irrepressible jealousy.

  He was approaching forty when he lost his two daughters in a car crash, but everyone thought, as I did, that if anyone was equipped for coping with such a tragedy, it was happy Jack. In the months that followed, it appeared we had all been correct. He had, after all, recovered from the death of his wife five years earlier, but no one had questioned why a youthful, good-looking man had never found anyone else.

  We had never considered that he’d been living for his two girls. In them, he had seen his wife, his future and what was left of his world. He still managed to smile and regale us with stories of his daughters’ adventures with an element of the old wit and charm. But it dawned on me that Jack was beginning to talk about his precious girls in the present tense. Then he began to buy them presents.

  We all watched on, praying that Jack would stumble through his grief and appear on the other side in full mental health, but it wasn’t to be. Six months later, I saw him walking along the road and arguing violently with his daughters, but of course, there was no one there. I wanted to pull over and drag him into the car, away from the eyes of t
he public, who were looking on with varying degrees of amusement and pity. I wanted to rescue him yet to my disgust, I drove on by.

  Jessop had ended up in a home and died two years later. When I visited him, he’d dropped three stone and looked like a man who was waiting for the end. He believed I was his son-in-law and asked after his daughter over and over again, begging me to tell her that she was forgiven and he wanted to see her.

  Jack’s decline had been gradual, but few of us who drank at The Keys had not felt complicit in his downfall. We had considered him the eternal optimist with an inherent ability to find a chink of light at the end of every tunnel. We had forgotten he had no family—no brothers, no sisters—and the relatives he did have lived on the other side of the country. Looking back now, his slide into madness was almost inevitable when he was surrounded by friends who found it easier to turn a blind eye to his eccentric behaviour.

  Jack’s face haunted me, isolated in a failing mind, swallowed by confusion, yet as he looked up at me from the chair that had become his prison, I felt that somewhere inside the decaying shell, the seed of the old Jack was reaching out. The young nurses had all, at some time, been mistaken for his daughters and had found themselves looking into old eyes, filled with paternal love.

  It was not a physical illness that took him. It was grief. And I couldn’t allow Jenny to walk the same road. This time, I would step in. I thought of Josie and her fascination with the human mind. I thought of the shrinks sitting in their leather armchairs, studying my daughter over the tops of their horn-rimmed spectacles. Jenny, I knew, would not bare her soul to any of them.

  Chapter Nine

  I returned home, negotiating the lanes under a leaden sky, with the copies of Jenny’s makeshift diary hidden under the back seat. I felt vulnerable, sitting in a small metal box while all hell let loose around me. It was, apparently, the worst storm to hit the North in five years and a relief to finally reach home.

  When I walked through the door, the phone was ringing.

  “Mr. Adams?” The voice was that of a well-spoken man whom I guessed was in some kind of authority.

  “Speaking,” I replied.

  “Mr. Adams, this is Reverend Francis.”

  He paused. I hadn’t heard the name before. My stomach turned.

  “I’m the minister at St. Jude’s in Tabwell…” He paused again. People only pause when they have bad news. “I have your daughter here, Mr. Adams.”

  I should have felt only relief, yet it had never occurred to me that anything could have happened to Jenny. She was a smart kid with an instinct for spotting potential danger.

  “I think maybe you should come on over.”

  ***

  Tabwell was a small and affluent town lying on the borders of Cheshire, renowned for its ageing middle-class population who continued to embrace the fading traditions, played the stock market during the week and stepped across the threshold of God’s house each Sunday morning to thank Him for their profits and find comfort in their losses.

  St. Jude’s was the backdrop to many model brides who graced the covers of the various glossy wedding magazines that lined the newsagent’s shelves. Its gardens had been exquisitely maintained by the Barrington family for the past hundred years, and throughout the summer, the local ladies would raise money holding tea-and-cake afternoons on the lawns.

  I arrived just as the evening sun appeared from behind a black thunderous cloud. Pulling up outside the stone archway, I wondered what awaited me. The minister had refused to go into any detail on the phone, but his concern had been almost tangible.

  The entrance to the church was shaded by two large beech trees, their branches forming a natural leafy arch, and as I stepped into the porch, the smell of old pews and flowers drifted on the stale air. Inside, Reverend Francis was waiting for me. He was small, around five-four, and balding.

  “Mr. Adams?”

  I nodded as he extended his hand. His face was surprisingly youthful while remarkably pale. I half expected him to smile and reveal vampire teeth as he shook my hand with flimsy cold fingers.

  “Jenny is in the back. She’s just had a cup of tea.”

  He spun on his heels with an ease that belied his rotund frame and strode off down the aisle at a pace that almost had me running through the patterns of light cast across the red carpet. He stopped suddenly just before the altar and spun to his left. Definitely been a dancer, I thought as we reached a large stained-glass window depicting the Virgin Mary cradling her child, surrounded by myriad angels.

  “I found Jenny standing here with a knife in her hands,” he explained. “At first, I didn’t see what she’d done.”

  Francis wasn’t looking up at the window; his eyes were fixed on the statue of St. Peter who appeared to be looking down at the stone floor. Then I saw the word sprayed across the wall behind the statue. Hypocrite.

  “When she saw me, she dropped the knife,” Francis continued. “She seemed agitated and terribly confused.”

  My own confusion must have been apparent.

  “I don’t suppose you can shed any light on why she considers St. Peter a hypocrite?” he asked.

  I shook my head, but the reverend wasn’t convinced.

  “You look as if you’ve just seen a ghost, Mr. Adams.”

  “I’ll pay for any damage,” I replied meekly. “And I’ll make a donation—”

  The minister didn’t allow me to finish. “There’s no need.” He patted my arm gently. “A scrubbing brush and little elbow grease will sort this out.” He paused. “I’m guessing you have enough problems of your own.”

  He beckoned me to follow him, stopping briefly as we reached the door of the vestry; his hand hovered over the brass knob. “I’m sure Jenny will be all right…” Looking me directly in the eye, he smiled warmly. No vampire teeth. The door creaked as it swung open.

  The whole place felt heavy with a history of which I knew nothing. Jenny was sitting in a leather chair, her hands shielding a mug. As she looked up, our eyes met. I stared into the face of a frightened, confused child. Jenny studied me for a moment, as if checking I was really there and not part of a dream.

  The reverend was also watching me, gauging my reaction, and I wondered how much he knew.

  “It’s okay, Jen. Whatever’s happened we can sort it out.”

  I reached over and placed my hand over hers. “Just talk to me. Tell me why I’m here.”

  My touch opened the floodgates. Jenny began to cry.

  My father was a patient man. If I had something to tell him, he was prepared to hold his tongue until I was ready. Jenny was still sobbing, gulping the air until finally, the tears stopped. I allowed her to take a sip of tea and waited.

  “I don’t even know how I got here,” she said. Her voice was strained and barely audible, the darkness in her soul visible in her eyes. She looked so vulnerable, surrounded by the trappings of her grandfather’s faith. The stone walls, the silver challis in the corner, the framed wooden cross above the door. “I can’t be here. I can’t be here—I want to go home!”

  The minister sat down beside her. “Jenny,” he whispered.

  My daughter wiped a tear from her cheek.

  “I know we find it difficult to understand why God allows these things to happen, but I couldn’t stand before my congregation each week if I didn’t believe He loved us.”

  Jenny looked down at her trembling hands. “How can you say that? If He loved me, I wouldn’t be going through this!”

  The reverend placed an arm around Jenny’s shoulders. “Jenny, do you believe that God loved His own Son? Do you believe He loved Mary?”

  Jenny looked up. “Of course I do.”

  Francis continued, his voice barely above a whisper. “Yes, he did, yet Mary stood and watched as they took her son, stripped and humiliated him, and then beat him until his back resembled a ploughed field. She stood by as they hung him from a cross, and watched as he died in agony, crying out to a God who had forsaken him. God’s love
doesn’t absolve us from suffering.”

  ***

  I left the reverend standing under the arch of his church. I’d insisted on sending a donation and apologised for the damage. He shook my hand and gave me God’s blessing. Jenny flashed him a brief smile but seemed determined to put distance between herself and the church as quickly as possible. She climbed into the seat beside me with a look in her eyes that reminded me of a girl who had just woken up in a strange bed and was wondering how she’d got there. There was no point in asking her, but the history of the place held the answers, and I knew this wouldn’t to be the last I saw of St. Jude’s.

  ***

  Josie was wearing that familiar look of motherly concern that left me feeling like a child about to receive a lecture.

  “I’m really not happy about this, hun,” she whispered, glancing around her lest the couple sitting more than five metres from us might overhear. “Jenny needs help—professional help.”

  I had told Josie about Jenny’s diary, the letters it contained and the dreams, but it was clear that after eighteen months of studying the human mind, Jo had become sceptical, and that scepticism reared its head whenever I mentioned the spirit world.

  The emphasis had been on the word professional, and Josie was in no doubt that the task was beyond me. “You can’t cure her by chasing ghosts from the past, hun.”

  She might as well have slapped my face and kneed me in the testicles.

  “I’m not taking her to a shrink,” I said defiantly. “Even if Jenny agreed!”

  “What about the doctor? She’d go to him.”

  “Elworth?”

  “Sure. Didn’t she have a bit of a crush on him a few years ago?”

  I recalled the unease that permeated their last meeting. “I don’t think it would be such a good idea. She’s still a little embarrassed by the episode.”

  Josie grinned.” Well, she’s grown into a real looker, your Jen. I’m guessing Dr. Dish might be quite flattered if he thought she was still smitten.”