Beyond the Dark Waters Trilogy

by Graham West

  “We need some proper light in here,” he said. “You stay there!”

  I found no humour in the irony of the comment. I only wanted to wake. To wake or die.

  ***

  Two paramedics returned with Farriday, who held a tungsten light on a pole. One of the men in green lifted me by the shoulders. “Leave this to us now, Mr. Adams.”

  I watched as they knelt over my daughter. “Can we have some light, please?”

  Farriday called through from the end of a trailing wire. “I’m on it.”

  “She just collapsed?”

  “Yes.”

  “Any medical conditions? Asthma? Anaemia?”

  “No.”

  The tungsten bulb burst into life. “That’s better.” One of the medics muttered. I looked away. How could I face them? How could I look into their eyes as they told me what I already knew? When they told me my daughter had gone.

  “Oxygen!”

  I spun round as the larger of the green men placed a mask over Jenny’s face. He looked up. “We have a pulse! She’s alive, Mr. Adams. You daughter is alive.”

  I sat alongside Jenny in the ambulance, a foil blanket around my shoulders. I’d not even noticed how cold the attic room was or how close to collapse I had been. Farriday had grabbed my car keys and insisted on following the ambulance in my car.

  “Don’t worry,” he assured me. “I’ll be careful.”

  I didn’t answer. I didn’t care. My daughter still looked like a corpse. “Is she going to be okay?” I had asked the question several times, but the paramedic smiled patiently.

  “She’s a fighter,” he said.

  That wasn’t an answer. It just meant that she wasn’t going to take the Grim Reaper’s hand willingly.

  “Until we know what caused her to collapse, we really can’t tell you much,” he said.

  They concentrated on keeping my daughter alive. I had nothing to give them. They asked again. Had Jenny any conditions, however minor? Any history? No. I had a healthy girl.

  “Is there anything in the family? Heart conditions?”

  I looked at the man in green. A robust, round pleasant face. A man in his forties. “I don’t know,” I replied. “Her father’s dead.”

  The paramedic frowned. “But I thought you were her father.”

  “So did I…until a few weeks ago.”

  “I’m sorry. This is obviously awkward…”

  “Her father is a man called Benjamin Pascoe. He took his own life,” I replied, almost casually.

  The medic looked as though he had just placed his hand in a hornets’ nest. He patted my arm. The ambulance screeched to a halt, and the doors swung open. Farriday pushed the keys into my hand, and before I had time to catch my breath, I was following my daughter as they wheeled her down a linoleum-floored corridor. Next, I was sitting in a room with several others, flicking through a celebrity weekly, trying to focus my mind on some pop princess and her new groom as they opened their home to the photographers.

  I wondered what my father would have made of the world’s fascination with the rich, famous and often talentless. He had no desire for wealth. To him, possessions clouded the soul and dampened the spirit. All that man required was in his surroundings—the rivers, the mountains, the flora and fauna. Nothing man had created could ever match the beauty of nature itself.

  I thought about calling Sebastian but changed my mind. What could he do? What could anyone do? I prayed, even though I wasn’t much good at talking to a God I really wasn’t sure existed, and even if He did, I’d pretty much blamed Him for everything. Even a deity might find it hard granting the wishes of a hypocritical bastard who wanted a favour.

  If you’re really there, just save Jenny. Please.

  A doctor walked in. He was tall with thinning grey hair and heavy-rimmed glasses. “Mr. Adams?”

  I stood, almost falling into him as he approached. “Jenny’s stable,” he said. But his dour expression told me that this was the sugar coating to a bitter pill. “But?” I said.

  The doctor introduced himself. “I’m Mr. Lamont.” He signalled that I should sit down. Lamont sat alongside me. “At this moment, your daughter is in a coma, but all the initial tests have come back clear. Medically, she seems in good health, and we can’t find any cause for her condition.”

  I felt my stomach knot. My chest ached, and I could feel the blood draining from my head.

  “Are you all right, Mr. Adams?”

  I nodded, even though I knew he wasn’t going to buy the lie.

  “Are you up to telling me what exactly happened?”

  I wasn’t, but there was no option. They needed to know. They needed to know the whole story, and I didn’t care if they believed it or not. Lamont listened sympathetically to the tale from the moment Elizabeth and Hanna had died to our confrontation with Amelia in her attic room. His eyes betrayed nothing. He smiled. “Thank you. We’ll be running some more tests, of course.”

  “When can I see her?” I asked.

  Lamont stood. “Soon. Someone will let you know.”

  I waited and drank more coffee. A young nurse appeared after one hour, and I followed her down the corridor and into a room where my daughter lay, tubed up and motionless. Lamont stood at the end of her bed. “You can talk to her,” he told me. “About anything. It might help.”

  I pulled up a grey plastic chair and sat down. A pale hand protruded from underneath the bed sheet. I gave it a gentle squeeze.

  “Hi,” I said awkwardly. “It’s your dad here… It’s going to be okay, sweetheart.” There was not a flicker. “Your granddad is watching you. He has faith… You’ll be all right.”

  If she could hear my voice through the haze, I only hoped there was no lack of any conviction within it.

  I talked about nothing that mattered for nearly an hour before Lamont returned and suggested I go home and get some sleep. It sounded like an order, so I didn’t argue.

  “If anything changes, we’ll contact you straight away,” he told me. “Just try to get some rest.”

  It was nine. There was a message from Farriday on the answering machine when I got home.

  “Mr. Adams? Brian here. How’s Jenny? We’re really worried. Hope everything’s okay.”

  I called back to thank him for his help before calling Josie, who insisted on coming over immediately. She arrived thirty minutes later, her face pale and drawn. “She’ll be okay, hun, I know it. People come out of comas, and like you said, the doctors can’t find anything wrong…”

  She threw her arms around my neck and clung like a child. “She’ll be back home before you know it.”

  I poured us a brandy and we sat talking till the early hours, trawling through the events of the day, searching for answers but finding none. After Jo left, I poured another large brandy and passed out on the lounge chair with the twenty-four-hour news rolling in the background.

  When I woke, fully clothed, my head ached like crazy. It felt like someone was swinging a hammer inside my brain, and I swallowed a couple of pills before calling Sebastian. Thirty minutes later, I was standing on his doorstep, unshaven and still wearing my old slippers. Sebastian studied me for a few seconds.

  “Things not so good, eh?” he said, ushering me in. I nodded, stepping into the hallway only to be greeted by an over-excited puppy.

  Sebastian listened in silence as I told him about Jenny. His obvious concern troubled me. “This has happened before,” he mused, glancing over at his wall of books. “There have been several cases recorded where the subject becomes an unwilling medium—a mediator for the spirit.”

  “And they’ve ended up in a coma?”

  Sebastian nodded. “Jenny—or Amelia—said that you’d know what to do.”

  “But I don’t. That’s the problem.”

  There was a look of enlightenment in Tint’s eyes. “I was right. Find the body, Robert. Find the body and you will get your daughter back!”

  I stared at the old man, and our eyes locked. �
��You have the clues. What Jenny did in the bath, the stench of stagnant water in the attic room. The girl lies underwater somewhere.”

  “Somewhere close,” I mused, thinking aloud.

  Sebastian smiled. “I doubt she would have gone far, with Allington’s blood on her hands.”

  ***

  I spent the following day in Tabwell’s rather quaint library, just a mile from St. Jude’s, but the local history books revealed nothing. Jenny’s condition hadn’t changed, and I needed to do something. I caught the attention of the librarian, who looked up from her screen and smiled as I ambled over.

  “Are there any lakes in Tabwell?” I asked.

  The woman looked at me as if I was stupid. “Lakes? Well, we have one.”

  “Local to the Stanwicks’ house?”

  “Stanwicks’?”

  “Sorry—the Crest Hill Rest Home.”

  The woman smiled. “Oh, sorry, I remember you now. Right…well, our only lake is quite a tourist spot. It’s not that far from the rest home. You could walk it in about fifteen minutes, I reckon.” She paused and reached under the desk and handed me a leaflet. “This will tell you everything you need to know.”

  ***

  Tabwell Water was well sign posted from the main road through the town: picnic areas, woodland walks, trekking and the usual pay-and-display car park with a small café area in the corner. I pulled up, bought my ticket, and took the path leading through the woodland to the lakeside. Was this the path the Amelia had trodden as she ran to her death?

  My heart sank as the vast waters came into view. If Amelia did lie in its murky depths, she would be there until the end of time. We would never find her body—not even with a team of divers. I sat musing for hours, almost hoping that a hand would appear from the water.

  Children played at the edge as their parents looked on. A family sat at a wooden picnic table, wrapped up against the winter chill, determined to complete their outdoor adventure.

  A young man in a green shirt with the words Lakeside Ranger emblazoned across his back in yellow letters watched on from the doorway of a small wooden hut. He was a glorified litter warden, I suspected. Probably with degrees up to his eyeballs but no prospective employer willing to pay anything above a Third-World wage.

  I left, walking with a weight on my shoulders. My mobile rang. It was Farriday. “Mr. Adams?”

  “Speaking,” I muttered, taking to a wooden bench beneath an ominous looking tree that threatened anyone foolish enough to sit beneath its tangled branches.

  “Listen,” he continued. “You might be interested…I went back into the attic—my wife was fascinated by your story. We found some diaries…”

  My heart jumped in my chest.” Amelia’s?”

  “Yes. They were at the bottom of that old trunk.”

  “Can I see them?”

  “That was the idea.”

  I paused. “I’m in Tabwell now. I can come over.”

  “Certainly. How’s your daughter?”

  “Still in a coma, but stable.”

  I climbed behind the wheel of my car and hit the play button on the car stereo. Frank’s big band struck up ‘New York, New York’ and I briefly wondered how my sister was doing over there before turning my thoughts to what Amelia’s diaries might reveal.

  I drove over the speed limit, braking sharply as I passed each of Tabwell’s many speed cameras. Considering it appeared to be the Ferrari capital of England, the owners were unlikely to get out of first gear on the local roads.

  I arrived at Crest Hill minutes later. Brian greeted me at the door. “Robert!” he said. “I have the diaries in my office. Follow me.” Farriday, like the minister of St. Jude’s, was quick on his feet, and I found myself in a half-trot trying to keep up with him. Several elderly ladies, huddled over a card game in the dining area, looked up as we breezed past. I smiled, my mind on Amelia.

  Farriday had not really given me any indication of how many diaries he’d found. There were ten piled neatly on his desk. Burgundy and black, leather covers. I stopped short. “Jesus!” I exclaimed, and I suddenly felt my father’s wrath at his son’s blasphemous tongue. “I thought you meant a couple! This is—”

  “Fantastic!” Farriday said. “Someone should publish these.”

  So that was it. I was in the company of a business man who saw old people as a way of making a quick buck, quite willing to turf them out onto the street when his profit margins fell. His excitement had nothing to do with the uncovering of the attic’s dark secrets but the money it might make for him.

  He looked at me, uncomfortable with my silence. “I can dig out a box from somewhere, if you want.”

  “What?”

  Farriday looked amused. “To put the books in—I presume you’ll be taking them with you.”

  I stared at the stack on the cluttered desk. “But I thought you would be keeping them here.”

  Farriday laughed. “From what you’ve told me, these books belong to your daughter.” I’d misjudged the man, in part at least. They were on his property, after all.

  “My wife has read a few pages. Some of it is just basic day-to-day stuff, but it really gives an insight. I’m sure that you and Jenny will find it interesting.”

  It was good to hear someone talk about my daughter as if she was still with us, rather than in some kind of metaphysical hibernation.

  “Thank you,” I said, holding out my hand as Farriday took it in a vice-like grip that felt both warm and genuine. He left and reappeared with a cardboard box. Ten minutes later, I was on the road back home with my head spinning in anticipation.

  I wondered where my daughter was. The anguished spirit of a dead girl had taken her body and her mind as she stood in that attic room. Where had she taken my precious child? What was going on in her head?

  Chapter Thirty

  The diaries were stacked in order so I made myself a coffee and sat back with the one I considered to be the last Amelia had written, flicking through the pages until my attention was caught by the following entry.

  I had never felt such love and truly believed that no man would be so heartless as to separate a mother from her baby. Yet Reverend Allington had torn him—yes, torn him—from my arms and left without so much as a word of kindness. I called after him, “Her name is Rebecca!”

  I flicked through several more brief accounts.

  My heart aches and will continue to ache for as long as I live. Rebecca. That is her name. The name that God gave her. She will always be Rebecca, and the thought that Reverend Allington might give her a new name in the presence of his congregation filled me with a fury. That is why I escaped my prison in the dawn light and took refuge among the trees behind St. Jude’s church.

  I waited, my anger unabated, as I watched the parishioners filing through the gates. Believe me, I knew what I was about to do would not bring back my child, but God was on my side, and I believe that it was His Spirit within.

  “The child is mine!” I cried, walking the length of the aisle towards the font at which the reverend was holding my baby. “She belongs to me!”

  The congregation murmured behind me but I never saw their faces.

  “Her name is Rebecca!”

  I felt breath on my neck and two hands gripping my shoulders, pulling me back. “He is a hypocrite—this man who preaches the word of God and then comes to my room and forces himself upon me!”

  I was dragged backwards and thrown to the floor at the gates of the church. “You young wretch!” a bespectacled man with a complexion as awful as The Devil himself barked at me. “Don’t ever darken these doors again.”

  I rose, brushing the dust from my clothing. “Do not concern yourself, sir. I have told the truth. Do you think I could ever find God in here when a servant of the Devil rules over you?”

  I wandered home, returning to my room uninterrupted and lay on my bed till late noon, my body too weak to rise and my eyes too heavy to read any of the books Sarah had left for me. The reverend’s doct
or visited, not from any concern, but too oversee my full recovery and ease the conscience of his peer. I was told to rest, though I have no option. Sarah is all I have.

  Intrigued, I continued on, turning the pages with the reverence a scholar would have for an ancient document.

  Sarah has read to me from the Gospels each day, fearful lest I should be lost to her God. I ask many questions, most of which she has no answer to, all concerning my child and how any man who serves the church could behave in such a manner. I have exhausted my own mind. I am sick of spirit, though Sarah told me that revenge belonged to the Lord Himself. I’m not sure if that is true. I think of how the minister might explain himself to his Lord. But maybe God will not consider me at all. Was I created for this purpose alone? The thought appals me, and I try to put it from my mind. They are the Devil’s whispers.

  My heart ached for the girl, alone with her thoughts every night of her existence, her only experience of physical intimacy at the hands of a man who despised her. I turned over to find the following pages were blank. Amelia Root had never written another word.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  I felt strangely uneasy, almost as if the author of these diaries was unwilling to let them go. Maybe it was the chill of the late evening stirring the memory of that clawing cold I’d felt as Jenny collapsed into Amelia’s world. I turned on the TV, relieved to hear the laughter of a studio audience ring through the house. I poured another coffee, almost black, and set out Amelia’s diaries on the table. At last, her thoughts, her feelings—her life—were there in front of me. But I was looking for clues about her state of mind.

  “Where are you, Amelia?” I whispered. “Where are you?”

  The studio audience let rip in wild applause as I killed the sound and picked up another diary.

  Sarah was late this morning. I’d washed early and began to read, my spirits lifted by the blue sky and light frost across the lawns. These are my favourite days, and Sarah took me walking in the grounds. Oh, the freshness of the air. I wanted to breathe deeper than my lungs would allow. My father was working, tending the roses, and he caught the most beautiful butterfly, holding it tenderly, anxious not to crush its delicate wings.