by S M Hardy
‘They don’t sound particularly radical ideas,’ I said.
‘The Garvin sisters have a very high opinion of themselves,’ Jed said with a snort. ‘“Public Houses are so not for us”,’ he said in a falsetto voice and wrinkled his nose like he was smelling something nasty as he lifted his coffee cup to his lips with his little finger stuck out in a curl.
‘You’re being a bit harsh,’ Emma said, but she was trying hard not to laugh. He raised a bushy eyebrow at her, and her lips gave a little twitch. ‘All right, all right. Yes, they are a bit snooty.’
‘Emma, they’re dreadful.’
‘Then why did you invite them to stay late the other night?’ I asked.
Jed gave a snort of disgust. ‘Emma didn’t so much as invite them as they invited themselves,’ he said, leaning back in his chair. ‘It’s the same every time Emms has “a bit of a do”. They hang around at the end hoping I’ll give them a performance. The other night I was fed up with it all and was going to disappoint them, but then you suddenly went off into one and scared the crap out of them.’
Emma frowned into her coffee cup.
‘What?’ he asked.
‘Don’t you think it a bit strange?’
‘How do you mean?’
‘They always get so excited about anything they consider “supernatural”,’ she said making quotation mark signs with her fingers, ‘so why the fit of the vapours over Jim’s efforts? I’d have thought they’d be over the moon.’
Jed’s eyebrows screwed together in a furry caterpillar line that had me stifling a slightly hysterical giggle, the sort one gets at the most inappropriate of moments like funerals or deadly serious board meetings. I took a deep breath and tried to draw my expression into one that suited the mood.
‘You’re right,’ Jed said. ‘It makes no sense at all.’ He slumped back in the chair and I could almost see the cogs whirring around in his head.
Emma tapped a fingernail against the side of her cup, staring into mid-air. ‘Reggie’s keys,’ she suddenly said.
‘Pardon?’ Jed said, straightening up in his seat.
‘Reggie’s keys,’ Emma repeated. ‘After he died, I couldn’t find them. I never did.’
Jed sucked in breath. ‘But that was,’ he breathed out through pursed lips, ‘nigh on fifteen years ago.’
‘I know, but that’s the only set of keys that aren’t accounted for. I’m pretty sure of it.’
‘How about Tilly or Rachael?’ Jed asked.
‘They both have a key to the back door,’ she admitted.
‘Have you asked if they still have them?’
Emma gave an exasperated tut. ‘Of course not. They come in at least twice a week, sometimes more. How would they get in if not with a key?’
‘Could one of them have misplaced their key and asked the other to get a replacement cut?’ I asked.
Emma frowned at me. ‘No,’ she said with a small shake of the head, ‘no, they would have mentioned it. I’m sure they would.’
‘It wouldn’t hurt to ask,’ Jed said.
‘It might,’ she said. ‘They’d be most upset if they thought someone had broken in using one of their keys or even worse if they got it into their heads that I was accusing them of being complicit. No, I can’t ask them.’
‘It could explain how whoever it was gained entry.’
I realised my hand was in my pocket my fingers curling around the set of keys to the cottage. A dead child’s keys. Little brat, I’ll teach you. I’ll show you.
I pulled them out of my pocket and held them up. ‘You say these were Krystal’s keys.’
Jed licked his lips and nodded.
‘Did they go missing when she died?’
‘I don’t know,’ Jed said. ‘I don’t think so.’
‘But you don’t know for certain?’
His shoulders slumped. ‘No, no I don’t.’
‘Where did you find them?’ Emma asked.
I stared at them lying on the palm of my hand and then dropped them back into my pocket. ‘In the lining of my jacket. I never did find the set I’d been sent by the estate agent. They disappeared and these turned up in their place.’ I slumped back in my chair. ‘I know this will sound crazy, but what if somehow they were swapped? What if Krystal somehow swapped them?’
Jed raised an eyebrow and he and Emma exchanged a look that wasn’t lost on me.
‘Jim, Krystal’s dead, and dead children can’t swap keys or play tricks. They’re not physical; they’re spirits,’ Emma said, her voice gentle like she was comforting a small, upset child.
‘I don’t suppose spirits make you cups of tea either,’ I said with a resigned sigh.
‘You’re talking about Peter Davies?’ Jed said.
I looked up at him. ‘Yep. He made me a cup of tea.’ I took a deep breath – here goes nothing. ‘What about moving things about the house? Can spirits do that?’
They exchanged another of their looks.
‘I’ve heard all the usual stories, but I’ve never seen it happen,’ Jed admitted.
‘Neither have I,’ Emma agreed.
‘Tell us,’ Jed said.
So I did. I told them everything. Well, when I say everything, I mean from when I arrived at Slyford St James. I didn’t tell them about Kat, although I think they had an idea about her. I didn’t tell them about falling apart for a while after she died, and I didn’t tell them that I’d been given a golden handshake from my job on medical grounds. If I had, I know what they’d have thought; I knew what I’d think. Nutter. A complete headcase. But wasn’t that what I’d been thinking?
Another thing I didn’t mention was the man I’d been speaking to at the party. I don’t know why, really. I just didn’t feel comfortable speaking about him.
Even so, by the time I’d finished they were both looking at me a little strangely. I think it was when I told them about the face looming at me out of the darkness the night of Emma’s party that finally did it. Even as the words tumbled from my mouth I realised how mad I sounded. As it happened Jed surprised me.
‘I knew you had the sight from the first moment I met you,’ he said, ‘but if it hadn’t been for the other night, and seeing you and hearing you do and say what you did, I’d think you’d lost the plot.’
‘Playing the devil’s advocate here,’ Emma said, ‘the instances with the bottle and the glass could have been …’ she hesitated and her cheeks flushed, ‘they could have been down to you being tired.’
‘Tired and emotional, you mean,’ I said with a bitter laugh.
She leant over and laid a hand on my arm. ‘You lost someone not so long ago and you’ve still not moved on. It’s understandable.’
‘How did you know that?’ I asked.
She gave a little laugh. ‘I’m nowhere as gifted as Jed, but I can feel things about people, see things sometimes. A sadness radiates off you and when I touched your hand the first time we met in the pub I could feel your grief and underlying confusion.’
‘You said it was an accident – what did you mean?’ I asked. It was a question that had been on the tip of my tongue ever since we’d met that first time, but until now I’d been too scared to ask.
Emma gave me a sympathetic smile. ‘It was a whisper in my head. Tell Jim it was an accident. I can’t say more than that.’
‘A whisper in your head?’
‘I’m not like Jed – when he gets messages, most of the time he knows who they’re from and who they’re for. I just get whispers.’
‘So, this whisper, was it’ − I let out a shuddery breath − ‘was it Kat?’
Emma patted my arm. ‘I don’t know, but I suppose it could have been.’
‘I wish I could see her again.’
‘I’ve never heard from Reggie and nor has Jed.’ And the man I’d spoken to the night of the party came into mind, but I pushed the thought away.
‘Sometimes, when it’s someone you’re close to, it just doesn’t happen,’ Jed said, ‘and Reggie and I
… Well, we were close, I couldn’t have had a better friend,’ and he looked away and I’m sure I saw a glint of tears. I was slightly taken aback; Jed didn’t strike me as an overly sentimental type.
‘I never had anything like this happen to me before I arrived at Slyford,’ I told them after a brief silence, ‘then practically from the first moment I stepped into the cottage everything got very strange.’
‘Like the combination to your padlock.’
‘Yes.’ This was something else I’d been wanting to know. ‘How did you know the combination? You just picked it up and immediately knew.’
‘Fourteen zero six, sixteen zero four; a reversal of numbers, an easy mistake to make and a logical explanation,’ Jed said.
‘As simple as that?’
He made a non-committal grunt.
‘Jed?’
‘Emma isn’t the only one who hears whispers sometimes. And she’s wrong, I don’t always know who’s talking to me.’
Emma looked surprised. ‘I didn’t know; you never said.’
He smiled at her and once again it skittered through my head that if there was nothing going on between the two of them it wasn’t down to Jed.
‘It’s not something I’ve given much thought,’ he said. ‘I’ve always heard voices; they just don’t always announce themselves.’
‘Have you ever seen things?’ I asked. ‘People, I mean − dead people.’
‘Not like you. I’ve seen glimpses sometimes. Shades of figures but nothing I could mistake for the living.’
Emma leant forward to pass around a plate of biscuits. I took one more for something to do with my hands and give me time to think rather than wanting a sugar rush. Even to Jed and Emma I was an oddity and the spectre of madness had returned to loiter at the back of my mind.
‘I’m wondering whether I should go to see someone,’ I admitted and took a bite out of my biscuit.
Both Emma and Jed looked genuinely surprised. ‘Like who?’ Jed asked.
I swallowed and washed it down with a mouthful of coffee. ‘A doctor, maybe a shrink.’
‘Ah,’ Jed said, leaning back in his chair.
‘Do you really think that would help?’ Emma asked.
‘Only if he wants to find himself on Prozac or Valium, or even worse, locked up in the funny farm.’
‘So you think I’m crazy?’
‘That’s what a quack would think. They deal with science and logic. Do you really think they’d believe you see the dead?’
‘I’m not sure I believe I see the dead so why should they?’ I said, feeling downright miserable.
‘Look,’ Jed said, fixing me with a stare, ‘I know you’re having a hard time taking this in. Hell, I’ve lived with it all my life and still sometimes it can surprise me, but you’re not going mad. At least if you are, the seeing of dead people isn’t part of it. What happened to you the other night was extraordinary; it was nothing like I’ve ever experienced before.’
‘I’ve never seen anything like it either,’ Emma said.
‘But why is it all happening to me now?’
‘I have no answer to that.’
We sat in silence for a while and once again I could hear the faint call of a peacock from across the garden, and I wished I could stay here for ever where it was safe and calm and I didn’t see things I really didn’t want to see.
‘Maybe …’ Emma said and hesitated. Jed and I both looked up. She was running her finger around the rim of her cup, a small frown creasing her brow. ‘Maybe it’s happening for a reason. Perhaps you’re seeing and hearing these things because there’s a need to put them right.’
‘What do you mean, Emms?’
‘If Jim has only just started having these’ − she frowned down into her cup − ‘episodes, it could be that he’s tuned into whatever happened at the cottage. Perhaps Krystal is crying out to him for some kind of closure or maybe even justice.’
‘You think it might stop if I discover what really happened that day?’ I asked.
‘I don’t know,’ she said, ‘but I really am beginning to believe you’re seeing and hearing these things for a reason.’
I sank back in my seat. Hearing Emma say what I’d already considered was making me feel a whole lot better and that my decision to stay was the right one. Besides, if it hadn’t been for the scrabbling of claws at my bedroom door I might no longer be here. I owed it to Krystal’s little dog to at least try and find out what happened to her. Even if it’s likely to get you killed?
I thought on it. Yes – even then.
CHAPTER TWELVE
When I left Emma’s I couldn’t face going straight back to the cottage; instead on impulse I carried on down the lane to see where it led. A walk would do me good and hopefully clear my head, even if it couldn’t help me answer the questions whirling around inside it. It would take more than a walk to do that.
A wonky, weather-worn, wooden signpost at the lane’s end pointed the way down a path to ‘Fisherman’s Cove and Saints’ Bay’. Below it was a more modern sign – ‘Care! Dangerous When Wet’. Well, it wasn’t wet today. The path was little more than a track, only just wide enough for two to walk next to each other. Over the summer the surrounding undergrowth had begun to encroach from either side, sometimes meaning I had to shrug my way past long grass and shrubbery or swat aside low-hanging branches from the occasional self-sown sapling.
It was rocky underfoot, the soil worn away to a dusty cover littered with sharp-edged, loose stones. The track curled and twisted ahead with nothing else to see other than wave after wave of vegetation and the blue of the sky above. Now and then a seagull would cry out as it soared towards the sun and swooped down again, wings outstretched soaking up the warming rays.
A line of sweat trickled down my brow and I shrugged off my jacket and threw it over my shoulder. It was turning into a beautiful day.
I didn’t appear to be getting anywhere near the coast and I was beginning to wonder whether it was worth going any further, when the path began to slope downwards and I caught a whiff of salty air encouraging me to carry on.
The track began to zigzag back and forth, then the vegetation appeared to drop away and there outstretched into infinity was the ocean. I stood still for a moment taking in the view along the cliff, the sharp scent of the sea and the warmth of the sun upon my face to the soundtrack of waves crashing against the rocks below. This was why I had come to Slyford St James. This was the feeling I’d been hoping to find.
I started off again; to one side of me gorse and shrubs, to the other a rocky landscape with some intermittent patches of brambles, heather and grass gradually dropping away to the sea. Once or twice the path curled a few yards towards the cliff’s edge, but nowhere close enough for the health and safety brigade to have a fit of the vapours.
Ahead of me the path dropped into a dip and out of sight for a few yards before coming up again the other side. I carried on walking and at the bottom of the dip I found what I was looking for, another track going downwards towards the bay below.
The first few yards had my calves working overtime as I shuffled down the steep incline, loose bits of rock skittering from beneath my feet, then, to my relief, I came to the first of many steps carved into the earth and rock. They were steep but wide. On some I had to take two paces before I could step down to the next. It was going to be a hard slog down to the bay.
Even harder coming back up.
I ignored the warning voice in my head. I’d take it nice and slow. I had all the time in the world and nowhere to be and nowhere to go.
From the steps I couldn’t see the bay beneath me, and it was only after about five minutes that I began to wonder whether it actually did lead to Fisherman’s Cove. It could just take me to a lower path. What the hell? It had to go somewhere.
The scent of the sea filled my nose and mouth and when I licked my lips they tasted of salt. Then the vegetation fell away until to one side of me there was only sheer rock and to the other a
handrail of tubular metal hammered into the cliff, then nothing except thin air. I stopped to peer over the edge. Below me was a beach of sorts. Mainly rocky fissures filled with pools of seawater and strands of weed floating like tendrils of mermaids’ hair.
The kid in me, enthused by thoughts of investigating the rock pools searching for crabs and other sea life, had me bounding down the steps, my feet barely touching the ground. In my head I heard a childish giggle and the yap of a small dog. Krystal used to come here.
The flight of steps ended in a sea of pebbles as I took that last pace down onto the beach. The tide was out, and I could see strips of sand between the swathes of solid rock at the shoreline.
The shingle crunched beneath my feet as I made my way across to the first slab of dark-grey stone and it felt so much better than the shifting pebbles as I climbed up to take a look. It was as I thought: dips and crevasses filled by the retreating tide made fine homes for all sorts of interesting sea life. Blood-coloured anemones clung to the sides of the pools while small fishes darted between clumps of seaweed. A hermit crab scuttled away to hide from my shadow and a mollusc of some description slowly made its way down the rock to find deeper waters.
Krystal would have loved this. I could almost hear her excited cries as she hopped from pool to pool searching for one more creature. The thought brought me up sharp. What had happened to her? Why had her young life been cut short so cruelly?
Any joy I had felt as I descended down onto the beach was replaced with one of melancholy. As if to reflect my mood a cloud passed across the sun, darkening the landscape, and a gull cried out, a plaintive sound against the swishing of pebbles as they were tumbled back and forth by the tide.
I shivered. Without the warmth of the sun upon my back and the exertion of walking the cliff path I was suddenly cold. I pulled on my jacket and carried on across the rock until I could jump down onto the sand at the water’s edge.
The tide was on the turn and in the brief time I’d been on the beach it had already started to climb its way back up the shore.