by Amy Cross
Alice, this is Graham. Can you call me when you get a chance? It's very important.
“Anything wrong?” Brad asks.
I close the message and turn to him. “No. Nothing.”
He looks at the phone.
“It's really nothing,” I add, before hearing a beep signaling a notification. “Sorry, I didn't mean to be rude.”
“Someone seems very popular tonight,” Catherine says with a smile.
“Crazy, huh?” I reply, looking down at the phone. Just as I'm about to dismiss the new notification, however, I see that it's from the alert I set up months ago when Dora Ohme was leaving book reviews.
I swipe the notification to take a look, and I swear I feel my blood run cold as I see that suddenly – after all this time – Dora has left another review.
“I just have to take this,” I stammer, getting to my feet and hurrying through to the hallway. “Please, just eat without me.”
I hear everyone muttering as I leave the room, but right now I don't care what they're saying. Stopping outside the door to the bathroom, I bring up the latest Dora Ohme review and to my surprise I find that she's finally gotten around to leaving a comment on one of the short stories I uploaded a couple of months ago. My fingers are trembling as I open the review, which turns out to give my story only two stars.
And then I read her comments:
Where to begin? Alice Ashcroft is usually so reliable, but she's really dropped the ball with this one. She fundamentally misunderstands the central concept of the soul auction, and she misses the idea that this is a kind of game for the entities involved. They're not all the same, and they don't all behave the same way. Some take their time, some enjoy the hunt, while others just go for a quick and easy kill. You'd think that Ashcroft might know this, but instead she writes as if the soul auction is a quick and easy process. She doesn't understand that some of these demons take years and years to torture their victims. And I should know, because I've seen the beginning of such an awful thing. I've seen it with my own eyes.
I read the review through several times, in case I've missed anything. This is the first time Dora has been so critical of one of my books, and it seems that my attempt to understand the concept of the soul auction has gone a little wrong. To be honest, I intentionally put the whole thing out of my mind when I got back from Curridge, and I never thought that Dora would write another review, not after all this time.
I need to ignore this review.
I need to keep a lid on what happened in Curridge, and I need to stop thinking about it.
And then, just as I'm about to put my phone away, there's another beep as a second notification arrives. Hearing a rumble of thunder in the distance, I swipe to check this new notification, and sure enough Dora has left a review on another of the short stories I uploaded.
This time, she's given only one star:
Another miss from an author who's usually so reliable. I've seen what happens when one of these demons comes to collect a soul he's won at auction. I've seen the damage and the trauma, not only to the person affected but also to the local area. Before that day, I was a devout woman whose faith was never troubled. Ever since, I have suffered nightmares about what I saw, and I fear that there is an insurmountable evil that stalks this world. And that, ultimately, is why I am so disappointed by Alice Ashcroft's latest book. She clings to an idea of hope, where no hope exists. I can only assume that she – like so many others – is scared to look into the abyss and recognize the true horror that awaits us all.
Again, Dora's review seems so authoritative, as if she has absolutely no doubt that what she's saying is accurate. At the same time, everything she's written in this latest review seems so dark and nihilistic, as if she's castigating me for insisting on a sliver of hope in all my stories. I've always believed that now matter how dark a story might get, there should always be some hint of light at the end of the tunnel, something to suggest that things might improve. That doesn't mean that I always write happy endings, but I just don't see the point of presenting a completely depressing worldview.
A moment later, another notification comes through, and I see that Dora has uploaded a review to the third and final short story I uploaded while I was in Curridge. She's given this story another one-star review:
Maybe one day somebody will write a proper account of a soul auction, but I doubt that person will be Alice Ashcroft. She seems to lack the necessary sense of perspective, and she misses the most obvious clues. For example, how can somebody see a book fall from mid-air, and have it land on the pages she needs to read, and yet still she doesn't understand? This latest story just shows that she lacks the critical thinking that's required to truly understand what has been happening around her. Sad, but I think I'll give up on her stories from now on.
As those final words sink in, I go back and re-read the review, and one part in particular stands out.
“How can somebody see a book fall from mid-air,” I whisper, “and have it land on the pages she needs to read, and yet still she doesn't understand?”
A shiver runs down my spine as I realize exactly what that sentence means.
She was there.
She saw me when I was looking around her cottage.
Or at least, somebody saw me.
“Cameras,” I stammer, trying to stick to obvious, realistic explanations. “There must have been cameras.”
Then again, I remember the sound of footsteps.
“Are you okay in here?” Brad asks, suddenly coming through from the dining room. “We were starting to think you'd fallen down the toilet.”
“I'm fine,” I reply, although I know I'm probably not fooling him. “I was just...”
My voice trails off, and I can't help thinking about everything Dora wrote. Finally, I realize there's one person I still need to call.
“I'll be through in a couple of minutes,” I tell Brad, as I bring up Graham's number. “Just tell the others I'm busy.”
“But -”
“Please!” I hiss. “Just tell them!”
“You're acting really strangely tonight, Alice,” he replies with a sigh. “Fine, whatever. I just hope you grace us with your presence eventually.”
With that, he turns and heads back to the others, leaving me to wait for Graham to answer his phone.
“Alice?” he says finally. “Are you -”
“What do you know?” I ask. “I mean, what do you think you know?”
Chapter Fifty-Six
Lizzie
Thirty years ago
“Kate, are you -”
Stopping as I reach the bar area, I see that Kate is sitting quietly at the booth, staring at the Polaroid photo that Anthony took yesterday. She's seemed unusually focused on that photo, and suddenly I realize why.
It's our first family photo without Rob.
Maybe I didn't even realize until now, but for the past six months I've been specifically avoiding family photos, because I knew that they wouldn't look right with just the three of us. We've never really been big on photos in our family, and I'm not even sure where I stashed the ones we do have. I put most of our pictures away after Rob died, although I kept a few of Rob so that the girls can see him whenever they want to remember what he looked like.
But family photos?
I hid all of those away, and now I realize I was wrong to do that.
“Are you okay, kiddo?” I ask, heading over to her.
She stares at the photo for a moment longer, before looking up at me with tears in her eyes.
“It's okay to cry,” I explain, taking a seat next to her. “In fact, I think I'd like it if you cried a little more. When you feel like it, at least. It shows me how you're feeling. And if I know how you're feeling, maybe I can help you to feel better.”
She sniffs back more tears, before looking back down at the picture.
“I'm going to look after this forever,” she says after a moment. “Forever and ever.”
“I'm sure
you are.”
“When we get home, can we try to find some of the older photos?”
“You means ones of Daddy?”
“I mean ones of all of us,” she replies. “We have photos of Daddy, and we have photos of me and Daddy together. But we don't have photos with you in.”
“I think I know where to find some,” I tell her.
“Are we leaving right now?”
“Pretty much. The car's all packed, Alice is ready.”
“Can we go somewhere first?”
“Where do you want to go, honey?”
She hesitates, as if she's worried about telling me.
“It's okay,” I continue, taking her hand in mine. “If you want to go somewhere, we'll go somewhere. Just tell me what you want to do.”
Chapter Fifty-Seven
Alice
Today
“There was a soul auction in the 1980's,” Graham explains over the phone, as I sit at the window and look out at the dark city. “I don't know exactly when, but that doesn't really matter anyway. What matters is that it happened, and that after it was over the various demons -”
“Demons?”
“I don't know what to call them,” he replies, sounding exasperated. “Different books and sources have different names for them.”
“Fine. Let's call them demons. Tell me what happened after this soul auction thing.”
“When a demon wins a soul, it's because it outbid the others. I don't know what they bid with, of course. Maybe it's money, maybe it's something else. Anyway, each demon has a different way of collecting a soul that it won at the auction. Some are quick and some...”
His voice trails off.
“Some take their time?” I ask, feeling the hairs standing on the back of my neck.
“This Tramelfacht book names twelve of them. I don't think that's all that exist, but he goes into detail about these twelve.” I hear the sound of him flipping through pages of notes. “For example, there's one named Haset who likes to gorge on souls and swallow them almost whole. There's another named Attaroth who likes to torture his victims for years and years. There are all these others, with names like Ket and Roanoke and so on, and apparently they each have their own approaches.”
He pauses, but I can still hear him breathing on the other end of the line.
“Do you think my mother's soul was taken by one of these things?” I ask finally.
As soon as those words have left my lips, I realize how utterly crazy they sound. At the same time, everything Graham's telling me seems to fit with the things I read in Dora's reviews.
“I think,” he says cautiously, “you have to consider the possibility that, yes, this is what happened to her. Souls are apparently selected for the auction based on their life experiences. Did your mother have a particularly difficult time at any point in her life?”
“Her husband had died about a year earlier,” I tell him. “My father.”
“Anything else?”
“I think she was... I mean, Kate once said she heard that Mum had been beaten as a child. Her parents were kind of strict.”
“And there might have been things you don't know about,” he points out.
I swallow hard. “There might.”
“If your mother's soul was won by a demon at a soul auction,” he continues, “then he would have come through to our world and tracked her down. And then, depending on which particular demon he was, he might have killed her instantly, or he might have taken his time.” He pauses. “Or she. I think there can be female demons as well.”
“My mother died of an aneurysm,” I reply. “From what I've heard, she was fine one moment and then the next...”
“Then maybe she was lucky. Maybe her soul was taken quickly.”
“But souls...”
My voice trails off for a moment. Again, I'm struck by the insanity of this entire conversation.
“Souls aren't real, are they?” I continue. “I mean, not in the sense that they can be somehow extracted from a body.”
“I have no idea,” he replies. “I'm telling you everything I know. The Tramelfacht book suggests that after a soul has been taken in this way, there'll be damage to the surrounding area, and I've already shown you the cliffs at Curridge. There can also be shock-waves, lasting for years after, due to the violence of the soul being taken.”
“My sister seems ill since we came back from Curridge,” I tell him. “It's like a kind of depression.”
“She was five when it happened, wasn't she?”
“Almost six.”
“So she might have seen something.”
“She says she -”
“Even if she doesn't remember,” he adds. “I've been doing some reading up, and it's totally within the bounds of possibility that she could be repressing some memories.”
“I've tried to get her to go to counseling,” I reply, “but she always says she's fine. Now I'm worried she's having some kind of breakdown.”
“If she witnessed your mother being killed by one of these demons,” Graham continues, “it's a miracle your sister's not gibbering somewhere in the corner of a padded cell.” He hesitates for a moment. “Sorry. Maybe that was insensitive of me.”
“There's got to be another explanation for all of this,” I point out. “We have to be missing something more obvious. Something believable.”
“Wait a moment,” Graham says, and I hear him walking down a set of stairs, followed by the sound of a door opening. “I'm just heading out for a moment, but listen. I've done some preliminary research, and I think I've identified several locations around the world where these events have left their mark. Alice, if soul auctions are real, then they represent one of the primary ways in which these demons interact with our world.”
“But why would my mother be targeted?” I ask. “Sure, she had some tough times, but her life wasn't that bad.”
“I don't know the criteria they use,” he replies, and now I can hear him making his way across the beach, accompanied by what sounds like a car rolling past. “I'm still looking into that. Information about these soul auctions is difficult to come by, but a few people have picked up on various aspects. If I'm right, Curridge is currently in the tail-end of one of these events. What happened thirty years ago must have left some kind of residual energy in the place. And believe me, I know how crazy that sounds.”
“She was murdered,” I whisper.
“I beg your pardon?”
“If you're right about this,” I continue, through gritted teeth, “then you're basically saying that my mother was murdered.”
“Well, I -”
“You are!” I say firmly. “All these years, I thought she suffered a simple aneurysm. I thought she was knocked down by a one-in-a-million piece of bad luck, and now you're suggesting that somehow she was deliberately targeted.”
I hear a car door slam on the other end of the line, and then more footsteps in the distance. At the same time, here in London, there's an ominous rumble of thunder ahead and moments later rain starts hitting the window.
“You're trying to tell me that my mother was murdered,” I whisper again. “Actually murdered!”
“What the hell?” Graham replies over the phone.
“I'm not ready to believe that,” I continue. “What you're saying makes sense, but I'm still not ready to abandon my belief in normal, rational things. There has to be another explanation.”
I hesitate for a moment, before grabbing my car keys from the bowl.
“I have to go,” I tell Graham. “I'm sorry, but I think my sister needs help. I can't leave her alone in that house, she needs proper, professional help.”
“Alice -”
“I can't be part of what's going on in Curridge!” I say firmly, grabbing my coat and heading to the door. “Keep yourself entertained with all these theories, by all means, but I need you to leave me alone. I've got enough happening in my life right now, and I don't have time to indulge you. Just because I write
about ghosts and monsters, that doesn't mean I believe they're real.”
“But Alice -”
“I'll be back soon!” I shout out to Brad. “I'm just going to check on Kate again!”
“You can't,” Graham tells me.
“I'm hanging up,” I reply.
“You can't go and see Kate at her house,” he continues, “because she's not there.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I just saw her,” he adds. “Alice, I'm outside on the beach, and I swear I just saw your sister step out of a taxi and walk into the pub right here in Curridge.”
Chapter Fifty-Eight
Lizzie
Thirty years ago
“Is this really what you want?” I ask Kate as we head along the path that leads to the church. “There are churches in London, you know.”
“I like this church,” she replies.
“Well, you're the boss.”
After carrying Alice through the doorway, I stop and watch as Kate heads along the aisle. When she reaches the altar she stops and kneels like a pro, and I can't help feeling as if my little girl is once again acting beyond her years. Then again, if she's found some way – any way – to deal with her grief, I guess I can't exactly be sad. In fact, in some ways, I actually envy her.
Hearing footsteps nearby, I turn just in time to see Dorothy coming out from the nearby office. She smiles shyly as she slips past me, and a moment later I realize I can hear voices coming from the office.
And then, to my surprise, Father Cole comes out with Anthony right behind him.
“I'm sure it'll be a great pleasure,” Anthony is telling him, “and we -”
He stops as soon as he sees me, and for a few seconds he seems shocked by my presence. Finally, however, a faint smile crosses his face.
In my arms, Alice lets out a faint gurgle.
“Good morning, Lizzie,” Anthony says as he and Father Cole come over to join me next to the door. “What a pleasant surprise. I wasn't expecting to see you again during your visit. Or, indeed, ever.”