The Curse of the Golden Touch

by G M Mckay

  “Uh huh, and the time we were biking home and you decided to try a new short cut, and we ended up lost and the police had to bring us home.”

  “Oh, jeesh, Gil, you only remember the times things go wrong—”

  “Like the time we nearly drowned in the river.”

  I sucked in my breath and looked away, not meeting his questioning gaze.

  “Jilly?” he asked uncertainly. “Are you okay? I’m sorry, I wasn’t thinking. I forgot about what happened afterward.”

  I shivered, no longer seeing Bally or Gil or the surrounding woods as the memories rushed over me.

  The last summer that I ever saw the ghosts, when I was fourteen years old, I’d heard a child calling out for help from the middle of the Greystone River. Gil couldn’t see or hear him of course, but the child’s cries had driven me frantic. I couldn’t just ignore them so I’d jumped into the river and Gil had followed after me like the good friend he was. We were both good swimmers but we’d nearly drowned that day and no amount of explaining or apologizing from me could appease my parents and Christoph.

  I’d been grounded, banned from seeing Gil, and forced into an intense month of sessions with a creepy child psychologist who’d made me cry when he relentlessly tried to make me see how illogical my ghost obsession was. Worst of all, despite my hysterical begging, Nanny, who I’d loved like a real mother, had been fired, banished to who knows where and never heard from again.

  “You’ll get over it,” Mother had said coldly, when I’d collapsed into a frantic fit of sobbing. “You’re fourteen years old, Jillian. You’re much too old to have a nanny, especially a superstitious old goat like that who encourages you in your ridiculous obsessions. Maybe now you’ll learn to put aside your childish stories and act like an adult.”

  That therapy-worthy trauma had caused me to fall quite ill, so sick that for a while there was some worry that I wouldn’t recover. But, I did get better, at least physically, and to make me forget about Nanny, Father had whisked me away on a European vacation and bought me Bally.

  Somewhere during all that upheaval, the ghosts, which had obviously been figments of an overactive imagination just like the psychologist had said, had disappeared completely. I guess it had helped me fit in a bit more, at least until the Frederick incident, and having a normal-acting daughter had certainly pleased Mother. But though I’d outwardly recovered from that traumatic summer, I’d always felt a bit hollow afterward, like there was a vital part of me missing.

  “Jilly,” Gil said, sounding worried, “I shouldn’t have said that … I thought that after all this time we might be able to talk about it …”

  I shook my head to clear the vision and took a deep, shuddering breath.

  Before I could answer, the woods far up ahead of us erupted in chaos. Voices yelling, branches snapping and the sound of squealing horses and thudding hooves. There was a high-pitched, terrified human scream, and then two horses burst from the forest. I could barely make them out in the dying light but one of them was definitely Rigel, triumphantly rider-less with his saddle twisted to one side, and in front of him was a huge bay horse, also without a rider, who galloped away from Rigel’s outstretched jaws as if his life depended on it.

  Without pausing, I brushed my calves against Bally’s sides and he leapt forward, launching himself up the driveway, running hard until we neared the place where the horses must have come from. I eased him to a trot, scanning the left side of the driveway for any sign of Xan. Bally suddenly slid to an abrupt halt, his ears pricking forward and his whole body rigid with his gaze fixed on the woods to our left.

  “What is it, Bally?” I asked uncertainly as he snorted and shook his head, clearly upset. This was very unlike him. Underbrush crackled next to the road and there was a low, whuffling, sniffing sound that reminded me acutely of what Gil had said about wild animals roaming the woods. Just as I was about to turn Bally around and make a run for it, a massive black shape pushed itself out of the trees, gave me one long steady look out of a pair of baleful yellow eyes and shot off in the direction the horses had gone.

  It was just a dog, I realized suddenly, putting a hand over my heart to steady it, the biggest dog I’ve ever seen in my life.

  Bally rocked back on his heels and snorted but bravely stood his ground, watching the oversized creature lurch away up the driveway. He tossed his head and then suddenly moved toward the trees, dropping down into the woods in the direction the creature had come from.

  “Bally, that’s not the way,” I said and then realized he was right; there was a well-used trail beneath his hooves and the leafy underbrush parted easily as we passed.

  I crouched over his neck, ducking to avoid the low-hanging branches and letting him pick his own way. The trail opened abruptly into a wide clearing and Bally stopped, dropping his nose to sniff something near his feet.

  “Oh, no,” I said, putting a hand over my mouth.

  A small, crumpled figure lay deathly still on the damp forest floor. She looked to be in her twenties, dressed in knee-high leather boots, breeches, and a red knitted sweater. She wasn’t wearing a helmet and her short, black hair stood up in all directions. She lay flat on the ground, head tipped to one side and one knee bent on an awkward angle. Her face was deathly white, her lips nearly blue, and I noticed that she was painfully thin with dark circles under her eyes.

  Xan knelt at her side, wide eyed and solemn. He looked like he’d hit the ground himself, one side of his jacket was covered in mud and there were leaves in his dark hair.

  “Jilly,” Xan said, looking up at me with serious eyes, “we need to do something.”

  “Is she … is she, alive?” My voice came out a squeak. I’d never seen someone lie so still.

  “She’s alive,” Xan said, “but I don’t want to move her. There was some sort of creature crashing around out here and it scared the animals. Our horses collided and both of us came off. Can you ride for help?”

  “It was a huge dog,” I said, “I saw it on the trail.”

  “Well, it was big enough that the horses probably thought it was a bear. Ride hard, Jilly. I don’t know how badly she’s hurt.”

  “Okay,” I said, taking a deep breath. “I’ll be as fast as I can.” I turned Bally around with shaking hands and headed back up the trail. It was too narrow to go very fast but I urged him into a trot and was relieved when we finally clambered back up onto the driveway.

  “Gil?” I called, standing up in my stirrups to scan both directions but there was no sign of him. I cursed myself for leaving him behind. He would definitely give me a long lecture when he caught up with us.

  Bally and I cantered briskly up the seemingly-endless driveway, his hooves thudding rhythmically against the ground. The dusk had fallen fast and the trees around us had taken on a strange dream-like quality; they all looked the same and I had the strangest feeling that we were cantering in place and not even moving forward at all. But finally, up ahead, there was a change in the road.

  “Easy buddy,” I said, drawing Bally gently to a halt. We’d come to a spot where the driveway divided into two halves, one branching left and the other to the right. Neither direction was marked at all and both ways seemed equally dark and unwelcoming.

  “Which way do we go, Bally?” I asked, looking at each side uncertainly. The seconds ticked by and I reluctantly directed him to the right-hand branch, hoping I’d decided correctly.

  Bally stopped and tossed his nose up and down a few times, then suddenly swiveled around to look at the road behind us, nickering softly under his breath.

  Hoof beats pounded up the driveway and I turned in the saddle, expecting to see Rigel and the strange horse galloping toward me. The last thing I expected to see was a woman dressed like she’d stepped right out of those old ancestral paintings that hung in our dining room. She rode side-saddle for one thing and wore a dark cape over her emerald green dress that trailed down past her horse’s knees. She looked furious as she rode up, glaring at me wi
th a livid expression as she pulled her horse up so sharply that he sprang up on his hind legs just a few feet away from us.

  “Careful,” I cried, stifling a scream and laying a protective hand on Bally’s mane.

  But the lady didn’t apologize for nearly running us over; she didn’t say anything at all. She just sat there on her foaming red horse and stared at me balefully with her ice-blue eyes.

  I opened my mouth to tell her about the girl hurt in the woods or at least to ask directions to the house, but my words froze on my tongue and suddenly, I felt very, very cold right down to my bones. I couldn’t move, and I couldn’t look away from her. Her long coppery red hair hung in bedraggled ringlets against her dark cape, bits of grass and leaves tangled in her curls. The massive black dog I’d caught a glimpse of earlier now sat on the ground behind her, a mass of shaggy black fur with only its yellow eyes and pink lolling tongue to break up the impression of darkness.

  A strange prickly sensation rose up my arms and along the back of my neck. A nauseous feeling began in the pit of my stomach and I would have thrown up there and then if Bally hadn’t shifted beneath me impatiently, pulling me out of my trance.

  I put one trembling hand on Bally’s neck for support and the other hand over my mouth, fighting to stay upright.

  “Beware,” the woman said ominously, her voice coming out a snake-like hiss. “All ye who seek to do harm. Beware.”

  “P…pardon?” I said, fighting the strange lethargy that had fallen over me. I struggled to remember why I was out there, riding through the dark in the first place. “There’s a woman badly hurt back there,” I said with difficulty. “I need to get help, to call an ambulance. I don’t know the way to the house.”

  All three of them, woman, horse and dog, fixed their eyes on me solemnly, unmoving, as if they were part of a painting rather than real life. Then the horse lifted a foreleg and pawed the ground impatiently, tugging against the bit in its mouth. It flicked its ears forward and then flattened them back, edging sideways slightly toward Bally in a way that did not look too friendly.

  The dog rose to its feet and looked up the road, whining a little under its breath.

  The woman nodded abruptly, as if coming to a decision and suddenly, her great horse reared straight up in the air, so high it looked like it might fall over backward.

  “If you are friend then follow the path that was forbidden. If you are foe then beware my wrath. The lady rides nine,” she said in a furious voice, glaring at me. She took one hand off the reins and pointed dramatically up the left side of the driveway before clapping her booted heels into the horse’s side and plunging past us up the road at top speed.

  “Hey!” I cried, wheeling Bally out of their path just in time. But the trio was gone before I could even blink; there wasn’t even the sound of hoof beats left for me to follow.

  I sat there, waiting for the numb, sickening feeling to pass and then shook my head to clear it.

  “That was helpful, wasn’t it, Bally?” I muttered under my breath. “She could have just said ‘go left’.”

  I looked in the direction she’d chosen. Hopefully, she’d been pointing toward help and safety and not directing me to jump off a steep cliff. Feeling less nauseous every second, I urged Bally back into a careful canter.

  I almost cried in relief when the sprawling white Baroque-style manor came into sight. It was huge, bigger than our house at home, but it looked wild and overgrown in the dim light. Instead of manicured front gardens, the lawn was a tangle of overgrown grass and weeds. Brambles and untamed clumps of lavender and heather grew everywhere in all directions, looking like hulking gargoyles in the failing light. The place had an abandoned look to it and I wondered if there was any help for me here at all.

  “There’s a light, Bally,” I said. “No, there are two. One downstairs and one on the top floor. It looks like someone’s home at least.”

  Bally dropped his head and started grazing on the sparse grass as I flung myself out of the saddle. I pulled off my helmet, set it hurriedly on a nearby stone bench, and automatically ran up my stirrups before hanging Bally’s reins over a low-hanging branch.

  “Stay, buddy, I’ll be right back.”

  Then I hurried up the stone pathway to the house.

  Up close, the place looked even more abandoned. Grass grew in the pathway, pushing up between the stones so they tripped me at every other step. The entrance was covered with fallen leaves, dirt, and a few small branches. I paused at the heavy wooden doors and took a deep breath. Now that I was here, I suddenly regretted having come so far on my own. Why hadn’t I waited for Gil? Something about the house was very unsettling. Gathering my courage I knocked hard on the door and then rang the bell.

  “Hello! We need help out here! Please somebody, come quickly. There’s a woman who’s been hurt.”

  At first there was only silence, but then a sharp click sounded inside the door and I stepped back in relief, expecting it to swing open. But nothing happened.

  “Hello?” I said again, trying the handle and then pressing my ear against the door. It was too thick to hear anything so I knelt down where there was an old copper flap for the postman to stick mail inside and lifted it carefully.

  “Who is she?” someone said, in a rough, guttural voice that was thickly accented. “She must be one of them. We can’t let her in; she’ll ruin everything.”

  “But what can we do?” a second voice said. “Oh, I wish Estelle was back, she’d know what to say.”

  “Don’t worry, I’ll take care of this,” the first voice said gruffly.

  I’d heard enough. All I needed was to use their phone. Surely, that couldn’t be too much trouble. “Help,” I called, standing up and banging determinedly with both fists against the heavy wood. “I know you’re in there. There’s a woman hurt who needs an ambulance. Please help.”

  This time the door swung open so quickly that I lost my balance completely and stumbled inside. Before I could react, something struck me hard upside the head, and I pitched forward with a startled cry. There was no time to defend myself; the ground rushed up to meet me and all the breath left my body as I slammed into a marble entryway.

  The rest was a blur as I slid in and out of consciousness; there was pain and noise and the feeling of being carried somewhere. Strange images swirled around me but whether they were real or figments of my imagination I couldn’t tell. Xan’s anxious face hovered into view, and then he was replaced by an image of that creepy psychologist of my childhood who’d banished the ghosts, and then it was Gil’s pale face looking down at me. A dark, malevolent shadow replaced him, and I felt a stab of panic but just as suddenly it was gone. Somewhere outside a horse neighed and then a dog bayed. There was a sharp prickling sensation in my skull and then I thankfully fell into a long, dreamless sleep.

  Chapter 3

  When I opened my eyes again, feeling deliciously rested, I stretched luxuriously and reached out to trail my fingers through the soft rays of morning sunshine streaming across my bed. A fire crackled comfortably in the hearth, and from somewhere came the faint, welcoming smell of rich coffee. I was warm and toasty under the thick, red duvet and there was a strange, soothing, humming noise right next to my ear.

  Mmm. I turned my head and nearly jumped out of my skin when I found a pair of bright green eyes peering into mine about an inch away from my face.

  “Morris!” I said as the big orange cat reached out and patted my nose gently with one furry front paw. “What are you doing in the house? Mother will throw a fit …”

  I stopped and frowned, realizing something wasn’t quite right; I wasn’t in my own bed at all. I sat up abruptly which, it turned out, was a very big mistake. The second I moved, a stabbing pain began in my head; sort of like a jack-hammer working away from somewhere behind my eyes. I groaned and squeezed my eyes shut, sliding back under the covers. I hardly dared to breathe until the pain subsided. Gradually the stabbing eased and was replaced by a dull ache.

>   Cautiously, I opened one eye again, staring around the room in confusion. No, I most definitely wasn’t at home. I was in the middle of a comfortable, oversized, canopy bed tucked underneath a heavy red and gold brocade comforter. The dark hardwood floor was scattered liberally with multihued Persian rugs. A large picture window with a built-in seat took up almost the whole wall opposite. The curtains had been pulled partially open and the morning was full of sunlight. Not far from where I lay, a crackling fire danced away in a large stone fireplace.

  “Where am I?” I said aloud in bewilderment. If I’d been kidnapped then they’d certainly taken some care to make sure I was comfortable. I lifted the covers and glanced down to find I was wearing some sort of awful old-fashioned white nightgown with a high lace collar and puffed sleeves.

  Morris blinked at me twice, as if questioning my fashion choice, and began studiously washing his paws one at a time.

  I gingerly sat up, moving inch by slow inch, trying hard not to make any sudden moves.

  “Ow,” I said, wincing and clutching my head. When the room stopped spinning again, I carefully felt around with my fingers to find the spot that hurt. What the heck? My head was padded by a thick gauze bandage that ran from the crown all the way down to the back of my ear.

  There was a light knock at the door and I groaned at even that gentle sound.

  “Oh dear, you shouldn’t be up yet.” A pretty young blonde woman with clear blue eyes and pale, almost translucent, skin strode inside. She wore an old-fashioned maid’s uniform of a crisp blue dress and a white apron. She stared down at me, eyes glittering with a mixture of concern and curiosity.

  “I’m Aimee,” she said to me slowly as if she were speaking to a very small child. She had a strong, lilted French accent but I could understand her perfectly. “I work for Miss Ruth. I’ve brought your breakfast. Don’t go anywhere.”