The Love of the Dead

by Craig Saunders

  So she didn’t moan. She didn’t puke. She didn’t feel bad, because this was her being better. She was better when she couldn’t see and she couldn’t hear the voices or see the dead people that watched her until she fell asleep and waited for her when she woke up.

  She went to bed so drunk she didn’t hear Miles trashing the house, and if she had, she wouldn’t have cared at-fucking-all.

  She went to bed drunk and she was better. She woke up drunk, but it wasn’t better anymore. Becky came calling, and it was worse in every way.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Thursday 13th November

  Beth sat down in the chair that would be her guest’s so she could see what they would see. The kitchen table, covered in a red check cloth. A thick candle sputtering, spewing the occasional plume of black smoke into the air. Her deck was on the table, next to the candle. She wouldn’t use her cards tonight, but people liked to see the workings of a medium. For some, it was their religion, but true Spiritualists went to church, or sat in circle, or maybe meditated. Most of her clients liked to see the works. Like junkies, kind of. They didn’t believe it was the real shit if they couldn’t see the works on the table.

  She sniffed the air. Cut flowers in a vase on the kitchen sill, a leftover tang of lemon dish liquid. Sandlewood candle.

  She held her hand in front of her mouth and breathed. Just toothpaste. Maybe some people, they’d like to see a medium with a few rotten teeth, but she wasn’t some storybook witch.

  There was a soft knock at the door. She stood, smoothed her skirt. Checked her hair in the mirror in the hall. A small fairy figurine had fallen from the battered table she rested her phone and keys on. She righted it before opening the door.

  “Becky,” she said, smiling. Smiling was always easy. It was just acting, after all.

  “Beth. Thanks for seeing me.”

  “Not at all. Come through.”

  Beth led the way into the kitchen and waved at the seat she’d just vacated. Becky took the seat. It groaned as she sat down, but it had held her without breaking the last two years that she’d been a regular customer. It’d hold her tonight.

  “Is it true?”

  “Is what true?”

  Beth saw for the first time the newspaper clutched in Becky’s fist.

  “You haven’t seen it?”

  “No.”

  But she felt that sense of dread building. Like a stack of cards. Like the top card was about to go on the deck, and it was a heavy card. A tower on a tower, ready to bring it tumbling down.

  Becky laid the paper out and the breath rushed from Beth’s lungs. She had to remember to breathe.

  “Fuck.”

  “It is you!”

  But she ignored Becky and read the article below the picture of her shaking hands with Coleridge.

  By Sam Wright

  Sources close to the police investigation into the recent spate of murders among the spiritualist community in Norfolk revealed that police themselves have turned to local medium Elizabeth Willis for assistance.

  The police investigation into the killings has yet to show any signs of progress. The killer has been at large for four weeks, since the murder of Yvonne Stanton, of Cromer.

  The deaths of Frederick Smith, of Norwich, Unwin George, of Winterton, and Henry Meakings, of Bacton, have all been linked to the killer. Though the police have yet to release further details, speculation has begun that there is an occult aspect to the murders...

  Elizabeth Willis...

  She pushed the paper away. “Bastard.”

  He’d killed her. He didn’t need to stab her. Someone had taken her name, taken her photo, found out who she was.

  Did a spirit need to read the paper?

  No. He didn’t. He knew her already. Did the article matter? Did the photo matter?

  Of course it fucking did. It put her right there with the rest of them. Before, he’d had no reason to hurt her.

  Now she was working with the police. Now he had a reason.

  She felt the house of cards tumble.

  “Bastard.”

  “It’s pretty cool, right?”

  She shook her head. Becky wouldn’t understand. She didn’t need to understand. She wanted to get rid of her, but she was a regular, and Beth didn’t exactly have people tossing cash through the door.

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “I’m sorry, Beth. I thought...I thought you’d be pleased. It’s pretty cool. I’m just...sorry. I didn’t think you’d be upset.”

  “It’s okay, honey. It’s fine. I’m just having a tough week. It doesn’t matter though. It’s fine. Really.”

  She put a smile on, and it must have been a good smile, because Becky, sweet junkie Becky, she smiled right back.

  “We’ll see if he’ll come through, OK?”

  Chapter Fourteen

  “Let me put the kettle on. Some camomile tea, just to settle you.”

  “With honey?”

  “Of course with honey,” said Beth, with her easy smile, showing a lot of white teeth. Not a rotten one in her head. Half of mediumship was acting. For some, that was all there was. But even if you knew your beans, you still had to put on a show, and it didn’t matter what you had going on in your own life, it had nothing to do with work. For some it was a vocation. For others it was a job.

  For Beth it had been both, but now it was money, and she needed the money. What else was she going to do?

  She made the tea while Becky whined in the background. Beth tuned it to white noise, listened to the kettle rumble instead. She sweetened one camomile with three spoons of honey, one with a healthy shot of whiskey. Single malt for preference, anything else when her purse was stretched. She had a bottle of Speyburn Single Malt she was saving. She didn’t know what she was saving it for, but it was good to have a bottle for emergencies.

  Mostly she drank the local supermarket’s own brand. There was a time she would’ve covered the taste with a mixer, but no more.

  Just so long as it was past five. Her one rule. Never broken.

  Hardcore.

  She laughed softly to herself, then remembered Becky, waiting for her tea.

  “Here. Now, shall we see if your old dad’s knocking about tonight?”

  “Please. My mother...”

  “Don’t tell me. You know how this works. If you tell me what you want to hear, you’ve got no proof it’s spirits talking, remember?”

  Becky flushed brightly all the way down to the top of her heaving chest.

  “Sorry. Sorry, Beth.”

  “No need for that. Okay. Close your eyes. I need to focus.”

  Becky nodded, shut her eyes tight, like she was squeezing her eyeballs with her eyelids.

  Beth shut her eyes, too. She took a deep pull on her tea. Breathed in the air. Let the first whiskey of the day hit her stomach.

  The door to the kitchen squealed against the tiled floor as it opened.

  Becky shivered. Same as she always did. She was well schooled, though. Whatever happens, don’t look, Becky. By God, don’t you look.

  But Beth looked. Her son, eight years old and bright as a button, looked around the door at her. She beckoned him in. She didn’t need to tell him to be quiet.

  “Spirit! Come to us! Come! Francis Hart, father of Becky Hart, are you there?”

  Beth made her voice hard as she could. Like she was ordering spirits around. Like such a thing could be done. Becky would never know. She didn’t need to know, but more than that, junkies like Becky, you could tell them, show them, open their eyes to the lies, but at their core, they didn’t want to know.

  Beth’s son nodded. He was ready. He opened his mouth and a deep, resonant voice came out. It was nothing like the voice of Becky’s father, Beth didn’t doubt. It was the best imitation a little boy’s voice box could do of a grown man.

  “Your mother don’t know what’s good for you, girl,” Beth’s son said. “You listen to your heart. Time you grew up, sweet. You’re not a baby n
o more. You stand up to her. You hear?”

  Becky’s eyes, tight shut though they were, welled with tears. She nodded.

  Beth flicked her hand at her son. Shooed him smartly out the door, and like the sometimes good boy he was, he left.

  Beth put her comforting smile on for when Becky opened her eyes.

  But then Beth’s smile fell from her face.

  Her son came into the room again, but this time his back was to her. He stared up at something she could see.

  Then she saw. There was a man forcing Miles back into the room. A man with dark hair and acne scars and thick deft hands. One hand was holding her son’s T-shirt tight in his fist. The other was holding a wicked blade.

  Chapter Fifteen

  “You see me?” he said.

  Beth half-stood, then sat. What the hell could she do? She nodded.

  “Beth? You okay?”

  Becky’s voice shook. She felt it. She felt how wrong it was. It was freezing in the room, a deep cold that sank right to the bone. The tea on the table didn’t steam anymore. Then there was a cracking sound as the tea froze. Then the water in the pipes.

  But Beth couldn’t pay the distractions any mind. The killer was here, right in her kitchen, and everything hung in the balance.

  “Good,” he said. He flicked the knife through the air. Naked, Beth thought, and hot on the heels of that she realized there was something wrong with his feet. Like they’d been broken and set wrong, or his legs had too many joints. She couldn’t figure it, and it hurt to look at him.

  But that didn’t matter.

  “I can touch you where you live,” he said. “You understand?”

  Black eyes. Black blade. Like a man born of night. But something else. He wasn’t a man. She understood perfectly that he was something she could never understand. He was beyond flesh, beyond spirit. Beyond evil, even.

  Primal.

  A beast.

  But that didn’t matter.

  The knife, moving toward her son’s throat. That was all she could think about.

  “Beth?” said Becky. Becky couldn’t hear him. Beth ignored her.

  “I’ll stop,” she said. “Anything. Please. I’ll stop.”

  Beth stared hard at the man. The knife dug into her son’s neck. His face. God, her son’s sweet face. He was terrified. Her heart was breaking but she couldn’t cry. It wouldn’t do any good. No sign of humanity would ever touch this man. He didn’t feel. He didn’t understand. He didn’t care.

  “You let him be,” she said.

  He shook his head. Kind of sad, kind of laughing. She hated him. She was afraid of him. For her son, but for herself and Becky and for everything that lived. He was death. Pure, black and so, so cold.

  “You shouldn’t have messed with shit you don’t understand,” he said, his voice crackling in the air.

  Becky started to cry.

  “Get your hands off him!” she shouted.

  “Remember. I can touch you here,” he said, “Or I can touch you there. You choose.”

  He dragged her son’s head back by his hair then with a flick of his wrist slashed his throat.

  Beth and Becky screamed as hot blood splashed over them. When Beth wiped her eyes clear he was gone, her son was gone, but the blood...

  The blood was everywhere.

  Chapter Sixteen

  The blood dripped from her hair into the basin. She splashed more water onto her face. It wasn’t fake blood. It wasn’t spirit blood but real blood, thick and stinking and arterial.

  No matter how many times she rinsed her face and hair in the sink, every time she looked in the mirror she found new spots. It was in her ears.

  The towel she used to wipe her face was a dark pink. She threw it into the washing pile.

  Back in the kitchen, she picked up the two tea cups. Both had blood in them, pooled over the melting ice. Her son’s blood. She washed them and turned the cups upside-down on the dish strainer.

  Becky was nowhere to be seen. She’d bolted soon after the blood had hit her. No matter what Beth said, she wouldn’t see reason. She’d even screamed.

  Beth tried to think back. She’d screamed herself.

  The tablecloth was ruined and the floor tiles, the counter, the sink, all were splashed with blood. She stared at the mess, standing in her kitchen in the candlelight in her bra, the blinds open. Blood on the wall and on the window and in a neat flat arc across most of the room.

  That was one solid client she’d almost definitely never see again.

  The TV turned on in the front room, and she heard the whir of the old Xbox as it booted up. Lego Star Wars boomed out from the TV. The speakers were blown and the bass sounded terrible.

  Nothing she could do about it now. She opened the cupboard under the sink, pushed aside the bottle of own-brand whiskey and took out her cleaning gloves, a bottle of bleach, and a bucket.

  If she didn’t drink, she’d be in hell for the rest of the evening. But if she didn’t get the blood off, it’d stain forever.

  So she cleaned, in her underwear and her rubber gloves, while the Xbox played on in the living room. She cleaned while the moon rose and left. Her knees ached and her back sent needles shooting all the way from her kidneys up to her neck and back, down into her shoulders.

  Finally, she tossed her cleaning rags into the trash and put all the soiled clothes and towels and the tablecloth into the washing machine.

  She walked into the living room. She sat in her armchair, facing away from the TV and the bloody endless games, facing her son.

  Then she poured a glass. Right to the brim. Drank it down in two, and filled it up again. Drank it. Filled it.

  Miles ignored her. Sulking. A bit young for sulking, but then he’d be a teenager by now.

  He had a gaping wound in his neck, but it wasn’t a patch on the ribs poking though his Lara Croft T-shirt. She’d put up a fight about that shirt. Her husband had overruled her. Miles got the T-shirt. Now he was dead and she had to look at the stupid thing every single day.

  “Miles,” she said, softly. He was angry. She didn’t want to make a scene. For a dead boy, he could kick up a hell of a fuss if he was in a mood. “Miles. Can we have the TV off now? Mummy’s got a headache. Please?”

  Miles turned and looked at his mother, then turned back to the TV.

  She got the message.

  She’d take her drink on the back porch. Then she could smoke in peace without him glaring at her. He didn’t like it if she smoked. He didn’t like it if she drank.

  Fuck it, though, she thought as she sat on the back porch and drank and smoked while the tears poured down her cheeks.

  He was dead. She wasn’t, and she wanted to get drunk.

  Part Two

  The Fool

  Chapter Seventeen

  Friday 14th November

  The phone woke Beth up. She worked her desiccated tongue around her mouth, round her teeth, trying to conjure spit. It was a losing battle. Shaking, she pushed herself to her feet and stumbled down the hall.

  The Xbox was off, thank God. Miles wasn’t about. Gone off to wherever the dead go. He didn’t sleep. He was dead. As dependents go, he was pretty low maintenance. She didn’t have to feed him, buy him new clothes, take him to Disneyland.

  She laughed bitterly to herself and picked the phone up halfway through the answer message.

  “Hello?”

  “Mrs. Willis?”

  Beth rubbed her eyes with a thumb and forefinger. She didn’t need this. Not now.

  “Detective. It’s early. I’m tired. Mostly, I’m not interested.”

  “Please, Mrs. Willis. Did you see the...”

  “Newspaper? Yes. Yes, I saw the fucking newspaper.”

  Last night I saw my dead son murdered. She didn’t say it. She didn’t tell the policeman she’d tucked away half a packet of Pall Malls and a two thirds of a bottle of shit whiskey, either. His business might be murderers, but hers was drinking, and he could mind his own.

&nbs
p; She heard him whisper, “Shit,” under his breath.

  She rubbed her tongue over the roof of her mouth.

  “I’m sorry. We...I mean, the police...I mean me. I didn’t have anything to do with that.”

  “You brought them to my door. Don’t you understand? He’s killing mediums, and you just painted a target on me. Don’t give me sorry or I didn’t know. Maybe he knows where I live. Maybe he’s already got me in his sights. But now he knows what I’ve been doing, that I’ve been working for you...he’s going to come for me. You planning to stop him?”

  “We can put a car outside your door. We can protect you.”

  “You can’t find him. You can’t protect me. You can’t stop him. You can’t do a damn thing.” She was angry. She didn’t try to hide it. With a hangover, someone murdering mediums, her name in the paper, she couldn’t have cared less if he knew it or not.

  “We can help you. Please, let me.”

  “Bullshit, but you know what? We’re even. You can’t help me, I can’t help you.”

  “There was another one last night. Two. A couple. Mary and Stan Westmoor.”

  Beth clenched her teeth together to stop herself saying the first thing that came into her head. He knew how to push the buttons, all right.

  Mary and Stan. A sweet old couple she’d known well, once upon a time. They’d never hurt anyone. Mary was a clairvoyant. Stan a healer. She’d met them at a retreat in Thetford, a spiritual weekend. They’d shared a ride a time or two, on the way to church, way back when she’d had something to say that might be worth listening to.

  “Twenty miles from you, but he’s covering the county. Please. I swear I didn’t have anything to do with the article. Please. Let us protect you.”