Ormis’s grey eyes sparkled with delight. They had yet to be hardened in the fires of tragedy.
His mother locked the front door. She was wearing a deep bonnet that matched her dress and it hid all but a sliver of her bandage behind its lace rim. She turned to leave but as she stepped off the stoop an icy draught lifted her onto tiptoes. She staggered down the steps and only stopped herself from falling by grabbing his shirt.
Ormis had been looking off into the sunshine and hadn’t seen the unnatural way she lurched forward. If he had, he would have known what just happened to her. ‘Are you alright Mum?’ he asked, rubbing her back as he propped her up. She had been through a lot over the past two nights and he mistook her stumble for a simple buckling of tired legs.
She nodded, blinking rapidly as if the sun was in her eyes. ‘I am now. I just lost control of my legs for a second.’ Another clue to her condition that his older self wouldn’t have missed. Many years later he would learn that once broke, victims of a possession have little resistance to the comings and goings of their possessor - a practical demonstration of which was playing out right in front of him.
They set off down the road and in the shade of her bonnet her pupils were like glowing coals.
Broken Fingers
Ormis beamed - the sunshine inside him as strong as that which glazed his skin. He held his mother’s hand and skipped along beside her, his feet as light as his heart. For the first half mile he looked up at her frequently, worried that she might stumble again. But he saw no cause for concern. If anything she was moving with ever greater confidence and before long, he was almost running to keep up. He thought about the blackness of his father’s face before he left last night and felt impatient to see it brighten when he saw his mum all better again. The cut on her forehead would heal and so would they.
He smiled up at her, but she didn’t smile back. Just tired, he thought.
They left the main road and started down into Rockspur Gorge, descending the crude steps that snaked down through the trees to the river. It was a shortcut that would save them the extra mile the main road demanded. Ormis led the way, his bony knees bending awkwardly as he stepped off each wooden riser. When he came to the deep step where his mother usually required help, he turned to offer it. But she approached it without slowing and surprised him by jumping down on her own. He watched her stride away down the next few steps and then ran after her, getting in front again by cutting the corner on a bend. It wouldn’t do for her to beat him down to the bridge. He liked to get there first so there was enough time to throw sticks in.
They turned onto the last straight of steps. These ran parallel to the gorge, but although the sound of rushing water rose to greet them the turbulent waters were still hidden by a row of trees. He opened a good lead and used it to step into a break in the trees and look down into the gorge. Heavy rains had swollen the river and it gushed rabidly through the rocky throat below. He leant out as far as he dared to, cranking his neck to see the little bridge. On most days the water was far enough below it that a man hanging from its underside could keep his feet dry. Today it was only a couple of feet below its rickety planks.
He soon realised he had been looking down at the gorge for far longer than he was usually allowed to. On most days a single step toward the edge was enough to trigger a scolding. He looked back over his shoulder as his new found liberty ticked out and saw that his mother hadn’t even noticed what he was doing. She was catching him up, but her head was lowered and her face obscured by the funnel of her bonnet. He turned his attention back to the gorge, happy to be awed by its watery fury as she made her way down to him.
As soon as he twisted away, his mother picked up her skirt tails and charged down the steps, her eyes now glistening like sea anemones at low tide. Without slowing she grabbed his belt and collar, ran him forwards and threw him into the gorge…
Rock studded water rushed up to meet him – his feet pedalled and his insides leapt as if they were trying to escape. With a splash that was drowned by the roar of the gorge, he plunged into a pocket of foam between two murderous juts of rock. Six foot of water was all that separated him from the cruel surfaces that awaited his elbows and shins, but it was enough to slow the force of impact to below the breaking point of his bones. He surfaced with a crying gasp – the pain of hammered bones and the shock of the cold assaulting him at the same time. His head went under again. His father had taught him to swim, but his weak strokes were no match for the raging white torrent. He kicked and jerked frantically and his pawing hands slipped uselessly through the water.
By sheer luck his head was above water as he was swept under the bridge and he reached for its underbelly, his fingers just able to grasp the edge of its planks before he was carried under. The weight of the water pulled his arms out straight and lifted his feet. He tried to pull himself out, but when he realised he could barely bend his elbows he started to work his way towards one of the vertical supports.
He was almost there when he heard boots thudding onto the bridge. A moment later his mother’s face appeared over the edge, right between his hands. It was the last time he would see her up close and of all the horror he would see in his life, it was this image that would plague his nightmares. There was little he recognised in her mask like face. She had the same freckled nose and ruddy cheeks; the same cherry lips and dainty chin. But the cheer and vitality that brought them alive had been chased away by an entity that had no use for them. Her face was dead except for the glistening sea anemones that were her eyes.
She disappeared from view and a terrible splintering pain erupted in the knuckles of his left hand. He released the bridge and the ravenous waters beneath it gobbled him up and spat him out the other side. The current turned him around, but before he went under again he got one last view of the bridge. His mother stood in the middle of it, the branch she’d used to bludgeon his fingers still in her hand. She was watching him go with something like satisfaction – her eyes reflecting a blood red sunset that only she could see.
Joannah watched her son’s bobbing head recede with a strange ambivalence – her despair mixed with a malevolent satisfaction that wasn’t her own. Although she remembered little of what happened after she rushed to Ormy’s room two nights ago, she understood the spirit had taken possession of her again. She fought it on the way to the gorge - but to no avail. The cogs joining her mind to her body were disengaged and she was nothing more than thought and emotion floating in a vacuum. But she had sensed her possessor’s malevolence towards her son and had suffered intolerable anxiety trying to guess its designs for him.
With the same hands she used to stroke her son’s head at breakfast she had thrown him into the gorge, and as he fell it was like her heart was plummeting with him. The sight of him breaking the surface flooded her with hope, but powerful though it was, it was dwarfed by the rage that cocooned her. Her possessor turned her from the edge and forced her down the remaining steps with a ferocious pace that her body had never been capable of. From her prison she screamed her son’s name, telling him to get away. But her chest and throat stayed loyal to their new owner and refused to broadcast her cries.
She had bounded onto the bridge as Ormis disappeared under it and when his desperate little fingers curled over the edge, she dropped to her knees to haul him out. At least that’s what she thought she was doing. But the attempted rescue was only in her mind. Reality took a different course and she took up a fallen branch and used it to bludgeoned her baby’s knuckles instead. And oh how she had felt its savage momentum checked by his tiny bones…
…It had all but finished her.
But now, seeing her little boy being carried away by the river she tried to fight on – willing her body to jump from the bridge and swim after him. But again her commands were ignored. She was a powerless spectator and when the water turned him around, she looked into his face for the last time.
When her possessor turned her from the river she reached for the brid
ge rail in a desperate attempt to remain there. But there was no movement of her arms. Her eyes fixed on the muddy risers that led out of the gorge and she strolled towards them instead. Outwardly she looked calm and composed; her jaw relaxed and her lips pressed together as she lifted the hem of her dress and began to climb. Inside she was hysterical. Her son was gone, probably drowning right now and as her possessor began to press down on her she raged against it. But by the time she reached the top of the first flight it was all over. The spirit wrapped her mind in black fabric and pulled tight. Her thoughts and emotion were compressed to a point and soon there was nothing in her consciousness but darkness.
Ormis fought the river as it swept him away from the bridge. He fought until he had no breath left and was totally disorientated by the churning water. He dropped down a small waterfall, turned head over heels and was delivered onto a flat rock just as he needed to inhale. He gasped several sweet lungsful of air before twisting onto his back to inspect his throbbing fingers. The last knuckle of his ring and middle finger had taken a severe bashing and the skin was hanging in shreds. The river had washed away some of the blood, but it still ran in trickles down his hand. He tried to bend his fingers but glassy pain prevented him. He looked back upriver, but could no longer see the bridge or his mother.
The spirit was inside her again. But when had it come back?
He remembered her glowing face at the breakfast table - as happy as he had seen her in a long time. But then he remembered the way she stumbled off the steps. It must’ve been then. It made sense of her lack of chatter, her quickening pace and her confidence on the steps. Not just tired as he had thought, but possessed again. It dawned on him now that she had likely been plotting to kill him the whole way down and the idea chilled him deeper than the river had done.
Don’t let her out whatever happens.
He felt his Dad’s words like a pang of sickness.
What had he done?
He stood up, feeling an urgent need to put things right. He stared upriver, shivering and biting his lip, his battered fingers tucked under his arm.
Don’t let her out whatever happens.
He had failed his parents on an epic scale. He felt a lump in his throat and a reservoir of tears behind his eyes. His face was all a quiver, but he braced himself. He had made a promise to be a man and was going to help her.
But how?
He felt a new panic as more of his Dad’s words came back to him. I fear for us if this gets out. People get scared and some of them have strong views. It was enough to get him moving and he set off upriver, jumping from one wet rock to the next. In sight of the bridge he stopped, his legs spread wide over a channel of froth. He scanned the steps to either side, but saw no sign of his mother. Should he go into town or back home? There was a good chance she was still heading to market, but she had already tried to kill him and he didn’t think he could help her on his own. So he decided to go home in the hope his father was back.
Don’t let her out whatever happens.
The words accompanied him to the bridge and seemed to be written on every step. He knew he was in trouble, perhaps more than he had ever known. But as much as he didn’t want to face it, he knew he had to for the sake of his mother. His father would understand when he told him about the spirit appearing in the scullery and leaving through the window. But some part of him knew better and before he was halfway up he began to cry.
He broke into a run at the top of the steps and was soon out of the woods and onto the main road. His wet shorts and shirt stuck to his body and they glistened in the sun where they were wet enough to drip. He ran as hard as his burning chest would allow him, but before he came in view of the house he drew up to the sound of drumming hooves. He turned with a rush of dread to see two horses appear around the bend. The first was Bo and his father was hunched behind her head, pushing her hard. Just behind him was a white horse carrying a man dressed all in black – no doubt one of the exorcists his father went to petition. He waited for them, river water dripping off his clothes and pooling at his feet.
The horses drew up in a cloud of dust - his father’s face an aggregate of surprise and concern. ‘What happened son? Are you alright?’
Ormis started to cry. ‘I saw it leave her Dad. I swear it.’
His father frowned, trying to decipher the meaning of his words in the context of his wet clothes. ‘You let her out!?’ he bawled when understanding dawned on him. He swung a leg back and dismounted, landing in the dirt with a crunch of gravel. His eyes were sunken and hollow from two days without sleep, but they were bright with anger. When he took two steps towards him he shrunk back, fearing a walloping that never came. ‘Where is she now?’
‘Gone to market’ he said through a narrow throat. ‘The spirit left her Dad, really it did, and she was all better again. She made porridge and let me have as much jam as I wanted.’ He was blubbering now, but determined to get it all out. ‘It must have got her again on the way out. She pushed me in the gorge and smashed my fingers so I couldn’t get out.’ He raised the tattered digits of his broken hand for him to see.
His father’s eyes widened throughout his explanation as if every word was spearing his heart. He turned away and kicked up a dust cloud, punching and cursing the air. Then he dropped to one knee, brought his hands to his head and scrunched his hair in tight fists. It was a posture of such despair that Ormis would have happily taken a walloping to spare himself the sight.
His father stood and threw his hands out in a gesture of exasperation. ‘You idiot!’ he yelled, spittle flying from his mouth. ‘What were you thinking?! I told you not to let her out… This is gonna cost us dearly son… It could finish us.’
Behind him the exorcist watched from his saddle - his face solemn and unreadable.
‘I…I’m sorry Dad.’
‘Save it.’ He put a foot in Bo’s stirrup and jumped onto his back. ‘Get yourself back home and wait there. You only had one thing to do… One thing. You shouldn’t have let her out.’ He yanked on his reins and turned to face the exorcist. ‘The village isn’t far,’ he said before digging his boots into Bo’s flank and jolting him into a gallop.
The exorcist started to turn, but he kept his eyes fixed on Ormis. His face was grave, but his regard wasn’t unkind. There was a ring on the middle finger of his left hand and it pulsed with sickly green light. ‘The spirit tricked you and given time your father will understand. But know this: your mother can still be saved and I give you my word that I will do everything in my power to help her.’ And with that he bolted away on his white horse, leaving Ormis dripping in the road.
Skewer
They entered the town on horseback, filtering in with the stream of people bound for market. Garel Brathra scanned the road for his wife and for any sign that her condition was known. But he saw neither. Market day was unfolding as normal.
They came alongside the thicket from where the path from the gorge joined the main road – the shortcut Johanna had taken with their son. He drew his horse up and looked down the first hundred yards of the muddy trail. But there was no sign of her. He thought about dismounting and running down to see if she was still there, but thought better of it. The likelihood was that she was already in town and he couldn’t afford to waste time on slim chances.
He turned to the exorcist, noticing that he had twisted his ring around. The mist stone he wore was now inside one of the balled fists he held his reins with and only a plain black band was visible across the back of his middle finger. ‘When we find her, would you see fit to hold back for a while?’ he asked him. ‘Give me chance to steer her away from the crowds?’ There was a catch in his voice; a pleading tone he was not used to hearing. ‘We’re finished here if this gets out.’
The exorcist studied him with a severity that was hard to bear. After setting out from the Caliste in the early hours he had spoken very little and since they left Ormis standing in the road he hadn’t said a single word. Dressed all in black and sitti
ng upon a magnificent white horse, he was already drawing attention. At any one time there were more than a dozen sets of eyes on him - appraisals that lingered much longer than what was considered polite.
‘I can allow you that. Our intention is always to resolve such matters with minimum disruption. You petitioned the Caliste for help, and I am here to give it... But I must have your word on two matters.’ With a sideways tug on his reins he sidled his horse across until they were tight together. ‘From your description of the entity that took your wife, there’s a strong possibility it’s a spirit demon - the ghost of an Eastland beast. They are the most dangerous type of spirit and the most cunning… You told me it came to your son first and that he purged it on his own. If that’s true, and I have no reason to doubt you, then he has a rare talent indeed. But your wife may not be as strong. If you find her, you’ll know very quickly if she’s in its grip. If she isn’t, then as long as you agree to my terms, you will have your chance to escort her to a quiet place. It would be best for both of us if I can do my work without an audience. But if the spirit has control of her I will have to act instantly. I came to help your wife, but I won’t endanger these people. Give me your word on two things and I will grant you the time to escort her from the village… Promise me you’ll signal me immediately if she’s under the demon’s influence and that you won’t hinder me in my work.’
‘What will you do to her?’ he asked, feeling a new fear rising in him.
‘If I can catch the demon unaware, I can wrench it from her with little difficulty. But I will have to take her to ground and there may be a short struggle. Once I have the spirit in my draw I should be able to exorcise it quickly. But know this - those who bear witness to my work will have no doubt about what they are seeing. For once I am involved I am bound by the protocols of the Caliste to inform them of who I am and what I am doing. It is essential to the success of the exorcism and for the safety of everyone you see here that no one interferes once I begin…When it is done it may not be possible for you to continue in this town, but at least you will have your wife back.’
Absence_Whispers and Shadow Page 26