“Dee, are you okay?” Her sister didn’t react. “Dee?” Paula took her hand. Dee raised her eyes. She seemed not to see her sister. “You’re worrying me now.”
Dee shook off her hand and got up unsteadily. On shaky legs, she made her way along the hall. She stopped by a mirror and stared at herself for a moment, stroking her hair as if rediscovering herself.
“We’d better get you to the hospital and have them check you out,” Paula said. “You might have a concussion.”
Dee looked at her. “I am quite well,” she said, but her voice sounded strange.
“I’m not happy, Dee. You’re not yourself.”
“I can assure you I am.”
“You’re acting weird.”
Dee pulled herself up, seeming to make a concerted effort to get herself back together. This time, when she spoke, the old Dee returned.
“Must have had a sudden drop in blood pressure or something. I feel much better now. Let’s get out of this place.”
Paula didn’t need telling twice.
* * * *
Back at the hotel, after a hearty dinner of Tafelspitz topped off with a bottle of Burgenland’s finest, Paula felt exhausted. Her eyes kept closing.
Dee stood up from the table, swayed and put a hand to her head. Paula jumped to her feet. “Are you okay? It’s not the same as earlier, is it?”
Dee looked at her blankly. “Earlier?”
“Yes, you remember. At the house a few hours ago. You fainted.”
“Oh. No. I’ll be all right in a minute. Just stood up too quickly, that’s all.”
“As long as that’s all there is to it.”
Dee managed a smile. “I’ll be fine. I need some sleep.”
Paula settled Dee in her room and returned to her own. She switched on the TV and tried to follow the news in German as best she could.
She stared at her phone, willing Phil to call her, but he would still be at work.
At midnight, she got ready for bed and had slipped under the duvet when her phone announced a Skype call.
Phil had undone his collar and removed his tie. He had dark shadows under his eyes as if he hadn’t slept for days.
“Paula. Have you sent that sister of yours packing yet?”
“No, I haven’t, and I don’t intend to until you get back.”
Why did they have to argue like this when they were so far apart?
Phil let out a deep, somewhat exaggerated, sigh. “I’m calling to tell you that I’ve managed to rectify the damage you’ve done and Stefan has arranged for the kitchen to be repaired, appliances and utensils replaced, and the door to be fixed.”
“Let’s hope that his men don’t have the same experience as that unfortunate carpenter.”
“Paula, please. Will you stop with this mumbo jumbo?”
“I’d be delighted if that’s all it was.”
“There’s clearly no talking to you when you’re in this mood. I thought you should know what’s going on at the house. That’s all.” Once again, he ended the call.
* * * *
“Dee, are you sure you’re all right?” Paula set down a cup of coffee in front of her. She ignored it and continued to stare straight in front of her in the hotel breakfast room. “Dee?”
Her sister blinked and seemed to shake herself from whatever trance she had slipped into.
“Yes?”
“You were miles away then. I asked if you were all right. You’ve been a bit…distant since you fainted back at the house. I still think we should get to the hospital and have you checked over.”
“Hospital? I don’t need a hospital. I am perfectly well. When are we going back?”
“Back?”
“To the house.”
“Dee, we’re not going back.”
She looked as if Paula had slapped her face.
“But you live there. We shouldn’t be staying in this hotel.”
“After what happened to you? After everything that’s happened there? Are you serious?”
Dee stared at her. Paula felt Dee had left and a total stranger had taken her place.
“I’m sorry. Yes. You’re right, of course. We can’t go back there.”
The almost robotic tone took Paula off guard. She seemed to be reciting the words or reading them off some invisible teleprompter. They were sitting by a large picture window. Out of the corner of her eye, Paula glimpsed a large black cat strolling past. She turned her head to get a better look, but it had gone.
Dee stood up. “Let’s go.”
“Go? Go where?”
“Anywhere. Let’s get some fresh air. Clear my head.”
“Of course.” Paula pushed her chair back. Dee had already left the table.
* * * *
They crossed the street to the U-bahn and went down the stairs to the city center-bound platform. A train arrived almost immediately and, without a word being exchanged, they boarded and sat next to each other.
“Where do you want to go today?” Paula asked.
Dee shrugged her shoulders. “Your call.”
“Okay.” Paula thought for a moment. “How about a stroll along Kärntnerstrasse? There are some great shops and we can take it easy. Plenty of places to stop for coffee and something to eat.”
Dee nodded. “Sounds good.”
Any less enthusiasm would have been hard to imagine. Paula sighed. Dee could be moody. As a child, she used to scream her head off if she was crossed. Paula used to stick her fingers in her ears to drown out the piercing screech. At sixteen, Dee would sulk but, as she grew older, the moodiness lessened and a fiery temper developed. Fortunately, it rarely came out. She did, of course, make an exception for Phil. Everything he said or did seemed to press her fury button. Today’s indifference to everything was uncharacteristic.
Vienna’s expensive shopping street was, as usual, packed with tourists. Japanese, Italian, German, French, American, Australian, British… Paula had only been off the train five minutes and she had heard all those languages and accents, plus some she didn’t recognize. Smells of pizza, and aromas of an array of coffee and freshly cooked street food mingled with the expensive perfumes women visitors had acquired at the duty-free.
Paula broke the silence between them. “Would you like to go into the cathedral? I haven’t been yet and, from the pictures I’ve seen, it’s well worth a visit.”
“Fine with me.”
“Dee, for heaven’s sake, what’s wrong with you?”
The two sisters faced each other.
“If you must know,” Dee said, her eyes flashing anger, “I think we should go back to the house and face up to whatever is in there.”
“What? Why?”
“Because sooner or later it’s going to come for you. And me probably. You remember that guy in the Café Central, and the woman in the Palace? I’ve never been a fan of coincidences, and for two people to say they saw a ghost with us…two total strangers—”
“You may not be a fan of them, but coincidences do happen. And anyway, one reported seeing a ghostly woman and the other a ghost of a man. Not the same thing at all.”
“I think we’d better go and get a coffee. This might take a while.” Dee led Paula to Café Demel on a side street.
Stepping through its original eighteenth-century doorway, Paula felt transported into an age of timeless elegance. It calmed her for a moment at least, and she needed that calm more than she dared admit.
They ordered mélanges and when they arrived, Dee took a sip of hers. “Delicious.”
“Okay, Dee, you’ve got me here, tell me what’s on your mind.”
Dee inhaled. “Here goes. When we were in the Café Central and that man described a male ghost, his description sounded an awful lot like what I thought I saw.”
“Quintillus,
presumably.”
“It was supposedly standing right behind you. Then in the palace, that girl said she saw a ghostly woman behind me. In both cases we were nowhere near your house. These ghosts had come with us. Whatever you say, I don’t think you can simply walk away from it. I don’t think I can, either.”
Dee had only said what Paula herself now feared, but she wished she could have spared her sister the worry. She made one last feeble effort. “That’s always assuming those people weren’t off their heads.”
It didn’t work. “Oh, come on, Paula. How many times previously have you been told there was a ghost standing behind you?”
“None.”
“Precisely. But now you get two in two days. Doesn’t that strike you as even a little odd?”
“Of course it does, but I don’t understand why you think we need to go back to the house.”
Dee put her hand to her head. She visibly paled.
Paula leaned forward. “Admit it, you’re not well, are you?”
Dee dropped her hand to her side. “I shall be fine once this is dealt with.”
“And how do you propose to do that? We’re way out of our depth here.”
“Somebody’s got to know what to do. What about your cleaner? Anna? She knows people at the university, doesn’t she?”
“Former cleaner now, I’m afraid. And she only knows people who know the legends. I doubt she knows any professionals, psychics or whatever it is we need. We’re in a foreign country, Dee. Neither of us speaks more than a few words of German, and while so many people speak English here, we’re not talking about your usual day-to-day stuff. I wouldn’t have a clue where to start.”
“Phil speaks German, doesn’t he?”
“You know he does. His parents brought him up bilingual. That’s how he got the posting here. But don’t start thinking he’ll do anything to help. You’ve seen him. He’s a complete skeptic about this, even though some strange stuff had started happening before he left for New York. Now he’s barely speaking to me.”
“Stefan then. I know he’s not ideal, but he saw what happened at the house.”
“And, according to Phil, he’s now denying there was anything supernatural going on. I tried to call him to demand an explanation but he was out for the rest of the day.”
“You’re sure Phil wasn’t saying that simply to put you off?”
Paula wasn’t sure. She hoped with all her heart he had told her the truth, but he had been so adamant they weren’t moving, could he have made it up?
“I’ll call Stefan in the morning, get him to explain himself and see if he knows anyone who can speak English and who knows how to cleanse a house.”
“It’ll need more than that,” Dee said. “I think we need an exorcist.”
Paula couldn’t recall when she had last been rendered speechless, but her sister accomplished that now. Jumbled thoughts, words, questions all tumbled into her brain, but she could voice none of them. Dee put a hand on her arm.
“I didn’t want to say this,” she said, “but I think things have gone too far for me to keep quiet about it any longer.”
Finally, Paula found her voice. “What do you mean? Keep quiet about what?”
“What’s been happening to you. The nightmares, the kitchen…everything really.”
“Go on.”
“Those weren’t nightmares, Paula. They were real. You experienced every single one of them. I know, because I saw you.”
“I…don’t understand, and what has this got to do with getting an exorcist? Surely they deal with people who believe they’re possessed by an evil spirit. None of us is possessed here.”
“I’m afraid that’s not true, is it?”
“Dee, whatever you’re trying to say, come out with it. I don’t get where you’re coming from.”
“Okay. I’ll try. Give me a moment.” Dee laid her hands flat on the table. “You’re going to have a hard time with this, but I’m going to say it anyway. Paula, there’s something inside you. As soon as you moved into that house, an entity entered your body and took possession of it. I don’t believe you’re aware of it yourself, but it’s still there.”
Twice in one day, Paula lost her capacity for speech. Dee stared at her, unsettling Paula even more. “Have you lost your mind?” she said eventually.
Dee shook her head. “If only it were that easy. All the evidence points to it. The manifestations. The destruction. Everything. It’s coming from inside you.”
“Where the hell did you get that idea from?” Paula realized she had raised her voice. People at a nearby table were beginning to take an interest in their conversation. She lowered her voice again. “This is the craziest idea you’ve ever come up with. What would make you say such a thing?”
Dee leaned in. “Because it’s happened before.”
“What?”
The people at the next table openly stared. Let them.
“You won’t remember because you’re not supposed to. When we were kids, you had an imaginary friend. Chloe. You used to go everywhere with her.”
Paula had an impression of having walked out of her life and into someone else’s. Nothing Dee said rang any bells or stirred any memories.
“I don’t remember any imaginary friend.”
“As I said. You’re not supposed to. Chloe was your confidante. She came between you and me, and I grew so jealous of her. That didn’t matter to you, though, because she was all you cared about at that time. Mum and Dad weren’t concerned. They said imaginary friends were normal as a child. But it meant I had no one to play with anymore and I became increasingly angry about it. She didn’t like that, and that’s when things began to change. I began to see a ghostly shadow, holding your hand. She gradually became more solid over the next few weeks. A tall girl with dark hair. Quite attractive and a number of years older than you, but she could change. Then her face would become darker and I grew to fear that change because that’s when she would hurt me.”
Paula grew increasingly incredulous the more she heard. None of it sounded familiar, but her sister plowed on. Now she had started, she didn’t want to stop. That, at least, was obvious.
“At first she pinched me, or pulled my hair. Then she smashed my favorite doll to pieces. Mum became concerned and when she saw you cutting up my dolls’ clothes, she knew this had become much more serious than any imaginary friend. You insisted Chloe had done it and that’s when she lost her temper. I never saw Mum so angry, either before or since. She marched you off to a child psychiatrist and he diagnosed multiple personality disorder or some such thing. I overheard Mum and Dad talking about it. You were put on tranquilizers and for a time all went quiet. We even started getting our relationship back. You played with me sometimes, but I was always wary of Chloe returning. Of course, I didn’t tell Mum that your imaginary friend actually existed. I suppose that was cowardly of me, but I didn’t want them thinking I had gone mad as well.”
Paula flinched at the use of that word. “So what happened? Why can’t I remember any of this?”
“You know mum always clung to her Catholic roots? Dad went along with her. They found an exorcist. A priest. He performed a ritual cleansing of the house and tackled the evil spirit that had possessed you. You struggled a great deal and kept screaming out in some language none of the adults could understand but, somehow, up in my bedroom where I’d been instructed to stay, I could both hear and understand the spirit’s words. They came to me in my head. Whatever possessed you had ancient scores to settle. It told me it would leave you for now, but would come back when the time was right. That’s all I know.”
“Dee, are you sure you’re not making all this up? It’s the most incredible, preposterous story I’ve ever heard, and I certainly would never have expected to hear such words coming from you.”
“What possible reason would I have for lying?”<
br />
“I have no idea, but if I find out you are… Look, you’ve always been the practical, down-to-earth one of the pair of us. Ghosts, demons, evil spirits had no place in our vocabulary until you came here.”
“And do you know why that is? Because after your session with the exorcist, I was warned never to mention the supernatural around you. The priest had put a suggestion to you under hypnosis, wiping out all your memories of Chloe and everything she had supposedly done. He feared that any exposure to talk about the paranormal, especially while you were so young and impressionable, might trigger everything again, so if you ever mentioned anything vaguely paranormal, I always changed the subject.”
“Or poured ridicule all over it.”
Dee nodded. “Frequently both.”
The whole thing sounded crazy. How could all this have happened in her childhood and she not remember any of it? Paula searched her mind for answers, but none came—apart from one.
“So, what you’re saying,” she began, “is that for some reason you don’t understand, the entity that was apparently sleeping inside me has now woken up.”
“That’s probably the best way to put it.”
It didn’t ring true. “How do you know it isn’t you who is possessed?”
“Because of what I just told you. It’s returned because the time is right. I don’t know what that means, but…”
“Maybe it’s returned, but in you. After all, that girl did say the female ghost was standing behind you.”
Dee nodded. “True. But I don’t have the history. You do. Anyway, never mind that. Give Stefan a call and see if he can help us.”
Paula stared at her sister for a moment before reaching into her purse for her phone.
Stefan sounded mildly surprised to receive a call from her.
“Your husband told me you do not wish to cancel the lease,” he said.
“He doesn’t. I do. Stefan, why did you tell my husband that nothing supernatural was going on in our house? After everything you saw?”
A pause. “I did not say that to him.”
“He told me you said it was a burglary.”
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Bancroft. But that isn’t true.”
Waking the Ancients Page 19