I dithered in the lane outside Mrs Cranford's cottage. I hadn't factored Ciarán into the equation. It shouldn't matter if he was there since I'd decided we were just friends but…
Stomach sloshing with nerves, I forced myself to take a step forward. The disappearance of the book had unsettled me. My room didn't seem quite so safe anymore. It felt like Haze had found a way to reach me when I was in the house.
And then I'd knocked on Grace's door only to find her gone. Again.
Dad's study was locked. Again.
I was alone.
At least Amy was safe at school.
"Emily? Are you going to stand out there all day, girl? We've got things to do." Mrs Cranford's tone was crisp but she sounded as though she’d been expecting me.
"C-coming." I hunched my shoulders, braced for a telling-off from Mrs Cranford or a smile from Ciarán, not knowing which would be worse. Neither happened. Mrs Cranford made no mention of my tempestuous exit yesterday. Ciarán was nowhere to be seen. I had a brief mental image of Grace meeting up with him, than clamped down on my feelings. Didn't matter.
"You've had a night of it," Mrs Cranford observed from her armchair.
I nodded. "I'm s-s-sorry…"
Mrs Cranford waved a hand dismissively. "I pushed you too hard. And I am not above being wrong. I should have got the full story from you first. So tell me, what happened?"
"I'm n-not sure where to st-start." I admitted.
"Start with your mother, Emily," she said softly and I jerked my eyes up to meet her gaze. It was bright with understanding.
"W-what has that got to d-do with eh-anything?" I snapped, immediately on the defensive.
"Emily, you are blocking yourself. I don't pretend to have the talent you have -"
I snorted rudely.
Mrs Cranford continued as though I hadn't interrupted. "But I do have some small abilities of my own. I'll tell you about them, one day. It's clear that something dreadful happened to you before you came here. Something far worse than the tragic early death of a parent. Far worse even, than being there when it happened. I doubt you've told a soul have you?"
"A-Amy," I corrected dully.
"Your younger sister? No. She was there too wasn't she? So you didn't have to tell her." Mrs Cranford gave me a shrewd look. "Neither of you even discussed it amongst yourselves."
I looked stared into those bright, bird-like eyes and found myself nodding. She was right and suddenly I wanted to tell someone. An adult. I didn't want to be the keeper of this terrible secret.
"Eh…it wasn't an a-accident." I sipped my tea, sweetened again, and told Mrs Cranford what I remembered. What came back to me in dreams. "Shuh…she tried to take us wuh…with her. She truh... tried to kuh…kuh…kill us." I forced the words out past the tightness in my throat. "We d-don't know why." I let the words hang in the silence. It was a relief to have said them out loud.
"Hmm. There's a piece of that story missing. No." Mrs Cranford raised a tiny claw-hand to ward off my protest. "I don't mean you've left anything out. I mean there's a piece of the puzzle that you don't have. I do know, from what you've told me about your mother, both directly and indirectly, that she would never have intentionally hurt you or either of your sisters. Never. Something must have been dreadfully wrong. I'm sorry, Emily, but someone is hiding the full facts from you."
"R-really?" I shouldn't have felt happy about the possibility of being lied to, but I did. "Buh…but we were arguing and th-then she just…." I hunched my shoulders, curving myself against hope or disaster.
"Emily, it had nothing to do with your argument. It had nothing to do with you at all. It's terrible that you were in the car. Amy too. But it wasn't your fault." She gave me a dark eyed look of sympathy over the rim of her cup.
I couldn't speak. Not because the words were damming up inside me but because a tremendous weight was lifting. I felt like I had been in a building that had collapsed, and, lying half-buried in the rubble, had had to tell everyone passing by that I was fine. And no one noticed that I was buried until Mrs Cranford said it wasn't my fault. The rubble was gone, I could move again.
It wasn't my fault.
I hadn't even realized that I thought it was.
But I hadn’t I believed it? Deep down? I knew Grace blamed me. Perhaps Dad blamed me for not stopping Mum. Or for surviving when she died. I'd blamed myself for those same things without ever really stopping to examine them. I wished I could leave now. That I could go on feeling this weightless. I was certain the next thing Mrs Cranford told me would be my responsibility.
"Th-thank you." It was hopelessly inadequate but I couldn’t say anything more. All of it was still too raw. Her gaze told me I she understood. In a flash of intuition, I wondered who she had lost. It didn't seem right to ask and a more important question slipped out before I could stop myself.
“Wuh why…why do y-y-you think M-Mum k-k-killed herself?” I tightened myself against the answer.
Mrs Cranford gave me a very long look. “Have you spoken to your father about this?”
“N-no,” I mumbled. Of course not.
“I’m sorry, Emily. I really am. But I don’t know.”
“Huh how do you know eh-everything else then?” I knew I sounded belligerent but I couldn’t help myself. I needed answers. Amy needed answers. And Grace.
“I have my own strange…gifts, for lack of a better word. What you can do, what a few - a very few - others can do, what I can do - it's called The Touch. I can pick up what someone is feeling. Sometimes I get the accompanying thought as well, if the person thinking it has a latent gift of their own.” She smiled wryly. “It’s not mind-reading as such. I’m just receptive if someone projects a thought clearly enough. Don’t worry. I can’t pry.”
She chuckled and then abruptly sobered. “And I can sense when things are wrong. With a person. With a place. The strongest sense I have ever had about a person, came from you, Emily. I saw your car go past the day you arrived and knew I had to meet you. I had to warn you. And then you turned out to be so much more powerful than anyone I had encountered before…” Her voice trailed off and my but my eyebrows hiked up in disbelief. Me? Powerful? Hardly.
"The Touch?" I said, frowning.
"Who knows where the name came from," Mrs Cranford said with a shrug in her voice. "It can mean a lot of things. In your case it encompasses the rarest gift of all. An affinity with the Dead. Lots of people without the Touch see occasional glimpses of ghosts or get that prickling sensation of something uncanny being near. That's normal. But you see, sense, speak and more strangely, hear them. The Dead do not speak, you see. They are silent."
I snorted. They weren't very bloody well silent around here. “How d-d-do you d-do that? The suh sensing thing?” Scepticism coloured my tone.
“How do you sense and see and speak to the Dead?” Mrs Cranford smiled faintly.
“D-don’t know,” I muttered.
“That makes two of us then.”
I guessed she had a point. “Buh but Mum-“
“Emily, I just don’t know. Nor can I find out. If anyone knows anything, it’s your father. ” Her voice was tinged with impatience.
Speak to Dad? Fat chance.
“I know this is hard but we need to talk about that young man your sister is involved with.” I snorted rudely and Mrs Cranford’s expression became more severe. “Grace is alive, Emily. A family member you can save.”
I winced. She was right.
Feeling ashamed of being rude all over again, I nibbled a strand of my hair. The whole situation was insane… but then I could see things that other people couldn't. I had to get control over it. And the newspaper clippings held clues about the watcher and the Pattern. Maybe about Haze, though they’d looked too old for that. My face burned as I remembered blurting out how I couldn't read.
With the trick she had of catching my thoughts, Mrs Cranford said, "Emily, humour me just a little longer. When did you discover you couldn't read?"
I hated answering those sorts of questions. It hurt. But Mrs Cranford treated me like I was normal. She didn’t pity me.
"W-when I g-got out of hospital. T-too ill before. W-why?" I did not want to be talking about this. Not with anyone. Those dreadful hours when I'd first woken up and found that Mum was really dead and Amy was in a coma. When my head had hurt so much, I'd selfishly wished I was dead too, to get away from the pain. And from the nightmare reality I'd woken up too. Where Grace screamed at me, and Dad wouldn't look at me and talked to the nurses as though I wasn't there. And all around were the creeping fingers of the Dead. Oblivious of me but somehow demanding my attention… No. There was no one in the world I wanted to share that with.
My expression must have communicated some of this because Mrs Cranford looked sympathetic now, as well as implacable.
"One last question, Emily, and then I'll propose a theory to you that you must make up your own mind about. When you used to read for pleasure - oh yes, I know you're one who did. When you did read, when did you do it most often? Or rather with whom?"
"M-mum. Always w-with Mum," I whispered.
"You don't have to answer what I'm going to say. You're not going to like it. I shouldn't be surprised if you were very angry with me. Please just listen though…" Mrs Cranford seemed was hesitant.
"W-what?" She certainly had a knack for keeping me talking.
"I think it is very likely you did injure your head badly in that car accident. I think it more than likely you damaged a small part of your brain. Just enough that, while you were healing, it made reading too difficult for you to do. You may even have temporarily lost the ability to read."
Mrs Cranford fixed me with a scalpel gaze. "We are not born knowing how to read, Emily. Did it never occur to you that if you had lost the ability, you could learn how to read again? Did no one suggest that might be possible?"
If she had looked at me with a shred of pity, I would have screamed at her to mind her own business. I would have walked out. But she didn't pity me. I let her even, reasoned words sink in. A different kind of horror rippled through me: I'd completely accepted someone else’s assessment of my ability to recover without question. I'd given up on myself.
"I have a further theory, Emily. If you read and discussed books with your mother, then not being able to read might be your mind's way of protecting you from further pain. How can you enjoy something you loved so much, when your mother is gone? How can you do anything that is so saturated with memories of your mother that you wouldn't be able to avoid thinking of her? Because if you did think of her, you had to ask yourself why she did what she did. How could any young girl reconcile the two?" Mrs Cranford seemed to be talking more to herself now than to me, but her words struck me like stones, sending ripples outward. I was afraid of this new hope.
"The kuh consultant s-said I wasn't able to l- learn again." I desperately wanted her to contradict me.
"Did you ever try?" her voice was soft.
There was a heavy pause. Everything I'd learned today, Mum, the accident, reading. All of it would hit me hard and soon. I rubbed my eyes then looked up again. I hadn't asked a single question I'd intended too.
"Who is Huh Haze?" I rapped this out, sharp with frustration. Mrs Cranford took the change of subject in stride.
"Who do you think he is? It's you who stands at the centre of the Pattern, Emily. You are the only person who can see the whole thing. I'm sorry but you're going to have to make your own discoveries. That is why the ability to read is so important. The book you mentioned is a new element. I have suspicions but I need you to draw your own conclusions first. I think it is a clue meant specifically for you. I can't do this for you." She compressed her lips as if that statement was not at all to her taste. "Though I wish I knew who was sending you clues."
"Th-that's just it. The b-b-book is gone." I told her about last night; being Helen again; waking up to the cold girl; sending her away; searching for the book this morning. I skimmed over yesterday afternoon, just saying I'd seen Grace with Haze again and not mentioning Ciarán at all. It was a gutless thing to do but I couldn't didn’t want her guessing my feelings for Ciarán. Even if I had decided nothing would ever happen, I wanted her good opinion too much.
And I didn't want to think too hard about who Haze was. Dark suspicions were already forming.
Mrs Cranford was too distracted by worry to notice my hesitance. "That troubles me, Emily. You're sure neither of your sisters would have taken the book?"
I shrugged.
"Try and find it. I agree with you. It's important." She lapsed back into quiet, staring into the middle distance.
"W-why sugar?" I blurted randomly. "Why d-do the Dead make me f- feel ill?"
"They don't belong here." Mrs Cranford’s eyes snapped back into focus. "Not on this plane of existence. It takes them a lot of energy to physically manifest. That is why it grows so cold. Especially to you. You are an untrained medium. A proper one - not a TV charlatan. If you want a comparison, you're a sort of universal adapter through which the Dead can draw energy to manifest. Unfortunately they take a lot of your strength too. You don't know how to be a gateway rather than a tunnel." She said this in the same level tone she described my reading problems. It all sounded mental…except it all fitted completely with what I could do.
"C-can I l-learn?"
"It's imperative to your success that you do learn, and learn fast." Mrs Cranford gave me an owlish look. "There are too many things here, in this village alone, which would seek to use you. You must be careful. The best you can do is shut off as much of your ability as you can, except in dire need. At least until you have learned how to use it. The sugar is merely first aid. It burns a lot of energy having the Dead work through you or draw power from you. That's what leaves you ill and shaking. The sugar just replaces enough energy to let you function. When you learn how to control your ability, you'll stop the Dead taking your energy too."
"Huh how do I d-do that?" If there was just some way… some way of stopping them from using me…Then I remembered the strange ‘coated in glass’ feeling I'd had yesterday when I was trying to keep Haze's shadows out. That had to be part of it.
"I don't know. I'm sorry, but I'm not a medium. The Touch works differently with me." She pursed her lips. Was she reluctant to teach me? It felt like it. I didn't entirely believe that she didn't know how to teach me.
"Isn't th-there anything?" I pressed.
"Start by controlling your mind. Practise making it still, especially when you are angry or afraid - they can use that as a way in." The strange reluctance lingered in her voice. "Practise making your mind clear before you sleep. And Emily?"
"Yes?" I was afraid of what else she might say.
"You must stop running from your gift. You don't have much time, if Grace is to survive."
I stared at her with wide eyes. Was she saying…?
"Killed, Emily. Those girls were killed." She gestured towards the shoe box of cuttings on the coffee table. "I think you know who Haze is. And what your sister is facing. You must stop the Pattern. It's too late to extricate her now." For a moment I could have sworn her eyes shone bright with tears.
"Huh how?" The word was a lump of coal in my throat.
"The only person who ever knew enough to help us, is Helen. The original witness." Mrs Cranford’s expression was looked grim.
"But sh-she's dead!"
"Yes. And you're a medium. Perhaps the first one strong enough to solve this." She broke off and her gaze skittered over her collection of protective charms. I was certain that's what they were now. "It can't be a coincidence. That you're here now. Perhaps you're meant to redress the balance." Her eyes were far away, looking at another time. I wondered again, who she had lost. Was that why she had never moved away from Arncliffe?
"M- Mrs Cranford?" I prodded hesitantly. She blinked hard. "H-how am I meant to do t-that?"
"Isn't it obvious, Emily? You have to ask Hel
en what she knows. Make her tell you what happened in those last tragic days."
I Belong to the Earth (Unveiled Book 1) Page 30