Chapter 1
When I arrived at the beginning of September, the Dordogne countryside had been warm and vibrant with the scent of summer still lingering but with the cool promise of autumn on the breeze. Now it was barren. Frost still covered the hard ground even though it was well after midday, and the trees looked naked, shivering against the white sky as the wind gusted past.
I took the narrow dirt track through the woods towards Gran’s cottage which stood in the middle of a large clearing. It was a long, low, stone cottage with a barn attached on one side.
Leaving the car outside the barn doors and stepping out onto the gravel path, I braced myself as the icy air cut through every layer of clothing I was wearing. Wood smoke curled from the chimney and the scent made me smile. I would always think of France when I smelt it.
Running to the front door, which had once been painted a jaunty bright blue but was now peeling and faded, I grabbed the handle and pushed hard, wincing as the bottom of the door grated on the stone floor.
As soon as I stepped inside I was enveloped with all the strange yet oddly familiar scents that permeated Gran’s house. Thankfully, the first to hit me was the decidedly normal smell of coffee. I hurried over to the old range cooker where the battered metal pot was sitting and poured out a mug full. Cradling the steaming mug in my hands, I sat in the old rocking chair in front of the log burner, not bothering to take off my coat and scarf just yet.
My mother’s family, the Corbeaux, had been living here for centuries, since the beginning of time if you were to believe everything that Gran said, which I didn’t.
I had ended up living in the UK because my Dad was English. Mum and Dad stayed in France until I was five when, as Mum put it, “I had to get you away from that witch.”
I had always thought that it was just a figure of speech, but since I’d been living with her, I'd begun to have serious doubts.
It had been almost six months since I left my home in the UK. Six months without a word from my parents. Every time I thought about the night of the row I felt sick, remembering the awful things we’d both said to each other.
For the first few weeks I had phoned home endlessly. The first time Mum actually picked up, heard my voice and cut me off without saying a word. I’d sat staring at the phone in shock. I’d also texted hundreds of messages - even sat down and written a letter, something I’d never done in my life before. There was never any response. I realised too late she had really meant what she said, that if I went back to Gran she’d have nothing more to do with me. I was on my own.
The stupid thing was I didn’t even know what I was doing here. In my memories, being with Gran just gave me a feeling of belonging, of being understood. Life with my parents on the other hand, was spent trying to pretend I was normal, even though all evidence pointed to the fact I was weird at best. I just had a gut feeling that the only one who’d give me answers was Gran. When I’d suggested spending some time with her, my parents’ reaction had been shocking. They were violently against me seeing her and yet they refused to give any explanation.
My temper, as usual, got the better of me and I packed my bags and left the same night. I flew out on the next available flight, still in a fury and turned up on Gran’s doorstep without the slightest idea of what to say to her.
My French was pretty rusty as Mum had stopped speaking it to me some years before and when I had arrived, Gran led me to believe she didn’t speak a word of English. I had to struggle to speak French until, one night while we were eating dinner Gran had spoken to me in perfect, if accented, English. I had stared at her in amazement for a moment, before leaving the table and slamming my bedroom door. I’d refused to speak to her for the whole of the next day, in any language. Thankfully it was now coming back to me and I didn’t have too many problems.
I was just beginning to wonder where she’d got to when the door grated again and Gran came into the kitchen. She was carrying a full basket and simultaneously cursing expressively and kicking the door shut.
“Hi, Gran. Here, let me take that for you.”
“Ah merci, Jéhenne, mon Dieu, it’s as cold as the grave today.”
I loved to hear Gran say my name. She pronounced it properly, in the French way, like Jen but with a soft J as in “mirage”.
At school I had inevitably been called Je-Hen, or worse, some awful play on hen or chicken. I’d gotten sick of poultry related nicknames pretty quickly.
I took the basket from her and placed it carefully on the table as I could see she’d collected the eggs from her hens. I wrinkled my nose as another peculiar smell, emanating from a bunch of odd looking roots, joined the warm, herby aroma that always filled the kitchen.
“Er, Gran, what are those for?” I asked, hoping fervently they weren’t on tonight’s menu as they smelt disgusting.
“Heh, don’t worry, they’re not for you. Georgette has her old trouble back again - I said I’d make her a tonic.”
“Gran, don’t you think she should just call a doctor?” I looked at the smelly roots with apprehension. “What if you make her ill?” Or worse, I thought.
I heard an expressive snort, as she went through the door next to the range, into her herb room.
“You could be sued you know,” I yelled.
I couldn’t have translated Gran’s next comment, but it seemed to be along the lines of you can’t get blood from a stone. Well, that was the clean version. My understanding of French swear words was now pretty comprehensive as Gran was colourful with her language at the best of times.
I sighed and sat back down with my coffee. I knew better than to interrupt her when she was brewing something. I wondered, not for the first time, what the hell I was doing with my life. I was stuck in the middle of rural France with a relative who was, well ... odd to put it politely. I had no proper job, and no prospect of getting one.
I peered around the door at Gran who had started muttering to herself under her breath as she tied up a little bundle of herbs. Soft white hair fell in gentle waves to her shoulders and she was wearing a flowery overall of the kind that seemed to be favoured by all elderly French women. Her face was rounded and pleasant, but set with startling green eyes, the same colour as my own. As to her age, that was anybody’s guess. I’d asked her once but she’d refused to answer; anywhere between seventy and eighty maybe?
She wasn’t like any other little old lady though. I’d only been here a few days when I’d heard a furious argument coming from her herb room. I’d nearly broken my neck running down the steep staircase, which was actually more of a ladder that led up to my bedroom. I flew into the room to find Gran holding a wicked looking knife in her hand and not a soul to be seen. She’d shrugged and smiled and carried on grinding something with a pestle and mortar. When I’d asked who she’d been talking to, she said, “Just an unhappy soul, dear. Don’t worry, she’ll find her way.”
The hairs on the back of my neck had prickled and I’d been too freaked out to ask anymore. Mainly because I knew I’d heard two voices.
There had been other incidents too and not all of them around Gran. My nerves were so jangled now that I’d jump at the slightest noise or creak.
Weird stuff tended to happen to me though, or around me at any rate. This had increased my worry that all the women in my family were actually insane, or at least attracted insanity. My Dad, on the other hand, just lived permanently in a genial world of his own, not that I blamed him.
I could also never understand my Mum’s absolute refusal to accept that maybe there was a problem that couldn’t be explained by the usual doctors or shrinks. This was in spite of the fact that when I was little, I’d regularly set fire to the house if I lost my temper - and not with matches.
When I was eight I’d been sent to a psychiatrist because I had weird dreams and imaginary friends. You might think imaginary friends are not that unusual but I didn’t just have one, I had loads. I saw them everywhere and … I didn’t think they were imaginary.
&n
bsp; After a particularly embarrassing incident at Hever Castle when I was seven (where I’d managed to freak out an entire coach party of American tourists) we tended to stay away from historic buildings. Not so easy when you live in London.
Eventually though, the treatment seemed to work and I didn’t see them anymore, at least not until my seventeenth birthday when I began to notice odd things again. Sometimes it was just a face in a crowd of people and when I looked again it was gone. Other times I was alone but had the feeling there was someone standing behind me. When I turned around there never was.
I didn’t say anything to Mum in case I got sent back to see some quack doctor but the weird dreams began again at the same time. None of them made any sense to me but they were amazingly real, not to mention scary as hell.
I finished my coffee and hung my coat up but I still felt chilly so I got up to fetch another jumper from my room.
I climbed up the wonky ladder to my bedroom and went to the window. I had just reached to pull the curtains shut when I looked outside and felt my heart stop. Looking back through the window at me was an elderly man’s face. At the same time I heard an ear-shattering scream and clapped my hands to my ears praying that the noise would stop. Then I realised it was me that was screaming and my head hit the floor.
I was woken by a cool cloth being pressed to my forehead. It smelt vaguely of lavender and eased the throbbing in my temples a little. I opened my eyes cautiously to see Gran smiling at me.
“Ça va, chérie?”
My eyes darted to the window, but the curtains were tight shut.
“There was a face,” I pointed to the curtains as I struggled to sit myself back up.
“Oui, chérie.” Gran patted my hand. “It was only Louis.”
“What do you mean it was only Louis?” I demanded. “Who’s Louis? I mean ... he was… he isn’t… I mean, I think he was dead?” My voice sounded kind of squeaky and hysterical and Gran raised an eyebrow in surprise.
“Of course he’s dead, chérie,” she said with a puzzled expression. “Otherwise he couldn’t have been outside your bedroom window, could he? You are on the first floor.”
A million responses to this statement came to mind, but my brain didn’t seem to be functioning properly. Instead I just sat with my mouth open.
“Alors,” she continued, “you’d better come and apologise to him, he’s very upset.”
“He’s here?” My stomach had begun to churn and my head throbbed harder. “I think I’m going to be sick.”
“Nonsense! Don't be a baby, come on now.”
I got to my feet a little unsteadily, putting my hand to the tender spot on the back of my head. “Ouch!”
I sank back onto the chair shivering violently and not caring that I was crushing the pile of clothes underneath.
“They were all real, weren’t they? All those people I used to see?”
“Of course they were real.”
“But the psychiatrists and Mum, everyone said I was imagining it.”
Gran snorted in disgust. “The psychiatrists were idiots, and your mother lied.”
“But they went away, I stopped seeing them,” I insisted.
“Non, ce n'est pas vrai, you just didn’t let yourself see them anymore. They were always there.”
She folded her arms and looked at me critically. “You must be very strong to have suppressed them for so long.”
I looked at her in surprise. “Strong” was never a word I had associated with myself.
Gran sighed and sat on the bed, her hands clasped together.
“Jéhenne, you must understand, your maman, she never had much of a gift, but the worst thing was she denied any knowledge of what she was. She pretended it wasn’t true and turned her back on magic and on me. She simply rejected her inheritance, refused to learn.” Gran sounded disgusted, as though Mum had been a major disappointment to her. “It made her afraid you see, but you, Nina, you were strong. I could see it in you as soon as you were born.”
I smiled at her calling me Nina. She had called me that when I was little. It was an old word, not French at all, but Occitan, the language spoken before French, before France even existed.
“Your maman could see it too of course, that’s why she ran away, she was scared for you, of you too - of what you would become. She thought if she took you away from here that you would never know, it would all go away. She was a fool!” she said. She smiled suddenly, her expression fierce. “But I always knew you would come back.”
“What do you mean she was scared of what I would become? What am I?” My heart had started beating erratically.
“Why, child, I think you know in your heart that you are different, that you have a gift,” she said, as if that explained everything.
I threw my hands up in frustration. “What does that mean, for heaven’s sake? What sort of gift? Am I a witch?”
“Of a sort, yes,”
I looked at her in astonishment, that hadn’t been the response I’d expected.
“But you are far more than that,” she added with a knowing smile. “I will explain, but not now.”
“Not now! You can’t just say something like that and not explain it.”
She got up, smoothing down the hideous flowery overall.
“Oui, Jéhenne, I can and now you must come and apologise to Louis, he’s had a terrible evening. First he died before the end of Columbo and then he had you shrieking at him, le pauvre.”
“He’s had a terrible evening?” I replied indignantly. “He scared me half to bloody death.”
“Don’t swear, Jéhenne.”
I raised my eyebrows in disbelief. “Gran, you swear more than anyone I’ve ever met.”
“Heh! I have more to swear about, chérie, as you will now discover.”
I didn’t like the sound of that.
I sighed. “I’ll come down, just give me a moment, OK?”
She shrugged. “D’accord, come when you’re ready,” she said and made her way carefully down the stairs.
I sat on the chair for a moment, staring at the floor and wondering when the shock would register. I’d just discovered that I really had been seeing dead people and that I was some kind of witch, that should be a big deal, but somehow it was a relief.
No matter how many psychiatrists had explained to me all the rational explanations for what I’d seen, I’d never really believed them.
But Gran had said I was a much more than just a witch. I began to remember, with a creepy feeling, things that had happened in my life. Odd things, usually when I was very upset, that my parents ignored and I always pretended hadn’t really happened at all.
Like when Julia Duggan had been teasing me once again for my carrot-coloured hair when I was six years old and her beautiful blonde locks had suddenly burst into flames. Thankfully, I’d been standing a long way from her and it had just been put down as a freak accident.
I decided I really did feel better. OK I was, as I’d always suspected, a freak, but that was better than a crazy woman, wasn’t it? Gran said she would explain so I would finally have some answers and if she thought it was a gift - well maybe it wouldn’t be so bad?
I was considering this when I realised I could smell fresh coffee and, more importantly, food.
I crept nervously downstairs to see Gran sitting with Louis at the table, writing as he dictated, looking just as if he was alive and well, which he wasn’t.
I looked at him and was unsurprised that he didn’t look especially ghost-like. There was a faint blurring to the edges of him, like in a photo when someone moves at the wrong moment, but he looked pretty solid. The films always made ghosts wispy and see through or else gruesome reflecting the manner in which they died. The truth was much less startling but still somewhat disconcerting.
He saw me coming down the stairs and looked immediately panicked, as though I was a bomb that might go off at any moment. I raised my hand and waved feebly, trying my best to look harmless. �
��Je suis désolée, Monsieur Louis.” I smiled.
He looked even more horrified so I decided to investigate whatever it was that smelt good and leave him to Gran to deal with.
Gran had made a bœuf bourguignon earlier this morning and the smell was making my mouth water. I picked up the ladle on the counter and gave myself a generous helping, grabbed a hunk of baguette and sought shelter in the herb room.
I made myself comfy in the old wicker chair in the corner; it was covered with an old, faded patchwork throw which I remembered from my childhood. The pinks, blues and greens of the various pretty patterns were tied into the fabric of my memories as tightly as the smell of the cottage.
It was this room, more than anything, that I had always thought of when I remembered Gran. She would stand me on a chair next to her at the bench and explain the name of each herb, plant or root that she was using, what they were for and how to prepare them. I always felt very grown-up and special at these times as Gran never spoke to me like I was a child.
It would be lovely until Mum came in and found us together and then I’d get that guilty feeling crawling down my back, like I’d been caught doing something bad.
I heard the front door grate open then bang shut again and I briefly wondered why Louis hadn’t just walked through the wall. Surely he didn’t need to use the door, although maybe that took a bit of practice. He’d only been dead a few hours after all.
I joined Gran at the table where she had helped herself to the bourguignon. “So what was all that about then?” I asked, settling myself opposite and forking up a mouthful of beef and carrot.
“Unfinished business.”
“Really? You mean that’s true about not being able to move on to the other side if there’s something they need to do?”
“Bien sûr.”
“But why did he come to you?”
“Well, the guide told him to. Everyone who dies is met by a guide to show them the way. In this area souls are often sent to me if there is anything they need to do.”
“Are there many people like you then?”
She grimaced. “Less and less, people think they are so clever nowadays, they are so wrapped up with mobile phones, iPods and computers and heaven knows what else, they have forgotten the old way. They don’t see anymore, they shut out anything they can’t explain with science.” She looked at me with her sharp green eyes and stabbed her fork in my direction. “You know it’s true, Nina.”
Yes, I knew it was true.
I helped to tidy away the bowls and Gran got out the rest of a gorgeous chocolate cake that she’d made the day before. She cut us both a big slice and got a bowl of crème fraîche out of the fridge to serve with it. I’d asked her, half-heartedly to stop making desserts as my jeans were beginning to protest. Thankfully she’d ignored me.
Later, I said goodnight to Gran and went up to my room. I put out a pair of warm pyjamas as my bedroom was freezing in the morning. Squeezing out of my jeans with some difficulty, I thought ruefully that I’d really better go easy on the chocolate cake from now on.
I slipped into bed, pulling my dressing gown over the covers for extra warmth and lay there wondering how Louis was getting on and whether he had been reunited with his family yet.
I fell asleep dreaming of ghosts.
The Key to Erebus (The French Vampire Legend. Book 1) Page 3