by Eliza Wass
“Have you been in here all day?” he asked her.
“I don’t know what to do with myself. I wish you would pick up the phone.”
“I was driving.”
“What did the doctor say?”
“Well, she had a good look at him. Although he wouldn’t take that mangy coat off.”
“How could she have a good look if he was wearing a coat? Where did he get that thing, anyway?”
“Oh, I don’t know. You know how Nikki is. He’s always been a bit…eccentric. When he gets these ideas into his head, he fixates on them. Remember when he was a little boy and we all had to call him Arthur for six months?”
“This isn’t quite the same as calling someone Arthur.”
“I didn’t say it was. Listen, I’ve spoken to him in the car and he’s promised me things are going to change.” Lord Bramley believed that all the ills in the world could be solved by a promise between gentlemen.
“And that’s enough?”
“I don’t see what else I can do, Olivia. This is the third doctor we’ve been to see. At a certain point, you have to hope that he’ll get it into his thick head to sort himself out.”
“Do you think we should bring someone in, to be with him?”
“I don’t think it’s drugs. All the tests they’ve run have come up clean.” The blankets flapped.
“I don’t understand how he can go from being such a good boy to…Have you seen? His hair is starting to go white.”
“The doctor said that might be a vitamin deficiency. Or else it’s genetic. That’d be your side.”
“At seventeen?” She paused, and I could almost feel her turning over something, feel the room turn with her. “Aislyn thinks he’s possessed.”
“Oh God, please don’t, Olivia.”
“I never would have thought I could believe a thing like that but…”
“But what? What shall we do, have an exorcism after supper? It doesn’t help Nikki, you saying things like that. Our son has a real problem, Olivia, he doesn’t need you corroborating this madness.” The bed was upset. “And don’t you dare say anything like that to Nikki. The last thing that boy needs is more ideas.”
“Where are you going?”
“I think I had better…have a moment to myself.” That was the night he started sleeping elsewhere. That was the night the castle divided clearly into two camps: on one side was Lady Bramley and Holiday, on the other side was Macklin and Lord Bramley. As usual, I didn’t know where I belonged.
EIGHT
A dim light emanated from the stained-glass windows, so the library had a hazy aspect, all of our actions suspended in a cloud. Lady Bramley clung to Holiday’s hand, and they were both pale and sickly so they seemed to be part of the same thing.
“Form a circle.” Roan shoved Nikki’s footrest aside and dragged a round table in front of the chair. The glass lamp fixed to the center shook. He set his doctor’s bag on the footrest and removed a candle, a silver lighter, an inkwell pen, and folded parchment paper.
Lady Bramley and Holiday sat at the same time, giving the aura of a ritual. I took a deep breath and sat down beside Roan.
“Does anyone have an item belonging to the deceased?”
“I do.” Lady Bramley rifled through her coat, which I noticed was one of Nikki’s: gray houndstooth with broad shoulders. She dug through the inside pocket and pulled out a handful of hair, tied off with a ribbon. My heart stung.
Roan’s eyes narrowed. “Perfect.” He laid it on the table, brushed the strands so they shone. He arranged the other objects with a psychic’s feng shui.
My breathing seemed a treacherous thing—rapid, thick, and overflowing. I was practically panting. Perhaps it wasn’t real magic, but it was powerful, sitting in Nikki’s favorite place with Nikki’s favorite people, just thinking about him.
The lighter clicked. The flame wafted in Roan’s illuminated hand and lit the candle, which was deep blue. “Who wants to call him?”
My insides quivered with the flame. Lady Bramley rubbed her daughter’s shoulder. “Holly, you go ahead, darling.”
Roan unfolded the bits of paper, fingers glowing in the candlelight. He set one down in front of Holiday. “Write Nikki’s name, seven times.” He handed her a pen.
Holiday wrote in red dove’s-blood ink, the pen scratching, Nikodemus Bramley seven times, in nearly the same practiced script Nikki used to write in.
“Tear it in half seven times, and give it to me.”
Holiday lifted the paper up and tore it down the middle. It was easy at first, but it got harder, until the pieces were so tiny that she had to stuff them into her fist. She passed them into Roan’s open palm.
Roan pressed them together, brought them to his mouth, where he spoke into his cupped hands, mumbled words I couldn’t hear, then placed his hands over the candle. The flame burst with a pop! His hand swept away and the flame leapt up. The paper was gone.
I had to admit, he was good. He had the right look—striking but also holy—and a serene levity. His eyes were so strange, especially in the dark, that it was easy to believe they looked out onto other worlds, or came from them.
The pieces of the old chapel trembled in the candlelight. The high arches over our heads, the wooden pews along the walls, the thin, glowing veins of the organ, and the air, thick with the spirit—of God or something less far gone.
Roan sighed: an earthy, tired sound.
“Holly,” he said. The skin along my back prickled. I was afraid he was going to channel Nikki. Terrified of how much I feared and wanted it. “I want you to write Nikki a message. Whatever you want to say, write it down.”
Holiday wrote, slow at first and then faster and faster. She reached the end of the page and turned it over. I envied her: perched forward, one elbow on the table to anchor her, pen flying. What would I say if this were real? Questions lit in a string along the inside of my mouth: Do you forgive me? Do you love me? One question, really.
Holiday finished writing.
“Seven times.”
The paper snarled as it tore. She ripped it to shreds, words in pieces. She passed the scraps to Roan, who held them to his mouth again, spoke into them, and placed them over the candle.
This time the page didn’t burn straight away. It simmered—if that were even possible—like the flames were taking time to devour every last word.
Roan shut his lantern eyes. His hand shot out, closed over Lady Bramley’s. We connected in a chain: her to Holly, Holly to me and then—damp, quivering, so heavy I could hardly lift it—my hand closed over Roan’s.
I went to shut my eyes, panicked, saw black spots in the corners of the library. My heart throbbed. It’s not real, I warned myself. It’s not real. My body was having a harder time believing that.
Roan hummed, and it took my head longer than my heart to realize it was Nikki’s song. But it couldn’t be. I was losing my mind, could see my sanity strung out in front of me, like a tightrope I was swaying over.
The flame went out. I shut my eyes.
Silence dropped into the center of the circle. I felt the pull, like it was taking us down with it.
“He’s here.”
Roan spoke fast, into his chest, like he was a conduit for an electrical current, and the electrical current was Nikki. “He’s showing me something, a picture—has somebody got a special picture?” I deflated in an instant. “I’m seeing flowers. He says, Thank you for the flowers.” It was almost like Roan was trying to be bad. “He says he can’t believe you’re here—”
A strangled sound emanated, from the other side of the circle, from the other side of the world. Lady Bramley began to cry, not safely crying, but sobbing. I regretted bringing Roan, believing he could help, believing anything when I should have known better. It was my fault, and all I wanted was to go back, to go back and take this and every last thing back.
Roan hissed beside me, like he’d been burned. His hand grew hot in mine. And then a voice—so pleadingly fam
iliar that tears formed on cue. “Please, don’t cry, Mum. It’s not nice to see you crying all the time.”
I felt my body lift, the way I felt sometimes walking into a church, even though I swore up and down I didn’t believe in God.
“You know I would have stayed forever if I could. And I am with you, always, even if I do get rather bored watching repeats of Come Dine with Me.”
Lady Bramley made a sound like a wave breaking.
“And you as well, Holly. I know it’s rather rude, making demands on people when you’re dead, but I do wish you wouldn’t go off in your separate corners, and Dad and Macklin, either. I wish you would remember more of the nice things about me.
“I don’t mean to complain, but it has been rather hard dying in the first place, without having to watch everyone fall apart over it. I know Macklin would say I’m making it all about me. By the way, can you tell him—and don’t say this came from me—but can you tell him to slow down in that car of his? You can’t stay late, but you can always come early, if you catch my drift.”
Roan was good.
His voice was so Nikki that it traveled through me, flicking on switches to lights that had gone out. It was not Nikki through a filter, or like Nikki. It was so much Nikki that it bled and bred inside me, made me feel deranged, almost monstrous.
Roan-as-Nikki chatted away, but underneath there was a running news banner in my mind, trying to contextualize as fast as it could: Of course we would go off in separate corners, that’s obvious! And Roan’s seen the way Macklin drives his car!
Roan’s grip tightened. I tried to center myself, when the only center I had was a being that didn’t exist, wavering like a candle, an electric current, an imitation game through the boy beside me.
I was going to be sick.
“Is there anything you’d like to say to me?”
I felt the question point at me. It was mad, but I recognized the way Nikki’s voice curved when it turned in my direction. But it couldn’t be. It wasn’t real. It wasn’t anything but a very dangerous trick.
Lady Bramley asked a few questions, if Nikki was being looked after and if he was okay with the songs they played at his funeral. I tried to concentrate, but my head was unsteady. I needed to get out of that room, away from everyone. I needed to be contained. I was contaminated.
“Was it my fault?”
I broke a sweat. I gulped down the acid that hemmed my throat. Roan’s grip tightened, so I went numb up to my elbow.
“No, Mum, of course it’s not your fault. And I hope you’ll be good enough to impress that fact on everyone. It’s like I said: you can always come early, but you can’t stay late. And there’s nothing that anyone could have done to prevent it.”
I exhaled, unsure if I was relieved or disappointed because I knew it wasn’t real then. Because the real Nikki would know that wasn’t true. The real Nikki would know it was my fault.
Holiday took her turn, chatting about Nikki’s football team, which had come onto a winner shortly after he died. Roan-as-Nikki made her promise to take Lord Bramley to one of the matches. “I’m doing all I can for them on my end.”
I was counting time, waiting for it to finish, when Roan-as-Nikki said, “Kitty?”
The sound of my name in Nikki’s voice so seized me that I had to press my lips tight together to keep from begging him to say it again.
“Yes, Kitty, don’t you have a question?” Holiday said.
I didn’t have a question for a fake Nikki, and the questions I had for a real one were best kept to myself, but a thought darted through me and was out of my mouth before I could stop it. “What happened when you went back to the canal?”
The air thinned, like whatever spirit Roan had harnessed within himself was backing off. The clocks on the wall beat a jagged retreat.
My fingers slipped in Roan’s grip, which had suddenly slackened. Everything had slackened, everything was sliding toward the floor, into the void those words conjured. The body beside me inhaled.
“He can’t say.”
I felt it ending, felt the fake spirit seeping from my bones. Roan-as-Nikki said I love you and good-bye to the others. They tried to delay him, talking over ridiculous things like the weather and what we would have for supper that night, in his honor. They must have said I love you at least a hundred times.
All I wanted was for it to be over, before I broke down or up or whichever way you went when you had nowhere to go. It wasn’t real and it wasn’t Nikki, but the longer it went on, the less it seemed to matter. It might not be real, but the feelings were.
The air seemed to ease, separate, like a cloud parting. I took a deep breath. I congratulated myself. I’d made it; I’d made it out alive. And then:
“Kitty.” My heart dove, then pounded like a funeral march. “I’m very sorry to disturb you, but I have to. I just have to. I have to say that I love you. So much more than I ever could have before, if you can believe it. I love you so much more.”
And then Roan shuddered and the warmth left his hands. And I knew Nikki was gone. Even if I never believed he was there in the first place. I believed he was gone.
We came out of it in pieces, the way you wake from a heavy dream. I kept my eyes closed for as long as I could. They finally opened on Roan, breathing hard and glowing with a golden vitality.
Lady Bramley embraced him. He pursued his breath unmoved.
“I cannot thank you enough. I cannot thank you enough.” She clung to Roan, and Holiday clung to her, both in their nightdresses, like Lazarus’s shrunken sisters. Lady Bramley ran her fingers up and down Roan’s arm like Nikki still glimmered there.
“I cannot thank you enough. I cannot thank you enough.”
Roan gazed at me and his lips cocked slowly, arching with his brow, as if to say, I told you they’d be happy.
“Yes, cheers,” I said, out of breath. “It was very…impressive.”
“Yes, well, I’d better shoot. Before it gets dark.” It wouldn’t be dark for ages, though it was already dark where we were.
“Oh no!” Lady Bramley held him. His chains jangled, tangled in her fingers. “You must stay. You must stay here with us.” Her fingers slipped between his, gripping his hand to hers, pressing it to her heart. “You can work here. We can hire you on as Holiday’s nurse.”
“Oh yes, please.” Holiday clambered onto the table in front of him.
“But what will Lord Bramley say?” Roan said.
I rolled my eyes, but I had to admit there was something compelling about him, something feline or reptile or David Bowie. Something that seemed more than human being.
“Never mind him. He’ll do what we say. And we’ll pay well, of course.” Lady Bramley lifted her chin.
Roan’s lips tugged at both sides of his face. “I guess I could stay.” His eyes ran across the heavenly mural over our heads. “For a while.”
Holiday hopped to the floor, swaying at the effort, and pulled him to his feet. “Come on! I’ll show you the castle! I’ll show you everything! Come, come, come!”
“Yes.” Lady Bramley stood up. “And then I’ll speak to Lord Bramley. Don’t worry. You’re here. You’re staying, no matter what.”
I watched them go. The air seemed to shut behind them. I was alone in the room. The gold-leafed mural burned along the ceiling.
I love you. So much more than I ever could have before, if you can believe it. I love you so much more.
Nikki was passed out on his bed, the coat spread out over his legs like a battle-worn flag. He stirred as I stood over him. “Kitty.”
“I came to see you.” I was about to cry, all of a sudden, and I wasn’t sure why. I wasn’t sure if it was because he was sleeping in that stupid coat like a nutter, or because he’d been avoiding me for weeks; he’d been avoiding me since that night after the canal, when he screamed and sweat through all his clothes like a boy possessed.
“What’s the matter?” he said.
“The coat. Can’t you take it off to sleep
? You must be so uncomfortable.”
He blinked like it hurt. That I didn’t believe him. That I didn’t believe he needed it.
His eyes ran from me to it like it was a real debate. “All right,” he said, and then he took it off. He wore a collared shirt underneath. I wanted it off. I wanted nothing between us so I could feel like I was holding on to him, like he wasn’t disappearing. I reached for the buttons but he put his hand up. “No.”
“Nik-ki.”
His expression dropped, and I saw how sad he was, how lost. Only I didn’t understand where it came from, or else I didn’t believe it, which amounted to the same thing.
“I’m sorry,” I said, even though I wasn’t. “It’s fine.” Even though it wasn’t. And then I crawled onto my side of the bed. He laid the stupid coat over the blanket.
I breathed him in, but he smelled different. I used to love the way Nikki smelled; I thought about it all the time, how people said that’s where attraction came from—the scent of your true love. But Nikki smelled different—not bad, but like a different person. It was like someone had stolen something from him, only I didn’t know how or what.
“I don’t know what that psychic did to you.”
He stiffened. “What do you mean?”
“It just seems like…” It was hard to say; it sounded silly. “It seems like ever since that day at the canal, you’ve been different.” I didn’t mention that he seemed to be getting worse, his face more haunted, his strides greater—a racing Atlas who propelled the world instead of held it. And these lucid moments, more precious as they narrowed. “It’s like you’re not the same as you were before.”
“I’m not the same.”
“But it’s—Don’t you see? It’s only because you believe it. You’re under your own spell.” I wanted to shake him, to wake him up. “Nikki, whatever it is, whatever it is that you believe happened that day, it isn’t real. You’re making things happen; you’re making things happen because you’ve tricked yourself. It’s like that stupid sign said: it only works if you believe it.”