Dark Sister

by Graham Joyce

  A few days later De Sang decided to make his move. "Hello, Bella," he said. Maggie was responding more easily to the suggestion with each session. "I've come to talk to you again. Have you gone quiet on me?"

  There was no answer. She blinked and looked away.

  "I'm worried about Maggie."

  As he'd expected, the name produced a look of confusion, a disorientation. He pressed on. "We might have to have her taken away."

  Bella's bottom lip protruded. Her chin tucked into her neck and her eyes filled with water.

  "You wouldn't like that, would you, Bella? You wouldn't wish that on anyone. Not again."

  "They hurt me." Little girl's voice.

  "No one's going to hurt you anymore. And no one's going to hurt Maggie. If you help me. Will you help me?"

  "How?"

  "Don't pretend you don't know, Bella. There's someone I have to talk to. Only, you've got to let her in."

  Bella shook her head violently.

  "If you won't help me, then Maggie will be taken away. And you'll see it. Because you are Maggie, aren't you, Bella?" She was still shaking her head violently. De Sang was afraid of another fit. But he knew he had to force the split. "Shall I call you Maggie, Bella? Or shall I call you Bella? Or shall I call you by your other name?"

  Still she shook her head. De Sang reached into his pocket and pulled out a scrap of paper. The paper had at some time obviously been screwed into a tight ball, but he had folded it neatly. When De Sang had originally left the paper overnight by Maggie's bedside it had been in pristine condition, and blank. He'd also left Amy's toy pen alongside the sheet of paper.

  "Someone was good enough to give me a name," De Sang said. "Look at what's written here. Is that your name? Shall I call you Annis?

  Her head stopped shaking and she flung herself back into the chair, arms out wide, cruciform. She'd blanked out.

  De Sang was sweating profusely. He wiped his face with a handkerchief before proceeding. "Bella. Bella, I know you can hear me. I want you to listen to me, listen to my voice. You know I'm here to help. Bella, I'm going to count to five, and on the count of five I'm going to touch you and you'll become relaxed. One, two, three, four, five."

  He touched her brow and she vented a deep, deep sigh, her eyes remaining closed. "That's good, Bella, that's very good. Now stay with my voice. I'm going to take you even deeper. Deeper. Because I want you to remember. I think it's before your time, Bella, long before your time. Remember before your time. How it was. And when I bring you back it will not be as Bella, and not as Maggie. You will remember."

  "Yes."

  The sudden response took De Sang by surprise. The voice was barely more than a whisper. Her eyes remained closed, but her head shifted slightly on the cushion. Her tongue licked at her lips and she swallowed hard.

  "Annis?"

  She didn't answer; continued to lick her lips and swallow uncomfortably, as if with difficulty. Then, "Yes."

  "Annis. You've led us a dance."

  "Dance?" Still a whisper.

  "Who are you?"

  "I am Annis. I am only a small bird."

  "You've been frightening people. Little Sam."

  She continued swallowing with difficulty.

  "You hurt people, Annis."

  She opened her eyes and looked at him. Some splinter of light in them made him afraid. "They are the ones who hurt. They hurt me." She gasped.

  "Are you thirsty, Annis?"

  She nodded, and he gave her a glass of water. She crooked her fingers round the glass and sipped the water painfully.

  "Who are you, Annis?"

  "Healer. Harm none. The priests. They came for me."

  "Like Bella."

  "Bella is weak." Her eyes closed again. He took the glass from her.

  "Annis? Annis? Listen to me, Annis."

  But she didn't respond. Her breast rose and fell with her heavy breathing, a soft rattle issuing from her throat.

  Then she said, "You are a priest."

  "No," said De Sang. "I'm a healer. Like you."

  "No; you are a priest. New words. New gods."

  "I don't think you can know me, Annis."

  "Yes. I know you. You were there. You were the priest."

  And Annis was gone, and Maggie was awake, shivering, shivering intensely.

  FORTY-THREE

  Ash had been brooding. His visits to Maggie, grudgingly allowed by Alex, had not convinced him she was getting better. On that issue, he and Alex saw eye to eye. He paid a visit to Liz, because he had no one else to talk to. He poured it out to her in a state of such agitation his fingers trembled round his teacup.

  "It's a do," Liz said when he'd finished. She sat under her grandmother clock, the pendulum swinging from side to side, its soft ticking sweeping back the silence. She chewed at her inner cheek and stroked her dog. "Yes, it's a do. You're missing her bad, ain't you?" she said. "Why did you give her up so easy?"

  "It wasn't easy, Liz. But it was her kids. It was destroying her to be apart from them. And deep down she loves Alex, I know she does. And though she didn't see it like that, I was standing in the way."

  "You're too good, Ash. Some people are just too good for their own selves."

  "She's ill. Very ill."

  "What about this one that's seeing her? What do you say to him?"

  "The psychologist? I don't know. She trusts him. But it may not be enough."

  "She trusts him, eh?" Liz looked thoughtful at that.

  "What do you know, Liz?"

  "What'll you give me for it?" Liz laughed. Ash chuckled, but she saw there was no mirth in it. She got up stiffly and took his teacup from him. "I'm still aching from a step out I took." Then she lifted a bottle from her pantry and poured them both a glass of elderberry wine. "I knows," she said, "of this one as is grabbing hold of her and won't let go. I've seen 'er."

  Seen her? What do you mean 'seen her'?"

  "She been hooking on to them children. She were in my pantry one day. I seen her all right."

  "Do you mean the one they're calling Annis?"

  "We don't say no names, do we? You should know that if you know anything. We don't say no names, but yes, that's the one. I been looking out for them children, so I been ... agin her ... as you might say."

  Ash stroked his beard. "Is it—she—like a spirit trying to get possession of Maggie?"

  Liz waved a hand through the air. "Soft. You're soft, Ash. You know nothing. She ain't a spirit as is trying to get in. She's a spirit as is trying to get out. How you ever going to understand anything when you're so soft?"

  "What about the one called Bella?"

  "Same."

  Ash shook his head. "Maggie told me it all started with a bird. A blackbird."

  "Aye, and she told me that story. And she were like you, soft, couldn't understand this, didn't know that. Talk it on for ever, she would. I says to her, no, the bird wasn't trying to get in you, it were trying to get out of you, but she couldn't see it."

  "The familiar?"

  "Whatever you wants to call it. The bird, then this one she's got trapped on her shoulder now, then the other one ..."

  "Annis and Bella."

  "And more, as much power as you've got. All in you. And will come out, if you're a one. All for you to use. But if you're careless and choose the wrong path, why, they'll want to use you, won't they?"

  "But why does Annis attack the children?"

  "Who else is taking Mammy's time and her wherewithal? It's all her vital, draining off to the children. So she don't want that, this one doesn't. She wants 'em out of the way so she can draw more vital for herself. Particularly the lad. He's taking a lot of her. So she goes for the lad. And there's something about that lovely gal she's afeared of."

  "Amy?" Ash's head was swimming.

  "That story with the blackbird. When it all started. Maggie breathed its spirit back to life. Now I never done nor seen that. But I believe it. Because, mark my words, there were more than just Maggie's
power in the air that day."

  "You're losing me, Liz."

  Liz took a swig of elderberry wine and smacked her lips. "That's because you're soft. You want it all laid out in a line for you. And then it's not the thing it is."

  "Go on."

  "No. I'm proper talked out now." She stared down at the rug under her feet.

  After a while, with nothing more said between them, Liz closed her eyes. Ash could tell from her breathing she'd drifted off to sleep. The clock ticked on. Once or twice she smacked her lips in her sleep; at one point she snored, in a sawing kind of way.

  Ash gazed at the floor, and then at Liz's collie lying at her feet. Its ears pricked up and it looked back at him with sympathetic but helpless eyes. He thought he should get up and leave Liz to her snooze; she wasn't going to come up with anything for them. Then a sharp spasm went through him, and Liz opened her eyes.

  Her stick had fallen to the floor. She leaned over and picked it up. "Yes, you'd best be on your way," she said, getting to her feet to see him out. Ash was a little surprised. Normally he had to endure Liz's abuse whenever he wanted to leave.

  "She lost something, Ash. When she was shifting. When she went a-flying. She lost some of herself and her's got to find it again."

  "Where to look?"

  "What did your mammy tell you whenever you lost something? Look where you lost it."

  Liz came as far as the gate with him. "Tell that one," she said, "to ask her about the Singing Chain."

  "The Singing Chain?"

  "That's it. And the Death Lullaby. Ask that."

  "What are they?"

  Liz looked cross with him. She raised her stick. "It's nowt to do wi' you. And you shouldn't even know. Now get off and ask him."

  "Just one more thing, Liz. All this talk of a dark sister. Is Annis the dark sister? Or Bella? Or these spirits she sees when she's flying? Or is it the Hecate she talks about?" Or even you, he thought. "I mean, I'm lost."

  "Is it because you're a man you're so soft?" said Liz. "These are all her dark sister. Coming out in different clothes. But there's only one real dark sister," and she tapped the side of her head, "and she lives in here."

  Ash shook his head and walked to his car. He got in, turned the key in the ignition, and looked at the rearview mirror. Liz stood at her gate gazing after him, her collie at her side. She was pointing her stick at him.

  Ash reported all of this to De Sang at his clinic. He got a frankly sceptical response.

  "So far, all the information we've been working on has been internal to the workings of Maggie's mind. Bella is a character from a journal Maggie knows practically by heart. Annis is a similar story. Alex says she wrote most of the diary herself and is just using bits of information emerging from his archaeological dig at the castle."

  "And what do you think?"

  "What difference does it make? Her behaviour and her health are what counts. But she wants to get well. That's why she gave me Annis' name with Amy's pen. That's an indication of the mind's natural subconscious will to heal itself."

  Ash shook his head. "There's more to it. I know you think she's just weaving a story around herself. But don't you think this spirit of Annis might somehow have a life of its own?"

  De Sang looked hard at him. "I'm a psychologist," he said, "not a fucking mystic.

  But De Sang was running out of ideas. His sessions were hitting the same impassable bedrock. His aim in surfacing the persona of Annis through hypnosis was to achieve integration of Maggie, Bella, Annis all. And he was willing to try anything. He attempted a long session, hoping tiredness might offer some subtle change in the subject's response.

  "Annis," said De Sang. "I want to talk to you again. I want to ask you some questions."

  "Always questions."

  It was after midnight, and De Sang was struggling to keep the weariness and hint of desperation from his voice. He'd been working with Maggie since early afternoon, unable to get beyond or away from Annis.

  "You've told me, Annis, that you mean no harm. But I don't believe you. You frighten Bella. You've terrified Sam. Now you're threatening Maggie's life. Healers don't do this. Why, Annis?"

  "The brank of time."

  "So you've told me. But what does that mean?"

  She sighed deeply and looked at De Sang from under heavy, drooping eyelids. "Then tell me why you want to hurt Sam. Tell me that."

  "Because of his mother's love. It drains us. Makes us weak. Her love makes us all weak. She put balm on his eyes; he saw me, and I was in."

  "In where?"

  "Your world."

  "She put balm on his eyes? Meaning Sam's mother?" No answer. No recognition. "What of Amy? You didn't attack Amy."

  "The girl? She is... is a one. She has the know."

  De Sang prowled the room, parking his bottom in turn on the windowsill, the table, and against the mantelpiece. Finally he dropped to his haunches in front of her before playing his wild card. "Annis, what is the Singing Chain?"

  Her eyes flared open. She looked astonished. De Sang himself couldn't hide his own surprise at her reaction, and when she registered that, she relaxed again. "If you know of that, then you must know what it is."

  "I also know of the Death Lullaby."

  She shook her head complacently. "That you can never know."

  "Then tell me about the Singing Chain."

  "Let me sleep."

  "If you tell me."

  She snorted. "The Chain. It is the passing on of power from a one to another one. That's all. When we are dying, we find a one and give them our power, our hopes. The Singing Chain. My Chain is very long. As long as life itself."

  "But how is the Chain passed on?"

  "By the singing of the Death Lullaby. The most powerful of our many songs of power."

  "Sing it to me."

  Again she snorted with contempt. "No man was ever given this song. It is the property and chain of the wise women. Healers. And besides, to sing the Death Lullaby is to invite death. It is Hecate's song."

  "If you sang it to me, I would die?"

  "Fool. You are not a one. I would die. I. It is for the passing on, to a one. Now I want to sleep. I am weary of this."

  "But tell me, Annis. Why didn't you pass on the Singing Chain? Why didn't you die?"

  "My time was taken from me." A fat tear welled in her eye. "They broke a Chain of two thousand years. My little sisters of two thousand years!" Then she snarled, suddenly nasty again. "Let me sleep, you priest!"

  "But you want to die, Annis! You said you wanted to pass on the Singing Chain! You told me that. Why not give the chain to Maggie! Then you could die and leave her alone, and the Chain would survive. Why not, Annis? Why not?"

  Her eyes closed. "Here," she beckoned feebly. "Closer." She was whispering. De Sang put his ear to her mouth. "Closer. I will spit out the brank. Come closer."

  He was ready for her to tell him. She grasped his lapel. Without warning she sat upright, launching an agonizing high-pitched scream into the inner passage of his ear. De Sang shrank back in pain, but her grasp was firm. The scream became louder. Her mouth was distended to ugly, shocking dimension. The membrane-splitting shriek paralyzed him with a pain like hot needles drawn through the most tender, fleshy parts of his inner ear. The scream burned. It was a scream of hurt and fear and agony and hatred, an occult screech calling across the centuries. The scream set up an excruciating, dangerous vibration on the sensitive tympanic membrane. He thought his eardrum must burst.

  Alex rushed into the room and the scream stopped. De Sang flung himself away, falling to his knees against the wall. He put his hand to his ear, and there was blood on his fingers. He looked at her, sitting on the chair, and she was grinning at him.

  Grinning at both of them, with evil satisfaction.

  FORTY-FOUR

  "I have to fly," said Maggie.

  "What?" hissed Ash. "Are you mad? Don't you think that would just be enough to tip you over the edge?"

  Ash had a ki
nd of contract with Alex to visit Maggie one afternoon a week while Alex was at work.

  "You told me yourself what Liz said. If you've lost something, you have to go back and look for it where you lost it."

  "It's madness!"

  "De Sang can't help me any further. I need you to fly with me, Ash."

  "But how is flying going to help you?" Ash protested. "You lost yourself in the shifting, not in the flying."

  "Flying is to knowledge as shifting is to power. Knowledge and power. That's the difference between the two. You have to trust me over this, Ash. I have to see, to know. There are some things I need to find out. That's my only way back."

  "I don't see the logic."

  "Now you're beginning to sound like Alex."

  "And anyway, Alex would never stand for it. He wouldn't allow it for a second."

  Maggie clouded over. "Alex will have to accept it. That's exactly what this whole thing was about in the first place."

  Ash recognized the determination in her eyes. He'd seen that look before. How Maggie had changed over the time he'd known her. And yes, it was true, that was exactly what this whole thing was about in the beginning. He could see how she would tell Alex, and how Alex wouldn't be able to stop her.

  "Remember the time we flew together, Ash? It was wonderful. Our love protected us. You can be there for me, protect me again. I gave you something that day, Ash. Something no one else could have given you. You owe me."