It looked so unreal in the dim light of the waning moon and the thin beam of her torch. Jan smiled. It certainly looked far less real than its virtual counterpart on Hal’s computer – and she knew that if she reached out to touch it, it would be the virtual reality that she would feel beneath her fingers, not the real one that existed now.
She reached out and touched it. The ring on her finger shone softly in the torchlight. Jan withdrew her hand from the invisible surface and slowly removed her half of Margaret’s ring.
Hal sat up straight and stared hard at his screen. Jan’s icon had vanished, and with it the plan of the Lazar. In a matter of seconds it came back again, then blinked on and off a couple of times before returning to its original display. Hal smiled as he hunched over his keyboard once more and resumed his midnight vigil.
Although it had lost much of its novelty for Jan, the experience was still as incredible as ever. The sense of wonderment that had overwhelmed her the previous day, at the monastery, returned once more to take her breath away. It was amazing. The ancient chapel simply came and went, into and out of existence, as she slipped the ring on and off her finger.
It was as easy – and as unbelievable – as that. No noise. No blinding light. Just the coming and going of a sensation. Without the ring her eyes and sense of touch were in agreement, unanimously confirming that she was in the here and now. But with the ring back on, her fingers told of another place, in another time.
It was as though she existed in two worlds at the same time and yet centuries apart.
Or was she two existences come together in one place? Two people in one body?
The realisation crawled over Jan with chilling clarity. She was not experiencing the past at all: it was Margaret, using her sense of touch to make contact with the world she had inhabited. The ghost had hijacked one of Jan’s sensations. Her sense of touch was no longer hers at all. It was Margaret’s. And the dreams – the nightmares she had had – they were Margaret’s too.
And the desire to follow in the footsteps of those dreams?
The chill hit the pit of Jan’s stomach with such ferocity that it caused her to shudder uncontrollably. It was not she who wanted to exorcise the haunting. It was Margaret. It was Margaret that had made her set out upon this journey simply by making her want to. Jan shuddered again. She was no more that a pawn in some supernatural game of chess.
Jan tried to turn, there and then. But she could not.
Whatever it was that was driving her was driving from the very heart of her.
She took a long, deep breath, cleared her mind and … snatched the ring off her finger.
Hal blinked in surprise, then frowned in confusion. His screen had gone blank. Jan’s icon had vanished again.
Jan held her breath for a moment before letting out a sigh.
Nothing around her had changed. Not to look at, at least. She reached out and touched the wall. Her fingers felt the pitted, weathered surface she could just about see in the weak light of the moon. What about inside her? Had anything changed there?
She could not tell; her thoughts were in too much turmoil.
She turned and took a step toward her Uncle’s house. Then another. Then a third. Then stopped.
No – there was still something there, deep inside, preventing her from walking away; from abandoning her quest. Something that was nagging her to complete her rendezvous at midnight. What was it?
Jan stood in silence, searching every corner of her consciousness. After several seconds of reflection she eventually smiled in recognition. She knew that stubborn desire that was compelling her to turn again. She had known it all her life – and it was definitely her own. It was her insatiable curiosity.
If she went back to her bedroom she would never know what it was she had not seen at the climax of her nightmare. She would never know the cause of this peculiar haunting. And she would never see the “towers rise up through the waves, all ghostly like, at midnight”.
For all she knew, she was the only person ever to have had the opportunity to witness such events. Maybe she was the only person that ever would. It was her duty to proceed.
And in any case, she was in control. This was her century, not Margaret’s, and she would have the final say in everything. It was she who could decide precisely when to take the ring off and when to put it back on again.
And it would not be just yet.
The screen on Hal’s computer shimmered blankly.
What was Jan playing at? She had already experimented with taking the ring on and off, as they had agreed. Why on earth had she taken it off again?
Hal’s hand reached out, instinctively, and clicked a button on his mouse. The screen flickered momentarily, but nothing changed. It was still empty. Hal narrowed his eyes and rehearsed the instructions he had selected on his computer. “Zoom out”. Why hadn’t it worked? He selected the instruction again.
Yes! There was something there – at the top of the screen. Hal leant forward. It was part of a map of old Wickwich. Hal looked more closely. The map was expanding even as he stared at it. Something was moving slowly, in a straight line, down the screen, leaving a detailed web of streets and houses in its wake.
Hal zoomed in upon the object. As he had thought, it was Jan’s icon.
No it wasn’t. It was Margaret’s.
Jan marched determinedly down the lane toward the sea. Her right hand was clenched tightly in a fist around the ring.
A clap of thunder stunned the heavens. Seven seconds earlier a jagged flash had sliced the sky. Jan blinked. But she didn’t take her eyes off the horizon. Even when she strode right past the dark and hollow monastery, she did not turn from staring dead ahead. Even with the sea breeze blowing straight into her face.
At the end of the lane Jan found the gap in the hedge that she had created during her previous excursions. Bending down and covering her eyes to protect them against any unseen twigs, she squeezed through and out on to the brink of the ditch that marked the perimeter of medieval Wickwich.
Now she would have to put her ring on, if she was to cross over to the other side.
Having zoomed in, Hal was now able to make out all the detail in the map. The comparatively empty area near the centre must have been the market square. Margaret had just crossed over it and gone between two houses. These immediately became two rows of two, then two of three and so on as a narrow street took form like some extrusion stretching backward in the train of Margaret’s icon.
If he had got his bearings right, Hal thought, that street was heading west. And if that was the case the West Gate should be somewhere just off the bottom of the screen. He slid his mouse and moved the map up slightly. Yes, there it was. And there was Jan’s icon passing through it.
Jan was surprised to discover how much easier it was for her to find her way through the phantom city at midnight than it had been that afternoon. By torchlight the contradiction between what she saw and what her fingers told her was not so disconcerting. Paradoxically, her problem now lay not in trying to locate the invisible shapes of the past but in avoiding the unseen thorns and nettles of the present.
Eventually she made it through the undergrowth and struggled out on to the windswept strip of land at the edge of the cliff top. The black monolith of the ruined tower rose up immediately before her.
Hal sat transfixed as he watched the icons move inexorably toward one another up and down the screen, each spreading pools of detail like two spotlights on a page. He leant forward and looked more closely. The pools of detail touched, then began to overlap, gradually revealing the nave and transept of a medieval church.
Hal estimated that the icons would meet somewhere near the bottom of the tower.
Jan had nearly reached the edge of the cliff before she saw Margaret hurtling toward her. She stopped abruptly, temporarily taken by surprise at the sight of her friend coming through the air in her direction. And then she felt the urge to turn and run.
This was a different
Margaret, not the one that she had known. In the brightness of the summer sun, that Margaret had appeared to be a living, breathing thing, a creature made of solid flesh and blood. But by moonlight…
…this Margaret looked just like a ghost. Her pale, white skin and yellow hair shone with a luminescent pallor. She was radiating light, not reflecting it.
And she was getting closer, very quickly.
Jan stood rooted to the spot. She could not take her eyes off Margaret’s face. It was a mask of fear, despair and … hatred. Its mouth, at first wide open, as if screaming, suddenly contorted into a thin and twisted smile of vengeful satisfaction.
The fear that had vanished from Margaret’s face now leapt straight into Jan’s heart and froze her blood. As she fought to catch her breath a single thought was roaring in her head. Take off the ring! Take off the ring!
Her left hand moved toward her right – but far too slowly. Margaret’s ghost was bearing down on her at terrifying speed.
Hal saw the icons coincide. There was a flash. The screen went blank, then flickered back immediately. The map of medieval Wickwich was complete.
And then all hell broke loose. Hal’s speakers burst explosively into wild and strident life. Bells clanged and rang and peeled out loud, and through their thunderous clarion a sepulchral voice intoned “Hell-o Jan-net, well-come to Wick-witch; Hell-o Jan-net, well-come to Wick-witch; Hell-o Jan-net…”
Margaret ran straight into Jan and sent her senses reeling. For an instant Jan was overwhelmed. So many sensations, all at once – to see and taste and smell and touch – and each of them so powerful that it felt as though she was experiencing them for the first time in her life. The images of medieval Wickwich, captured by a snapshot flash of lightning and etched upon the eye; the searing pain that shot right through the finger; the salt spray in the nostrils and its tang upon the tongue. And the bruising claps of thunder and the pummelling of bells.
And the voice that knelled repeatedly as it rolled across the sky: “Hell-o Jan-net, well-come to Wick-witch; Hell-o Jan-net, well-come to Wick-witch; Hell-o Jan-net…”
Where was it coming from? Was it calling out above the storm, or from somewhere deep within it? Or was the voice inside the head? And who was Jan-net?
She span right round. There was no one to be seen. She felt surprise, but why? Had she been expecting to see someone standing there? Yes. Where had she gone?
Nowhere.
She was here.
“And just what do you think you’re playing at?” Hal’s father burst into his son’s bedroom and stormed across the floor. “Do you know what time it is?”
“Midnight,” Hal replied distractedly. He was stretched over the top of his computer, frantically scrabbling behind it in a desperate attempt to locate the speaker cables. He found them and yanked them out. The room went silent. He stood and turned and stared. “Exactly midnight.”
The look of panic in Hal’s eyes put his father off his stride.
“Are you all right?” he asked, his irritation gone within an instant. “Is something wrong? Where’s Jan?”
The bells stopped. The thunder faded. The sky was silent, but not everything was still. There were voices in the distance, at the far end of the street. They were getting louder – calling, shouting, baying like a pack of bloodhounds hot upon the scent.
A dreadful fear crashed into Jan and shattered into panic.
“Oh dear God, they’re coming after me!” She let out an involuntary scream. “This can’t be real. Why me? Why me? I haven’t caused the storm. It’s not my fault. I am no witch.”
What was she thinking? Whose thoughts were those? How had all this talk of witches come into her head? And what was it that filled her so with fear? Was it a resurgence of the terror that had almost overwhelmed her in her dreams? No. It was more than that. Much more. This was a terror of that terror. The realisation that she was experiencing a fear that was not her own. The realisation that there were two consciousnesses present in her head. Hers – and someone else’s.
“What do you mean, you couldn’t stop her?” Hal’s father’s irritation had returned and transmuted into anger. “Did you actually try? Or did you put her up to it? You do realise that we’re responsible for her while she’s staying under this roof. Of all the stupid…”
“But it’s OK,” Hal retorted, “I know exactly where she is. I can…” He faltered as he realised just how lame his explanation was going to sound. “I can monitor her position with this icon…”
Hal stopped again and did a double take. It was not Jan’s icon on the screen.
Nor was it Margaret’s.
Jan was standing at the cliff top, on the edge of a precipice.
There was someone else inside her. Someone trying to usurp her from her very own existence. They were commandeering her emotions and requisitioning her senses. But how could they? They were her emotions and her senses, weren’t they? Weren’t they?
She dropped the torch and thrust her hands into her hair, curling her fingers tightly till it hurt. What on earth was happening to her? What the hell was going on? This was worse than any nightmare she had known. Even in the most terrifying dream she’d always known she was the dreamer. But now she didn’t even have the reassurance of that certainty. She could no longer tell who even owned the thoughts and feelings in her head.
She screamed again, this time in anguish. It was echoed by a yell from her pursuers.
“Oh no, they heard me! I’ve betrayed myself. Oh please, God, don’t let them catch me.”
Suddenly, somehow, Jan knew exactly what would happen if she was captured by the mob. They would drag her to the storm-lashed beach and drown her for being a witch – her fate to be decided by the elements, determined by the sea.
Whose thoughts were those? They weren’t hers. They must be Margaret’s. Yes, they were hers, hers!
She struggled hard to hold on to the thoughts that were her own. But which were they? This one must be hers. It was going round and round her head with such insistent urgency.
Take off the ring! Take off the ring!
Her fingers tugged. It wouldn’t move. She brought her hand up to her face and stared. Two rings? She was wearing two rings, hers and Margaret’s, fused into a Celtic cross bound tight around her finger. And with both rings came all of Margaret’s feelings. Now she was at the very heart of Margaret’s fear, and Margaret’s fear was at the very heart of her – the horror of the violent storm that tore at the air and ripped at the fabric of the town, the terror of being pursued.
The townsfolk, her friends and relatives, had accused her of witchcraft and necromancy. She, they said, had brought the storm upon their heads. She had known that it would happen. Why, she had even foretold the time and place. But that wasn’t fair – she had tried to warn them, to pass on the prediction she had been given by the ghost she had seen outside the monastery.
Someone interrupted.
Those aren’t my thoughts. This is my thought. I wasn’t a ghost. I was me – she had been the ghost. I had told her what had happened, I wasn’t making a prediction. She’s not a witch. There was no necromancy, it was just me and … just me and… Just me…
A bolt of lightning flashed in the eyes and off the teeth of the angry crowd of faces at the far end of the street.
“There she is, the witch,” they cried, the hatred in their voices thrown in her face by the fierce and spitting wind.
“I must get away. I must seek sanctuary. But how? Where can I go? Of course, the leper colony, they would not come in after me if I took refuge there.”
A sudden shudder ran through her body.
What was it Hal had said – half her nose and her lips were missing?
Oh my God! That’s what she must have done – escaped the mob by fleeing to the Lazar.
“Yes, that’s what I did.” This thought was in another voice, a cold and vengeful one. “Better to take refuge in a leper colony than be put to death by drowning. Ha! How wrong I was. Better
to have died a quick and painless death than spend the rest of my life shunned, reviled, disfigured.
“Now the townsfolk shall have their witch, their scapegoat to be cast into the sea. Now they can wreak their vengeance, and I shall have mine.”
Margaret turned. Jan turned. But not in time.
“What’s the point of just sitting there tracking her every move? How on earth can that help?” Hal’s father asked, as much in anxious puzzlement as in enquiry.
“I can’t explain. The computer’s controlling things somehow. All I know is that if she’s in trouble or things go wrong, I only have to turn it off and everything disappears – the town, the people, everything.”
“Turn it off, then.”
Hal’s Dad leant forward and pressed the on/off button. Hal’s finger jabbed forward and pressed hard on his father’s.
“No! Don’t!” Hal exclaimed. “That red line – that’s the current coastline, the cliff-edge. If we turn the power off Jan will plummet thirty metres straight on to the beach.”
The mob was a shapeless monster; many-headed; multi-limbed. It spat out its venom and bellowed its hate. It grabbed and it snatched at her limbs and at her clothing as it dragged its prey struggling through the maze of rain-lashed streets.
She could hear the roar outside her. She could feel the scream within. While she kicked and lashed out at the mob all around her, another battle to the death was being fought within. Like some spiritual parasite latched upon Jan’s soul, Margaret was sucking her emotions dry and leeching all her senses.
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