Digital Magic

by Philippa Ballantine

  “It’s alright, pet,” he gasped against her shoulder, “let it all out!”

  Grief had them all, but even in the melee, Ella noticed that somehow Ronan had managed to slip away. Perhaps he thought himself too much the stranger—or perhaps it was all too much for him.

  “Come on, love,” Ned was pulling her through the crowd to the bar. “You sit yourself down and have a proper drink.” He thrust a large pint of cider into her hand. "We were just remembering Hamish. I’m sure you have something to tell of him.”

  She certainly did, but right now that was not what they wanted to hear—so instead Ella dredged into her writer’s brain for a sweet story that would make them all cry. What was needed was release and not the real memory of the lost person. She knew that better than most.

  Alice had grown up knowing there weren’t any monsters under the bed. Real monsters had two legs, and more often than not, they wore familiar faces. They were called friends because they wore their ugly faces only at night and because no one ever believed what one little girl said. So as soon as she was old enough to escape, she’d fled all those well-known people and the dangers, and come to somewhere that seemed like a sanctuary. Well, that’s what it had seemed like until today when Ella had so flippantly told her that this was all a lie. And she hadn’t even known what she’d done, because by this stage Alice had got very good at hiding.

  There was one person still left in the world that she felt she didn't need to hide from, and right now she didn't want to wear her own mask. But, typically, Alice couldn’t find Penny. The girl’s unreliability could be relied on. She had little concept of comfort or grief, and even Alice, who had looked after her for nearly ten years, was a tenuous connection.

  Just when I could do with her about. Alice sat down on the garden seat with a muffled sob. This was the rear garden, hidden from the prying eyes of those on the road or in the neighboring houses. It was her space, where none of her demons dare venture, and yet it could have had a killer running through it that night.

  Alice’s throat was tight and she wasn’t sure if she was breathing or not. She closed her eyes, tried to get a grip on her panic. Bad idea. Those monstrous faces leered back at her from the depths of her memory. Nothing anyone had done had stopped them coming, or stopped the pain. No one had believed her when she told about how her father’s friend was really a monster—a beast with an appetite for her tears.

  Her fingers were straining against her palms, a habit she’d thought long gone. And now when she looked about the garden with wide despairing eyes, it all seemed changed. The garden was not full of peace, it was full of dangers and corruption just like the rest of the world. Every tree was rotten to the core, every rose was scented with vileness, for everything was already dead.

  This was not a place where she could heal. It was a place she would die. They’d find her here rotting and laugh at her weakness. The despair was a heavy cloak wrapped around her, and though Alice struggled, it was hopeless. With a fatalistic groan, she knew it was a battle she was going to lose.

  That pain was going to swallow her again, and yet as she prepared to sink into it, there was a light that made her raise her head. Through her sweat soaked hair, Alice glanced up, seeing something that managed to touch her curiosity.

  The ferns at the back of the garden were glowing. A faint silvery gleam that seemed to dip and flutter with a breeze that was not in the garden at all.

  For a moment, the panic was forgotten. Alice’s brow furrowed and she blinked rapidly to clear her tears. But it was not her tears that had caused the light, for it was still there. What on earth could that be?

  The monsters had always said, be still, be quiet, don’t move—so it was a victory when Alice got up from the bench and went cautiously down to the bottom of the garden.

  The light was still there, so she wasn't crazy, which was good. Yet, as strange as it was, it didn't make her afraid, which pretty much everything that wasn't habit in her life usually did. And it didn't hurt her eyes. It made her blink, but it also somehow warmed her.

  And then a tiny hand moved aside the fern and Alice was looking into a very smooth face, almost mask-like but for its violet eyes. Behind fluttered a pair of pearl coloured wings.

  Any rational person would have known this was madness, but as Alice looked into those eyes and saw herself in miniature reflected in them, she didn’t think that. For, if monsters could exist, then perhaps other things could as well.

  She’d taken an abrupt step into something, but oddly she didn’t feel worried. As if in a dream, she found herself sitting down next to the silver-lit ferns.

  A flutter of wings, the lightest of touches on her shoulder, and the voice of understanding in her ear. Without hesitation, Alice began to tell on the monsters. The winged creature listened as she laid aside her burden.

  Ned pulled the cork out of the pinot slowly, and for a moment time hung on that moment, until with a half-sigh the bottle gave up its aroma. The Green Man was quiet now, the towels hung over the taps, the front door locked tightly. Instead, it now seemed to whisper of laughter and sorrow.

  Ned shook his head; he was getting quite batty—a combination of the murder and his own private hell. So he didn’t hurry back behind the bar, to where Bev was watching the news and eating her fish and chips off the paper on her lap. Instead, pulling out a scrupulously clean glass he poured a fraction of the pinot and took a second to savor its berry filled aroma. It reminded him of blue sky days when he and Bev had traveled the vineyards of New Zealand, sampling and falling in love with each other and the fruit of the vine.

  He swirled the ruby red liquid and frowned—the pinot had been bought then, packed away with dozens of others, until now it was the last. The rest had been consumed in joy, but this one would not be. Like its homeland, it now stood for endings, and like New Zealand there would be no going back. Once those words were out of his mouth, everything would be forever different.

  Despite all his earlier resolve, Ned dithered, finding an excuse in the wine to linger out in the dimness of the Green Man. Everywhere he looked, there was a memory and another sweet pain, but the murder had made him think—there wasn’t enough time in this world for a person to remain unhappy. Even plain old Ned Aldridge needed and deserved to be happy. Didn’t he?

  Taking a small sip, Ned let the liquid roll to the back of his throat and rest there for a moment. Once upon a time, ensconced in their B & B in Blenheim, Bev had trickled pinot over her body. It had been worth the extra expense of the sheets to drink it off her.

  But Bev wouldn’t do that now, and he probably wouldn’t have known what to do if she had. The bittersweet sting of that memory made him lurch away from the bar, swallowing the wine quickly—as bitter as medicine.

  He went back into the dim corridor and up the steep steps that led to the family part of the Green Man. Bev didn’t bother looking up as he dropped into the couch, but she took notice when he flicked off the vid stream.

  She looked out at him from shadowed eyes, like she already knew the words he had to let loose, but she took the glass of pinot Ned offered her. So she still hadn’t forgotten. Holding the glass with the tips of her lacquered fingers she swirled the liquid round and round. Ned was entranced. He found he could not look away from the dance of the wine, eyes fixed as it described lazy circles in the crystal.

  The smell grew so powerful that it reached him even across the room. Bev’s hair seemed to billow and grow light, as if there were a breeze coming up out of the glass.

  Ned rubbed his eyes with the back of one hand, while the other didn’t give up clutching the bottle of pinot. When he glanced, back Bev was looking straight at him, but there were no lurking shadows now. The violet eyes that looked back reminded him of times now lost.

  The scent of the pinot could almost be seen in the air, like bunches of grapes and raspberries. It reminded them both of sunshine and laughter. Bev’s hand was no longer spinning the glass and yet the contents kept moving, not sl
owing down but speeding up.

  And now the sound of the grape came, like deep bells making Ned’s spine quake. His logical brain was telling him that he must have taken a tumble back there on the stairs, or someone had slipped something into the pinot, or maybe he was mad as a hatter.

  But in any case, he didn’t care. Not while his wife was looking back at him like that, not while she was smiling. He deserved to be happy, but he couldn’t be happy without her.

  “I still love you, Bevvy,” Ned said, something he hadn’t uttered for years.

  Her smile was wide and flashed across the wine glass at him. All their memories were in that smile; the children, the trials and tribulations, even the pain. Together, they made up a whole life.

  Picking up her glass, Bev got up and held out her hand. That smile never left her lips. “Why don’t you come and remind me of that, luv?”

  Ned laughed loudly before following her. After that, the strange music and the unseen wind didn’t seem to matter.

  Tania avoided the Green Man. Everyone would be there talking incessantly about Hamish and jumping at shadows. She knew well enough what lurked in the darkness, and she didn’t feel like sharing that knowledge with her fellow villagers. After the Adjustment, they had never looked at her in quite the same way. Strange, how she was still hurt by that.

  No one was about on the village Green. Even the police had finished their scene examination, tidied up, and left. Tania sat on the crumbling park bench just off the cricket pitch.

  Almost nothing remained to say what had happened only a few hours ago. Only a glimpse of a strip of plastic marked the cordoned off area where Hamish had breathed his last ragged gasp into the world. The poor kid was a mere blip on the statistics for the year—to everyone but herself.

  She could be sure that she looked normal enough from the outside; certainly she’d had enough practice for that. Inside, however, the voices could not be escaped. Here they were different from those at the manor. The ghosts of the common folk; the murdered wives of long ago, the smothered children thrown into the ditches that had once lined the road, and hundreds of other victims of crime and accident. Now they were joined by a new voice.

  Hamish. Tania ducked her head and concentrated out of the corner of her eye. His face had already faded, so that he was only a smudge of light in her peripheral vision. He spoke evenly into her ear, yet so fast that his words barely made any sense. He’d not even seen his killer, but the pain he’d endured had burned his spirit into the air. Tania pulled her chin in against the chill, feeling a few spits of rain threaten to become more.

  What had possessed her to come here, where murder was freshly written and Hamish had not even had the decency yet to fade? His voice was loud enough to be confused with a still breathing person's. Perhaps she’d wanted to try and make use of her madness; perhaps if she were honest, it was the chance to help Rob.

  But the confused Hamish said nothing to reveal who his killer had been. Like all the voices, he only spoke of missed chances and dreams now fallen to ashes.

  A tear worked its way loose from Tania’s clenched eyes. She’d grown up with him after all, and though he’d been five years younger than her and his brother Rob, she’d had a soft spot for him, even if he had ruined her early kissing experiments. She was glad she hadn’t been the one to find him. Out of a sense of duty then, she sat and listened to him.

  So when Bakari plopped into the seat next to her, Tania almost didn’t notice. He sat a fraction too close to her—his way of reminding the lady of the manor that things had not always been cold between them.

  “You’re a brave one,” his honeyed voice was quiet today, quieter in fact than Hamish’s. “The boys aren’t even playing cricket here this coming Sunday.”

  “It’s just a place,” she replied, while the moans of the dead hammered on.

  “I suppose—but with the boys in blue finding nothing, it’s got people a little edgy.”

  She shrugged in her coat, hoping that the librarian would get the hint and melt away. She could feel how tense his body was. Adjustment had taught her better control of herself than that. Bakari could have benefited from knowing how to turn off distress. It only made people suspicious—like she was now.

  “So, have you seen that guy Ronan around?” Bakari really had very little experience in the real world. His voice was heavy with overdone casualness.

  “Who?” What on earth did that have to do with this situation? Unless he suspected the stranger.

  Tania barely restrained a jump when Hamish whispered hard against her cheek. He knows.

  She counted three trips of her heart before Bakari got up suddenly. “Ok… well… catch you later then,” and sauntered off.

  Why hadn’t he heard the pain in her voice? Couldn’t he have asked if there was anything wrong? Had she got so good at hiding, that even he couldn’t see her hurt? The answer was yes, and that was how it had to be.

  It doesn’t have to. Hamish sounded like he was bent over her. There are ways you can be free.

  Tania had heard this before. In those moments before the Adjustment team arrived, when Bakari was long gone and only the lonely shades of her parents remained, she’d heard the same argument. It had been tempting, but then that scrap of her sane self had reminded her that she’d have just become one of the gray voices.

  No. Hamish’s voice was remarkably insistent. You only need the Art.

  Not able to sit still and listen to anymore, Tania got quickly up from the seat and walked away. That was one advantage humanity had over the dead, they were faster to react. She outdistanced Hamish’s ghost long before he tipped her over into madness.

  She walked under the ash and rowan trees, already bursting with new green growth under a cloud dotted sky, scissoring her legs brusquely so that the voices were muffled as she passed them. But it wasn’t as though she had anywhere to really go. She’d already knocked on Ella’s door, but she was most likely in the Green Man.

  Tania circled around the edge of the park past the cricket pitch, beyond sight of the pub, and reached the bridge that crossed over Lamden Stream. It partly froze in winter, but with the breath of spring the burble of water could be heard again. It was a cycle that refreshed most of humanity, but not Tania. It reminded her that she could not tell how many more springs she would see. Staring down morosely into the icy flow, watching it run over smooth rocks, she caught sight of a small pair of white feet dangling into stream.

  Curious despite everything, Tania leant rather dangerously over the handrail until she could see Penny Two Dolls sitting like a content water sprite in the middle of the stream. What sort of person would let the girl get into such predicaments? Tania was scrambling down the side of the bank before she knew it, half outraged and half worried. The voices here told of drownings and suicides.

  Penny’s wide china-blue eyes watched with interest as Tania splashed across through the water towards her, ruining her expensive boots and at every step risking a dunking. The Two Dolls were perched on her knees and she seemed perfectly happy to remain there with them.

  Tania wasn’t giving her the chance. She hauled the surprised girl, who also proved rather heavy, up under one arm and waded, cursing all the while, to the bank.

  Once there, she deposited her burden on her little bare feet in the mud and looked down in horror at her own ruined outfit.

  “Do you have any idea how much this cost?” Tania demanded of the pale Penny.

  A frown creased the tiny brow while she hugged Two Dolls closer.

  Please don’t start crying, Tania thought as she dragged herself out of the water. “You could have been drowned, silly girl.” She could not stop herself being a little snappish.

  Tiny fingers balled into what might be peeved fists, and Penny shook her head stoutly. “Wouldn’t.” The girl hardly ever let a word slip. It was something that Tania could identify with—they had perhaps similar demons. Penny’s parents had been killed in London, in a riot just after the first bout
of the Northern Water Wars. Tania knew how it felt to lose mother and father so young; her own had been killed when she was scarcely older than Penny. Even if no one spoke of those lost ones, it didn’t mean they were forgotten.

  Gulping down the urge to hug her, Tania pulled off her thick wool coat and wrapped it brusquely around the girl. She in turn struggled and frowned just as angrily up at her. Ungrateful little thing! Hauling a wet, shaking, grumbling eight year old up a damp and slippery slope was both undignified and unplanned. Tania’s beautiful leather boots skidded in the wet leaves and dirt. The child might look like a tiny bundle of bones, but she was heavy. Finally dumping her at the top, Tania found herself scrambling to grab hold of bushes as her footwear slid back down the slope. Dress boots were not meant for this sort of punishment.

  Worse still, while Tania was engaged in saving herself, Penny shot her a little bright smile from under her hair and, with a wave, ran off like a march hare. She even took the coat with her. By the time Tania had got herself on a firm footing and recovered from the shock enough to yell furiously, the girl was completely out of sight.

  Tania wanted to throw her bag in the bushes out of frustration, but she settled for whacking some offending branches instead. They snapped back and gave her a good slap in the face. No one was around, dusk was falling, and it was—at least for the moment—safe to cry. So she did.

  The earth smelt good, and the tree, despite her attack on it, felt comforting against her back. She cried, and the sound of her tears and hoarse cries drowned out the dead.

  Tania. Hamish was close again.

  “Go away,” she snarled, flinging the remains of the branches to the ground, “Leave me alone—you’re dead, so shut up!”

  Tania, run, it’s coming. The sweet voice was twisted with horror. Get out! It howled in her ear.

  And she suddenly didn’t care if she was taking advice from the dead, for she could feel it and even see it. A knife-like wind cut through her woolen tunic, making her stumble back in shock. Her rebellious sodden boots slipped once more in the leaf litter and with a howl she slid back down the slope. The ground was not soft and as she crashed through the undergrowth every rock and branch seemed to take its chance to hurt her. The world twisted and spun, and for a moment all she heard was the roar of the dead rising around her.