by Nina Dreyer
Sid fell back, clasping the banister.
‘No, John, come away.’ Marion took his arm.
John turned on his heel, pulling Marion with him. ‘Oh,’ he called over his shoulder with a waspish smile, ‘I’ve given Marion your sister’s old room, Sid. Thought you wouldn’t mind.’
They walked away, leaving Sid alone on the cold landing.
Marion followed John deeper into the house. He put his arm around her shoulder, squeezing his fingers into her collar. ‘Don’t worry about a thing,’ he said quietly.
Marion glanced up at him. His face was tense in the low light, but his voice was kind. Sidney couldn’t have told him anything yet. About Germany. The back of her neck prickled. ‘John… there is something I need to… tell you.’
‘Come with me. We have to talk.’ He led her up a flight of stairs, pausing under a narrow window. Moonlight glittered in a delicate pattern of frosty rime on the glass.
John turned to her, bowing his head. ‘My love, something has happened.’
Marion held her breath.
‘Lt. Rothman has been shot. He died early this morning. We just got the call from HQ.’
Marion grimaced. That wasn’t possible. Not Rothman. ‘What…’
‘An ambush. Somewhere around Fitzwilliam Square. Shot in the back and neck. Three bullets lodged in his spine. He choked on his own blood.’
Marion clutched at her throat with cold fingers. ‘Listen to me.’ She laid a hand on his chest. ‘The gunmen are coming for you too, they’ll be coming to kill us both, we have to send away Brock and these soldiers, we have to hide, we-’
‘Marion, hush. Nobody’s going to come here.’ John gazed at her with a steady, earnest look in his dark eyes, and Marion felt like screaming and clawing his shoulders and shaking him. ‘We have to perform a seance,’ John said, taking her arm just above the elbow, ‘we have to bring Rothman-’
‘No.’ Marion pressed her hands together and exhaled slowly through her fingers. ‘John, we cannot do anymore of these murder seances. Think of what happened last time. We’re toying with something malignant, something angry.’
‘Toying? We’re not toying, we’re helping. Please, Marion. Do it for Rothman. He suffered enough in the war, he did not deserve to die like that, at the hands of the murder gangs.’
Marion dropped her head, letting her hair fall over her eyes. She thought of the pale man, and the hair on her arms stood up. She’d thought, for a brief instant, the enemy of my enemy… But Rothman had not been anyone’s enemy. Not really. Just a young man with melancholy eyes who’d struggled not to wince as he walked on his prosthetic leg. Rothman had been kind to her. Courteous. And she hadn’t even bothered to find out his first name. Because of his uniform.
‘Marion, please, we have to hurry. If you won’t do it for poor old Rothman, then at least do it for Rothman’s wife, his daughter. Do it for Hettie. She had to be tranquilised by a doctor when she heard. At least we’ll be able to assure them all that he’s at peace now.’
Marion winced. Another woman plunged into widowhood. It had never occurred to her to wonder if Rothman had a wife and child. Just because of his uniform. She thought of Hettie, smiling widely at him, fluttering her hand over his shoulder, my poor beautiful Rothman… Marion swallowed back a wave of shame, like a sour dream creeping in on the edge of a hangover.
John gently swept her hair back. ‘Please, Marion. Do it for my sake, if nobody else’s. Please, I can’t just shrug this off, those Shinner savages, they’ll tear everything to shreds, and now they’ve murdered Rothman.’
There it was again, that malevolent glint of famine in his eyes. Murderous, sharp as fractured flint.
Marion arched her shoulders. She thought of him slumped by his trench radio, face buried in the crook of his unbroken elbow, struggling to hear one last time the voices of his dead comrades. She thought of the little man in the soldier’s bar, slurring, to the pole, me boys, to the pole at dawn… She thought of Eilis, baring her teeth and snarling, why do you think John won’t ever let anyone do a reading for him? Why do you think that is?
‘Marion, you have to do this with me.’
She looked up, letting her gaze linger over the faint scar on the swell of his lip, the darkening bruise on his cheekbone. For the briefest moment, he looked so wounded, crinkling his brow and searching her face with wide eyes.
She breathed deeply. This might be her last chance.
If she faced John again at the seance table, she could clasp his wrist and hold it, press her thumb into his pulse and unearth all the poisoned shadows that clung to him, and she could shove them away, just like she’d shoved away the shade of Hettie’s dead soldier-lover.
A gust of wind howled round the corners of the house.
‘Please, Marion.’ John stroked the back of her neck, and goose bumps ran down her spine. ‘Let’s just get this done. For Rothman.’
Marion met his gaze. You must never go to a seance with hidden motives. Not ever. But this was different. This would not be a betrayal. She would be freeing him.
‘One last time, John. For Rothman. For all of us.’
Chapter Twenty Seven
Marion followed John into a great hall, knotting her fingers over her chest. The room was large and bare. Sparse furniture lined the walls, as if huddling for warmth. Dusty linen sheets covered some of it. Peat crackled and hissed in a great granite fireplace, but a clammy chill hung over everything. Hail pattered the windows. Nobody had come to draw the great brocade curtains, and condensation trickled down the old panes.
Marion glanced up.
Antlers bristled high above on the walls. Not whole heads, stuffed and mounted with protruding glass eyes. Just antlers, mounted on bits of skull with black cracks running through them. Pointy little things, sawed off some small, underfed creature with matted fur on an autumn morning long ago.
In the middle of the room stood Brock, leaning on his knuckles on a small round table covered with photographs and crackle-thin documents. A few sheets had fallen to the floor. Marion thought briefly of those women typists in Dublin Castle, typing copies for the IRA. She wondered if they were still alive.
‘It’s a bloody disgrace,’ said Brock, ‘gunning down an officer in broad daylight. I want to find out who did this, and I’ll bloody well see to it that the miscreations are drowned in a bathtub.’
‘We’re here now,’ said John, ‘we’ll help.’ He pulled out a cracked leather chair for Marion.
She seated herself, fingers locked tightly under the table.
Brock snorted, scraping out his pipe bowl with a metal hook, scooping the black sludge into a crystal ashtray. ‘These murderers don’t even deserve a good hanging.’ He lit his pipe with a damp box of matches, fumbling and dropping a few.
‘Don’t worry,’ said John, ‘we’ll have them all shot.’ He opened a small wooden crate on the floor and unpacked the Ouija board, carefully wrapped in sackcloth and hay.
Marion glanced at him with a sinking feeling.
‘It’s a bloody slaughter, that’s what’s it is, and it’s not just Rothman, this other chap bought the ticket as well.’ Brock waved pipe smoke from his face. ‘Thomas Fornwood. One of those hush-hush men. You know the ones, John, plainclothes. They hunt the gunmen in the streets. Cairo Gang or whatever they call themselves. Got gunned down last night in front of the Imperial.’
Marion stiffened. The hairs on the nape of her neck bristled.
She thought of the pale man, tapping his pencil stub on the table in that cavernous warehouse.
She had given him Fornwood’s name.
And now she was a murderer. Eilis would lick her sharp little teeth with pleasure if she knew. Hettie would shriek in horror. And John would have her strangled. The thought made her want to scream.
‘Bloody atrocious,’ said Brock, ‘surviving the onslaught of the Hun only to die in some filthy Irish gutter.’
‘Calm yourself,’ said John, adjusting the Ouija board and the ebony tra
veller.
Marion’s chest tightened. She became aware of a loud sound, a ticking.
She glanced at the fireplace. On it stood a clock. It was three hours late. Still ticking, a stiff, metallic sound, but the thin arms didn’t move.
‘Marion.’ John sat down opposite her and reached for her hand. ‘Let’s begin. For Rothman.’ He looked at her steadily.
Marion took his hand, and he guided her fingers to the traveller, laying his hand on hers. His fingers were cold.
They sat in silence for a long moment, gazing at each other.
Marion closed her eyes and tried to steady her breathing. She could do this. She had to. She must. She must be like a surgeon in the dark, now.
‘We ask help to discover a murderer,’ said John. ‘Whoever is here with us this evening, will you let yourselves be known.’
Silence.
A crackling from the smouldering peat. The ticking of the dead clock. Brock’s heaving breath.
Marion pressed her eyes tightly shut, clenching her teeth as she let herself sink back into the darkness, farther and farther away from the faint light. She’d rarely felt nervous at a sitting, but now, she felt like she was reaching both arms naked into bottomless black water roiling with flesh-eating eels waiting to slither around her wrists and drag her under.
‘Is there anyone here with our circle?’ John’s voice, still and calm.
A familiar chill spread through Marion’s arm. A jerk of the traveller, slow, almost languorous.
‘It’s landed on yes,’ said Brock.
‘Will you bring Lt. Alfred Elias Rothman to this circle?’
A jolt of the traveller. Marion tensed. She leaned forward, pressing her feet firmly to the floor to steady herself.
‘Are you unable to bring Alfred Elias Rothman,’ said John.
Marion gasped as an iron clasp twisted her arm from the inside. The traveller began to flick over the board, haltingly at first, then faster, harder. She felt her hand pressed down, like a rock grinding on hard earth.
Brock’s breathing became more rapid, and she felt him moving his weight sideways, rocking on his feet. ‘This is utter drivel, let’s try again from the beginning.’
‘What does it say, Brock?’
Marion heard him rustling with his notebook. ‘It says we can hear him screaming.’
Marion’s heart began pounding too hard.
‘If you can’t get Rothman, then get me someone else,’ she heard Brock say.
‘Who are we looking for,’ asked John.
‘Palfrey. Yes, Gerald Palfrey. I’ve got his personnel file here. A Tan, veteran of the Meuse offensive, born in Nottinghamshire in 1889,’ Brock rustled some papers, ‘gunned down in this district, five miles south of here. At a crossroad. An ambush. Two others wounded. The men downstairs just briefed me. They’re going out later tonight for another raid, we have to get results for them now, this instant, before they fall into another ambush.’
Marion felt her throat constricting.
‘Steady, Marion,’ John whispered. ‘The dead are at rest. It’s all over for them. We’re only asking them for their final memories.’ She heard him take a deep breath. ‘Whoever is here with our circle, will you bring Gerald Palfrey to us?’
A long silence. Marion swallowed dryly. A strange smell rose in her throat. Acrid, metallic, like burnt blood.
‘This nonsense again,’ said Brock, ‘you have to try harder, concentrate! It worked last time, it’ll work this time.’
Marion felt the traveller move, slowly, painfully, like a broken limb twitching.
‘What does it spell,’ asked John.
‘It just says help,’ said Brock, ‘this is gibberish!’
A low, muffled moan, distant and anguished. Marion frowned. It was coming from the waking world. She strained to hear. It was coming from the depths of the house. ‘What was that? John? Who is crying?’
‘Don’t pay any heed to it. It’ll stop soon enough. Keep your eyes closed.’
‘No, someone’s screaming, we must go-’
‘Open your eyes, woman,’ she heard Brock say, and there was a heavy clink of metal, ‘and I’ll bloody well shoot you.’
‘Enough, Brock.’ John raised his voice. ‘I repeat the question, whoever is with us, will you bring Gerald Palfrey to this circle?’
The traveller began to move, slowly, grating across the board. It seemed to go on forever. The bones in Marion’s arm ached.
‘I… This is…’ Brock heaved for breath and cleared his throat. ‘It spells, stop them from fighting, they are still fighting, they are still screaming.’
John was silent for a moment.
‘Look here,’ Brock said, ‘we’ll finish this sitting in the basement, where the prisoners are. We’ll have the prisoners standing right next to you, and then-’
‘I am not,’ Marion gritted her teeth, ‘closing my eyes in the presence of those Black and Tans, you can point your gun at me all you like!’
‘Steady, Brock. We’re getting a stronger contact now,’ said John. Marion heard him draw a deep breath. ‘Who else is here,’ he said. His voice was still calm.
A sheet of cold sweat shivered down Marion’s chest.
Something was coming, drawing nearer in the darkness.
A taste like a coming electrical storm prickled the back of her throat.
The table jerked as if someone had kicked it. Marion gasped as her arm convulsed, then stiffened, and the traveller began to jolt rapidly, churning across the board in painful, staggered shoves.
Something else had control of the board now.
Brock’s voice, a muffled cry. ‘This doesn’t mean anything, it just spells hate, hate, hate and burn, burn, burn over and over again, make it-’
Marion shut her eyes tightly and leaned her head back.
Now was her moment.
Wrenching her hand free, she grasped John’s wrist as hard as she could, and she rolled back her eyes until her sockets burned and hurled her mind backwards into the darkness.
‘Marion, what are you doing,’ John’s voice sounded distant now, muffled, the deeper down she sank, ‘don’t do that, come back…’
She felt the table and the floor itself shake and rattle as if under distant artillery fire. Brock’s voice, a distant, muffled shriek, ‘what the hell is that!’
A stench enveloped her in the darkness, chlorine gas and mud, rust and blood and decomposing corpses, clogging her throat, clogging her nostrils until she felt she couldn’t breathe.
She saw them then.
Writhing in the outer darkness, crawling near, clawing nearer to John.
Raw animal terror blistered through her.
The war dead. A legion. A drowned man in a gas mask, a man with feet like black cauliflowers, a man hanging on barbed wire, all shambling nearer and nearer, blurring and bleeding into each other, their maws gaping for him, their bone-blasted hands clawing for him, to drag him back with them, into the sucking mud and soft, shredded flesh, to cradle him with them in dead darkness.
Marion lunged her left hand into the outer darkness and shoved with all her might, to sever them from John, to force them away into the darkness, her fingers splayed against shredded chests and raw bone stumps and shattered teeth of iron.
Around her, the others, the men shot at the pole, eye sockets empty, howling for John’s blood, his soul, their necks shot through, white rags pinned to dead chests.
One lashed back at her with a barbed wire arm.
She pushed harder against the dead, screaming through gritted teeth with the strain, reaching deep into the darkness, repulsing them will all her might until she felt her fingers would break, snap back and splinter right down to the knuckles.
John’s voice came, distant and garbled, and he tried to wrench his hand from her, but she tightened her grip.
She ground her teeth so hard they might crack and fought back the rising thickness of rust and blood in her throat and strained, rigid, cramping, commanding with her mind�
��s voice, leave him, leave him, but the dead were closing in and her strength began to break-
With a rapid movement, the traveller was flung off the table, landing with a crack against a wall. Marion felt the bones in her arm would shatter. She cried out as the table jolted, then jolted again, and she tore back her arm and opened her eyes just in time to see the heavy crystal ashtray flung at John’s face with such force that his head snapped back.
Brock staggered back, covering his face with his arm, then turned and stormed from the room.
Marion half-fell, half-rolled out of her chair, stumbling to her feet. ‘John!’ She pulled herself up on her elbows and reached for him, gasping for breath, her throat burning.
John remained seated, one hand still resting on the table. Slowly he opened his eyes, raising his fingertips to the deep, bloody gash in his cheek. He lowered his hand, staring at the bloodstain with a stunned frown. He met Marion’s gaze and held it, his black eyes gleaming. Then he inclined his head and licked the blood with the tip of his tongue, as if to test if it was real.
‘You must stop now,’ Marion panted, her voice sour and hoarse, ‘they are coming for you, John, the fallen, the war dead, they are all coming for you.’ She gasped with exhaustion and reached for him.
John shook himself, as if wrestling free from an unwanted embrace. Then he stood up and walked out with slow, uneven steps, leaving the door to the hall yawning behind him.
A cold draft swept into the room, heavy with the smell of frost and peat smoke.
Marion was left alone with the ticking of the dead clock and the crackle of the peat embers. She collapsed on the floor, pressing her forehead against the musty old carpets, every bone and muscle and sinew in her body drained and bruised. By her wrist, the splinters of the ashtray glinted sharply in the light of the hissing fireplace. She’d failed. She’d failed him.
Chapter Twenty Eight
John stumbled down the corridor. His heart was pounding. He shook his head in a hard jerk. The ringing in his ears was back, a shrill whine like the sound of the whistle for going over the top, and a feeling like water pressuring in his inner ear.