Mary Hades: Beginnings: Books One and Two, plus novellas

by Sarah Dalton

  “Anyone else starting to think this might be a bad idea?” Neil says.

  “Um, I am.” Lemarr lifts a hesitant finger up on the air, like a kid who needs the toilet in primary school.

  Igor lets out a low, not very reassuring, chuckle. I find myself pressing my fingers against Seth’s. He entwines them in his, and warmth rushes through my body. I draw strength from him and use it to keep me walking up the path between gravestones.

  “Yer wanted to know more about ghosts and that’s why I’ve brought yer here. Where else is better, ey?” Igor stretches his arms out wide as we follow him gingerly through the headstones.

  “Have you, um, caught ghosts here before?” I ask. My voice wavers in the night air.

  “Have I? Have I? Course I bleeding have,” he answers.

  We tip-toe around the side of the church while Igor chunters under his breath, complaining about stupid questions.

  “Is this church abandoned?” Neil asks.

  “Yes,” Igor answers. “Has been fer years. The graveyard is full, you see, and the congregation are probably all buried in it.”

  “I sense a presence,” Lacey says.

  “Lacey can sense a ghost,” I relay to the group.

  “Why doesn’t Lacey show herself, seeing as we’re alone?” Neil suggests.

  “Hi, big boy.” Lacey appears right next to Neil. He lets out the girliest of squeals which has us all in stitches.

  “Would you shut up!” Igor yells, turning back to us with eyes that gleam in the dark. “This is serious business.”

  Everyone who is still alive stops mid-step and stares at Igor in terror. Lacey just says, “Oh, shut up yourself, you stupid old tosser.”

  There’s the trace of a smile as Igor turns away and we carry on round the back of the church. Here the moonlight shows us the reeds of grass growing up to our knees by the church wall, the silent angels frozen in marble, the well-trodden paths between the stones, the crumbling mausoleum, the neater patches with rotting flowers at the headstones, the R.I.Ps, dark against the grey slabs, and the moss growing everywhere… and the ghost stood in the centre of the graveyard, dressed in white.

  Lacey and I gasp when we see her. Igor focusses his cloudy eyes on her, but he doesn’t react.

  She is beautiful in her wraith-like form. She is ethereal and floating. Her head is low when she flickers on and off. Her long white dress trails to her feet, old-fashioned in style but still recognisable as a wedding dress. Her hair ripples to her waist in waves of auburn and gold, unreflective in the moonlight. Her arms are held like a cradle, as though she still carries a baby. They are empty.

  Her face is bent low, staring at the invisible infant in her arms, but I can tell she is lovely. Youthful looks have been permanently frozen on a translucent form, forever caught in this spectral goddess.

  “What do you see?” Seth asks.

  “An angel,” I say. The word slips out without much thought.

  The spirit begins to sing a lullaby. Her voice is soft and soothing, but there is a shake of emotion and panic.

  “Please quiet, my child,” she says, rocking her arms fervently.

  “What is she doing?” I ask.

  “She is reliving a memory,” Igor replies. “Ghosts relive memories when they lose their concept of reality.” His gaze turns to Lacey.

  “You can see her?” I ask.

  “When I hold the Athamé, I can.” He lifts the dagger up to show me.

  “Can I hold it?” Neil steps forward towards Igor. “I want to see her.”

  Igor passes him the knife, and Neil gasps. “Whoa, that’s insane.”

  The dagger is passed to everyone in turn so they can all see the ghost before us. Each person lets go with reluctance. They don’t want to stop seeing such beauty.

  “What’s happening now? What’s happening now?” Neil keeps asking whenever he’s not holding the Athamé.

  “Still the same,” I answer. “She’s cradling her child.”

  The woman seems oblivious to our presence. She is so caught up in whatever memory she’s reliving, that she never so much as looks in our direction. But as she continues to sing her haunting lullaby, her voice betrays more and more emotion. She starts to sob through the words, and her arms shake as she rocks the baby back and forth, back and forth.

  “Something’s wrong,” Lacey says. “She’s losing it.”

  The woman stops singing and lets out a low moan, like the rumbling growl of a Doberman.

  “I don’t like the sound of that,” Lacey says.

  “Why won’t you stop crying? Why won’t you stop?” screeches the ghost. She tips her head back and screams in frustration. “Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!”

  My stomach lurches with a combination of fright and disgust as the woman shakes her imaginary baby. She shakes and shakes, her arms out, screaming and wailing like a banshee. And then she stops. She staggers back. She drops the baby to the floor, and puts her hand over her mouth.

  “Did she… kill her child?” Lacey says in a low whisper.

  Neil is holding the Athamé. “Yes, I think she did.”

  The ghost’s head snaps in our direction and I see her face for the first time. She would have been beautiful once, but not anymore. Now her features are twisted in rage. Her mouth is a tight grimace of fury, and it brings to mind the sight of Little Amy on the moor before she wrapped her hands around my throat.

  “That’s not a friendly expression,” Neil says with a tremor in his voice.

  “Athamé,” Igor commands.

  Neil passes it without hesitation.

  “Holy crap,” Lemarr says. “I can see her.”

  “She’s revealing herself,” Lacey says with a faraway voice. “I think she’s angry that we intruded on her private moment.”

  “Um, you think?” Neil replies.

  Her wedding dress floats behind her as she moves towards us. I think back to that moment I called myself the corpse bride in my thoughts. I should never think that again. There is no glamour, no romanticism in being dead. No, it’s hideous and shocking.

  Her hands outstretch towards us, formed into claws ready to rip us to pieces. Seth and I clasp hands at the same time, squeezing tight.

  “Shouldn’t we be running away, about now?” Lemarr suggests.

  Igor steps in front of us wielding the Athamé. With a deft hand, he arcs the knife into patterns. With each sweep, a glowing trail is left in the air, forming symbols. He works fast, creating one symbol and then moving onto the next. It stops the ghost in her tracks and she seems to freeze.

  Igor steps around her, drawing the symbols on each side so that she is locked in an invisible cage of magic. It is unlike anything I have seen before.

  “First you trap the ghost with the circle of protection,” Igor says. “It holds the apparition in place.”

  The woman snarls and claws at the barrier around her, but she is unable to pass through.

  “How does it work?” Seth asks.

  “These are the symbols of protection. They control ghosts. That’s all I know. It’s all I was taught.”

  “Now what?” Lacey asks. I notice she has taken a step back away from Igor and the Athamé, nervous of its powers.

  “Now, it’s very simple,” Igor says. He turns away from the ghost, who is desperately trying to attack him. “You stab her in the heart.”

  Lacey turns very pale, even paler than usual. “In the heart?”

  “Yes, that’s correct. If they refuse to go themselves, because they are sick and twisted like her,” he jabs a thumb to the woman, “then this is the only way to do it.”

  “Where do they go?” Seth asks.

  Igor shrugs. “Do I look dead?”

  Seth turns to Lacey.

  “I don’t know, either,” she replies.

  “Right then, I’d best get on with it.” Igor turns back to our captured spirit. “Time to leave this world, love.” Without any hesitation, he pushes the knife through the circle of protection, throug
h her wedding dress, and into her chest. “You’ll know if you’ve got the heart, because they make a terrible noise and then disappear.”

  She wails like a banshee, her arms flailing around her head. But there is no blood, and that I’m glad of. It looks nothing like killing a person. Instead, she flickers on and off, on and off, over and over. It takes around thirty seconds for her to disappear. A fleeting moment before she does, her face changes back to young and vulnerable, with an almost serene expression on her face. I see the person she was before she died, before she became this twisted creature.

  She whispers, “Elizabeth,” before she dies.

  “Elizabeth?” Lacey asks.

  I shrug.

  “She seemed peaceful at the end,” Seth says.

  “They always do.” Igor inserts the Athamé into its sheath. There’s a trace of sadness in his voice. Or maybe it’s relief, it’s hard to tell.

  “I hope she found peace,” Neil says.

  “She was a child murderer,” Lemarr replies. “Maybe she doesn’t deserve peace.”

  “We don’t know that she intended to kill her baby. The circumstances looked unpleasant,” I say. Seth squeezes my hand a little harder.

  “It doesn’t matter, now. She’s gone. And now you know how to get rid of a ghost,” Igor says.

  “Well, not really. We don’t know how to do those symbol thingy-mi-bobs,” Neil points out. “They looked complex.”

  “Yes, well,” Igor replies, his voice prickling with annoyance. “I was about to get to that.”

  For what feels like hours in the cold night, Igor demonstrates how to perform the ritual, showing us each symbol one at a time. Seth takes a small notepad out of his jeans pocket and sketches each symbol. We don’t see any more ghosts for the night. But we do manage to form a circle of protection. Igor wanted Lacey to be in the middle, but she refused, choosing to stand sullenly by the church. She hid herself so that only I could see her without the Athamé.

  As we walk back to Five Moors I think about Amy. When we perform the ritual on her, she will revert back to the little girl she was before she died. Will she tell us what happened to her before she goes? I like to think that Igor’s ritual is helping the ghosts move on. If we are sending them to some hell dimension, surely they wouldn’t look so serene at the end? But then, maybe everyone looks serene when their story ends, no matter where they end up.

  Chapter Nineteen

  It’s the day of Seth’s twenty-first birthday and I’ve bought him a lame present from the Nettleby gift shop. It’s a tiny bust of Beethoven. When I saw it, I thought of Seth at his desk, with the sketches surrounding him, working in solitude.

  We have only tonight to perform the ritual on Amy. But first we’re going to The Nag’s Head, because there’s a local band playing there and, according to Lemarr, it’s the one night of the week that all the stuck up locals stay at home.

  With Lacey in my room helping me choose outfits, I put on coral lipstick, ring my eyes with kohl—not enough, according to Lace—and don a denim mini-skirt over black tights. There’s not much I can do about the scars on my neck. I apply a little foundation, but too much and I start to look like the orange faced women who work on the make-up counters in Boots.

  “Are you nervous?” Lacey asks.

  “A little,” I admit.

  “She’s ten times as powerful as the ghost in the graveyard.”

  “I know.” I’m dreading tonight. I’ve barely eaten all day, and what I did eat I feel like I’m about to throw up.

  Worst of all, Mum seems to be watching me more carefully. She made me take my medication in front of her this morning and I had to cheek the pills, the way I learned to in Magdelena. One day I will tell her that I don’t need them, that I’m not crazy; but right now, I can’t. I have to focus on saving Seth.

  “I don’t like that Athamé,” Lacey says. She hesitates. “I don’t like what we’re about to do, either, but I know it needs doing.”

  I turn away from the mirror with a mascara brush in my hand. “She kills people.”

  “I know,” she says. “But it’s just… the thought of someone forcing me away from this world… I can’t…” Her eyes are down and her voice is more sombre than I’ve ever heard it. “Promise me you’ll never do that to me.” She looks up at me with large, misty eyes. “I couldn’t face it, being torn away from here. I couldn’t… it’s a violation—”

  “Lace, it’s okay, I would never do that to you.”

  “You promise?”

  My skin tingles and I don’t know why. My stomach squirms as I say the words, and somehow I already feel like I’m making a bad decision. But I don’t know why I feel like that. “I promise I will never perform the ritual on you.”

  We hover-hug each other and then I apply another coat of mascara.

  *

  There’s a chalkboard advertising the band outside the pub, and a fat man with a straggly beard takes a pound from me for entry. Lacey pulls faces behind his head, and jokes about his bald patch. She even pulls on a strand of his beard, and the guy starts in his seat, looking all around him.

  Lemarr waves from the bar. “The band’s upstairs. I got you a vodka and coke.”

  “Thanks,” I say. I hadn’t planned on drinking.

  “We need Dutch courage,” Lemarr explains as he hands me the drink. “Lacey here?”

  I nod.

  “Hi, Lacey,” he says, smiling.

  Lacey pulls on his dreadlocks and the poor guy almost drops his pint.

  “She says hello,” I translate. “Is Seth here, yet?”

  Lemarr answers as we make our way up the stairs to the same room we discussed ghost hunting in with Igor. “Not yet.”

  I finger the strap of my bag, thinking of the tiny gift inside, and wonder if everything is all right. We’d arranged to meet at 7:30 and it’s already 7:45. I was late because Dad decided to lecture me about staying “safe”. I cringe just thinking about it.

  The music thumps, bass reverberating through the handrail of the stairs. There’s the twang of an electric guitar and a few cheers from a small crowd. It sounds like they’ve just come on stage. My pulse responds to the beat of the music, quickening to match the pace, and the vodka loosens my muscles, making me want to dance already. Heat spreads up my neck in nervous anticipation. I’m jangling tonight. I feel like the electric guitar, itching to be strummed.

  When we enter the room, Neil and Igor are stood together near the back. Igor’s mouth is fixed into a tight line while Neil talks. Neil’s arms flail in wild gestures, his drink spilling onto the dirty carpet. His jeans are so baggy they cover his feet entirely, and his hair spikes up at all angles.

  “All right, Mary,” he says. It sounds like a question, but it’s an acknowledgement. I nod in response.

  Lacey steps forward and tugs on Neil’s nose ring.

  Half of Neil’s drink sloshes to the floor and Lacey doubles over in a fit of giggles.

  “Don’t worry, it’s Lace,” I explain, shouting over the music.

  I glance at my watch. 7:50. Seth should be here, by now. What if something has happened to him on the way here? We should have been more careful. We should have stayed with him for the entire day. I should have made the most of our time together, because soon I will be leaving Nettleby for good. Not even stopping Amy will prevent that from happening.

  “The band are good, aren’t they?” Lacey whispers by my ear. She dances to the music, jumping up and down, flickering like a flame in the wind. Every now and then she crackles with excitement, and the electricity catches my arm. Her sparks are contagious. They always have been.

  Before long I’m dancing, with Lacey next to me, letting the music control my body. But I can’t let go, not when I don’t know where he is. Not when I don’t know if he’s safe.

  Lemarr nods his head with the music, sometimes counting the beats with his fingers and jumping high off his feet. Neil shuffles forward and back with his eyes closed. Igor leans against the table w
ith a grimace, but I see him tapping along with his left hand.

  The more time goes on, the more unease grows in my stomach. Lacey watches as I keep glancing at my watch and checking my phone for missed calls. Eventually, I text him; I’d been holding off so as not to look too clingy.

  At about 8:15, a shaken Seth walks into the room. There’s a glazed look in his eyes.

  “What’s wrong?” I ask.

  He shakes his head. “I don’t want to… It was Amy.”

  I push him back towards the door so I can hear him. “Did she hurt you?”

  “No… I… I want to…”

  And then he kisses me urgently, pressing me against the door frame so that someone has to push us out of the way to get past. His stubble rubs against my chin but I don’t care, I lean into him, forcing our bodies to become one, ignoring the dozens of people around us. When we break, his breathing is laboured.

  “Let’s dance,” he says, pulling me into the crowd.

  We’re lost in an instant, away from our friends, anonymous in a sea of people. I face Seth instead of the band. We move as one, with our hips jammed together. The music controls us like a spell. We’re compressed by the crowd and our noses touch. We kiss. Seth’s hands travel over my back, around my waist. I think of that glorious afternoon in his room. I think of now, and how invincible I am, how we’re going to win tonight.

  I’m not consciously aware of song changes. Instead, I let my body move to the music. When a slow song comes on, my hips sway with Seth’s body. When a fast and rocky song comes on, and when the lead singer screams into the microphone, I let the crowd around me throw me into Seth, jumping with them, letting the film of sweat build on my forehead. We kiss and it’s salty and our teeth bump together. We break and our palms find each other. Our eyes never stray.

  We don’t even notice Neil gesturing to us. We don’t notice when the band announce their last song. Neil has to pull Seth away.

  “It’s time,” he shouts. “Igor wants us to go.”