by Natasja Rose
Lizzy was enough of a romantic to believe in soul-mates and true love, but it wasn't as though she would suddenly give up her life to stay here. Not with such things to consider as citizenship, her job, and leaving her family and friends behind, especially for a relationship that might not even last.
There was no point in trying to go back to sleep just yet, so Lizzy fished a book out of her bag and quietly tip-toed downstairs, careful not to wake anyone. Tina hadn't complained, and insisted that it was nothing to worry about, but she hadn't been feeling well during the tour, and some uninterrupted sleep would do Lizzy's friend a world of good.
The fires downstairs would be banked, but there were one or two electric reading lights scattered in a sitting room, with knitted or crocheted throws over every chair, where she could read until she fell asleep again. The Innkeeper wouldn't mind if they found her lying on the couch, as long as her slippers were off the edge.
Lizzy had barely settled under a throw, wondering where to find a book to teach her how to make one of her own, and opened her book when the door creaked open, to reveal James, in a set of slightly muddy flannel pyjama's, looking only a little more awake than she felt.
Spotting her, James looked rueful as he carefully placed another log on the fire and replaced the grate, tugging on a calf-length, fleece-lined overcoat and buttoning it all the way down before removing his mud-splattered pyjama pants and hanging them up to dry, retrieving another throw out of a hallway closet.
Looking away as he changed in the limited space on the other side of the open door, Lizzy curled her legs further underneath her body when he emerged, silently offering the other half of the couch.
James accepted it gratefully, answering the question that she hadn't asked but really wanted to know. "Would you believe that I dreamed I was someone from the Georgian Era, riding to meet someone at an Inn, and I had just reached the Inn yard when I woke up, and found myself outside, in the weirdest case of sleepwalking ever? The door wasn't even unlocked, and I had to find the spare key before I could get back inside!"
It would have sounded a bit strange to anyone who hadn't been having the same kind of dreams for the last several nights, but Lizzy was in no position to criticise. "If it's anything like the dreams I've been having lately, then yes. They've been more like flashbacks while sleeping, really, like I was an Innkeeper's daughter centuries ago."
If anything, James looked even more uncomfortable. "That's… scarily similar to what I've been dreaming since the night before your group showed up, only I was a Highwayman. Your name as the Innkeeper's daughter wasn't Bess, by any chance?"
Lizzy almost felt her face turn pale. "It was; Bess Dawson. Please tell me the Highwayman's name wasn't John."
James shook his head. "Can't do that, I'm afraid, and Dawson family have owned this Inn since it was built in the early seventeen hundreds. This is getting creepy."
Lizzy could only nod in agreement and move closer, shivering from more than cold.
Confident that there were no ghosts likely to force her to listen to their autobiographic monologues, Tina had finally relaxed the stranglehold on her psychic sub-conscious.
She still needed to make a second attempt at talking to Lizzy, but for the first time since the tour began, she could relax as she had closed her eyes and listened to the latest story from the Innkeeper.
It was raining again, though more of a steady drizzle, so most of the tour group was there, relaxing after lunch. Ben, Will and James had joined them after finishing the washing up, though James still seemed a bit chilly toward his friends.
The ghost story was a tale that sounded like something out of the Gothic Romances that Lizzy pretended she didn't read, filled with secret romance, betrayal, midnight rendezvous and restless spirits. Something tingled on the edge of her senses, and she let her eyes drift open, reluctant to lose the relaxed atmosphere.
Tina instantly lost every trace of calm anyway as she took a closer look around, her eyes snapping open in horrified awareness.
Connected by a soft eldritch glow, Lizzy and James were instinctively leaning toward each other in a pose of relaxed familiarity. Worse, their figures were overcast by the ghostly outline of two people, an outline that grew stronger by the second.
The loud yelp as Tina jerked and clutched her head went largely unremarked by most of the tour group, who had been reassured multiple times that it was nothing life-threatening, but the locals stared at her in concern. Tina attempted a smile. "It's fine, just a thing. Happens all the time. It's fine, Lizzy, but if I could get some help upstairs…"
Lizzy's reassuring smile was a lot more effective at soothing people's concern, but the fact that she didn't offer to help Tina upstairs only confirmed the Psychic's worst fear. Instead, Tina caught Will and Ben's eyes, the worry and seriousness in her face grabbing their attention. Will stood up, "I'll give you a hand upstairs. Won't be a minute, Mrs Dawson."
The last was addressed to the Innkeeper's wife as he wrapped an arm around Tina's waist. Ben took the other side, and they headed up the stairs.
Their reassurance might have relaxed and reassured most of the Tour Group, though the Innkeepers looked a little concerned, but they did nothing to soothe Tina, reeling from the sudden discovery that she had been so determined not to notice.
A determination that could now spell disaster.
Tina tried not to freak out as they climbed the stairs, but Ben was more perceptive than he had first seemed. "OK, I'm studying medicine and psychology, and what just happened matches no symptoms of any illness I've studied. Maybe the more severe cases of PTSD, since you jerked like you saw something terrifying, but there was nothing that wouldn't have already set you off several times over, if that was the case.
Tina cringed. There was really no way to tell people about her abilities without sounding crazy, but she needed help. "It's hard to explain and harder to believe, but I'm slightly psychic."
Ben looked incredibly awkward, as though he didn't believe her, but didn't want to call her crazy or a liar to her face. Will, on the other hand, looked thoughtful. "OK, I know this is going to sound stupid, but that fits with something Mr D. told me yesterday."
Ben looked as close to melodramatic despair as Tina had ever seen a male in their early twenties manage, but Will cut him off. "No, mate, hear me out. I was asking the Innkeepers yesterday if James had ever acted so head-over-heels before we knew him. Mr Dawson he said that he hadn't, but it mirrored something that had happened every thirty years, to the day, since 1805. Two strangers meet in the Inn, fall in love within days, and there's some tragic accident, always involving shooting, that ends with one of them dying and the other following in less than twenty-four hours. What did you see?"
This just got worse and worse! Tina tried to keep her voice steady, "Lizzy and James, but overlaid with two ghostly silhouettes, like they were being possessed. I've been keeping my psychic vision turned off these past few days, or I would have noticed it sooner."
Ben was still reluctant, but at least he hadn't run off to call the nearest loony bin. "OK, I'll suspend disbelief, because I did a project on the 'ghost sightings' in this village for extra credit last year, and read the reports of those incidents. Once or twice is co-incidence. Seven times at such regular intervals is a pattern."
Will frowned. "Mr D. said that he and Mrs D. were visiting their daughter, who had just given birth to James's older sister, last time it happened. That one was with some wannabe cowboy gun maniac from the colonies, and a local girl that had been complaining about wanting to get out of this village since she hit puberty. Most people brushed it off as an accident, but it was still reported and recorded."
Tina glanced at the clock in the hallway outside her room. "How much longer do you have before someone comes to see what's taking you so long? We need to work out a plan, so maybe meet after dinner?"
Dual yelps suggested that they had maybe thirty seconds before Mrs Dawson came to check if anything inappropriate was going
on. "After dinner will be great. Say, 9:30?"
Tina barely had time to nod before they were scrambling back down the stairs, leaving Tina to enter her room, hoping that lying down for a few minutes would help her focus.
Chapter Six
The shock of seeing Lizzy at least partially possessed, coupled with the larger shock of suddenly dropping the psychic barrier all at once, and the theory that she and Will had come up with, was enough to knock Tina out entirely as soon as she hit the bed.
Waking up much later than usual, Tina looked around and spotted Lizzy on a chair next to the bed, reading a book and looking utterly scandalized. A look at the title sorted out why. It might be one of Lizzy's favourite books, but Supernatural Fantasy hadn't really caught on in the Georgian period, nor had heroines – much less high-born heroines – who knew three kinds of martial arts, saved the day in adventures and had no intention of marriage but didn't let that stop them from the occasional bit of fun between the sheets.
Looking at her friend and confirming that spiritual possession was not just a bad dream or hallucination, Tina closed her eyes again. With an intensity that she hadn't felt since the lower levels of the Tower of London, she sincerely wished that they had never come on this trip.
Deciding that there was no use simply hoping that the whole mess wasn't going to go away if she pretended that it wasn't there – an attitude that had got them into this situation in the first place – Tina forced back the guilty feeling that if she had been paying attention, she would have found some way to get out of this place before Lizzy fell prey to the ghosts. Whether it was true or not, dwelling on it wouldn't fix the problem.
The psychic glow around her best friend was strong, strong enough to indicate that Bess was enjoying some time in control of Lizzy's body, so now was perhaps the only chance she would have to get some answers.
Tina made her voice as cold and confrontational as she could. "Normally, I'd demand that you hand back my friend right this very second, but I want answers first. Presuming that you are the Innkeeper's Daughter, I want to know what it will take to get you to leave Lizzy alone, and how long you've been possessing her."
The answer was a blinding smile that Tina had never seen on Lizzy's face in the years they had known each other. "My name is Bess Dawson, and my spirit resonated with that of your friend the night you both arrived. What will bring me peace and allow me to go on to the afterlife is up to you to find. But I will tell you this much: to bring about the ending that should have been, you need to start at the beginning."
The Psychic glow faded, the awake Bess giving way to a napping Lizzy, and concern for her friend, who hadn't been sleeping well (exactly why was now obvious), was the only thing that stopped Tina from letting out a scream of frustration.
Tina was a straightforward kind of girl, who had little use for cryptic remarks, and even less skill at translating them. She had always left that nonsense up to Lizzy, who probably would have worked it out easily, and Tina wished more than ever that she could talk to her about this. But right now, Bess had a strong enough hold on Lizzy that it was likely to be she who answered, every time the topic of ghosts and spirits came up, and all that Tina had been, or was likely to be, able to get out of her was to start at the beginning.
Start at the beginning. Right.
For Tina herself, that had been when she caught the flash of John's death. For James and Lizzy, it had been when they started having dreams of being someone else and the life they had shared, the night that Tina and Lizzy had arrived.
What was it that the Innkeepers had said? There were three theories of how the soldiers had found out about Bess and John the Highwayman: by pure chance, by the Innkeeper's Daughter's betrayal, or by a jealous stable boy.
From the way Bess and John were acting, even though their near-strangers hosts, the second theory was right out, and a Highwayman so careless as to leave a rumour detailing the exact time and place of his meetings would not have lasted so long as John reportedly had.
That left the stable boy, and with everyone who worked at the Inn eating dinner before the kitchen opened for the guests, Tina had a small window of opportunity. It would be good to have some information before she and her accomplices started to make a plan.
Walking out to the empty stables and checking that no-one else was around, she folded her arms in her best impression of 'Angry Woman: Do Not Irritate'. "Right, I know that there is someone hanging around in here, and if I don't get some answers now, I'm leaving and taking Lizzy with me, and I don't care how far we have to go before the ghost possessing her stays behind!"
The ghost of a young man in what was probably Georgian Era clothing appeared with commendable speed. Most spirits tended to fade into view, but this one had ditched the dramatics. "Alright, alright, calm down!"
Tina glared at him with a fury that bordered on murderous. "Don't tell me to calm down! That's my best friend in there, and the whole mess is at least partly because I wasn't paying attention! Now start talking; what role do you play, and how do I fix this?"
The youth squirmed, looking even guiltier that Tina felt. "I was the catalyst. I began the events that led to the Landlord's daughter killing herself to warn her Highwayman love, and his death as he hunted down those that he thought responsible. It's a long story."
Tina's eyes narrowed. "Boil it down. Why are you here as a ghost that can interact with people, but all of the others are just spirits, and have to work through dreams or possess a host? The Landlord's daughter killed herself with a musket, and violent deaths are the most common way of leaving a ghost behind, so I'd have expected her to be the one floating around. The Highwayman died miles away, I felt and saw it, so why is he possessing someone here?"
The ghost sighed. "I'm Tim, originally the 'ostler at this Inn. Bess died violently and before her time, but she died with love in her heart, to save another, and at peace with her decision. The Highwayman, John, killed the captain who commanded the troops at the Inn before the rest brought him down. I remain because of the guilt of knowing that I was responsible for their deaths… "
He trailed off dramatically, and Tina intensified her glare, knowing that there was more to it than simple guilt. Tim winced. "…and the misery of the sheer number of people who offered to help me with a rope necklace. I appear to you so easily because just as my impulsiveness led to their deaths, so your inaction has placed the life of your friend in jeopardy."
"HOLY MOTHER OF SMEG!"
Tina and Tim both jumped at Ben's loud yelp as he entered the stables and saw Tina facing off against a ghost. The youth was about the same shade as un-dyed linen, and looked ready to fall over. Tina took a few steps to the side, gripping Ben's arm to steady him, and tried to focus on the 'ostler.
She could feel the situation upgrading from 'Killer Headache' to 'Horrible Migraine', complete with her vision dimming and feeling ready to black out. "But you said that they died at peace, so they shouldn't be here at all! Bess warned the Highwayman, he avenged her death, what is left for them to finish?"
Tim somehow managed to look even more wretched than before, his face the picture of suffering that most arts students only wished they could achieve. Tina was actually impressed. "The Highwayman swore that Hell itself would not keep him from her, and meant it with all of his soul. That last ride, if not for my actions, would have been the last. He would have finally saved enough to support a wife and begin a family, and the Innkeeper would have given his permission in a heartbeat."
He sighed again with the misery of centuries. "To my mind, giving up the Highwayman was my last chance to play the hero and claim Bess for my own. Instead I became the villain, and destroyed their longest-held dream, a dream so dear to their hearts that it holds them here still."
Tina barely resisted the urge to scream. Why was it always her? Every other ghost story in the world had some relatively simple solution!
But noooooo!
If what Lizzy and James – or rather, Bess and John taking o
ver and speaking through them – had told her was correct, she had to re-unite two spirits that had died miles away from each other, and somehow give them the Happily Ever After that they had been waiting for.
Anger turned into fear and grief. If she failed, there was every possibility that her best friend would die as Bess had!
Tina swallowed back the threatening tears that stung her eyes, forcing herself to try and think things through calmly and objectively.
One of the bigger problems, to Tina's mind, was that Lizzy was being possessed by a woman madly in love. Madly in love, and in a situation where people were unlikely to remark too much on the number of months between her first child and her marriage to the man who was, in turn, possessing a local boy who Lizzy had known for literally only a few days.
Anger returned in a hurry. Bess might like the idea, but the only thing in common on that point was both Bess and her host were not enthusiasts of casual sex. Lizzy and James barely even knew each other, and Lizzy had frequently expressed her opinion about one night stands. Even if it was a ghost controlling things, it would practically be rape, like a kind of Supernatural roofie, and Tina wouldn't do that to her friend if there was even the slightest chance of some other way.
Lizzy's wandering way of thinking might have driven Tina crazy on occasion, but right now, Tina would have given nearly anything to be able to ask her advice and see if Lizzy could come up with an alternate solution.
As it turned out, she didn't have to, since Lizzy came to her first, with a story that they both knew would have sounded fantastical to anyone else, but only sent Tina into a cursing fury before Lizzy huffed off, misunderstanding her anger and assuming that Tina didn't believe her. Tina chased after her friend, but Lizzy had locked the door and was either asleep, or pretending to be.