The Dark Water

by Helen Moorhouse

  Martha frowned in annoyance. “Gabriel, the floor!” she exclaimed, momentarily distracted.

  “Screw the floor!” shouted Gabriel in response. “What on earth is Mr Hot-But-Sneaky doing in town?”

  Martha managed to prise the cup of tea from Gabriel’s grip and took a sip. “That’s the stupidest name you’ve ever made up, Gabriel,” she observed flatly, avoiding answering the question, reluctant now to continue the conversation and regretting starting it, regretting also having ever told Gabriel about her disastrous marriage over Bellinis once.

  Gabriel was having none of it, however. “Martha!” he shouted, annoyed.

  “Okay, okay,” she said, and placed the cup on the worktop behind her before turning back and telling Gabriel everything – about the phone calls, the delivery of the thistles, the encounter in the alley and finally their meeting at the hotel where he had announced he wanted access to Ruby. Gabriel listened in amazement, taking occasional sips of tea.

  “I haven’t managed to talk to Will about it yet,” finished Martha. “And while I’m at it he’s another one of my concerns. Have you noticed he’s a bit . . . well . . .”

  “Bloody livid all the time?” finished Gabriel.

  Martha couldn’t help but laugh joylessly. “Oh dear,” she said. “You’ve noticed. And the irony is that he’s actually been in brilliant form – comparatively speaking – since you and he started talking again and he got all excited about tonight.”

  Gabriel blew air out between his lips. “Pfff! Comparative to what? A charging rhino with haemorrhoids? A peeved honey badger?”

  “A what?” asked Martha. Why could Gabriel never take anything seriously?

  “Oh, saw it on QI,” said Gabriel. “Little thing. Bites your nuts off apparently.” He suddenly re-focused. “But very angry. Like Will.”

  “Well, I can barely hold a conversation about what to have for dinner without him flying off the handle and stomping off these days,” she observed. “How the hell am I going to tell him my ex is back in town, looking for access to Ruby? You know how he feels about her.”

  “I don’t envy you,” Gabriel replied matter of factly. “In fact, Will’s humour is the reason why I’ve asked you along tonight – to be a sort of buffer in case he gets cross with me again. I don’t think he’s fully forgiven me for my terrible betrayal.”

  “Oh thanks very much,” said Martha, sarcastically. “I’ve a feeling when I finally get around to telling him about Dan then I’ll be the one needing a buffer. What time is it, by the way?”

  Gabriel glanced at his watch. “Oh shit, time you were heading off. Angeline’s expecting you at five and it’s half past four now – by the time you get the car and if there’s traffic –”

  “I know, I know,” said Martha. “I’ll head off now to get her. You won’t mention any of what I’ve said to Will, will you?” she asked, pleadingly. “Only I need to find the right time and get him in the right mood.”

  “Bloody right you do, lady,” retorted Gabriel. “And the sooner the better. The fact that you’ve kept your powder dry for so long makes it seem like you’re up to something. Now I know you’re not, and you know you’re not, but Will doesn’t and – as you so rightly pointed out – we all know how he feels about Ruby. And Desperate Dan for that matter.”

  “I know you’re right,” Martha nodded.

  “‘There may be trouble ahead!’” Gabriel sang, wagging a finger at Martha, only half in jest.

  She nodded and put her mug into the sink. “Okay,” she said, determinedly. “Let me just close the windows and then I’ll go get Angeline and we’ll get tonight over with and then I’ll do it. He’ll know really soon, and that’s final.”

  Gabriel nodded. “Sounds like a plan,” he said. “Now, I’m going to run down to the shop and get an actual packet of biscuits for tonight. Can’t contact the dead without Jaffa Cakes. Are you okay to let yourself out of here?”

  Martha shuddered. In the last few moments she had managed to push the thought of contacting the dead out of her mind – replacing her concern about the investigation with her concern about her life in general. She nodded. “Go ahead,” she said. “I’ll be fine.”

  Gabriel was already halfway out the kitchen door and she heard the jingle of his keys and the slam of the heavy front door of the flat a moment later, leaving the apartment in silence. Martha sighed and leaned over the worktop to close the kitchen window. The sun was still shining but the afternoon had begun to turn cold.

  She worked her way through the apartment, closing all the windows as she went, silence gradually filling the space as she shut out the noises from the street below. The living room was her last port of call. Martha wandered gingerly into the room. Something about it always made her feel uncomfortable, and her eyes were immediately drawn, as they always were, to the corner of the ceiling just to the left of the chimney breast. She couldn’t understand why her attention was always focused there, but something about it made her uneasy, made her afraid almost not to look at it, just in case if she looked away something might suddenly be there when she looked back.

  Martha closed her eyes and took a deep breath, telling herself not to be so stupid. She squared her shoulders and entered the room boldly, taking big strides to the first window and closing the sash window behind it. She then headed for the other window and found herself glancing nervously at everything on the desk as she passed it. There was an open notebook, but thankfully no sign of the message in ghostly handwriting that Gabriel had shown her before. She was comforted that it wasn’t there – she’d thought about it more than once since leaving the flat the last time. The inhuman hand urging the reader to ‘do it’, over and over again. She shuddered, and turned to plump a couple of the cushions on the couch as if to physically shake the thought from her mind. Again her eye was drawn to the ceiling to the left of the fireplace and she had to drag her gaze away, skimming the photograph of Laurence with his brick and his medal on the mantel on the way down.

  All of a sudden the room felt very cold and Martha turned and scurried over to the second window, surprised to see that the blind was down. As she took the final step toward the window, she gasped in shock as a sudden gust of wind blew through the window and back again, sucking the blind against the window frame and causing it to rattle loudly. Martha screamed in fright and ran from the room and down the hallway, leaving the window wide open. She grabbed her handbag from the hall table and opened the catch on the door with trembling hands. It couldn’t have been, she reasoned to herself. It was just your imagination – you’re just nervous about tonight, she scolded herself as she ran down the stairway that wound down through the Georgian building.

  She knew that the noise and sudden rush of wind had been enough to give her a substantial fright, but what had really scared her, had made her blood run cold and her whole body start with shock was what she had seen in the blind. What had made Martha run from the flat was the fact that when the blind was sucked back out by the window she was sure that, for a split second, as if watermarked into the blind’s fabric itself, she had seen a face. A face with an open mouth, looking like a person trying to speak or shout or scream through the material of the blind. Martha reached the front door of the building and slammed it behind her, not pausing for a second as she rushed down George Street to get to her car, to get away. She felt sure, as she did so, that somehow she had just seen the face of Gabriel’s intruder. The face of the visitor itself.

  CHAPTER 18

  As she drove toward Leith, Martha tried to imagine what the person she was being sent to pick up was actually like. It was helping her to focus her attention away from what she had just seen. What you thought you saw, she reasoned with herself, her heart still pounding slightly even as she drove further and further away from the flat to collect Gabriel’s guest for the evening. Another medium. Brought in to communicate with Gabriel’s ghost as he could not.

  Gabriel said that he knew Angeline Broadhead from one of the spiritua
list churches he attended occasionally. As she drove, Martha composed a mental picture of the medium as tall and witchlike – long hair, unkempt, possibly dyed red or purple, floaty clothes, lots of bangles and rings. It made Martha even more apprehensive about the night ahead – if this medium was into things like candles and invocations it would just add a whole unnecessary element to the evening and make it even more frightening – for Martha, that is. The others would probably love it, she reckoned.

  Will had been sceptical about using another sensitive at first but on Gabriel’s insistence he consented to have Angeline there, if only to perhaps spark something in Gabriel himself. Will was determined to remain sceptical of anything that Angeline might say and trust instead in his equipment. Martha glanced at the time on her car clock. Will should be arriving at Gabriel’s flat around about now to set up for the evening – to wire the apartment with cameras and recording equipment, check normal levels of heat and sound so that he could detect any anomalies later. He was also conducting initial investigations to check levels of infrasound and electromagnetic frequencies. If they were found to be high, he’d explained once, it wouldn’t be the first time that someone’s scary experiences could be put down to being caused by the electrics. As Martha drove, she reasoned that it was actually most likely to be old wiring in the flat that made her feel spooked all the time, and her so-called vision at the window was just a by-product of a nervous imagination and stress. She started to feel slightly better as she turned into Elm Place, the pretty cul de sac where Angeline lived.

  They drove in silence on the return trip, Angeline staring fixedly out of the front window. She reminded Martha of some kind of tenacious terrier, her attention fixed on a single point. She looked nothing like she had imagined her. She wore a headscarf for starters, and a tweed skirt and flat shoes, topped off with a green anorak. At first sight, in fact, Martha was struck by how much like the Queen she looked. Off for a spot of shooting at Balmoral, maybe. Followed by tea and shortcake. And some chatting with the dead.

  Giving her the odd sideways glance, Martha made her way back through the rush-hour traffic into the city centre. She parked as close to Gabriel’s flat as she could and killed the engine.

  “Well,” she said nervously, not knowing quite how to break the silence, “this is us, here at last.”

  She was rewarded with a warm, if slightly distracted, smile and a quiet “Thank you, dear” but that was as far as the communication went.

  Gabriel let them in with a flourish of his arm and a hearty hello. Martha followed Angeline, who just padded silently straight past Gabriel and down the corridor, peering left and right into the rooms along the way as she went. Martha fell back and let her get ahead before turning to Gabriel.

  “Where did you find her?” she hissed.

  Gabriel glanced down the hall after Angeline and put a finger to his lips. “She’s dynamite, isn’t she?” he said admiringly. “A wee pocket-rocket – small medium at large!” Delighted with his own joke he followed Angeline down the hallway, leaving Martha to follow, bemused and slightly nervous.

  As she entered the living room she brushed her face and made a ‘pfff’ sound as she walked straight into a cobweb. She plucked frantically at her scrunched-up eyes and nose in an attempt to remove something that she couldn’t see. Or feel with her fingertips for that matter.

  On opening her eyes again, she was puzzled to see that Angeline had turned to stare at her intently. “Interesting,” she said quietly. “Seems our visitor has been here already.”

  Puzzled, Martha finished flapping at her face, satisfied that the cobweb was gone, and opened her eyes. The room was mostly dark now, lit dimly with candles and a glow from the streetlights outside through the closed blinds. She looked away quickly, reminded of what she had seen, terrified in case she saw it again.

  For a brief moment she wondered should she tell the others about her experience. She couldn’t deny that it was something. A year ago, she might have convinced herself that it was nothing – just her imagination or that fabled trick of the light that everyone was so fond of referencing at times like this. But she knew that she couldn’t do that. At the same time, however, she couldn’t shake the habit of a lifetime – the feeling that if she didn’t verbalise it, then it might never have happened. She remained silent.

  The candle glow made the living room almost inviting – if it hadn’t been for the upturned glass on the coffee table and the faint glow of the infrared cameras dotted around the room. A séance, Martha realised. They were all going to have to join hands and wait for who-knew-what to happen in the room around them. She felt terrified all of a sudden. Even the presence of Will standing beside the fireplace didn’t calm her. He was more like an executioner awaiting the arrival of a prisoner than her boyfriend. He stood to the left of the fireplace, hands clasped behind his back, dressed in a pair of black jeans and a black turtleneck sweater, blending into the shadows. Martha’s eyes flicked upwards, involuntarily, to the ceiling above him, drawn to the same spot as always. She looked back at the coffee table to find Angeline watching her intently.

  The medium nodded. “That’s right, dear,” she said softly, looking at the spot herself, and then turned her attention to sitting down on one of Gabriel’s expensive cream sofas, arranging her skirt under her in such a way that it didn’t crease.

  Martha stared at her, puzzled. What did she mean by that? Martha looked at Gabriel, who was gazing at her in a strange way. She looked down at her shoe suddenly, pretending to notice a spot of dirt to avoid his stare. She didn’t want to have that conversation. He frowned and bent to Angeline to check if she were all right. Will was completely emotionless, staring at the group and holding aloft a piece of equipment that Martha recognised as a thermal imaging camera. He operated as if none of the other three were there and Martha realised that he was in work mode and wouldn’t be joining in, just watching the proceedings with a detached eye. She also knew exactly what he could see on that camera. The outlines of three figures – herself, Gabriel and Angeline. They would be red and purple against the black of the room around. At least she hoped it was only three figures. She feared the moment that they might be joined by a fourth. Another heat signature visible only on the small hand-held screen and not to any of the living in the room.

  Martha felt very alone as she took her place on the couch opposite to where Angeline was sitting, eyes closed, deep in thought, Gabriel by her side.

  A hush of anticipation settled across the room and they sat in complete silence. Martha felt helpless as she looked across at the two mediums, hands folded on their laps as if in prayer, eyes tightly shut. Martha glanced at Will who was staring intently at the proceedings. She felt the silence begin to grow unbearable, longed to shout out to break it, to run from the room and home.

  A long sigh echoed through the room. Martha realised that it was Angeline and felt her entire body go tense as a tiny, softly accented voice filled the room.

  “Young man,” Angeline began, eyes still closed, addressing someone who wasn’t there – in body anyway, “I call upon you to make yourself known to me, to reveal yourself to us. We know you’re here – you’ve already made a start – but I need you to speak to me and tell me exactly what you’re doing.”

  A silence fell again, the same thick soundlessness that had begun the session. Martha was afraid to move and realised that she was holding her breath, for fear of making a noise.

  “You have nothing to be frightened of,” said Angeline. “We are here in respect – not to mock you or to hurt you. We simply want to communicate with you. I know you’ve been trying to talk to us so now’s your chance. I’m listening.”

  Again, the silence, except for one of the candles on the mantelpiece guttering slightly. Martha shifted uncomfortably on the couch.

  Suddenly, Angeline opened her eyes.

  “My dear, can you open the door for us?” she said.

  Martha thought it an odd thing to say, then noticed that Angelin
e was staring at her. “You mean me?” she said, pointing at herself nervously, hoping that Angeline would just continue talking to someone who wasn’t there.

  “Yes, please,” said Angeline, nodding.

  Martha’s heart sank. Angeline continued to watch her expectantly, however, and something in her stare made Martha realise that she wouldn’t take no for an answer. Reluctantly, she rose from the couch and padded over to the doorway, glancing at Will as she went for some sort of support but he was completely absorbed in checking that his digital video recorder was aimed at the door she was about to open. Martha’s trainers squeaked softly as she crossed the room.

  The door was forbidding in the candlelight – the handle cold to her touch as she gently placed her fingers around it. Martha froze before turning it, terrified that there might be something on the other side – something terrible like she had seen before. Something decaying and rotting and evil. She turned her head back to the couch and saw that Angeline had taken Gabriel’s hand and was holding it tightly on her lap, her eyes once again closed, but an expression of anticipation across her face. Again, Martha felt completely alone. Against every last piece of will in her being, she turned the handle slowly, hearing it squeak slightly, and pulled the door toward her. It jammed for a moment on the saddle-board and she gently tugged to release it. It juddered, vibrating in her hand. She felt as though she was wired to the electricity mains – her whole body tense and expectant, finally understanding what people meant when they said their hair stood on end with fear. With a gentle creak the door swung toward her and she dared herself to lift her eyes and glance as she stepped backwards. It was almost a disappointment for her to see that there was nothing there. Nothing strange happened at all in fact – the candles on the mantel, the desk and the coffee table flickered with the breeze from the open door and the room was filled suddenly with cool air and, oddly, the smell of fresh Christmas trees – like opening the door to a living room on Christmas morning. Martha breathed it in. It was beautiful actually.