by Kim Wilkins
“It was September.”
“Oh. Let me see.” He tapped a finger thoughtfully on his desk blotter, trying to buy time.
“Sacha said that you told him she was found face down in the street.”
That triggered his memory. “Ah yes. It seemed she grew ill at home and was coming down to the village to get help.”
“Was it daytime or night-time?”
“I don’t rightly remember. But it was Elsa Smith who spotted her first as she collapsed right outside Elsa’s house. Elsa phoned Tony and he recovered her body.”
She leaned forward, fixed him with a keen gaze. “Where does Elsa Smith live?”
This was a nightmare. Questions like these could get him – get all of them – in a great deal of trouble. “On the main street. Number forty, I think.”
“And was she injured? My grandmother? Was she injured or just…”
“I’m sorry, Miss Fielding. I wasn’t there. Why don’t I call Tony in? He might be able to help you.”
She nodded once then leaned back in her seat. Again, the lacing and unlacing of fingers. She was nervous, which was a good sign. At least it meant she wasn’t sure about what she was asking. Not like Sybill with her trick questions and conceited confidence. He rose once more and went to the side door. Tony was sitting in one of the pews and the Reverend beckoned him back to the office. In a few moments, Tony was seated on the edge of the desk and the Reverend stood uneasily by the window.
“Miss Fielding wants to ask about the night her grandmother died,” the Reverend said. He could see Tony’s shoulders tense, but when he answered, it was easily and confidently.
“She collapsed out on the street around two a.m. Elsa Smith noticed her and called me. When I got there she was already dead. I called the doctor and we took her back to his surgery. He pronounced her dead and wrote up the death certificate. We knew she didn’t have family so the church paid for her interment.”
“Why didn’t this Elsa Smith go out to help her?”
Tony cleared his throat. The Reverend jumped in. “I’m sure you’ve learned by now that your grandmother was held in some fear by the locals.”
“Okay. But why was she up at two a.m.?”
“Nobody knows why Sybill left her house that night,” Tony began, “but she had locked all her doors and –”
“No. Not Sybill. Why was Elsa Smith up at two a.m.?”
Silence. The Reverend cast a glance over his shoulder at the cemetery and the sea beyond. It was Tony who finally answered.
“I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe she heard a noise. Maybe your grandmother cried out. I never asked her.”
“Perhaps I will.”
“Now, don’t you go disturbing the –”
“It’s all right, Tony,” the Reverend interjected. “I’m sure Elsa would be happy to answer Miss Fielding’s questions.”
“And who is the doctor who signed her death certificate?”
“Dr Honour on Cross Street,” the Reverend answered.
“I might go see him too.”
Tony’s knuckles had tightened on the edge of the desk. The Reverend felt just as tense but was trying not to show it.
“Again, I’m sure he’d be glad to answer your questions,” the Reverend said. “But, may I ask, why are you interested in Sybill’s death?”
It was clear she wasn’t expecting this question and she stumbled over the answer. “I…ah…I just wanted to know. You know, if it was cancer or liver disease or…you know, in case it’s something hereditary.”
Comforting to see someone else in anxious turmoil rather than himself. “Your grandmother was an old woman, Miss Fielding,” he said, trying to sound kind. “And I’m afraid that dying of old age is undeniably hereditary.”
She stood and reached a hand out to shake Tony’s. The Reverend stepped forward and shook her hand too. She dipped her head nervously and left, closing the door gently behind her.
“This is very bad,” the Reverend breathed at last.
“Why is she asking these questions?”
“I don’t know. But it’s very bad. You call on Elsa, I’ll phone Doctor Honour. If our stories are straight, if it’s all watertight, she can’t suspect anything.”
“I hope you’re right, Reverend,” Tony said, pulling his car keys out of his pocket with a jingle. “Because if you’re wrong, we’re all undone.”
Maisie found the doctor’s surgery a few minutes later. The rain was gushing in gutters and along the cobbled streets, and the wind had blown her umbrella inside out twice. Her boots were starting to fill up with water, and each step made a squelching noise. She thankfully pulled open the door and entered a warm, dry waiting room which smelled of old paper and wood panelling. The receptionist was on the phone, and looked up as she came in. Maisie had the distinct feeling that she was expected. She walked up to the counter and waited.
“Yes…yes…I see. No, it isn’t a problem at all. Thank you for calling…yes, goodbye.” The receptionist, a middle-aged woman with pink cheeks and salt and pepper hair, replaced the phone carefully then looked up at Maisie with a half-smile. “Yes? Can I help you?”
“I need to see Dr Honour,” Maisie replied.
“He doesn’t see patients without an appointment. Unless it’s an emergency.”
“Then I’ll make an appointment. I can sit here and wait.”
“I’m afraid the doctor is completely booked out today.”
Maisie opened her mouth to ask how the receptionist knew that without checking her appointment book, but she stopped herself. Perhaps she was being paranoid and the doctor really was busy.
“Okay, I’ll make an appointment for tomorrow.”
“I’m afraid that tomorrow –”
“Can you just check your appointment book?”
“I…ah…just a moment.” The receptionist flipped open a small, leather diary in front of her. Maisie leaned forward on the counter and saw her find tomorrow’s date – plenty of blank space.
“Ah, it seems we have some time free in the morning. About eleven?”
“I’ll be here at eleven.”
“Your name?”
“Maisie Fielding.”
“Thank you, Miss Fielding. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Maisie braved the rain once more, headed home with sodden boots. These people had something to hide, she knew it. But if they were all in on it together, including the local constable, how could she ever get to the bottom of it?
In dry socks, sitting in front of the fire, she phoned the airline. They put her on hold and she listened to bland music and wondered why she had so many misgivings. There were good reasons for organising her return journey sooner. She had promised Adrian she would bring her flight forward; she was running out of money; Sacha might not be coming back. But, more importantly, she was becoming too scared to stay. In daylight she was fine, but as soon as night began to close in her imagination made evil spirits out of every creak or half-glimpsed shadow.
“I’m sorry.” A human voice interrupted the song mid-chorus. “We have no seats left for flights on the sixteenth.”
A reprieve.
“Would you like me to put you on a waiting list, or would you like me to check the seventeenth for you?”
Was it a reprieve? Or a curse?
“Miss Fielding?”
Maisie didn’t know how to answer. “I…um…”
“I can check the seventeenth for you.”
She couldn’t decide. “I…I’ll call you back.” She hung up. Her fingers twitched. Adrian would be angry, she should have put her name on the waiting list. The phone started to ring. Surprised, she scooped it up.
“Hello?”
“Maisie, it’s your mother.”
“Hi, Mum. I was just about to call Adrian in Auckland.”
“Why did you lie to me?”
“I’m sorry?”
“Why did you lie to me?”
Maisie’s blood dropped two degrees. Her mother’s anger
could still do that to her. “Why did I lie to you about what?”
“Your hand.”
The pit of her stomach felt hollow. How had she found out?
“I…”
“Adrian told me everything. Don’t try to get out of it. You lied to me. Why?”
Maisie took a breath. “Because I didn’t think you’d understand if I said I just wanted a break.”
“A break? For what? So you could run off to England and track down a mad, criminal, cruel old woman just because she happened to be related to you?”
“Mum…”
“Well?”
“No. I don’t enjoy playing cello, Mum. It’s what you wanted for me, not what I wanted.” She tried to keep her voice gentle, reasonable. Her mother’s, however, was icy and demanding.
“What are you saying? You’ve been playing music all your life. What’s changed to make you say you don’t like it any more?”
“Because I’m an adult now. Because I don’t want it as a career.”
“But your father and I have invested so much time and money in it. Perhaps we’ve spoiled you.”
“Mum, please be reasonable –”
“Reasonable!” Her voice was a shriek down the telephone line. “You lied to me, you lied to all the doctors, you…” Dawning realisation. “There were no doctors were there?”
“Mum…”
“This is the most elaborate lie anyone has ever told me. Why go to all this trouble?”
“Because I couldn’t tell you the truth.”
“I don’t even know who you are. Perhaps it’s fitting that you’re over there in my mother’s house. It seems you’re more like her than us.”
“Please, Mum, don’t be so angry. I’m sorry if I hurt you, but you’ve got to understand that you overreact to things and it makes it hard for people to be honest with you.”
“How dare you blame me for your lies! As though I deserved them!” Janet’s words were now pouring out in rapid confusion. “Maisie, don’t come home. Just stay there. With a bit of luck the old woman will come back from the dead and you’ll find out what kind of person she was and then you’ll be sorry that you lied to me. I only ever wanted what was best for you, and your father is going to be devastated. Devastated. I don’t even know who you are. Tell Adrian not to come back either. Both of you are out, it’s better if you stay away from me because I can’t bear to look at either of you.”
Click.
She had hung up.
Her mother’s anger had made her feel about eight years old again, and terrified. She carefully replaced the receiver. Maisie, don’t come home.
She would cool off. She didn’t mean it.
Damn Adrian. Why the hell had he told Janet about the lie? What was he thinking? Knowing Adrian, it had slipped out by accident and then he was too afraid to call and warn her. That was a typical Adrian way to handle things, or rather, not to handle things at all. She was too angry with him to phone him now. Let him think that she’d run off with Sacha on the way home from London, or that the local witch-hunters had been waiting for her to burn her at the stake.
Let him worry, let him get hysterical.
In the early hours of the morning she began to dream.
She was outside the cottage, hovering a few metres above the roof. She was frozen to the bone. Weird shifting shadows and dull rainbows glinted off objects below her. The peculiar deserted feeling of the early morning hours told her that the world was asleep all around. Stillness lay over treetops apart from the occasional breath expelled from the lungs of the sea.
“What am I doing here?” she asked.
Silver sparks began to form around the cottage. She watched as they created an aura that encircled the walls, windows, roof. It must be Sybill’s spell to protect the house. Perhaps the dream was telling her she could feel safe. The aura was dazzling, beautiful.
But then she noticed areas in the silver that were dull, or thin. Weak points in the spell. She realised the back door was almost completely barren of protection. At the same moment she saw a shadow shiver in the wood behind the house and seem to move slowly towards her. The hooded figure!
“But how can I fix the spell?” she cried out. And what would happen to her sleeping self if the dark shape got to the back door before she awoke? The black panic that seized her almost pulled her up into consciousness, but she knew her only chance to find out how to fix her grandmother’s spell lay in staying in this dream.
The wall of silver light collapsed below her. She parted her hands and found between them a blue book. Before she could open its cover to see what was in it, the dark shape broke free of the wood. It moved without seeming to touch the ground, slid through the gap in the rosebushes and hovered there at the back of the garden. Its head moved back and Maisie realised it was looking at her. She caught a glimpse of bone and shadow, but her terror jolted her back into her body and she woke up with a start.
She sat up and clutched at her chest. Her heart was racing. Calm down, perhaps it was only a dream. She threw back the covers and made her way down to the laundry. Tabby sat atop the washing machine, tail frantically swishing. She looked around when Maisie arrived, chattered her teeth with a frustrated growl. Maisie crouched next to the washing machine and slowly stretched her neck up to peer out the bottom of the window.
The dark figure stood where she had last seen it in the dream, unmoving, as though waiting. Her heart was thundering under her ribs now. She was frozen to the spot, willing it not to move any closer to the house. Then, a slight disturbance of the trees in the wood behind it caught her eye. For a moment Maisie thought it was only a sea breeze, but then, to her horror, an identical dark figure emerged from the wood, moved past the rosebushes, and joined the first figure in the garden. It was all she could do to stop herself screaming.
She jumped back from the laundry window and ran to the bookshelf in the lounge room. The dying embers of the fire glowed weakly. She hit the light switch and started searching for a blue book. Despair clutched at her stomach: the way her grandmother kept house, the blue book from her dream could be anywhere. Still, she pulled every book with a blue spine from the shelf and gave it a cursory inspection. Not Native Birds of Yorkshire. Not The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations. Not Eighteenth Century Philosophers. One by one she threw the books on the floor, more and more frantic. Every minute felt like an hour.
Nothing.
“Okay, Maisie, don’t panic.” Blue books didn’t always have blue spines. She closed her eyes and tried to remember how thick the book in the dream had been, felt its weight in her hands. Opening her eyes, she began to scan the bookshelf again. Pulled out a book that matched the description here and there. The third book she pulled, with a dirty grey spine which was falling into disrepair, was entitled Basic Magical Spells. Basic? Would basic magic be enough? But the cover was blue, and it was about the same size and weight as the book in her dream. She went straight to the table of contents, her shaking fingers gliding down the page as though they were trying to read ahead of her desperate eyes. Spells of blessing, love spells, spells for finding lost items. She was tearing through the list so fast she almost missed it. Spells of protection.
Maisie flipped to the page. Protecting the self. Protecting a friend. There: protecting a house. She quickly skim-read it: psychic preparation – lucky she was becoming an expert at that – then visualisation, the silver wall of stars that she had already seen in her dream, then…on the next page, the spell. But her grandmother had crossed out the simple spell printed in the book and had written in its place a few lines in a language Maisie had never seen before: inne þære stowe þe ic bregde mid þissum steorran higes, anra gehwelc sie gesund of þære ealdan deorcnes. She read it through a couple of times, trying to commit it to memory. She wasn’t even sure how to pronounce some of the letters, but did her best, repeating it in her head as she lit and set up the circle of thirteen candles and turned out the light.
inne þære stowe…
She
said it to herself over and over. Before she sat in the centre of her circle, she raced back down to the laundry and took another quick peek through the window. The two figures were standing together now, and she could see that they weren’t quite identical. One was slightly taller and thinner than the other. They were turned towards each other, almost as though in conversation. She took a step back from the window and accidentally kicked the washing machine – the bump was loud in the early morning darkness, and she was certain she saw one of the figures turn quickly in her direction. She backed away from the laundry and returned to the lounge room, to her burning circle of candles. The task of centring herself and focusing on anything but the two shadows in her garden seemed impossible in her state of panic, but she forced herself to try.
Deep breaths, imagining the coloured lights.
inne þære stowe…
And then, as though the words themselves had taken over, she felt her body slump and her throat open. The words came out and they sounded strange to her ears, a language she had never heard before but that she knew she was instinctively pronouncing perfectly. In her imagination, almost as vividly as she had seen in the dream, she could see the silver stars collecting around her house, pouring into the weak places. And she could also see the two dark shapes look up in surprise, move quickly towards the cottage, but pause a few metres back as though afraid to come any closer.
Over and over, in a stream, the words kept springing from her lips, the silver aura around the cottage became stronger and brighter in her mind’s eye, until finally – it may have been moments later, it may have been as much as an hour – the words stopped and she could once again sit up straight and look around her.
She stood, shakily, and moved down to the laundry. Tabby no longer sat on the washing machine. Outside, the garden was empty.
“Did I do that?” she asked the dark laundry. Had she got rid of the two dark figures? Had she made the spell work?
Her breath caught in her throat.
I did it.
She put a hand to her forehead. A spell. She had cast a spell of protection and it had scared off the dark figures.