by Kim Wilkins
CHAPTER FORTY
She slept through Sunday and most of Monday. Not just because she was tired – though she was tired, bone-achingly tired – but because she hoped to dream it right. She hoped to find that, once again, she had at least her power to dream, and through those dreams she could restore whatever it was Sybill had taken from her. When she woke on Monday at noon, she remembered no dreams.
Sacha was there. He had called in sick from work for a few days. She stumbled into the kitchen where he was playing with Tabby. They both looked up as she came in.
“I called Ma,” Sacha said. “I told her what happened.”
What happened…That was how they spoke about Sybill’s betrayal, that was the euphemism they had chosen.
“And?”
“She said you shouldn’t have trusted her.”
Maisie huffed a scornful laugh. “Yeah, I could figure that out.”
“Anyway, she’ll be here tomorrow – you can talk to her then.”
Talking wouldn’t change anything. Maisie picked at a fingernail.
“Tea? I just made it,” Sacha said.
“I guess.” She sat at the table with her head in her hands.
“What are you going to do?” he asked. “You can’t sleep forever.”
She raised her head, took the cup of tea that he offered her. “I don’t know. Everything’s changed.”
“You mean, everything’s gone back to how it was.”
She sipped the tea, nearly scalding her tongue. She pushed it away. Her appetite for it had evaporated. “I need to get dressed. I need fresh air. Perhaps I’ll look in on Reverend Fowler.”
“I have something for you.”
“What is it?”
“I cleaned it up for you.” He pulled a small shiny object out of his pocket and slid it across the table to her.
She picked it up. Georgette’s ring. A tear threatened. “Thanks, Sacha,” she said softly.
“Does it fit? It’s so tiny.”
She put it on her right pinky finger, over a healing graze from flying glass. “Yes, it fits.” She couldn’t look at him. “I need fresh air,” she said, backing away from the table. “I’m going for a walk.”
She pulled on some clothes, tucked her hair up under her hat and opened the front door. The snow had melted, the sky was a clear, though pale, blue. The sun shone from a long way off, as though it were a star from a distant galaxy. She closed the door behind her.
The outside seemed peculiarly still after Saturday night’s adventures, almost a different place. She walked up the main road, glancing only briefly at the graveyard. The place of deception. The moment of betrayal. It made her skin swarm with anger to think of it. Sybill – her grandmother, the woman who had leaned over her baby crib and spoken proudly of her Gift. Only to steal it from her for some selfish purpose, to get across the distance she wanted to cover in the Afterlife. Maisie passed Elsa Smith’s house and thought of what the old lady had said to her once: she’d be better off with Baba Yaga for a grandmother. Well, Sybill hadn’t eaten her, but she had consumed her future.
As she approached the Reverend’s house she could see Tony Blake’s police car parked out the front. She cautiously advanced the last few metres, waited for a moment on the front path and then ventured up the stairs.
The front door burst open. Constable Blake stepped out, saw her and paused. They faced each other on the steps like that for nearly a full minute. Maisie shoved her hands hard into her pockets, shrugged. “I came to see the Reverend.”
Constable Blake’s jaw was set hard. “He’s dead. He died yesterday.”
Maisie felt tears pricking her eyes. Perhaps it was strange to have so much empathy for the Reverend, but he had spent his life doing what he thought he should do, what others expected him to do. She knew how that felt. “I’m sorry,” she said, and she meant it.
“That’s the tenth person to die in Solgreve since Saturday night,” the police constable continued.
“I’m sorry,” she said again, and this time she did not mean it. She backed down the stairs and walked out onto the street.
“Miss Fielding. Get out of town,” he said, his voice fed-up, exhausted. “Please, before somebody decides to take out their anger on you. I’ve more than enough deaths on my hands to deal with.”
She turned and looked up at him. A cloud passed over the sun, placing her momentarily into a shivery shadow. “It’s okay,” she said. “I’m going the day after tomorrow. For good.”
“I wish that you’d never come,” the constable muttered descending the steps. Maisie watched him get in his car and pull away from the kerb.
“You think you lost something?” Maisie called to his departing tail lights. “Let me tell you about losing the only thing I ever really cared about.”
She trudged home. Mila would be here tomorrow. Less than twenty-four hours left alone with Sacha. She was determined to make the most of it.
Mila arrived Tuesday morning and Maisie would not speak to her. Under the pretence of packing, Maisie lurked in her bedroom all morning until she heard the front door open and shut and saw through the window Mila and Sacha make their way up the front path and towards the graveyard. Then she let herself out of her bedroom and looked around. This cottage, this strange little place by the woods, had become home to her. It had been exactly eight weeks since she had arrived, but it felt like a lifetime. Everything had changed but she had nothing to show for it. The whole eight weeks may as well not have happened. The fantasy of the little shop, the lifetime of psychic practice, had been snatched from her and she was right back where she started: frustrated, yearning, ordinary daughter of genius parents. She went to the phone. It was probably around ten p.m. back home and she wanted to speak to her mother with nobody around to eavesdrop. The phone beeped its double ring thousands of kilometres away. Janet answered it.
“Hello, Fielding residence.”
“It’s me.”
A short pause. “Maisie? How are you, darling?”
“You were right.”
“I’m sorry, Maisie, I don’t follow.”
“You were right about your mother. Does that make you happy?”
Again the silence. A faint electronic squeal on the line, somewhere in the telecommunications netherworld. Finally Janet said, “It doesn’t make me happy. It just makes me right.”
“I’ll be home in a couple of days.”
“I look forward to it. We’ve had an offer on the cottage and –”
“I shouldn’t imagine that offer stands any longer, Mum. The man who made it died yesterday.” She took pleasure in telling her this. Even though Janet had been right, even though Janet had warned her from the start about Sybill, Maisie took pleasure in deflating her hopes of a financial windfall.
“He did? Ah. Well, I expect we shall just lock it up and –”
“Sybill’s best friend is here – Mila Lupus. The cat seems to like her and she’s kind of between addresses at the moment. Can I give her the keys?”
Janet sighed. “I expect so, darling. It’s all the same to me. I’d as soon be without the place. I’d as soon put it all behind us. Now what’s this nonsense Adrian tells me about you wanting to read fortunes for a living?”
“Don’t worry, Mum. That possibility is now no longer open to me.”
“Oh, I see.”
Both of them fell silent. Maisie felt as though her face were made of stone.
“I’m sorry, Maisie, if things haven’t worked out the way you wanted,” Janet said gently. Maisie responded on an instinctive, almost child-like level to her mother’s sympathy. She started to cry.
“It’s all falling apart,” she said. “It’s all fallen apart.”
“You’ll be home soon. I’m sure that dismal weather is bringing you down. They’re always talking in magazines and on the television about that weather-related depression.”
“Yeah,” Maisie said, sniffing, pulling herself together.
“And it can’t be all
bad. At least you can still play the cello.”
Maisie heard the front door open and Sacha came in, beckoned to her. “Mum, I have to go.”
“We’ll see you soon.”
“Yeah, sure. Bye.” She put down the phone and turned her attention to Sacha. “What is it?”
“Do you want to come and watch? Ma is going to bless the ground. So the curse is lifted forever.”
Maisie followed him out into the clear afternoon, down through the cemetery to the cliff’s edge. Mila stood, her arms stretched out beside her, humming a strange, almost inaudible song. They waited a few metres away while she went through her ritual. Sacha stood behind Maisie with his arms around her. She felt his breath tickle her ear.
“Are you going to talk to Ma?” he asked.
“Maybe.”
“She might be able to help.”
“I doubt it.”
He squeezed her. She put her hands over his and hung on. It was as though his arms were the only thing keeping her together, keeping the ache inside from becoming a quake that would split her apart. A light sea breeze tangled her hair and the sun shone palely on her face. Mila stopped singing and crouched close to the ground, whispering something to the earth. Maisie looked up. Two seagulls, hanging on the breeze, watched dispassionately from above them.
“Finished!” Mila said, leaping to her feet. She clapped her hands. “Ah, it’s a good feeling. So much pain and suffering over forever.”
Sacha let Maisie go, propelled her gently towards Mila. “I’ll meet you two back at the cottage,” he said. “I’ll make us some lunch.”
Maisie and Mila faced each other. Mila opened her arms, offered an embrace. Maisie stood her ground, waited until Sacha was out of earshot.
“If you’d been here it wouldn’t have happened,” she said at last.
“Why do you think that?”
Acknowledgments
My sincerest thanks to Selwa Anthony, for ongoing service above and beyond the call of duty; to the twee temptresses Norna Scott and Hannah Collingridge at the University of York, for their help with details of Anglo-Saxon religion and language (all misuse of the info is entirely my responsibility); to Louise Cusack and Jan McKemmish who read and commented on the story in its earliest drafts; and to Mirko Ruckels for help with the particulars of music theory and opera singing (and also just for being a sweetie). The support of my friends and family is always appreciated, but special thanks must be extended, as always, to Kate the Great (B.F.).
About the Author
Kim Wilkins was born in London and grew up in Brisbane. She has degrees in English Literature and Creative Writing. The Infernal won the 1997 Aurealis Awards for Best Horror Novel and Best Fantasy Novel and in 2000 The Resurrectionists won the Aurealis Award for Best Horror Novel. Her books are also published in the UK and Europe. You can write to her at [email protected] or find more information at www.kimwilkins.com.
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Also By Kim Wilkins
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Copyright
HarperCollinsPublishers
First published in Australia in 2000
This edition published in 2010
by HarperCollinsPublishers Pty Limited
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Copyright © Kim Wilkins 2000
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Wilkins, Kim.
The resurrectionists.
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