Another twinge caught her mid-breath and she plonked down on a kitchen chair for a moment, tea towel in hand, until Molly settled.
Late August and the light had dipped to a sultry haze, dust motes fizzed in the dying rays, the air a heady mix of honeysuckle and scented roses. She sat totally still. How wonderful. There wasn’t a sound.
The moment came and went, but it was almost like blinking and not being quite the same again afterwards. As quickly as that. Had it been déjà-vu she wondered? No, that was when you thought you’d experienced the same thing before, wasn’t it? She frowned. This had been more like being in her own body but seeing through someone else’s eyes altogether. She swayed, slightly dizzy. Ooh, what a weird feeling…
The clock on the wall ticked solidly onto the hour. Initially she just glanced at it, then did a double take. Good grief, an hour had passed. When she’d sat down the sun had been a crimson ball sinking over the horizon…yet the kitchen was now quite gloomy; shadows crept along the floor, and the vivid colours of a summer day were rapidly seeping into dusk.
Despite the lingering heat she shivered as she stood to lean over the sink and pull the window shut. Perhaps she’d fallen asleep? No denying the dragging fatigue of an insomniac, that was for sure. It probably came with the territory – pregnancy, new house, stress…all of those things… Yes, it must be that.
She eyed the narrow, wooden staircase leading up from the hallway.
Well there was no putting it off – it was that time again.
She sighed. If only Callum wasn’t away. If only there hadn’t been that message from Ruby, ‘Tell Becky to look up Lilith…’
And if only she hadn’t.
***
Chapter Two
Lilith, Lilith… The name that had frightened Celeste so badly just before she died. She’d been scrying, using her gift as a medium to try and uncover what was happening in Woodsend; but whatever she’d come into contact with that day had possessed the power to destroy her within hours. Coincidence?
Oh, why did this message have to come through for her personally? And why now when she’d finally got settled and happy? Still, there was no one to blame but herself for going ahead and researching it, opening up doors that should have been firmly shut. And locked. Maybe it was better not to have the knowledge? It was almost as if once you recognised these dark spirits they recognised you. The thing was, Ruby was rarely wrong. And there was the rub. If you didn’t believe there were other dimensions to those we only perceived with our five senses, you sure as hell did after you’d met Ruby.
Becky wandered from room to room methodically checking all the doors and windows. The middle terrace next door was empty, having been allowed to fall into disrepair after the last tenants vacated, and the one at the far end was inhabited by an elderly couple who, although they gave her friendly waves, clearly had their work cut out with her on crutches and him almost bent double with arthritis. It wasn’t the isolation though, that gnawed at the edges of her mind, but a much deeper, far more insidious fear – something that had latched onto her, prickling the back of her neck, causing her to suddenly glance over her shoulder, or start at an imagined sound. And that something, she realised, would have to be dealt with whether they lived in the middle of a city or on a beach in Bali.
Taking a deep breath and giving herself a stern talking to, Becky switched off the downstairs light and headed upstairs, as usual avoiding looking up at the landing as she climbed. If she did she would see her - a young woman with long, wet hair standing under the light; the same conviction, the same image, creeping into her mind every evening.
The bare bulb flickered slightly when she got to the last step, and she hurried into the bathroom and shut the door. Why on earth had she got such jitters? Everything was fine during the day, it was just at night. Shivering, as if invisible moths were fluttering up and down her arms, her back, and in her hair, she hunched over the sink to brush her teeth. And now there was something else to add to her overactive, fertile imagination. She’d just had to go and read about Lilith possessing women through mirrors, hadn’t she?
Fleetingly she glanced at her reflection purely to remove her eye make-up, then washed, rubbed in moisturiser and grabbed her dressing gown. The electric light seemed too bright, surreal somehow, as if she was a character on a stage, observed from a dark and silent auditorium.
She flung open the door to the landing. No one was there. Of course not…of course there bloody wasn’t…
Forcing herself to breathe properly, to systematically unwind the muscles knotting in her stomach, she pushed the bedroom window wide, leaving the curtains open to catch any hint of a breeze. It was stifling up here; one of those nights where people lay sleepless and exhausted on top of the sheets, waiting for the early hours to cool them down. She lay back on the bed and closed her eyes, leaden with exhaustion, and although still partly alert for creaking floorboards, fell quickly into the oblivion of sleep.
Seconds later she woke with a shock. Someone had shouted, ‘Good evening!’ loudly and directly into her left ear. She sat up. Was that a dream or was it real?
She waited for her heart to stop banging so hard it hurt - squeezing from arteries and slamming through pulse points. It was a dream that was all…had to be… Anxiety did weird things to you – keeping you on night watch instead of letting you drift off trustingly. What time was it? She reached for the alarm clock. Bang on three am. Weird, just weird…it seemed like she’d only been asleep a matter of seconds...yet it had been hours.
Moonlight bathed the room through the long sash windows; night’s shadows falling across the bed in boughs of heavy leaves. All was perfectly still and silent. Reassured, she eased back against the pillows again, her breathing steadier now, when a glint of light in the dressing table mirror caught her attention and she found she could not look away. It was a strange effect and the thought occurred that perhaps it would be a good idea to reposition one or the other, because reflected in the glass was a never-ending corridor in the cheval mirror opposite; a corridor, in fact, of corridors.
Lilith…Said to possess souls through mirrors.
Oh for God’s sake, Becky!
She sat up again. This was no good, no good at all. If only she hadn’t read all that twaddle. Coming on the back of all she’d already suffered it had rooted in her mind and now just would not go away. Wired and fully awake in the witching hour. Great. She lay a hand on Molly. This was fear for the sake of it – fear breeding more fear and so it went on. In Celeste’s language, fear itself was a spirit – one which could paralyse you, part of your brain displaying graphic images of oppressive dark shapes and skittering shadows where there were none. And it would feel oh-so-real. If that was the case, then surely, she rationalised, it should be possible to re-train your own thoughts and replace the fear images with benign ones – those of love and faith and sanity, for example? So maybe if she pictured decorating Molly’s room? Or planting out the garden? Enjoying a glass of wine outside on the patio with Callum on a gorgeous summer evening?
The nice images came and the nice images went, lasting a second or two at most before her mind flicked straight back to where it was. There were so many theories, from scientific to ancient pagan beliefs, regarding human fear, but in the end the only thing anyone could do was whatever brought them comfort when they were alone and scared in the dark. Nothing was watching her. Nothing was going to pull her hair or shake the bed or snatch the covers. And there was no one on the landing. It was all in the mind. She had a will of her own and she was not having this. Not anymore. Enough was enough. ‘Go away’ she told the fear within. ‘Go away and don’t you dare come back.’
For goodness’ sake, what had all that business with Ruby done to her? Would she ever properly recover and feel normal again? Callum seemed to remember nothing of his experiences except being chased through the woods by flesh and blood thugs with torches. All the supernatural, sanity-challenging aspects had passed him by, thank God. Still, t
hat kind of left her isolated, didn’t it? Celeste was dead; poor, damaged Ruby had problems even coping with daily life; and Kristy Silver – the specialist who had tried to help both her clients and her colleague, Jack McGowan – had decided to emigrate with her ex-husband and live in Australia. She wanted daylight, she said, as much sun, sea and surf as possible – and who could blame her? She was even retiring from psychiatry to re-train as a GP. A sad loss to the profession, but after what she had suffered it was highly understandable – a miracle she could practice medicine at all really; unlike Jack who had lost all that he was, and by all accounts still continued to struggle with his sanity.
Kristy might well go on to live a happy life, and Becky hoped that would be the case. There was little doubt though, that the experience would always haunt her, that she would fear dropping off to sleep or being left alone in the dark, wondering if the television set would switch itself on or things would move around in her room, and if the nightmare would start all over again.
With renewed determination, Becky forced herself to shut down the remembered images of Kristy as she had last seen her. If she gave in and thought about it she’d never sleep again.
No, the only person she could safely talk to about this was her staff nurse and best friend, Noel. Maybe Toby? No, no – not Toby. Toby needed the light, having suffered a breakdown. He’d been way too young and impressionable, despite being in the CID, and not nearly well enough protected spiritually. Hopefully though, he’d be okay in the long run. Callum, his boss, was watching out for him and so was she. It had been a wise move for him to return to his parents for a while: no one needed to be alone in a house at night after facing what he had.
He occupied her thoughts for a while. On a high after the arrests, Toby had been part of the team putting together the case for prosecution, and it had been that which had sent him toppling over the edge. It seemed odd he’d cracked once the imminent threat was over, and that it was later, much later, when the team was working under Tanners Dell, that he’d finally collapsed. Like Kristy, he was another who preferred not to rake it over, though. Perhaps it was enough that he’d recovered and they should be thankful for that? And now it seemed he was well enough to think about girls again too, so that was alright.
Would this Amy be kind, she wondered? Would she take care of him? It wasn’t a quality young men looked for exactly, but Toby needed someone with a good heart whether he knew it or not. Oh really, she smiled at herself. She wasn’t his mother…but she had come to feel very protective towards him nevertheless. Guilt, no doubt. Yeah that was the guilt talking.
A faint waft of night air perfumed with sweet honeysuckle cooled the perspiration on her face, and once more her leaden eyelids began to close. Drowsily, her thoughts churned over the message from Celeste. How uneasy it had left her, researching Lilith that afternoon. There didn’t seem much to fear when you analysed it, but nevertheless it had left what she could only describe as an awareness – an awakening of knowledge that had seemed to open some kind of channel.
Lilith had many legends attached to her depending on which civilisation, religion or century you identified with most. According to one story she was an Old Testament character who claimed to have been created whole and was therefore equal to Adam. Sexually confident, it seemed she had emasculated Adam and as a result he had subsequently taken Eve, a more subservient woman to be his wife, the latter having been crafted from one of his ribs. Banished into the wilderness, Lilith was now full of vengeance. Revered by modern feminists for insisting on sexual equality yet reviled through the ages for being a frustrated sexual predator who hated children and killed pregnant women, she was reputed to be a harbinger of disease who flew through the night to wreak her revenge. Hardly the stuff, Becky thought, to terrify a right-thinking person, and probably a myth fabricated to serve the purpose of various religious leaders throughout the ages.
However, it wasn’t that which had chilled her, rather it was the far more credible, modern day worship of Lilith. Summon her and the unholy alliance with Samael would spark the black flame; after which Lucifer himself could be raised. Oh, how richly rewarded these people would be by Satan for inflicting pain and degradation on others, for defiling everything sacred; without mercy, without compassion, sullying the soul given to them by God. Was it an excuse for being a disgusting, self-serving human being with no conscience? Or did whatever they invoke really manifest as a malevolent presence none of us could either understand or control?
Surely they realised, because they must believe in it, that the demonic was too dangerous to summon? That they would no longer be in in the driving seat? That it didn’t give a damn about rewarding them with more sex and more money once it got here? These idiots were mere conduits… Or perhaps they didn’t quite believe in the dark side after all – thinking it was just a bit of a thrill until it was all too late? The genuine, sickening testimony from the broken few who had been victims of ritual satanic abuse and escaped, often only to find themselves disbelieved, was so horrific it could not have been fabricated. The same acts carried out by ancient druids in the sixteenth century were still being carried out today; and it was so far underground, so tight, the rest of the world simply didn’t know, see or care about the victims spat out afterwards. But why did they do it if there was nothing in it…if it didn’t work? That was the thing…
Well, knowing what she now knew, especially with it being so personal, hadn’t helped one bit. She couldn’t sleep – not when every time a pipe banged or a board creaked her eyes snapped open again and her heart lurched. She stared into the gloom. A branch rustled silkily outside the window, its silhouette fluttering on the far wall. Silence hissed in her ears. So who or what had shouted into her ear? Was something here now staring at her…they could see her but she couldn’t see them? God, if ever she woke to find a pair of eyes fixed on her in the dark she’d die of a heart attack.
It could happen…
Right, that was it! She threw back the top sheet and padded over to the light switch, passing the cheval mirror mid-way. Then stopped. And turned. A tiny movement had caught her attention and she stared at her reflection. For several minutes she stood there, voluminously pregnant in the ethereal greyness of pre-dawn, gazing hypnotically into the glass, unable to pull herself away….chilled now…swaying…
And when it happened it was so fast her mind almost didn’t register it.
With a gasp of horror, hands shaking violently, she lunged for the light switch, back flattened to the wall.
What the fuck was that?
Electricity floodlit the room. She scanned everything in it, turning around and around, half expecting there to be someone behind her. Everything was normal. Absolutely normal. She swished the curtains shut. Shot back into bed. Pulled the covers up to her chin, shivering uncontrollably. The urge to tear downstairs, get out of the house and run into the drive was overpowering – there was a feeling of menace in here, like a presence.
No, no, no – she would not give in to this. Instead she plumped up the pillows and reached for her Kindle. It was all in the mind. Every bit of it. Sending her half mad. Anyway, there was no way she would sleep until the sun came up so the best thing to do would be to read for a while.
What was it, though?
She stared at the unopened Kindle.
A dream, a hallucination, her own demons, memories from a movie or online images? That was fine…yes…she could cope with it, rationalise it…Or was it Lilith…possession through mirrors…
She flicked on the Kindle. Her imagination had run into overdrive. It was stupid and had to stop. But it wouldn’t stop. It kept on and on.
She scrolled down to the book about third trimesters, determined not to recall what she’d just seen, or thought she’d seen. But it shot straight back into her head.
As she’d stared into the cheval mirror, a fleeting image of a woman’s face had appeared in the mirror opposite, multiplying infinitely down an eternal corridor.
Her hair was long, black and dripping wet; her eyes totally white.
***
Chapter Three
Woodsend Village
Toby wandered along the riverside path from Bridesmoor to Woodsend. This case was going to take years to wrap up: there were still so many unanswered questions – not least where Ida Dean had got to. It was, in short, a total mystery. If she had been in Tanners Dell on the night of the raid she could only have fled further into the network of underground tunnels, and there were only so many exits, none easy to scale – especially when the surrounding area was heaving with officers. However, if she hadn’t been present at the satanic ceremony then she would surely have been at home in Woodsend when the police came knocking? From what he understood though, Ida would have been an essential presence at the Black Mass. Well, one thing was certain – no way could she still be around here; the whole place had been pretty much taken apart. He pictured her shooting skywards on a broomstick and half-smiled. Bloody, horrible old witch.
Right now though, right here in this moment, with sunshine catching on the water in sparkling sprays, it was hard to believe so much evil had been committed amid all this natural beauty. What was wrong with people? All this having power over others or acting out debauched perversions seemed totally alien to him. That the whole thing had lasted decades and locked down an entire community, depriving the villagers of their right to live freely, was frankly astonishing. Christ, but they’d had it all sewn up though, hadn’t they?
Even now, eight months after the arrests, local people still wouldn’t linger down here by the river or walk their dogs in the woods. The dogs, it was said, wouldn’t go in - crouching on their haunches, growling at a sinister presence humans couldn’t see. And although every person residing in Bridesmoor had been visited by the police over the last few months, all without exception had refused to talk – said they’d seen nothing and heard nothing. Fear, it seemed, was their legacy. Maybe it always would be – at least for the next generation and all who could remember Lucas Dean and his sons. But it was now over, it really was: they were free if they chose to be. It was odd how an atmosphere lingered, even when the threat had long gone.
Magda: A Darkly Disturbing Occult Horror Trilogy - Book 3 Page 2