by Phil Ford
‘I have these… holes,’ she gasped, rapping her head with long, elegant fingers.
Holes in her head? thought Luke.
But Bea was now reaching up into the tree, into a crevice in the trunk. A moment later she withdrew her hand, holding something and Luke saw tears in her eyes.
‘I knew they might find me one day,’ she told him. ‘But I couldn’t be parted from it. Foolish old woman!’
And she handed him a small tin box. The lid was rusted tight. It had been years since the tin had been opened, but Luke managed it. Inside lay a talisman. A beautiful thing on a chain. It was obviously old, with a strange green gemstone at its heart. And as Luke touched it gently with his fingertips, a fire deep in the heart of the stone began to glow.
Luke gasped, ‘What is it?’
Bea’s eyes lit with the glow of the talisman, but she didn’t touch it. Instead she looked around nervously.
‘Just… promise me,’ she struggled. ‘Promise me you won’t tell anyone that you have the talisman. And whatever you do — do not let her get it!’
And she grabbed Luke, her eyes — frightened and defiant — boring into his, ‘Do not let her get it!’
‘Who?’
‘Put it away and promise me!’
Luke closed the tin and slid it into his pocket, ‘I promise. But who’s after it?’
But then Bea was only looking at him. Something like the change Luke had seen before had happened again. But now it was as if she didn’t quite see him, didn’t know him…
‘It was nice to meet you, young man. But I really am very busy,’ she said. And with that, she walked away. A moment later Luke caught her voice in the air. She was singing some old song about a slow boat to China.
Luke set off back towards the car. He guessed that Sarah Jane would probably be waiting for him by now. He wasn’t so sure what to do about the talisman. The way it had glowed he had no doubt that it was alien. But he had made a promise to Bea to say nothing about it — and a promise, he had learned, was something you didn’t break.
By the time he reached the car and found Sarah Jane and Clyde he had made up his mind to stay quiet — at least until he’d had chance to take a better look at the talisman.
Sarah Jane was eager to get going.
‘So what’s the story?’ Clyde wanted to know. ‘Is the place haunted or what?’
Mrs Gribbins stood in the doorway of the home watching as Sarah Jane turned the ignition and put the Figaro into gear. ‘I don’t know,’ she said, eyeing Mrs Gribbins, ‘but there’s something about it here I don’t like.’
As Sarah Jane swung the car out of the Lavender Lawns gates, Mrs Gribbins took from her pocket the business card Sarah Jane had given her. Mrs Gribbins was uneasy. Not just about the reporter’s visit, but because she had seen Mrs Nelson-Stanley talking to one of the boys that had come with her. Curious, Mrs Gribbins had reached for the binoculars they kept in the recreation room for bird watching. She had seen Mrs Nelson-Stanley give the boy something.
And she knew it had to be what they had been looking for. It was the talisman for which the Sisters had been searching.
Chapter Three
Every girl needs her mum
Maria had been teaching her dad to bake when her mum showed up looking for abed.
No, that wasn’t like her mum. That wasn’t Chrissie at all.
She showed up having fallen out with the boyfriend so now here she was, bags packed, expecting a bed.
That was Chrissie.
But no way was Maria going to let her walk back out of the kitchen door. She had seen her do that before — and that was how, a year later, she and her dad were living in Bannerman Road and Chrissie was shacked up with her smooth boyfriend Ivan on the other side of the city. That was until now, of course…
‘It’s Ivan’s own stupid fault,’ Chrissie told Alan, Maria’s dad, as she stood in the doorway and dumped her bags on the kitchen floor.
‘If he hadn’t been spending so much time at that flaming office, I’d never have thought of going to salsa lessons, would I?’
‘Salsa?’ Alan was standing in the kitchen wearing an apron dusted with flour, one finger covered with cake mix scraped from the mixing bowl. He had been about to lick it off when the door burst open and there was Chrissie.
‘Then Ivan gets the hump. Gets all possessive. And next thing I know, Carlos is on the ballroom floor with a bloody nose.’
Carlos was the salsa teacher.
‘So, has Ivan got the push, then?’ Alan asked.
‘More of a nudge. Reminding him what he stands to lose if he doesn’t sharpen up. You know, he even said I was having a mid-life crisis! Midlife, cheek!’
Alan’s eyes travelled to the suitcases. He was getting a very bad feeling about all this.
‘And you’re planning to stay here?’
‘Where else am I going to go?’
Alan was about to list some possibilities. But then Maria came back into the kitchen (she had gone to her room to grab a cookery book from school) and, of course, the issue was settled just like that.
‘Mum!’ she cried.
And they were hugging each other, and it was going to be just like old times. Only Alan knew it just wouldn’t be. Chrissie wouldn’t be staying. He didn’t want her to. And that, in the end, was going to make life so much more complicated for everyone.
There were going to be tears, he knew it. And he wouldn’t have to wait long. Chrissie arrived around 10 o’clock. They started a little after lunch.
Maria was lying on the floor in her bedroom, schoolbooks fanned around her, when Chrissie came in.
‘Anything I can help with?’ she asked.
Maria looked up and grinned, ‘You and maths? I don’t think so.’
Chrissie sat down on the bed. Maria was right, when Chrissie had been at school the only figures she’d been interested in were guys’ phone numbers.
‘Maybe we can do something together after you’ve finished?’ Chrissie suggested. ‘Go into town, do some more maths on my credit cards?’
Maria smiled. It was good to have her back in the house again — even if, perhaps, it wasn’t going to be for good. She and her mum used to have some good times together. She could remember when her parents had, too. A part of her hoped this break from Ivan and this stop-over in the new house at Bannerman Road would lead to something… on the other hand, Maria was a smart girl and life didn’t tend to shape up the way it did in soaps.
Either way, she couldn’t hit the shops with her mum that afternoon — she had said she’d see Sarah Jane.
And that was where the trouble started.
‘Sarah Jane?’ Chrissie echoed. It was funny how she made the name sound like something she’d stepped in. ‘Come on, Maria, I’m your mum. What are you doing, always off gallivanting with those weirdos over the road?’
Maria tried to laugh it off, ‘Sarah Jane and Luke aren’t weirdos.’
But Chrissie wasn’t laughing, ‘It’s weird how much time you spend with her. And there’s something about that boy — I hope you don’t fancy him. I don’t know what it is, but he’s not right.’
If only she knew, thought Maria. But that didn’t mean there was anything wrong with Luke — he was just different, that was all. Very different. Like, he didn’t have a belly-button. You couldn’t get much more different from everybody else than that, could you? All the same, Chrissie had no right to have a go at her friends like this…
‘I’m telling you, Maria, there’s some funny people in the world!’
And that was it! Maria was on her feet, homework forgotten, trips to the shops forgotten, any thought of her mum coming home for good forgotten. Maria seethed.
‘You don’t know anything about Sarah Jane and Luke!’
Chrissie almost reeled, ‘I’m your mum, love. I’m only trying to protect you.’
‘I don’t need you to protect me!’
‘Come on, darling, every girl needs her mum.’ And that was reall
y it!
‘Yeah?’ Maria shouted at her mum. ‘So how come you walked out on me, then?’
Chrissie felt that like a slap across the face. She even felt the tears spring to her eyes. Tears as real as the ones Maria was shedding.
‘Maria,’ she tried.
But Maria wasn’t interested, ‘Oh, just shut up!’
And she was out of there, slamming the bedroom door on her shell-shocked mum, and thundering down the stairs. She saw Alan waiting for her at the bottom of the stairs, alerted by the shouting and looking worried.
‘What’s going on, love?’ he asked.
‘She doesn’t like me seeing Sarah Jane and Luke — like she knows anything about them!’ Alan put an arm around her shoulders, and pressed her close to him. He still carried on him the smell of their morning baking together.
‘Look,’ he said quietly, ‘we’ll be back to normal in a few days.’
Maria sniffed back her tears, wiped them away from an eye with the heel of her palm, ‘You mean she’ll be back with Ivan.’
Alan smiled, tried for a joke, ‘If he doesn’t see sense and do a runner while she’s gone.’
A joke usually worked with Maria. But not today.
‘Doesn’t it bother you?’
Alan groaned inside. This was just what he’d been scared of when Chrissie turned up like that, and Maria had obviously been so keen that she should stay. Maria wanted her mum back. It was only natural. Only it was never going to happen.
‘Your mum and me, Maria, you know that’s all over. For good.’
Maria pulled away from her dad, and went off like a distress flare, ‘Well, that’s great for you, isn’t it? Some solicitor gives you a bit of paper, and it’s all over! What good’s that to me, Dad? She’s always going to be my mum!’
‘Yes, I know that, sweetheart,’ Alan said. He hated to see his daughter like this. He had hoped this was behind them, that she had come to terms with the end of the marriage. But maybe that would never happen, as long as Chrissie kept treating their new place as some kind of second home.
His heart broke as he saw fresh tears tumble down Maria’s cheeks.
‘Maybe I want her to get to know my friends, so she doesn’t think they’re weird anymore. Maybe I don’t want her to go back to Ivan. But that’s never going to happen, is it? Because you’ve got a piece of paper!’
‘Maria… ’
But she was already out of the front door. For a second he thought about chasing after her. But what was the point? It wasn’t as if she had done anything wrong, was it? All she wanted was her family, her mum and dad. Deep in his heart, Alan knew that if anyone had done something wrong, it was him and Chrissie — they had let their daughter down.
Chapter Four
The Abbess
St Agnes’ Abbey loomed over Sylvia Gribbins. It was a cold place, she thought. Built of dark grey granite with windows that seemed to watch you like big, black hooded eyes, it was a long way off anything in The Sound of Music. But then, Mrs Gribbins thought as she raised the heavy iron doorknocker and struck the riveted oak door, these nuns didn’t remind her much of Julie Andrews, either.
One of them answered her knocking. She was a pale, thin woman and the black habit and wimple made her skin look even whiter. If Mrs Gribbins had woken in the middle of the night and found her standing in the shadows, even she might have believed in ghosts.
‘I’ve come to see Sister Helena,’ said Mrs Gribbins.
The pale nun said nothing, but opened the door for Mrs Gribbins to go in. She wasn’t surprised or offended by the nun’s silence, she had visited the abbey only twice before, but neither time had anyone spoken to her apart from Sister Helena. Vows of silence, she supposed.
It had been Sister Helena who approached Mrs Gribbins in the first place, shortly after she had taken over at Lavender Lawns. She hadn’t really relished the idea of visiting the abbey at Sister Helena’s invitation that first time; running Lavender Lawns didn’t allow a lot of time for socializing with nuns. But maybe the abbey wanted to offer some sort of help with running the place? Forty-five elderly residents complete with Zimmer frames and dietary problems could be quite a handful. Any offers of help (that didn’t cost her budget anything) would be welcome. As it turned out, though, it was the nuns that were looking for help.
They were looking for something else, as well.
The pale nun led Mrs Gribbins to Sister Helena. She was in the Great Hall, a large vaulted room strung with tapestries. She was a tall woman who seemed to be made even taller by the black habit. She had perfect ivory flesh that made Mrs Gribbins think that even some nuns followed a skin care regime. On the other hand, perhaps Sister Helena was just lucky. Either way, she had the kind of face you expected to find on the cover of a magazine, not under a wimple.
The news Mrs Gribbins brought for Sister Helena, however, wasn’t going to put a smile on that cover-girl face.
‘You’re sure it was the talisman?’ Sister Helena demanded, when Mrs Gribbins had finished telling her about the reporter Sarah Jane Smith’s visit, and what she had seen through the birdwatching binoculars.
‘Absolutely,’ said Mrs Gribbins. ‘I saw her give it to the boy.’
Sister Helena strode across the room, the fabric of her habit flapping angrily around her. An angry nun was something Mrs Gribbins had thought she would never see. But then, nuns that paid her handsomely to sneak into the rest home by night and search the residents’ belongings was something she never expected to come across, either.
‘Why would she give the talisman to the boy unless she knew we were looking for it?’ Sister Helena growled. ‘You told us she barely knows her own name.’
Mrs Gribbins noticed that her hands were shaking. Whoever these nuns really were, she knew they were about something much darker than singing hymns. The thought of antagonizing one of them really didn’t seem like a good idea.
From her pocket, Mrs Gribbins pulled the business card that the journalist had given her and tried to soothe Sister Helena’s rage. ‘I know where you can find the boy,’ she said.
Sister Helena snatched the card and glanced at it, as she walked away and tugged on a bell pull. She didn’t seem any happier.
‘We’ve paid you well for your assistance, Mrs Gribbins, but this complicates everything.’
Mrs Gribbins wanted to justify herself to Sister Helena she knew she had been well paid. But she had done everything they had asked of her, and when she had finally realized where the Nelson-Stanley woman had hidden the jewel that her husband had once stolen from their order, she had come straight to the abbey to tell them. But before she could say a word, the double doors at the end of the Great Hall opened and two nuns advanced through it. Mrs Gribbins knew they were coming for her. And that sent a chill down her spine.
‘The Abbess will want to see you,’ said Sister Helena. She turned her back on Mrs Gribbins and left the room.
Mrs Gribbins saw no alternative but to go with the two nuns that stood, silent, waiting for her. They walked either side of her, leading her through the abbey. They didn’t speak. They barely looked at her. Mrs Gribbins fought the chill anxiety that she felt creeping through her body. For goodness’ sake, they were nuns, she tried to tell herself, what were they going to do to her? The Abbess was probably some shrunken old biddy with a walking stick that was going to try to give her a telling off for slipping up like this. Well, Sylvia Gribbins dealt with people just like that on a day-to-day basis. She would tell the Abbess exactly what she told the odd disgruntled resident at Lavender Lawns: they got value for money but sometimes things — like the community room TV blowing up half an hour before the latest Corrie wedding — were just beyond her control.
The thought made her smile. She could deal with the Abbess.
And then the nuns came to a door and knocked. They waited a moment, then opened it and stood back. Neither of them made any movement to enter, they just stood there and waited for Mrs Gribbins to step over the threshold.
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br /> She was psyched up now, and ready to give the old Abbess as good as she got. Mrs Gribbins stepped into the room, and the door closed behind her.
It was a small room, with no furniture except a simple bed and chair. In the chair sat a dark shape. As her eyes fell on it, all the confidence that she had mustered on the way there seemed to soak into the cold flagstones beneath her feet.
The dark shape was a nun. Small, thin and old. Very old, from the look of her hands. The nun was veiled; Mrs Gribbins couldn’t see her face. All she could see of her were her hands — dark, shrivelled hands, with skin that looked more like tree bark than living flesh. But it was the nails that made Mrs Gribbins shudder. Her fingernails were long and twisted, uncut in decades, like hideous talons.
The Abbess didn’t move, but Mrs Gribbins knew she was watching her through the dark veil that hid her face.
Mrs Gribbins’ mouth had gone dry; she tried to speak…
Then the Abbess’s hands moved to her veil, and raised it.
And Mrs Gribbins screamed.
Chapter Five
Bea
At about the time that Sylvia Gribbins was striking the door of St Agnes’ Abbey, Sarah i Jane Smith stood in the middle of her attic, that she used as an office and centre of operations when alien-hunting, and called out. ‘Mr Smith, I need you.’
Bricks in the wall broke apart and clouds of steam burst out of the opening that yawned wider as hidden hydraulics thundered into action somewhere behind the attic brickwork. The computer that Sarah Jane called Mr Smith emerged from the wall.
Clyde, who stood a little behind Sarah Jane in the attic, always loved to see Mr Smith coming out of the wall.
Awesome!
He thought the same thing every time it happened.
He also kind of wondered what had made Sarah Jane call the computer Mr Smith. There was something about Sarah Jane, he thought, that was a little bit sad.