Haunted (22 page)

‘
You’re interfering with things you don’t understand
,’ the voice continued. Her mouth formed shapes, but they bore little relation to the sounds that emerged.

Ash turned back to Edith to find she had slumped on the bench, the person beside her holding on, preventing her from slipping to the floor.

‘
You must stop, you . . . I can’t see you, Mummy
. . .’ The voice had changed mid-sentence, had belonged to a child, girl or boy, it was impossible to tell. Brotski rocked in her chair. ‘
Come and fetch me, Mummy, don’t leave me here
. . .’

Someone in the crowd sobbed, a wretched, racked sound. ‘It’s my baby . . .’

‘She’s trying to fool you,’ Ash said loudly, pointing accusingly at the dark woman.

Another voice followed on from that of the child: ‘
We’re happy, we’re happy
. . .’

The child’s again: ‘
I want to come home to my own room
. . .’

Now an older person, a female’s voice, cackling like a crone: ‘
I can see you, I can see you all
. . .’

And then the discarnate utterances intermingling, so many now, rushing against each other as though some incorporeal sluice-gate had been loosened, the voices flowing, tumbling through, some raised, anxious to be heard, others quiet, mannered, the sounds becoming a clamour, indistinct from each other, the whole moulding together like some sound engineer’s experiment with a tape-deck, a cacophony of meaningless noise, a dissonant roar that made no sense at all . . .

‘. . .
without me your brother sends christmas no hurting any more I can’t see you what if tell martha no why are please stop this if you look under the stair carpet what year mummy come and fetch me don’t listen to her we never forget you over on this side I was glad no more sorrow here when will I david so many things to I can see you all that person will do you harm mummy please I’ll wait I’ll wait you there is grandad is whatever can it there is god don’t grieve any be happy help one day stop this stop this stop this . . .!
’

The last words were screamed.

Edith’s body jerked, her eyes snapped open. She raised her head, looked over at the bright beam of downward light. She felt – she actually
felt
– the sensation of blood draining from her face.

The bogus medium was struggling to rise from her chair. But it seemed some unseen force held her there. Her back was arched, her hands were pushing against the wooden edges, knuckles strained in jagged, white-topped ridges. The whites of her eyes had become dominant around her pupils, as though invisible fingers were pulling back the lids, and her mouth yawned wide, the lips that had been lush suddenly thin and stretched; her cheeks had hollowed so that even under the glare of the spotlight there were faint shadows.

A fine mist had begun to drift from her mouth, a vapour that suggested that the air around her had frozen; but Edith had witnessed the emergence of ectoplasm, that physical representation of astral bodies, from the orifices of mediums on other, though rare, occasions. She was certain that this was the beginning of such, the stream as yet too tenuous, too weak, to create a definite shape.

The babbled words still came, although they had faded, were no longer loud, had levelled to a weary entreaty. And they were delivered while the woman’s mouth remained locked open, carried by the vapour, neither her tongue nor her lips forming the sounds.

‘
Stop this stop this stop
. . .’

The gentle expellation of mist faded, wisped away, but still there was a passing of shadows over her face, a curious shifting of light that subtly altered her features, changing her appearance yet never settling, an emphasis of cheekbone, perhaps a strengthening of the jaw, a furrowing of her brow; transient shapings, hints of different personalities, but nevertheless only a crawling of shadows beneath a still light.

The people around her, those guests who had held her in awe, could no longer control their panic. There were shouts of alarm, a furore of voices that overwhelmed the murmurings exhaled (it seemed) from her taut mouth.

The young woman who thought she had heard her dead child calling to her fought to get through to the seated ‘medium’, but others in the room had no further desire to stay and she was pushed, sent stumbling over a bench.

Two other women, both whimpering like frightened children, rushed past Ash, knocking him sideways in their desperation to leave. Others followed them in a mêlée of jostling bodies, all hurrying to reach the door, and although the bogus medium had become a distressing sight, Ash could not understand the acuteness of their terror. Surely they realized she was victim of some peculiar kind of fit? Then he realized that this woman (and now he acknowledged she was psychic, although his deep-rooted scepticism rejected any notion that she was clairvoyant) was somehow mentally projecting her own fear, the atmosphere itself charged with it. It spread like a rapid disease, touching, infecting everyone present, including himself. If he hadn’t understood the absurd logic of it all, he too, would be heading for the exit. My God, he thought, no wonder they were in awe of her.

He flinched as a hand touched his arm.

‘David, she’s in terrible danger,’ said Edith urgently.

He was relieved that Edith Phipps had recovered from her faint and relieved, too, that she showed no signs of panic. ‘It’s self-induced,’ he said to her. ‘I’ve seen this kind of hysteria before.’

She looked at him as though he were mad. ‘No, it isn’t that. We have to help her before it’s too late. We have to bring her out of her trance.’

The crowd around them had thinned, most of the people now bunched around the door, jostling to get through. Edith and Ash had a clear view of the woman in the chair.

‘Dear God,’ breathed Edith.

Not everyone had rushed away. A few, just a few, including the Brotski aides, stood as if mesmerized by the sight before them. Somebody moaned. There was the crash of someone else collapsing to the floor.

For Elsa Brotski’s face could hardly be called her own any more.

Its flesh heaved, rippled. The skin wrinkled into lines and whorls and just as abruptly there were smoothly clear patches, areas so fine they were nearly translucent. These transformations could no longer be mistaken for the shifting of shadows across her face, for the fleshy contortions were plainly evident. It was as if other countenances –
many
other countenances – existed beneath the surface, and each one was striving to announce itself, pushing from within, expanding the covering skin to its limit. It was an incredible and quite horrific spectacle; and it was nauseatingly fascinating.

It seemed that Elsa Brotski’s face must surely burst.

Shocked, almost beguiled, Ash waited for the rapid transfigurations to run their course, cold-bloodedly, and even perversely, curious to see how far the phenomenon could progress, how it would end. There was little pity in him for the woman, and he could not help but despise himself for that.

He sensed Edith leaving his side and raised a hand to stop her, knowing where she was going. Her silhouette blocked the bizarre sight from his view, then she, too, was under the light, centre-stage in the nightmare.

She reached down for the tormented woman, laying her hands on the undulating face. She began to speak softly to her.

Ash made his way towards them, easing past those who had remained to watch with weird dread in their eyes. The helper whom Ash had pushed away earlier turned at the investigator’s approach, but made no attempt to stand in his way. Instead, he backed off himself, hastily joining the throng around the exit. His colleague seemed struck rigid, unable or unwilling to go near the helpless woman. The third aide, the one who had operated the movable spotlight that had singled out individual sitters, clutched the tripod as if for support, his head shaking in disbelief.

Edith staggered as Brotski suddenly lifted herself, her body arching outwards as if sprung, her hands still clenched around the edges of the chair, fastened there. She stretched herself in a perfect bow shape, her stomach enormously rounded as though in the final stages of pregnancy, her back hollowed. Yet her head was upright, resting on the shiny black material covering her breasts, giving the illusion that it had been disconnected from her neck and placed there. Worst of all were her eyes, for the pupils had rolled back inside their sockets so that only the whites showed, oddly swollen and lacklustre, like those of a grilled fish.

She presented an awful and terrifying vision, her features still not having settled, continuing to move in gargoylean patterns.

And the voices persisted, an unearthly gabbling that spilled from unmoving lips, a low outpouring of inanities – and anger . . .

‘. . .
can’t if mind the cat you I it’s different still remember that time won’t long long tunnel ever bright light at mummy please mummy flowers here lots stop this leave tell everybody you the end death can’t alone all pain ends don’t forget under the stairs when you stop come over we don’t wish this we want to I can see be left
. . .’

Blood began to trickle from Brotski’s nose; then from the corners of her eyes.

Ash stepped before her, made afraid by the sheer force of this woman’s convulsions. Not knowing what else to do, he stooped and took her head in his hands as Edith had done, fighting the repulsiveness of that swelling, agitated flesh against his palms.

Her stomach and pelvis brushed against him in lascivious parody of seduction. The red-veined, leaking eyes glowered sightlessly at him. Her breath was foul, as though the words carried their own stinking effluence.

The fitful spasms seemed to concentrate themselves into a trembling, a shaking of her whole body that threatened to loosen Ash’s grip on her face. Her spine curved even more, to the point it would surely snap, so that her belly quivered against his chest. Her head sat between her breasts like some grotesque palpitating effigy.

A one-word litany could now be heard above the others . . .

‘. . .
stop . . . stop . . . stop
. . .’

It was as though the violent quivering had reached its zenith, for Elsa Brotski suddenly solidified.

Or at least, that was how it felt to Ash. He might well have been holding on to a marble statue, so hard and frozen did the woman feel.

The voices had ceased. But a high-pitched keening had replaced them, the sound distant, coming from deep inside the woman.

It grew, became piercing, erupting from the gaping hole that was her mouth as a deafeningly shrill shriek.

And then one more word. A name. Before Elsa Brotski fell unconscious into a loose, fluid heap.

Leaving Edith Phipps to wonder why David’s name had been called, once among the babble of other voices and now as a single last cry.

Ash stirred in the bed, one hand sliding across his forehead to soothe away the pressure inside. He swallowed to ease his parched throat. His eyes opened grudgingly. He drew in a long draught of air as though breathing were not the most natural thing.

He moved again, pushing himself up in the bed, that movement sluggish, almost drugged. Muted daylight shone through the window to render shadows, those which at night had been an intense and secretive umbra, no more than an insubstantial shading. Ash murmured something, perhaps a protest against his own lack of vitality.

With considerable effort he raised his wrist to study his watch. Surprise played its part in overcoming the lethargy. It was late afternoon; Ash had slept through most of the day.

He leaned back against the headboard, wiping his hands across his face to dispel the grogginess, then down across his chest. His body felt grimed, staled, and he remembered how soaked it had been when he’d woken during the dark hours. Ash tugged the sheets away, unmindful of the room’s low temperature. His skin was dry now, pale in the daylight. The bedclothes beside him were tangled, any indication of anyone else having lain there since erased by his own troubled sleep. But there were semen stains on the sheet.

He rose from the bed, slow in action, a dullish pain loitering behind his eyes, and went to the window. Hands resting against the frame, he looked out at the gardens.

Everything was still. There was no breeze, no drifting of clouds (for the sky was blanket grey once more, sombre in its fullness), no sounds to be heard.