Resurrectionists (18 page)

“She was in the cemetery!” Elsa almost shouted these words.

“We needn’t worry,” Tony replied. “She might not know anything.”

“She’s Sybill’s granddaughter. These things are passed between generations,” Margaret King said. The Reverend had to stop himself from physically recoiling. It was his greatest fear that Maisie would prove to be just as powerful and formidable as Sybill.

“What are you going to do to protect this town if you won’t let us protect it?” Douglas Smith demanded. The Reverend put up his frail white hands. “Stop

. . . please . . .” He had to raise his voice to be heard over the outraged questions. “Please . . . be quiet.”

Finally they ran out of steam. Tony gave the Reverend an encouraging smile.

“I hear your complaints,” the Reverend said at last.

“I understand your concerns because they are also my concerns. The girl has told me herself she won’t be here much past Christmas. Why don’t we wait until then? If she still hasn’t gone, then I will do something about it.”

“What will you do?” Elsa asked sharply.

“Try to understand this: when people are

confronted by rock-throwing locals, they will always –

always
–report that to the authorities. It’s a crime, and they know it’s a crime. But when people are confronted by other frightening things, things they can’t explain or even believe, they are very reluctant to come forward.” The Reverend laid his hands on his desk, reached for a pen to idle with. “I can call on . . . well, you know.”

They were all nodding slowly now.

“I think she’s already had a visit from one of them,” Tony said. “I suspect that’s what was in her back garden when she called on Wednesday night.”

“Her presence may have aroused their interest,” the Reverend said. “But they can do more than stand in the back garden and look mysterious. We all know that.” He paused. “Sybill Hartley found that out.”

They all nodded, sagely, smugly.

“So if she’s not gone after Christmas –” the Reverend began.

“No. Now. Scare her now,” Elsa said. “Make sure she goes.”

“But if there’s no need –”

“Just once.” This was Tony interjecting. “What do you say, Reverend?”

He sighed, clasped his thin hands together. “All right. Just once before Christmas.”

“We’re agreed then,” said Walter King. “Just a little something to scare her now and we’ll leave her alone. And if she doesn’t go after Christmas, you’ll take care of it.”

“Yes, I shall,” the Reverend replied. Though he was hoping fervently that the girl would leave of her own accord as she had said she would. He would much prefer to avoid resorting to those tactics again.

“Hi, Maisie, it’s Cathy.”

“Cathy! How nice to hear from you.” Maisie sat heavily in her armchair. “I just made a cup of tea. Your timing’s perfect.”

“Well I’m standing in the freezing hallway in the boarding house. So enjoy your cosiness, won’t you.”

“I will. I’ve had a bugger of a day.”

“Yeah? Why?”

“Last night some dickhead put a rock through my front window, so today I’ve been sorting it out. I suppose I shouldn’t complain as it’s given me something to do. To top it off, though, now I think I’m coming down with a cold.” And nobody to make her hot lemon drinks. Colds were miserable at the best of times.

“Who threw a rock at your window?”

“One of the locals. I don’t think he meant to break it. It was a good shot to get it through the bars. This whole place is crazy. I got evicted from the cemetery yesterday while I was paying my grandmother my last respects.”

“Really? I wonder if it has anything to do with the archaeologists who keep asking to dig it up,” Cathy said. Maisie sighed. “No, I just think everyone here is
loco.
” Though Cathy’s explanation did make sense.

“Anyway, you don’t want to hear about that. You know, I found an old diary stashed under the floorboards.”

“A diary?” Cathy exclaimed. “Whose diary?”

Maisie summarised the story for Cathy, who found it all thrilling. “Hey, maybe you can help with something,” Maisie said. “Do you have access to historical records down there?”

“All kinds of historical records. What do you want to know?”

“I’m trying to find out some information about the local Reverend. Specifically, what year he was born.”

“I can look for you. Is this Reverend Fowler you were telling me about?”

“Yeah. The Reverend in the diary had the same name.”

“Maisie,” Cathy said with a suspicious tone, “what are you thinking?”

“Nothing too stupid. Don’t worry.”

“I’m glad. I thought for a minute the insanity in Solgreve might be contagious.”

“Would unhinged religious freaks scare you off coming up for Christmas?”

“Christmas? Oh, Maisie, I’m sorry. I’ve already organised Christmas.”

“Oh.”

“My aunt’s ex-husband’s family live in Edinburgh. I’m going to stay with them. I organised it weeks ago, I was so afraid of being alone at Christmas.”

“That’s great. I’m glad you’ve got friends to stay with.” An admirable effort at keeping her voice even there, not pitching into desperation. Christmas alone. It was unthinkable.

“I could ask if you could come too,” Cathy

suggested.

“No, that would be too uncomfortable. It sounds like you barely know them yourself.”

“I can ask.”

“No. Don’t ask. I’ll be fine. I might even see Sacha.”

“Sacha?”

“The gypsy gardener.”

“You know,” Cathy said slowly, as though she were planning in her head. “I won’t be going up until Christmas Eve. I can catch the late train and we can go to the Christmas Eve service here at the Minster together. What do you think? You could come up on Thursday and stay the night, then catch the late bus home. Or book into a B&B.”

Maisie suspected Cathy might be putting herself out, but simply couldn’t refuse. “Okay. Yeah, that’s a good idea. I’ll come out on Thursday, same bus as last time. Will you meet me?”

“Of course. That’ll be fun.”

“So, how are all the assignments going?”

“I’m finishing my last one off at the moment. It’s already three days late. Hang on.” There was a clunk on the line and muffled voices as Cathy talked to somebody in the hallway. “Maisie? I’m going to have to go, there’s a girl waiting to use the phone.”

“Okay. You won’t forget to look the Reverend up for me?”

“No problem.”

“It’s Reverend Linden Fowler.”

“Got it. I’ll see you Thursday.”

“Sure. Bye.”

“Bye.”

“A penny for your thoughts.”

Adrian looked up. He was sitting in the Green Room backstage at The Duchess Theatre, waiting to go on. The woman standing at the doorway, looking at him with an amused smirk on her face, was Penny Dayly, the soprano with whom he sang the duet of
O

Soave Fanciulla
. He suspected that she enjoyed the duet too much. She always held his hands too fervently, kept too appreciative an eye on him. That kind of female attention always annoyed him. Everyone knew he was with Maisie.

“Sorry?”

“Here I am – a penny for your thoughts. What’s on your mind? You look worried.”

Adrian shook his head. “It’s nothing.”

She smiled and approached him, sat down next to him. Too close. “Come on, you’re all pensive.”

“I’m a little worried about Maisie, that’s all.”

When in doubt about unwanted sexual attention, invoke the name of your girlfriend. That always worked.

“Maisie? Isn’t she in England?”

“Yes, I spoke to her before I came here tonight. Some vandals broke her front window with a rock, and I really just want her to come home.” There, it felt better to say it out loud.

“But you aren’t at home.”

“I know. Which is why she won’t come.”

“After Christmas maybe?”

“I’ll be in Auckland.”

“It’s going to be hard spending Christmas without her.”

Adrian nodded. “But I’ll be with my family. I won’t be lonely. I’m worried that she will be.”

Penny was clearly doing her best to sympathise with his girlfriend. “It would be awful to spend Christmas alone. But it was her choice to go.”

“That’s right.”

“Feel better for talking about it?”

Adrian looked across at her. Her thigh was pressed too close to his thigh. He stood. “I’d better warm up.”

It was a lie. He’d warmed up ten minutes ago.

“Want some help?”

He shook his head. “I’m fine.”

Penny shrugged and got up to leave. He watched her go then sat down again and thought about Maisie. It wasn’t just the locals throwing rocks on her roof; it wasn’t just the head cold that made her sound vulnerable and in need of care (so awful to be sick when you’re alone). It was her reaction to the story Roland had told him about her grandmother, to the possibility that she, too, may have the Gift. Excited. She’d been excited. Not dismissive. Not mildly interested and sceptical. Not disturbed. Really, really excited.

“It makes sense, Adrian,” she had said. “I used to have these dreams when I was little, but they always made me sick. After a while I got so sick that the dreams wouldn’t come any more, like my body was protecting itself.”

“Dreams? Dreams about what?”

“About things that would happen. Just silly, trivial things, like what colour shirt somebody would wear the next day, or what the neighbours would name their dog.”

“Why don’t you come home?” he had suggested. “I don’t want you to be in any danger.”

“No way. Not now. I want to find out more about my grandmother.”

“She wasn’t a great person according to your father.”

“That’s all in the past.”

“She desecrated graves.”

“Which is clearly why I was evicted from the cemetery the other day. Probably why I got a rock through my window. What was she doing? I’ve got to keep looking through all her papers and things.”

Adrian leaned his head back on the sofa and looked at the ceiling. All that talk of psychic powers unnerved him. Not because he was afraid, but because it sounded like crazy talk. He didn’t like it when his girlfriend talked crazy. Maybe Janet had been right to be worried about Maisie going to the cottage. Maybe the danger wasn’t physical, but emotional. Or spiritual.

He glanced at the clock. The concert started in ten minutes. Pushing all other thoughts out of his mind, he headed for the wings.

Frozen pinpoints of light far above her, the endlessly moving sea far below, Maisie paused on the cliff’s edge, trying to ignore the wind needling through her scarf and overcoat. She looked up at the stars feeling

… what was she feeling? Was this happiness? It was too painful, hammering too hard under her ribs to be happiness. Excitement then? Perhaps.

She was different. She was special.

It had been ten hours since the phone call from Adrian, since she found out that she had met Sybill, and that Sybill had seen in her something that nobody else had ever seen. The Gift. She had the Gift. The regret about not inheriting her parents’ musical talent paled into insignificance when she considered this much greater inheritance. Some kind of psychic ability lurked within her, long dormant. All she had to do now was to find it, lure it out of hiding. How she was to do that, she didn’t yet know.

Perhaps the ache under her ribs was fear. How could she have not known that this power was inside her? And what could it do to her if she exercised it? If only she had some kind of guidance.
I wish I’d known
you, Sybill.
Her life could have been so different. The wind dropped suddenly and the sky was very still. She took deep breaths of the cold, cold air. It was demented to be out here on the cliff-top after dark, but she felt a little mad. A little delirious.

Different. Special.

A new determination filled her. There were still stacks of boxes, mounds of papers tucked in corners of the cottage. She would go through all of them, come to know her grandmother and find out what her Gift might mean. It was time for some earnest excavation.

Damp hair trailing about her face, Maisie inspected herself in the bathroom mirror. A cold was not only miserable, it was bad for the complexion. Her eyes were watery and her nose was red. She spotted a blackhead just below her lip and gave it an enthusiastic squeezing. Strange, she’d have thought that being psychic might mean she was more than mortal. This morning she looked profoundly

ordinary.

She pulled on her dressing gown and headed for the lounge room to open the curtains. Was it her imagination or was she walking straighter, taller, this morning? “I’m psychic,” she said out loud, then laughed at her foolishness, held out her hand to an imaginary new acquaintance: “Pleased to meet you. I’m Maisie Fielding and I’m psychic.”

She spent a moment gazing through the window surveying the weather: the freezing sky had descended, embracing the world in mist. Trees were tall shadows behind the veil. But the mist was not so thick that she couldn’t see Sacha’s van pull around the corner, heading towards her house.

“Oh, my god!” she squealed in horror. Wet hair, red nose, blackhead, only in her dressing gown. She had roughly ten seconds to fix it all.

She raced into her bedroom and fumbled for some concealer, quickly pulled on a black skirt and cardigan. A knock at the door.

“Just a second,” she called, quickly towelling her hair and pinning it back. Her reflection in the bathroom mirror scared her. She looked a mess.

“Just a second,” she said again, heading back to the bedroom and trying again with some hastily-applied mascara. She ran her tongue across her teeth. No time to clean them. She would have to remember not to breathe on him.

“Hi, Sacha, I wasn’t expecting you,” she said.

“Can I come in?” No apology. No explanation.

“Sure.” She stood aside and let him through, locked the door behind him. “I’m just making a cup of tea. Come down to the kitchen.”

He followed her to the kitchen where he sat down, clearly more comfortable than she was. “I forgot to take that stuff for Oxfam the other night. Thought I’d pick it up today instead.”

“Thanks, that’s great.” She switched the electric kettle on and got out two cups.