Resurrectionists (58 page)

The rain continued to pour, driven diagonal by the wind. The dark sky fluttered on and off with brightness as lightning circled them. “My mother would send me to bed while the seances were taking place, and I went quite happily because her friends were noisy and drank and smoked too much. But one Wednesday, I had worn my best dress to greet Brian at the door, and he had said to me, ‘Janet, you look so pretty tonight.’ This set my imagination on fire. I was very rarely disobedient – the boundaries Sybill laid down for me were either non-existent or so arbitrary as to defy logic. So I had become, very early on, a self-regulated child. This Wednesday night, I was probably asleep by nine o’clock. But around midnight I woke up needing to go to the toilet, and on the way back I could hear Brian’s voice. In my childish silliness, I suspected he might be talking about me, so I crept up the hallway to the kitchen –

which is where Sybill held the seances – and hid behind the door to listen.

“Of course, he wasn’t talking about me. I peeked around the corner, my face hidden by a potted plant, and watched the seance.

“The table was round and made of dark wood. My mother said she had brought it with her from England. During the day it was quite an ordinary kitchen table, with a checked tablecloth over it, and that’s where I’d eat my eggs for breakfast. But if you pulled the cloth off, you could see the table top was carved in the design of a ouija board. A single candle burned in the centre. The planchette, which is a pointer with a glass eye in it, was at the ready. My mother was only in her mid-twenties at the time, very young and pretty with blonde hair rolled up stylishly. All the sitters, six of them including Brian, had their hands placed lightly on the table, their fingers touching. They breathed deeply and silently.

“As I watched, Sybill lifted her head and said, ‘Are there any spirits here who wish to speak with us?’ A long silence followed, during which time I studied Brian’s face and wondered if he loved me as much as I loved him. After a few minutes I heard the sound of the planchette scraping across the table. Nobody was touching it, all their hands were joined. Sybill began to read what the planchette spelled out.

“‘No Name,’ Sybill said. Then, probably because she had a well-paying client at the table expecting more than nameless spirits, she said, ‘Can you tell me if Lydia’s mother is there?’ I could hear the planchette scratching two firm letters. I could guess they were N-O.”

Janet paused to refill her wine glass. Water gushed over the gutters outside. The wind howled. Adrian waited for her to resume, transfixed.

“Sybill asked, ‘What message do you have for us?’

A loud popping noise followed, and I saw the planchette flip up into the air and disintegrate. Just as though it had been blasted to pieces. Sybill’s face was pale in the candlelight. ‘Whatever happens,’ she said quietly to the others, ‘do not lift your hands from the table.’

“‘What is it, Sybill?’ one woman asked, frightened.

“Sybill didn’t answer. I could hear our kitchen clock ticking off the seconds. I was rooted to the spot. I knew I should have returned to bed, but I wanted to see what was going to happen. The sitters held their breath. When all had been silent for nearly five minutes, however, they began to relax, to murmur their relief to each other. Sybill looked shaken, but she managed a smile.

“‘Well,’ she said, ‘it looks as if –’

“Her sentence was broken by a horrific bellow. It seemed to go on forever, though it was probably only a few moments. Above the table, as though rising out of the middle of it, appeared a swirl of pale light. It began to spin slowly at first, then gathered speed. The bellowing stopped, but the room was soon filled with the sound of a howling wind. As the thing spun, it seemed to create a tornado. Books started to fly out of shelves, papers were cast up into the air, Sybill’s neat hairdo was whipped into a mess. I dropped to the floor and clung to the corner of a rug as though it could save me from being sucked up into that wind. Some of the sitters cried out. Sybill told them not to move.

“‘I command you to be gone!’ she shouted at the spirit.

“At once, the spirit stopped spinning in the middle of the table. There was a sound like a sharp intake of breath, as though it were gathering its energy – and the thing leaped off the table and headed in one shrieking movement towards me.

“It struck me full force and knocked me flat on my back. I heard Sybill call out my name, but she didn’t leave the circle. I could feel a strange buzzing sensation on my skin as the thing clung to me, and I madly tried to brush it off, but even as I did so, I could feel it seeping into my pores, into me. My body suddenly felt curiously swollen and I could no longer see. Like a dark cloud had been pulled over my eyes. I could hear sounds beyond my own body only faintly, while the sound of my heartbeat was magnified extraordinarily. The joints of my arms and legs began to ache. No, ache is the wrong word. The pain was sharp and hot and agonising. This all happened in a matter of seconds. I must have screamed, though I don’t remember hearing it. I do remember hearing Sybill telling the others that under no circumstance were they to break the circle. Something about ‘energy holes.’ Her maternal instinct was not as robust as her craving to master her magic. Rather than attending to me, she continued her attempts to command the spirit.

“When I finally felt the spirit withdraw from me, I was convinced that weeks or months had passed. But when I could see again, it was still the same night, the same seance. Confusion reigned. The pale light had begun to spin again, causing the rushing wind. Sybill tried to raise her voice against it, but it seemed all but hopeless. Then the thing took aim again and launched itself at another one of the sitters. At Brian.”

Janet lifted her wine glass to her lips. Adrian saw her hand tremble, then still as though by a force of will. Three claps of lightning and thunder sounded before she continued.

“Brian’s body began to jerk and then to move in uncanny, unnatural ways. As though he were

becoming disjointed under his skin. It was too much for most of the sitters. They were pushing their chairs back and breaking the circle before Sybill even had time to comprehend what was happening. I watched as Brian’s face became distorted and he hissed and spat, and said foul words.

“‘Keep the circle together!’ Sybill shrieked. ‘We can’t send it back unless we keep the circle together!’

“But it was too late. Two people had already made for the door. Others were cowering in corners, unable, like me, to take their eyes off Brian. He stood and began to scream the foulest things you can imagine –

sexual things, toilet things. Sybill rose from her chair also and said, ‘I command you to be gone. I command you to be gone,’ and Brian spat at her and laughed in a voice that wasn’t his own, and said, ‘You cannot command me.’ He put his hands under the table and flipped it over as if it were made of paper. There were more screams and the sound of objects breaking, and a curtain caught fire when the candle flew at it. Sybill was trying to put it out when Brian stalked to the door and left.

“‘Don’t let him leave!’ Sybill shouted desperately. But nobody would move. Nobody wanted to touch him because they were afraid that they would be next. The curtain was still burning as Sybill stood there stupefied. I found my wits and went to the sink for water and extinguished the fire before it could spread. The remaining sitters were looking to Sybill for advice, for reassurances. But she couldn’t speak.”

Janet drew a long, shuddering breath. Adrian was dumbstruck. “The following night,” she continued, “I was getting ready for bed when I heard a sound outside my window. When I went to look, Brian stood there. My blood froze. He spotted me before I could hide, and he began to shout things, obscene things at me. ‘Little fucking whore. How would you like to fuck me, you little whore. How would you like to suck my cock.’

That kind of thing. But in far more detail than I can comfortably relate to you. I screamed for Sybill who came to my room and merely shut the window and the curtains, and took me to the lounge room to sleep.

“‘Are you going to do anything?’ I asked her.

“‘There’s nothing I can do,’ she replied. But not hopelessly, not remorsefully. She was angry, and she directed it at me. ‘I hope you’ve learned your lesson.’”

“What did she mean?” Adrian asked.

“She tried to infer that it was my fault the spirit had come, because I had been watching the seance. Brian showed up outside our house regularly until we finally moved. Sometimes he would knock on the door or beg to be let in. They say that people who are possessed by spirits will continually try to break free. Even though they are not themselves any more, some kind of residual sentience will keep driving them back to the place where the possession first took place, seeking help. But when Brian turned up, Sybill always handled it the same way – by ignoring him. At times, when I was supposed to be asleep, I would creep to the window and peek out, and he would be there, standing inhumanly stiff by the letterbox, his eyes staring at some unfixed point. For all I know, if he’s still alive, he’s still possessed. Sybill never tried to help him.

“And for years I believed it was my fault. Well, Sybill had said as much, how could I think

otherwise? My entire childhood I carried around that burden. Then when I was about twenty-five I found out that it couldn’t have had anything to do with me. I wasn’t part of the circle, none of my energy contributed to the seance – I was wholly innocent. Yet she let me believe I wasn’t. No comfort was extended to me during one of the most harrowing experiences of my life, and somehow on top of that I was blamed for what happened. That is the kind of woman my mother was.”

Janet sat back, twirling her empty wine glass in her fingers. Adrian was aghast. Janet was the last person he would have expected to hear this kind of story from. She tilted her head to one side and he thought she looked at him, though in the dark it was hard to say for sure. The thunder and the wind had eased now. The rain fell steadily, almost soothingly.

“Do you think I’m crazy?”

He shook his head.

“Because I’m not making it up you know,” she continued.

“I don’t know what to say.” He thought of Maisie alone in the cottage, experimenting with psychic powers.

“I just want Maisie to be home and for things to be normal again,” Janet said.

Adrian wanted that too. Craved a world where seances and spirit possession were back in books and movies where they belonged. “But Maisie has inherited some of this power, right?”

“How do you know that?” Janet snapped. “Did Maisie tell you that?”

Here, Adrian remembered that Roland had told him in confidence. “I . . . ah . . . no. Actually Roland mentioned it.”

“And you told Maisie?”

Adrian nodded, guilty.

Janet’s hands began to tremble once more. “But she wasn’t supposed to know. Ever. I took steps so she wouldn’t . . .” She trailed off, distressed.

“Janet?”

“I love my daughter, Adrian.”

“I know.”

“When she was little, she started having

dreams,” Janet said, leaning forward and placing her glass firmly on the table. She stood and went to open a window. Cool, soft air rushed into the stuffy kitchen. She leaned on the sill. “I guess you’d call them prophetic dreams. My sister-in-law grew ill and Maisie knew about it before we did. That kind of thing. I was so terrified. She was such a tiny thing, all big black eyes and innocence, and I couldn’t bear that she had been touched in some way by that awful power that Sybill had. The dreams became more regular. She would complain of a headache before sleep, and then during the night or the next morning she’d come to our bed and say that she dreamed a bad dream, and almost always it would come true. I couldn’t bear it. So I did something that you might think is cruel or hateful, but I only did it because I loved her so much and I wanted to protect her.”

Adrian held his breath. A glimmer of lightning flashed far away on the horizon. “What did you do?”

“When she complained of a headache before bed, I would give her Ipecac syrup. To make her vomit.”

“Why?”

“So she began to associate these prophetic dreams with being sick. And then after a few months, I didn’t need to give her the syrup any more. She would have a dream and be sick immediately, by association. Then she stopped having the dreams – like her body was protecting itself. And I thought that the psychic power must have gone away.”

“So you think she’s safe now?” Adrian asked. “You think you drove this psychic ability out of her for good?” Though he shouldn’t approve of her methods, he had to admit he was glad she’d done it.

Janet shook her head. “Do you remember last September, one night Maisie became violently and unaccountably sick in the middle of the night?”

“Yes, of course. She threw up so much I thought we’d have to take her to hospital.”

“That was the night my mother died.”

“So . . .”

“It means two things, Adrian. First, she must still be psychic. Second, my mother and she must have an incredibly strong bond.”

Adrian shook his head. “You should have told us, Janet. If I’d known all this, I could have stopped her going.”

“She’ll be home soon,” Janet said. “And I doubt if we could have stopped her. You can imagine if I’d said, don’t go because my mother was a dangerous psychic –

it would have made her twice as interested. Because, you see, Maisie has made an error of judgement. She thinks that all grandmothers make teacakes and love children. She thinks that just because Sybill was old she must have been kind and good.”

“But she wasn’t?” Adrian asked.

Janet turned her head and gazed outside at the rain.

“No,” she said firmly, “she most certainly wasn’t.”

“This commuting is tiring me out,” Sacha said, dropping his van keys on the kitchen table.

“You don’t have to come over every night,” said Maisie, hopping up to kiss him. His hair smelled like a hot bread oven.

“Yes, I do. You’re only here for nine more days.”

“Ugh, don’t remind me.”

“Where’s Ma?”