The Fetch (31 page)

The drawing reminded Susan of the way Richard had described the dog-shrine, the remnants of the tomb that had been fetched in that almost devastating earthfall, years before. The drawing was unmistakably Carol’s. Peering more closely she could see that the odd shading by the hut – or shrine – was the shadow of a man. The shadow had no origin, it was just that: a touch of shade.

She felt intrusive, then, and left the room, locking the door behind her and tapping a fist against her chest three times in the traditional pre-Christian manner of warding-off evil after having behaved in a way that might summon it. But later she returned to Michael’s room and searched the drawers, the cupboard, the secret places of the sanctuary, looking for a doll, or a piece of the past, something that might signal Michael’s continuing relationship with his waning but still cherished power.

Although she found nothing in the room, the smell of tomato-stalk, emanating from the creased ball of handkerchief, made her think about the garden, and the greenhouses that had been in Richard’s family for so many years. She unlocked the back door and walked slowly across to the humid environment. Nothing was growing here save for the tomatoes themselves. Trays of seedlings had been unattended and had wilted. The tomatoes were self-sustaining because of their connection with a steady water drip.

There was dirt on the wooden slats by one of the plants, and the cane supports were at an angle. Puzzled, Susan peered more closely and realized that the pot had been disturbed. She tugged
the whole plant from its container, and the glint of gold at its bottom made her heart miss a beat.

When she lifted the disc she nearly died.

Golden. Heavy. Beautiful. She recognized it at once as Babylonian, the shallow cuneiform being unmistakable. It had other symbols on it too, and radiating lines, like the sun.

Mind whirling, she replaced the gold, burying it again below the plant that secured it. Guiltily she swept the potting compost from the table and the floor. When she left the greenhouse she stopped for a moment to breathe deeply, eyes closed. Her whole body was shaking. She was close to tears.

‘Oh Michael! Michael … Oh no …’

She hardly dared think what this might mean in terms of a return of Michael’s true power. And she felt a confusion of emotion: wealth might still be promised, which would buy off the ‘businessmen’ and their enterprise in Essex. But Richard had clearly stated that trouble was already on its way, and she was frightened by that. Too much control might be passing from the family to the outsiders. And what would Michael do if that was to happen?

‘Don’t come back … Dear God, don’t come back, not now. Not ever. Just leave him alone.’

She went back to the house where the phone was ringing. Thinking it might be Richard she ran into the sitting room, breathless, but it was the French psychic, Françoise Jeury, asking if she could come and visit. Susan put her off, then poured herself
a large Southern Comfort.

The first thing she noticed was the cooling of the air in the room, a phenomenon so common that it no longer alarmed her. It was an atmospheric change that invariably accompanied a psychic event, and Françoise Jeury had a well-established routine whenever her extra senses, or one of the five ordinary senses, detected an unexpected change in the environment.

She switched on a small tape-recorder, activated the corner video camera, put loops of coarse iron around her neck, wrists and ankles, then rang down to the main lobby of the Institute.

‘Room 4b. I have an AC positive, getting stronger.’

That was all she needed to do. All the corridors in the Institute were monitored on a routine basis for the passage of ‘hard located’ or ‘moving’ presence – that state of alertness would now be increased to critical. A medical team would be on standby, and a psychologist ready to access Françoise’s unconscious mind, or dreams, if a phenomenon occurred and was transferred too deeply during the encounter.

She quickly rang Lee, then, and was relieved when he answered. He had been intending to visit a new Roman site being excavated on the Thames embankment, near Fleet.

‘Do you want me there?’

‘Please!’ She spoke urgently, uneasy for reasons she couldn’t fathom. There was a sense of
approach, of something coming closer, and it was making her pulse race. ‘As soon as you can.’

‘Get out of there if you think it’s going to be dangerous …’

‘Just come!’

‘Shall I bring a shield?’

‘Yes.’

A shield was a simple defence against psychic attack, not always effective, but an enhancement to confidence. The Institute did not possess the sort of high-tech weaponry and monitoring equipment that had been romanced in a recent film. ‘Ghostbusting’ was still in the realm of fantasy, but she smiled to herself as she remembered occasions, not long past, when she could have done with a little more control of the psychic event that was occurring around her.

The Atmosphere Cooling passed, but the hair on her neck – an invaluable sensor – was sharp and itching. (I have a positive on spine tingling …)

She got on with her work, typing slowly, distracted now. Around her, on the shelves, the artefacts and natural materials that she had accumulated over the years were quiet, innocent.

A minute later the temperature dropped dramatically, a shock of cold, and the air thickened around her. She pushed back from the desk, and tried to stand, but her legs felt suddenly sluggish. She forced herself up, rising as if through a soupy liquid—

A nagging memory of a conversation … too distracted to remember clearly
…

There was something in the room with her. It filled the space by the door, then seeped away, but pulsed back a moment later. She could smell the sea! A sharp, salty tang, with the sweeter stench of rotting weed. It made her gag for a second, and she sat down again, eyes wide and alert, mind open but sensing
nothing except this false ocean …

The sea! The ocean! Michael Whitlock!

Shimmering, then: a shimmering shape materializing before her, arms outstretched. It was taller than the room. She could see the vague outline of legs and arms, the head halfway through the ceiling. Then it stooped. Great fish eyes, dead and watery, glittered for a moment, then faded. Fingers flexed, stroking the air of the room, reaching towards the shelves.

The dead face took on a momentary feature, and she saw Michael’s face, eyes closed, ginger hair flaring. Then again the dead thing, the drowned thing, then just the fingers of the left arm, swelling, flexing, becoming impossibly jointed, curling round a stone on the shelf, a spherical piece of black obsidian the size of a cricket ball.

‘Michael …’ Françoise shouted. ‘Michael, can you hear me?’

The room pulsed, seemed to shrink, then expand again, and Françoise felt the air snatched from her lungs. She gasped and struggled for breath, but the air came back, and the round, dead face was close to hers. The fish eyes slowly closed, but the toothless mouth opened in a faint and echoing scream, that dissolved into weird, distant laughter.

The shelf that held the stone was suddenly shattered. Fragments flew across the room and Françoise, acting on instinct only, flung herself to one side as the blast of air and pottery exploded towards her.

And at once the room was silent, very still, settling. The presence had gone.

Françoise picked herself up, brushed at her clothes. She surveyed the mayhem. Her desk was overturned, one corner broken off completely. The telephone was wrapped around the ceiling light, its cord trailing.

Searching through the scattered objects on the floor she established that the heavy stone
had gone. She remembered the video. It was running, but …

‘Damn!’

It was pointing along the wall. It had been dislodged. It had a wide-angle lens, but at some point it had been thrown out of line. Hands shaking she removed the camera and ran the tape back, reviewing the film through the finder.

There was a flash of shape, a clear visual image of the presence in the room, then the field of view shifted alarmingly, finally being flung to face the wall.

The sound of the scream and laughter was on the tape recorder.

Two technicians arrived in the room, flushed and breathless from running. First reports suggested that no other room had witnessed the phenomenon, nor had the monitors in the corridors. This didn’t surprise Françoise, although she said nothing for the moment. She was too shaken, and too excited.

A minute later Lee Kline stepped cautiously into the room, smiled at Françoise, then looked around at the mayhem and the busy technicians. ‘Spring cleaning, I see.’

His smile was thin, his concern showing. Françoise shrugged then held out her hands. Lee walked over to her, unbuttoning his leather jacket. He took her hands in his and asked two questions, which she answered. He pulled her close and kissed her on her open mouth, staring into her eyes, looking hard. All the time his fingers felt the deeper pulses in her wrists. Her taste flowed. Her response to the kiss would have been clear to him after the years of practice. Finally, she did the thing with her tongue that they’d agreed would signal at least the continued presence of Françoise’s memory, even though she might have been ‘inhabited’ after the encounter.

As Lee pulled away, he pecked Françoise
affectionately on the cheek.

‘You’re clear. At least, as far as I can tell.’

She touched a finger disappointedly to the area of flesh and shook her head. ‘The romantic American – more passion in the “test” kiss than in the greeting.’

Lee grinned, scratching his dark hair as he looked around at the scattered artefacts. ‘I notice you’ve had garlic for lunch.’

‘No entities would dare try to possess me.’

‘Well, there’s trying and trying …’

She noticed Lee’s teasing laugh but ignored it, save for a smile, then described the apparition and outlined her idea as to its source.

It
had
been Michael, disguised somehow, dressed in his Fisher King guise, or perhaps as the boy who haunted the primeval sea, his alter ego, his chalky imaginary friend. Perhaps he had reached through space and ‘fetched’ a tribal artefact from the culture of the Aztecs, a stone imbued with echoes of the lives it had taken as it had been used to smash the skulls of its victims.

But something about the image of the ghost disturbed her … it was familiar to her … a familiar appearance … Had Michael drawn it for her? She couldn’t remember
.

She drank a cup of coffee and relaxed, but still struggled to recall the source of the ghostly image. After a while she abandoned the mental quest and phoned Susan Whitlock. The woman at the other end sounded subdued, quite defensive.

‘Susan? Is Michael there?’

Susan’s voice was strained. ‘No. He’s at school. Why?’

At school! Not in the pit, then. Françoise said, ‘I was wondering … has he fetched anything in the last little while? Has there been any sign of his talent returning?’

‘None at all,’ the other woman said stiffly, and Françoise had the very human sense
that Susan Whitlock was not telling the truth.

‘I was thinking not of valuable things, but rocks, or earth, stones … wood … that sort of thing.’

‘Nothing,’ said Susan. ‘No stone or wood that I’m aware of.’

Françoise hesitated, then prompted, ‘Something very simple, like a black ball of stone, chipped and shaped to be sharp on one side … ?’

‘I’ve seen nothing like that.’

‘I see. Well, thank you.’ She hesitated, made uneasy by the hostility pouring down the phone line. Lee’s presence beside her was reassuring, his hand resting gently on her shoulder as he listened. ‘Susan … ?’

‘Yes?’

‘May I come and visit Michael? Perhaps later this evening? I’d like very much to talk to him, to ask him some questions.’

There was a sigh of irritation, or perhaps frustration. Then came the answer, curt and to the point: that the Whitlock family had some sorting out of its own to do. Perhaps Madame Jeury wouldn’t mind waiting a few days. Then, yes … by all means come and visit. But not today.

‘Thank you.’

Staring at the mess around her, the evidence of an explosion caused by a boy reaching through time and space, Françoise came to the odd and exhilarating conclusion: Michael was fetching from the future. He had reached back from some future time to this moment in 1989 in London.

The event – the presentation of a black stone trophy to his parents – was still to occur in the life of the Whitlocks.

Françoise couldn’t know when exactly the event would occur, but as she discussed the idea with Lee she made the assumption that it was still some
months off.

At the end of the class, at the end of the day, Michael was called to the teacher and told to wait behind with Carol. Then they were taken through the school to the car park and personally delivered into their mother’s care. Susan hugged him and opened the door for him, and at once he felt cold. He pulled away from her, his arms rigid by his sides. The chatter and laughter of the pupils faded and that buzzing returned, the angry buzzing that blanked all his senses, except for the sea and the beach, and the red sandstone caves.

He watched his mother suspiciously. As she drove from the gates he looked for the man in the brown jacket, but didn’t see him.

Daddy’s friend had not returned, then, to try and tease more treasures from him.

At home he was again surprised and suspicious when he was taken straight to the house and told to stay inside. Carol seemed content enough, despite the day being still bright and hot. Michael wanted to go to his castle, but his mother locked the back door and started to make tea.

‘I’d like to go and play outside,’ he said grimly from the kitchen doorway.

‘Not until your father gets home. I want you to stay indoors.’ She looked round at him as she
stirred the saucepan, and smiled. ‘Why didn’t you tell me that Tony Hanson was a bully? Why didn’t you tell me you and he aren’t friends?’

The thought of Hanson made Michael’s blood run cold. The memory of nights at Aunt Jenny’s made him shiver, remembering the creaking of floorboards as the Hanson boys would come into the room and try to steal his clothes; or the kicks beneath the table during supper; and the simple, increasing sense of menace whenever he stayed there.