Read The Magdalena Curse Online
Authors: F.G. Cottam
The Magdalena Curse (2 page)
‘Does he know what you did in the military?’
‘No.’
‘You were in the SAS.’
‘Was I?’
‘You were involved in covert operations. You were awarded medals for gallantry.’
‘Was I?’
‘It was in the paper, Mark. When you came here and bought this place, it was in the
Chronicle
.’
Chronicle
.’
‘If it was in the
Chronicle
, then it must be true.’
Chronicle
, then it must be true.’
‘You must be open with me if I am to help your son.’
‘And I shall be, doctor. But you asked me about what Adam knows. Being open to you is not the same as bragging to my son about the men I’ve killed.’
Elizabeth got into her car. She was gifted at languages. She spoke only a smattering of Russian from a voluntary stint a few years earlier gained during the second Chechen conflict. She had not had the time to learn the complex subtleties of the Russian tongue. Events had intervened. Adam had spoken it with much profanity in a strong Siberian dialect.
The dreams belonged to someone else.
She had made a fool of herself in front of Mark Hunter. She was not sure of very much about the morning’s events, but she was certain of that. Driving away from him, she did not think she had ever felt more foolish in her adult life.
He called her that afternoon. She had given him her mobile number in case of emergency. Her practice was largely rural, far flung. Isolation itself was a problem, a cause of anxiety, for some of her elderly patients in particular. Giving them the mobile number could allay that. What it cost her in privacy she thought a worthy sacrifice to their peace of mind. Healing was a vocation to Elizabeth Bancroft. She thought that being a general practitioner was a sometimes rewarding, sometimes difficult, profession. But her compulsion to do it was a deep and instinctive desire.
‘I’ve rung to apologise,’ he said. ‘I was high-handed, arrogant with you.’
‘And I was the village busybody gossiping at the parish pump,’ she said.
He laughed.
‘How is Adam?’
‘No longer bilingual. Okay. Subdued. This morning you mentioned the possibility of a referral?’
‘I don’t think the need is acute. But we should not discuss his case over the phone. I’ll call in tomorrow evening, on my way home. I can chat to Adam before he goes to bed and then outline my thoughts afterwards with you.’
‘You work long hours.’
‘Yes, Mark. I do.’
She felt relieved that he had called. She was concerned about Adam’s case. She wanted no unnecessary obstacles to bringing a happy conclusion to his ordeal. Thankfully, that appeared to be his father’s only priority too. It was why he had phoned her. He was pretty desperate, she thought, under the English, officer-class poise he affected. His son was all he had and Colonel Mark Hunter MC, GC loved the boy very much. She did not think it was the first time he had needed to apologise for his arrogance. It was an inclination in his character he had to struggle to overcome. That was as clear to her as it must be to him. But she was still ashamed of reciting hearsay gleaned from the local free-sheet. That remark she had made about the shrew at the parish pump had come from the heart. Her own family had been victims of cruel gossip down the years. At times it had amounted to persecution. On a couple of occasions it had provoked actual violence. On one occasion, a long time ago, the violence had been terrible. She believed rumour to be pernicious. The way to establish what Adam Hunter knew about his father was to ask Mark, who would tell her truthfully. He had admitted to being a killer to her. But the killing was contingent, had been done in the cause of Queen and Country. Anyway, Elizabeth did not believe his father’s dubious exploits the cause of Adam’s nightmares. She had seen the way the boy looked at his father. The look was open, adoring. ‘Dad’ had been the first word
on his lips when he woke from his dream, seeking refuge from the fears that haunted his sleep.
on his lips when he woke from his dream, seeking refuge from the fears that haunted his sleep.
She wondered how much Mark knew about the history of his house. All old houses had some pain or tragedy attached to them in this part of the world, she thought. The Highlands had endured some bloody periods down the centuries. Nowhere around here had been immune. Mark’s house had been home to a witch finder sent from Westminster by order of Parliament in the time of Oliver Cromwell. Cromwell’s imperialist adventures in Ireland were well chronicled. But he had been just as harsh in Scotland. The witch finder had been one more symbol of the brutal oppression England could inflict, on a whim, on its self-styled Commonwealth. He had come and he had found his witches. Of course he had. He had probably been given a quota to meet back in London. He had conducted his trials and got his confessions using the iron heated in the forge and the drowning bucket and the thumbscrews. And he had inflicted his burnings on his poor innocent culprits. And he had been cursed savagely for it all. And he had lived in that very house until felled by the stroke that killed him. It was said that the smell of singed flesh clung to the hills for decades after. But Elizabeth believed only the factual part of the story. And she did not think Judge Josiah Jerusalem Smith, or the curse under which he laboured, responsible for the dreams afflicting Adam Hunter now. Puritans frowned even at Latin. Men like Cromwell’s witch finders did not generally inspire anyone to speak Russian.
Her journey to the Hunters’ house was slow and difficult the following night. Fog was common in the Highlands in the autumn. But it clung most tenaciously to the gullies and vales and stream banks, and to the forested land. Generally it thinned as you ascended in altitude. But it did not do so
on this night. Darkness came very early, conjured prematurely by the mist. Elizabeth was not that familiar with the road. Mist wrapped the car in pale tendrils, an opaque blanket of grey smothering her windscreen as her headlights failed to pick out landmarks and she was filled with the weird impression that the car was no longer anchored beneath her to the earth. She crawled in a kind of limbo along the road for a while, aware of the steep banks descending sharply to either side only when the car canted and the tyres juddered and she corrected her steering. She had hoped to arrive at 7.30. But it was past 8 p.m. when she finally made out the light above her, climbing the hill towards it.
on this night. Darkness came very early, conjured prematurely by the mist. Elizabeth was not that familiar with the road. Mist wrapped the car in pale tendrils, an opaque blanket of grey smothering her windscreen as her headlights failed to pick out landmarks and she was filled with the weird impression that the car was no longer anchored beneath her to the earth. She crawled in a kind of limbo along the road for a while, aware of the steep banks descending sharply to either side only when the car canted and the tyres juddered and she corrected her steering. She had hoped to arrive at 7.30. But it was past 8 p.m. when she finally made out the light above her, climbing the hill towards it.
Hunter met her by the door, where he must have been listening out for the approaching noise of her engine.
‘There’s been a development,’ he said, ushering her in, before she could apologise for her lateness. He looked worried. He looked tormented.
She unbuttoned her coat and he took it from her and hung it on a peg beside the door.
‘What kind of development?’
‘Things have escalated. It has got worse. He’s talking now in his sleep. I tried to keep him awake for you. We were playing chess. But he fell asleep over the board, poor little fellow. He’s exhausted. I’d carried him up and was tucking him in when the muttering started. I don’t know whether to rouse him or leave him. It’s gone beyond the conventions of nightmare. He’s living the dreams. He’s whispering in languages that were dead a thousand years ago.’
Elizabeth put a hand on Hunter’s arm. She squeezed. He was close to tears, almost unmanned by what was happening upstairs to his son.
‘Have you anything strong to drink?’
‘I’ve whisky.’
‘Pour two inches into a glass and swallow it down.’
He tried to smile. ‘That’s your prescription?’
‘Do it. I’ll go up,’ she said.
Adam was lying peacefully on his back. His breathing seemed regular but slow. His mouth was slightly open and there was a bluish tinge to his complexion that Elizabeth did not like very much. Once again it felt bitterly cold in the room despite a radiator too hot for her to touch for more than a couple of seconds. He was talking. But it wasn’t in his own clear, piping tone. There were separate voices. It was like some skilled act of ventriloquism. The voices emanated from his chest and their words were articulated without the boy moving his lips even a fraction. It was uncanny, like a radio broadcast of stories recounted in biblical times, and the very remoteness of the tongues made her shiver in the chill of the room.
Elizabeth had an involuntary memory then, recalling with perfect clarity seeing a ventriloquist perform in a variety show broadcast on television when she had been a little girl of about four or five. The dummy sitting on its master’s lap had sung a song while the ventriloquist himself had very deliberately drunk a tall glass of milk empty. She remembered the song. It was, ‘I Belong to Glasgow’. She had been puzzled, wondering how it was done. Now, more than a quarter of a century on, she puzzled again, wondering how this squall of dead voices was emerging from the mouth of the sleeping boy.
Some of it was in Latin. Some of it was Classical Greek. She thought some of it was from St Luke’s Gospel, recited in Hebrew. She recognised quite a long passage from Milton’s
Paradise Lost
, sonorously intoned in an English dialect she had never heard spoken. The really unnerving thing was when two voices spoke at the same time. One rising babble of voices almost forced her to flee from where she stood. There was anger and mockery there in the chill room and
she could equate none of it with Adam. She lifted one of his eyelids and then measured his pulse. His heart rate was regular and his sleep deep, even if it wasn’t restful. The voices subsided for a moment and she crept out in the charged silence. They were no more alive, the voices, she thought, than had been the ventriloquist’s doll. If they had been, they would have addressed her. She did not think she could have endured that. This was bad. But she thought there was some explanation that the science of her calling could accommodate. Had the voices addressed her, had they acknowledged her presence, she would have been staring at the void.
Paradise Lost
, sonorously intoned in an English dialect she had never heard spoken. The really unnerving thing was when two voices spoke at the same time. One rising babble of voices almost forced her to flee from where she stood. There was anger and mockery there in the chill room and
she could equate none of it with Adam. She lifted one of his eyelids and then measured his pulse. His heart rate was regular and his sleep deep, even if it wasn’t restful. The voices subsided for a moment and she crept out in the charged silence. They were no more alive, the voices, she thought, than had been the ventriloquist’s doll. If they had been, they would have addressed her. She did not think she could have endured that. This was bad. But she thought there was some explanation that the science of her calling could accommodate. Had the voices addressed her, had they acknowledged her presence, she would have been staring at the void.
Hunter was seated in one of two armchairs angled to face the hearth when she descended the stairs. She could smell the peaty aroma of whisky. An open bottle and two glasses occupied a small table placed between the chairs. She would not join him in a drink. The unfamiliar road would require total sobriety even if the fog had lifted. Elizabeth had seen the carnage caused by vodka-fuelled driving in her time in Russia. She had seen the victims thrown through windscreens on arctic nights, pasted by their innards and then welded by them, frozen to the bark of the conifers their cars had collided with. Such sights offered no encouragement to drink and drive. A decade on, the gory images of accidental death still stayed with her.
‘I think he is undergoing some kind of nervous trauma,’ she said. She sat down. ‘I think he has downloaded something, some game involving magic or possession or demonology or a stew of those things. It’s overwhelmed him. We should check if any of his schoolmates are similarly afflicted.’
‘They’re not. You would know. They would be your patients. And you know it isn’t that.’
‘You should have his computer’s hard drive examined and find out what is on it. And find out what he’s deleted from it. It isn’t just download sites. Check your credit and debit
card bills. See if he has bought something on eBay, some hardcore Death Metal-inspired thing, some game involving the Apocalypse. Or one of the occult series shown on television in America and available here as a box set of DVDs. Some of those shows are heavy stuff.’
card bills. See if he has bought something on eBay, some hardcore Death Metal-inspired thing, some game involving the Apocalypse. Or one of the occult series shown on television in America and available here as a box set of DVDs. Some of those shows are heavy stuff.’
‘You think my son was reduced to this by watching episodes of
Buffy
?’
Buffy
?’
‘Check whether he’s subscribed to an online fraternity. The Goth subculture can be very dark.’
‘It isn’t that. You know bloody well it isn’t.’
It was quiet, now. The murmurs from above had ceased. Adam lay quietly and apparently still in his bed. She heard something large caper by outside. It brushed the wall of the house with a coarse flank. A deer, she thought, befuddled, made clumsy by the mist.
‘There’s something I didn’t tell you, Mark.’
Hunter drained his glass. ‘I’m just going to have a look at him. Make sure he’s okay.’
He came back down half a minute later. There was relief on his face, which was slightly flushed by the whisky.
‘There’s something I need to tell you,’ she said again.
‘And there’s something I need to tell you. But by all means, ladies first.’
She paused. And then she began. ‘I told you Adam spoke yesterday morning in fluent Russian.’
‘In a strong Siberian accent.’
‘And in the persona of a man who recited his name. I did not tell you that part. He was speaking in character.’
‘He told you who he was?’
‘He stated who he was. He did not engage with me at all. It was not a conversation. It was a speech, a recitation. His voice was raised no louder when I turned my back on him to discover whether it would be. It was not communication. It was impersonation.’
‘It was possession. What was the name he gave?’
Again, Elizabeth paused. ‘He stated that his name was Grigori Yefimovich Novy. Does that mean anything to you?’
‘Yes. Novy was born in Pokrovskoye, in Siberia. The date of his birth was probably 1869. The world knew him better as Grigori Rasputin.’
‘Don’t you see, Mark? You can just picture some Californian cyber-geek game designer namechecking Rasputin for level three of his warlocks and wizards conspiracy fest. And it has affected a boy, too young to play the game, in the traumatic way we see upstairs. Adam needs psychiatric help, Mark. He has downloaded and been exposed to something he shouldn’t have and has frightened himself out of his wits. You are right that the condition has worsened. I know a really good man in Edinburgh. He’s expensive, but he will prioritise a case as unusual as this. And he’s a kind man with kids of his own.’
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