A thick white candle sat in the middle of the table and, bizarrely, to the right of it was an old school bell made of scratched brass. A slim, frayed loop of leather hung from the handle. Rachel had set up a sound recorder on a side table. It blinked its recording lights.
A decade ago, a sweet, good reverend like Matt Hunter wouldn’t have gone anywhere near something like this. He’d have avoided it like spiritual scurvy and even campaigned hard against it, because all good Christians know this seance stuff is wrong and treacherous. A Doorway to Danger! – so the tracts and leaflets screamed. But now, on the flip side of faith, this felt very much like any church prayer meeting he’d led in the past. The solemn sense of ritual, the quiet approach, the expectation that an unseen presence would fade out of the dark for a moment and change everybody’s world.
Of course these days he knew both prayer meetings and seances for what they were – exercises in kidding the self – but that innate sense of breath holding – whenever people sat in quiet circles – was an old habit he’d need to shake, because he noticed that despite himself, he was still doing it now.
Now they were assembled, Bob carefully placed a floor lamp right next to the table and switched it on. Then he killed the main lights so that shadows sprang up from everywhere. It made the room look dark and Gothic. Using the lamp was annoying and manipulative perhaps. But wasn’t the swell of a church organ, or the light sprayed from stained-glass windows specifically designed to set the mood and melt the heart? Wasn’t it all just suggestion and special effects?
Joyce looked even more gaunt in the low light; disturbingly similar to his own dead mother at certain angles. In the days before a psycho sliced her lips off. Around the walls, the animal pictures hung. Tigers and wolves and birds stared out, the white paint of their eyes catching the light in a way he preferred to ignore.
Bob cleared his throat. ‘We’re here tonight to speak to Miss Holly Wasson.’ This wasn’t said to the people around the table as such. This was an announcement to the room, to the forces that might be listening. ‘Holly tragically took her own life in this house … yet we believe she was driven to that act … that a great injustice has been done.’
Matt looked across at Rachel. She was pursing her lips, like she was trying to regulate her breathing.
‘We believe Holly knows the force that poisoned her heart and we’re afraid that force might have returned. So tonight we come here, to this house of power … to this place of death.’ He opened his hand and called up towards the ceiling. ‘And Holly, love … we’ve brought you what you asked for.’ Slowly and smiling, he looked down at Rachel and pointed right at her, like she was tonight’s sacrifice. It made her shrink into her chair. ‘We’ve brought her. But first … music.’
Music? Huh?
Bob didn’t whip out a mike and suddenly break into song. If there’s something strange, in your neighbourhood … Instead, he wheeled a vintage stereo over. It was some ancient thing in a tall wooden cabinet with a glass door and record player on top. He grabbed an album that was leaning against it and with great delicacy placed the record on the turntable, gently hovering the needle above it. Before he put it down he spoke. But this time it was no longer to the room. Now it was to Matt and the other living people around it. ‘We’re about to get started, folks, so please don’t leave, for any reason. I’ve set up motion detectors in Holly’s room, so if the alarm goes off we’ll know that something is moving up there. And can you make sure your phones are turned off and please, please keep your hands on the table, palms down. The wood will act as a conductor – oh … and do not touch each other.’
Proto-science babble complete, he dropped the needle.
The crackle of dirt and hair sounded like a fire dying but then classical music filled the room. There was something about the melody that made Rachel visibly stiffen, then she closed her eyes while Mary started laughing, staring at the metal school bell.
He recognised the music instantly.
Peter and the Wolf by Prokofiev. First movement.
‘God, Holly loved this music,’ Rachel said. ‘How did you know?’
When they both looked at Joyce for the answer, she was in no mood to speak. The old woman’s eyes were already rolling back into her head and her shoulders were trembling, and she was opening her mouth uncomfortably, painfully wide.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Rabbit runs with breeze and fur and wind and fire in its face.
Leaping over logs and branches, beating heart’s a ball of grace.
Bulging eyes
look
back and over,
up
to see what’s there.
Veins are flooding up with power.
Still not stopping, rabbit reaches in its stomach for its soul.
Yanks it out and pets it gently,
Swallows down the power whole.
Scampering toward the light,
fling the fur to heaven’s door!
Wild and flying, through the dying,
barely touching paws on floor.
Branches loosen now at last.
Rabbit future, rabbit past.
Free and coming very fast.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Joyce’s head started to tremble, not violently, but enough to look like she had a sudden dose of Parkinson’s. Yet it was the slack-jawed gape and rolling eyes that really made her look like she needed a straitjacket. It was freakishly similar to a businessman Matt saw on the Tube once, having a fit. He’d frantically tried to stick his jacket under the guy’s head as it smacked repeatedly (and musically) against the metal railing. Teeth together, chin pushed out in a grotesque Bruce Forsyth impression.
Joyce looked like
