Authors: Sarah Dalton
“Yes
, that’s correct. If they refuse to go themselves, because they are sick and twisted like her,” he jabs a thumb to the woman, “then this is the only way to do it.”
“Where do they go?” Seth asks.
Igor shrugs. “Do I look dead?”
Seth turns to
Lacey.
“I don’t know
, either,” she replies.
“Right then, I’d best get on with it.” Igor turns back to our captured spirit.
“Time to leave this world, love.” Without any hesitation, he pushes the knife through the circle of protection, through her wedding dress, and into her chest. “You’ll know if you’ve got the heart, because they make a terrible noise and then disappear.”
She wails like a banshee, her arms flailing around her head. But there is no blood, and that I’m glad of. It looks nothing like killing a person. Instead, she flickers on and off, on and off, over and over. It takes around thirty se
conds for her to disappear. A fleeting moment before she does, her face changes back to young and vulnerable, with an almost serene expression on her face. I see the person she was before she died, before she became this twisted creature.
She whispers, “
Elizabeth,” before she dies.
“Elizabeth?”
Lacey asks.
I shrug.
“She seemed peaceful at the end,” Seth says.
“They always do.” Igor
inserts the Athamé into its sheath. There’s a trace of sadness in his voice. Or maybe it’s relief, it’s hard to tell.
“I hope she found peace,” Neil says.
“She was a child murderer,” Lemarr replies. “Maybe she doesn’t deserve peace.”
“We don’t know that she intended to kill her baby. The circumstances
looked unpleasant,” I say. Seth squeezes my hand a little harder.
“It doesn’t matter
, now. She’s gone. And now you know how to get rid of a ghost,” Igor says.
“Well, not really. We don’t know how to do those symbol thingy-mi-bobs,” Neil points out. “They looked complex.”
“Yes, well,” Igor replies, his voice prickling with annoyance. “I was about to get to that.”
For what feels like hours in the cold night, Igor demonstrates how to perform the ritual, showing us each symbol one at a time. Seth takes a small notepad out of his jeans pocket and sketches each symbol. We don’t see any more ghosts for the night. But we do manage to form a circle of protection. Igor wanted
Lacey to be in the middle, but she refused, choosing to stand sullenly by the church. She hid herself so that only I could see her without the Athamé.
As we walk back to Five Moors I think about Amy. When we perform the ritual on her, she will revert back to the little girl she was before she died.
Will she tell us what happened to her before she goes? I like to think that Igor’s ritual is helping the ghosts move on. If we are sending them to some hell dimension, surely they wouldn’t look so serene at the end? But then, maybe everyone looks serene when their story ends, no matter where they end up.
It’s the day of Seth’s twenty-first birthday and I’ve bought him a lame present from the Nettleby gift shop. It’s a tiny bust of Beethoven. When I saw it, I thought of Seth at his desk, with the sketches surrounding him, working in solitude.
We have only tonight to perform the ritual on Amy. But first we’re going to
The Nag’s Head, because there’s a local band playing there and, according to Lemarr, it’s the one night of the week that all the stuck up locals stay at home.
With
Lacey in my room helping me choose outfits, I put on coral lipstick, ring my eyes with kohl—not enough, according to Lace—and don a denim mini-skirt over black tights. There’s not much I can do about the scars on my neck. I apply a little foundation, but too much and I start to look like the orange faced women who work on the make-up counters in Boots.
“Are you nervous?”
Lacey asks.
“A little,” I admit.
“She’s ten times as powerful as the ghost in the graveyard.”
“I know.” I’m dreading tonight. I’ve barely eaten all day, and what I did eat I feel like I’m about to throw up.
Worst of all, Mum seems to be watching me more carefully. She made me take my medication in front of her this morning and I had to cheek the pills, the way I learned to in Magdelena. One day I will tell her that I don’t need them, that I’m not crazy; but right now, I can’t. I have to focus on saving Seth.
“I don’t like that
Athamé,” Lacey says. She hesitates. “I don’t like what we’re about to do, either, but I know it needs doing.”
I turn away from the mirror with a mascara brush in my hand. “She kills people.”
“I know,” she says. “But it’s just… the thought of someone forcing me away from this world… I can’t…” Her eyes are down and her voice is more sombre than I’ve ever heard it. “Promise me you’ll never do that to me.” She looks up at me with large, misty eyes. “I couldn’t face it, being torn away from here. I couldn’t… it’s a violation—”
“Lace, it’s okay, I would never do that to you.”
“You promise?”
My skin tingles and I don’t know why. My stomach squirms as I say the words, and somehow I already feel like I’m making a bad decision.
But I don’t know why I feel like that. “I promise I will never perform the ritual on you.”
We hover
-hug each other and then I apply another coat of mascara.
*
There’s a chalkboard advertising the band outside the pub, and a fat man with a straggly beard takes a pound from me for entry. Lacey pulls faces behind his head, and jokes about his bald patch. She even pulls on a strand of his beard, and the guy starts in his seat, looking all around him.
Lemarr
waves from the bar. “The band’s upstairs. I got you a vodka and coke.”
“Thanks,” I say. I hadn’t planned on drinking.
“We need Dutch courage,” Lemarr explains as he hands me the drink. “Lacey here?”
I nod.
“Hi, Lacey,” he says, smiling.
Lacey
pulls on his dreadlocks and the poor guy almost drops his pint.
“She says hello,” I translate. “Is Seth here
, yet?”
Lemarr
answers as we make our way up the stairs to the same room we discussed ghost hunting in with Igor. “Not yet.”
I finger the strap of my bag, thinking of the tiny gift inside, and wonder if everything is all right. We’d arranged to meet at 7:30 and it’s already 7:45. I was late because Dad decid
ed to lecture me about staying “safe”. I cringe just thinking about it.
The music thumps, bass reverberating through the handrail of the stairs. There’s the twang of an electric guitar and a few cheers from a small crowd. It sounds like they’ve just come on stage. My pulse responds to the beat of the music, quickening to match the pace, and the vodka loosens my muscles, making me want to dance already. Heat spreads up my neck in nervous anticipation. I’m jangling tonight.
I feel like the electric guitar, itching to be strummed.
When we enter the room, Neil and Igor are stood together near the back. Igor’s mouth is fixed into a tight line while Ne
il talks. Neil’s arms flail in wild gestures, his drink spilling onto the dirty carpet. His jeans are so baggy they cover his feet entirely, and his hair spikes up at all angles.
“All right, Mary,” he says.
It sounds like a question, but it’s an acknowledgement. I nod in response.
Lacey
steps forward and tugs on Neil’s nose ring.
Half of Neil’s drink sloshes to the floor and
Lacey doubles over in a fit of giggles.
“Don’t worry, it’s
Lace,” I explain, shouting over the music.
I glance at my watch. 7:50.
Seth should be here, by now. What if something has happened to him on the way here? We should have been more careful. We should have stayed with him for the entire day. I should have made the most of our time together, because soon I will be leaving Nettleby for good. Not even stopping Amy will prevent that from happening.
“The
band are good, aren’t they?” Lacey whispers by my ear. She dances to the music, jumping up and down, flickering like a flame in the wind. Every now and then she crackles with excitement, and the electricity catches my arm. Her sparks are contagious. They always have been.
Before long I’m dancing
, with Lacey next to me, letting the music control my body. But I can’t let go, not when I don’t know where he is. Not when I don’t know if he’s safe.
Lemarr
nods his head with the music, sometimes counting the beats with his fingers and jumping high off his feet. Neil shuffles forward and back with his eyes closed. Igor leans against the table with a grimace, but I see him tapping along with his left hand.
The more time goes on, the more unease grows in my stomach.
Lacey watches as I keep glancing at my watch and checking my phone for missed calls. Eventually, I text him; I’d been holding off so as not to look too clingy.
At about 8:15
, a shaken Seth walks into the room. There’s a glazed look in his eyes.
“What’s wrong?” I ask.
He shakes his head. “I don’t want to… It was Amy.”
I push him back towards the door so I can hear him. “Did she hurt you?”
“No… I… I want to…”
And then he kisses me urgently, pressing me against the door frame so that someone has to push
us out of the way to get past. His stubble rubs against my chin but I don’t care, I lean into him, forcing our bodies to become one, ignoring the dozens of people around us. When we break, his breathing is laboured.
“Let’s dance,” he says,
pulling me into the crowd.
We’re lost in an instant, away from our friends
, anonymous in a sea of people. I face Seth instead of the band. We move as one, with our hips jammed together. The music controls us like a spell. We’re compressed by the crowd and our noses touch. We kiss. Seth’s hands travel over my back, around my waist. I think of that glorious afternoon in his room. I think of now, and how invincible I am, how we’re going to win tonight.
I’m not consciously aware of song changes. Instead
, I let my body move to the music. When a slow song comes on, my hips sway with Seth’s body. When a fast and rocky song comes on, and when the lead singer screams into the microphone, I let the crowd around me throw me into Seth, jumping with them, letting the film of sweat build on my forehead. We kiss and it’s salty and our teeth bump together. We break and our palms find each other. Our eyes never stray.
We don’t even notice Neil gesturing to us. We don’t notice when the band announce their last song.
Neil has to pull Seth away.
“It’s time,” he shouts. “Igor wants us to go.”
I glance at my watch, it’s almost ten. Where did the time go? Seth swallows thickly; his eyes seem reluctant to leave mine. I reach out and stroke his hair away from his face. A tremor twitches along his jawline. He’s afraid.
*
When we leave The Nag’s Head, we walk in a silent line. Igor leads. Neil and Lemarr follow close behind him. Lacey flickers on and off, third in the row. Seth and I lag behind. I want to give him his present.
My heartbeat quickens. I’ve never liked giving gifts
, it makes me nervous. I don’t know what to say when I hand them the present. I never know what to expect from their reaction. It always takes me a while to summon the courage to do it.
I haven’t even said happy birthday to Seth yet. Neil did it as we were leaving the pub. He did it with ease, slapping Seth on the shoulder
, like they were old pals. Why can’t I be more like that?
“I have a gift
for you,” I say. “It… it’s for your birthday. Um, happy birthday, by the way, I should have said it earlier, sorry.” I can feel myself beginning to mutter. My fingers work the clasp on my bag, taking three attempts to open it. “I’ve not wrapped it. And it’s only a small token, it’s… I mean…” I sigh and hand over the Beethoven bust. “I don’t know why, but it reminded me of you. I thought you could put it on your desk, or whatever. It’s stupid, really—”
“Why did it remind you of me?” Seth asks. I can’t read his expression in the dark. I think he’s confused.
“Well, I figured if Beethoven could compose the ninth symphony when he was deaf, you can survive Amy and get to university. It reminded me of you, because I think you’re brave and a survivor. You’ve gone through so much and that could change someone. It could strip away their goodness. But you’re still good. You’re still compassionate and caring.”
Seth stops in the road and stares down at the bust in his fingers. He lets out a little laugh an
d then he pulls me into him by the lapels of my jacket and kisses me.
“Happy birthday,” I say as we break.
“Thank you.”