She thinks for a moment, leaning back against the pillows, eyes closed.
“The address was out on Tanner’s Row, just on the edge of the village. It’s probably only about a ten-minute drive but on the bike it takes a bit longer. I should have known all those houses were empty—Dad was talking about nothing else for weeks—but I was just thinking about the money. I’d been saving for a new stereo, because the one I’ve got is knackered. Of course once I got there, cycling all the way in the sleet and the cold with my fingers so numb I could hardly feel them, I realized right away. There were no lights on for one thing. Not even a streetlamp. No one goes in or comes out of Tanner’s Row anymore. All the cottages there got sold to a developer and now all six of them are just sitting there falling to bits, waiting to be knocked down. That’s what Dad gets so mad about. Good Cornish granite going to waste, he says. The last house on the row, number six, was where I was headed. When I got there the front door was already standing open.”
A pause. Her eyes flick to the collection of photographs again, her and that girl and those hundred-watt smiles.
“There was someone standing there, calling me over. It took me a while to realize that it was my friend, Vicky.”
I glance up at the photos again, Alice and Vicky with their faces pressed close together, eyes shining with bright adolescent fervor.
“Vicky had a flashlight in her hand. ‘Come on,’ she was saying, like something exciting was happening, ‘come on, we’ve been waiting for you.’ She was laughing. I wasn’t laughing. I was pissed right off. Confused, too. Something still didn’t feel right,but you know—I’d gone all that way in the cold. Might as well see what was going on. I leaned my bike against the wall. As far as I know it’s still there. I haven’t been back to get it.
“When I went inside the house, I had to duck because of the way the ceiling was sagging. Everything stank, like dirty water. There was carpet but no furniture and so the people inside were sitting on plastic bags on the floor.”
“What people?”
“From my school, mostly. It was hard to see in the dark. Vicky’s brother was there, he’s at college, and some of his friends I suppose. A few girls from my class. They had flashlights and were drinking bottles of Thunderbird. They were obviously all in on the joke because when I arrived someone said, ‘Who ordered the hairdresser?’ and they all just about wet themselves laughing. Even Vicky. She offered me a go on the wine but I didn’t want any. I wanted to leave. The house was gross, so dark and damp. There was graffiti all over the walls and empty cans everywhere. One of the girls stood up then, a bit pissed. They all were, I think. She held the money for the appointment out to me. Five pounds. Said it was only a joke, that they were still going to pay me. Only I had to do something first. Before she’d give it to me, like.”
“What did they want you to do?”
Alice sighs, hands plucking at the cover. Her voice is soft and almost slurring, so deeply buried is she in the memory. Her eyes are wet and distant, mouth drawn down.
“I had to get something out of the chimney. I didn’t want to do it. I told them that. ‘Absolutely not,’ I said. ‘Whatever it is I’m not putting my hand up there, why couldn’t someone else do it?’ That’s when Vicky stood up. She came right up close to talk to me and she said, ‘Come on, Alice. It’s only a bottle. Justtake it out and then they’ll pay you. Please, Alice, you’re the only one brave enough.’ On and on like that until I said, ‘Fuck it, fine, I’ll do it.’ Everyone cheered. One of the boys even put his arm around me which was, you know, nice. They shone their flashlights up there so I could see. Lit up like that I wasn’t scared at all. It was only a chimney. Bricks and cobwebs and soot. It smelled bad but the whole house smelled bad, like everything in it had drowned. I couldn’t work out why they’d all been so afraid to do it. I reached up all the way to my shoulder—it was awkward, and it ached for a long time afterward but in the end I found it in a hole in the bricks, right where they said it was.”
A beat. I watch her carefully. There is the slightest tremble in her hands, voice wavering as if on the cusp of tears.
“Go on, Alice.”
“It was a bottle.” She swallows, her eyes deeply socketed and ringed with shadow. “I managed to pull it free but I suppose my fingers were so cold I couldn’t hold on to it properly. I dropped it and it smashed on the fireplace.
“Everyone screamed. I think Georgia said, ‘Oh my God. I’m going to be sick.’ One of the boys ran first but most of them followed, straight out the front door. Only Vicky hung back, and she was so frightened I could hear her voice shaking. I kept asking her what the matter was, why everyone had freaked out. She said, ‘You broke the witch’s bottle, Alice,’ and then she ran. After that I don’t think we said two nice words to each other—andI never got my fiver.”
I sit breathless, watching her. Her knees are drawn right up to her chin as if she were receding into herself.
“Alice, when I was studying psychology, I wrote a paper on mass psychogenic illness. It’s the theory that an idea or a feeling—particularly a strong one like terror or excitement—canspread through a crowd like a disease. It can even change the way people behave.”
As I lean toward her, I feel the slightest pressure on the back of my neck as if someone is watching me. Some oculus perhaps, cracks in the brickwork. I ignore it, threading my hand into Alice’s own.
“It’s what happened in the Salem witch trials and the dancing mania of the Middle Ages. It’s even been observed in animals, that’s why they call it ‘herd mentality.’ It doesn’t mean there is something wrong with you. Quite the opposite. It’s a shared experience, that’s all.”
I reach out and turn off the Dictaphone. I almost feel disappointed. Teen fever, a whipping up of emotions. There was a case recently in an all-girls school in upstate New York—hundreds of girls came down with a ‘fainting sickness’ despite tests showing there was no medical reason for the mysterious fits. It’s a social contagion and even though it’s fascinating it’s also normal. I need to go and talk to Sam. At last, I think, we might have an answer to what’s happening here. It’s only as I stand up and cross the room, one hand reaching out for the door handle, that I hear her say, “You didn’t ask me.”
“Ask you what?”
“How it feels.”
“How what feels, Alice?”
“When dead people start talking to me. You didn’t ask me what it feels like.”
My mouth floods with the taste of hot metal. Fear, polluting me.
“What does it feel like?” I ask her quietly and she looks right at me.
“Like biting into ice,” she says.
ELEVEN
A little before midday I find Sam standing in the front porch, his hands in his pockets. A cigarette burns in an ashtray beside him. He has a strange look on his face that I initially mistake for boredom, but it isn’t boredom. It’s a sort of wonder.