“When I first heard that voice on the tape, I felt something I hadn’t felt in a long time. Hope. ’Course I know now why they describe it as a ‘glimmer of hope’ because that’s exactly how it feels, like a narrow chink of light through rock. A flame burning low, on the verge of guttering out. I came to Banathel because I felt hopeful, Mina, but maybe hope is just desperation dressed up in fancy clothes because I still haven’t found Maggie, I haven’t found proof of any kind. Just a sulky teenager and that fucking shoe in the fireplace.”
“So do you want to stop? Do you want to go home? Sam?”
I’m surprised how much this thought bothers me. The idea of going home without digging a bit deeper, without helping Alice out the other side of whatever she’s going through. I pull at his arm and he looks at me, his face creased in misery.
“I need answers, Mina. I want Alice to stop hiding in her room and come and fucking talk to us. I wantproof.”
He hooks me with his gaze, scowling. I understand his agitation but I’m not convinced. Alice seemed genuinely afraid whenI sat with her yesterday morning. Whatever it was she thought was in the chimney, she believed in it as much as the people gathered outside believed in her. Perhaps Sam reads this on my face because he snorts and shakes his head.
“I know you want to think this is genuine, Mina. I do, too. Because the alternative is that Maggie and Eddie are gone and that’s unbearable, isn’t it? Almost impossible to get your head around. But you have to, otherwise you’ll end up like me in a few years, chasing spooks in the dark.”
“I just— I don’t think Alice is capable of any great deception. It’s not just that she’s so young, it’s—”
—she watches me through the cracks in the bricks… I see her eyes in the holes—
“—a lot to put on her shoulders. I don’t think she’d be able to maintain it this well for this long.”
“Well, let’s prove it, then, shall we?”
“How?”
Sam’s flushed, sweating slightly. I can see how hungry his expression is, all mouth and glittering eyes. He gives me a fervent, wolfish grin.
“We’re going to hold a séance, Mina.”
TWENTY
I’m watching the little red light winking on a video camera, which has been positioned at the end of the dining table. The rabbit corpses have been cleared away and the table wiped clean but the smell still lingers, the one Paul spoke of, the one that had haunted poor Terry to the end. Iron and pennies and marzipan.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” I ask Alice a third time, turning to look at her.
Paul coaxed her out of her gloomy bedroom with a promise of pizza but she still looks nervous and unsure, winding her long hair around her finger. Alice is wearing the same baggy T-shirt she wore the day I arrived (POBODY’S NERFECT!) and now she is beginning to smell stale and slightly sour. Her blond hair is dark with grease.
“Because you don’t have to, you know. No one is forcing you.”
“I know,” she tells me.
Paul smiled unpleasantly when Sam had told him his idea, eyes pricked with a bright gleam. He said,“Whatever you need to do to make it work, Sam,”and patted him on the shoulder with something like fellowship. It made me think of Masonic rituals and a sly, unscrupulous brotherhood. I reach out to Alice and squeeze her hand briefly, just once. Sam’s eyes slide to me and then to the camera, speaking in a loud, clear voice.
“It’s just gone twelve-thirty on Friday, the thirtieth of June, and I’m here with Alice Webber and Mina Ellis at Beacon Terrace. We are about to conduct a séance in which we will try to contact the so-called witch that Alice released from the bottle at Tanner’s Row.”
He looks back to Alice.
“Okay, Alice, let’s begin.”
Alice drops her chin to her chest. I watch the slow rise and fall of her shoulders. A minute goes by in silence, then another. Sam and I exchange a nervous glance.
“Alice? You okay?” I ask in a voice that is almost steady. Almost.
Nothing. Just the tightness of her fingertips pressing into the table, turning her nail beds white. In the silence I’m intensely aware of the strip light buzzing like high-voltage tinnitus. I glance up at it and what I see repulses me. Inside, the casing is crawling with wasps. Itbristleswith them.
“She’s here,” Alice says and I feel it, right in that moment. A sensation of kinesis; the skin tightening on my bones, a stomach drop like a descent. It’s a similar sensation to driving over a humpback bridge. Sam must feel it, too, becausehe shifts uncomfortably, looking around as if someone has just walked up behind him.
“Who?” he asks. “Who’s here?”
Alice lifts her head. Her pupils are fat blots of ink. She stares at Sam and her lips curl slowly and with menace. I’ve heard of your blood running cold before but I haven’t believed it was a real thing until this moment. When she speaks, her voice is silky and soft, slightly lisping.
“Little Maggie. Margaret. She didn’t like it when you called her that though, did she? It used to make her mad. She has your hair, the same color. Like autumn leaves.”