‘Mrs Hudson.’
The voice was breathy, muffled-sounding. Right behind me. I spun on my heel and there was a monster there, something with round insectile eyes and a horrifying black proboscis. It was leering towards me, gasping for breath like something birthed from a nightmare. I screamed, flinching away, my hand reaching for the back pocket of my jeans without thinking, a smooth, practised motion. The creature reared up, shrieking. I’d got my teeth bared like an animal; I could see myself reflected in those strange round eyes.
‘Jesus, Mrs Hudson! No!’
I saw Charlie standing off to one side with her hands stretched out, pleading. Her face looked pale and sick. The monster had stumbled backward and landed on its behind. Now it scooted away from me until it backed up against the tree. I gasped, couldn’t seem to get any oxygen. Adrenaline is a strangler, a robber of breath.
‘What the fuck! Is that a knife?’ a muffled voice said. I looked down at my hand. Back up again. It wasn’t a monster, I saw now. It was Moya, her face sheened with sweat. She tossed something to me over the grass. I looked down at it.
‘A gas mask?’
‘Mrs Hudson,’ Moya said, her voice watery. ‘Please, we’re sorry. We were just kidding around.’
‘Huh?’
She pointed at my hand. Her fingers were shaking.
‘The knife,’ she said. ‘Please put the knife down.’
I looked down at my hand holding the stiletto knife. It was Italian, belonged to my father, the man Edie called Nonno. He used to slice apples with it, spearing the flesh with the needle-sharp tip and eating them right off the blade. ‘Oh. You scared me.’ I felt embarrassed now.
‘Why do you carry that thing round with you?’ Charlie asked. Some of the nervousness had left her voice. Now she just sounded curious, her voice soft. It was nice. It was like being stroked by a cat. Despite myself, I found that I wanted her to like me.
‘Protection.’ I snapped it away and slid it back into my pocket. ‘I don’t like people creeping up on me.’
‘It was just a joke,’ Moya protested, and she looked at Charlie for help.
Charlie ignored her. ‘That’s cool. I wish I had a knife like that.’
‘You wouldn’t know what to do with one,’ Moya snapped. Charlie stared at her before rolling up the sleeve on her right arm and turning the wrist there outward to face us. Even in the dusk I could see the white stippling there, the scars that embroidered her skin. She poked her tongue out at Moya, who was getting to her feet.
‘Is this what you found in his house?’ I asked her, lifting up the gas mask with the tips of my fingers. This was what I had seen hanging from the tree in the dusk. I didn’t like to touch it. It was heavy and the blank eyes made my skin crawl.
Moya nodded. ‘Yeah.’
‘Anything else?’
They’d hidden all the things Moya had stolen from Peter Liverly’s bungalow in the hollows at the roots of the big oak: old playing cards, a silver teaspoon, a matchbox. There was even an old snuff tin down there.
I dusted the earth from it carefully. ‘You know Edie used to do this. Bury things. When she was a little girl. I’d find them all over the garden.’
The two girls looked at me mutely. Charlie came over and kneeled across from me, taking my cold hands in her own. She didn’t seem to mind the damp and the dirt beneath her. At this angle her skirt rode up over her pearly thighs to reveal the delicate pink of her underwear. She looked at me, her tongue trembling, the tip of it touching her upper lip. It was delicious, like we were about to share a secret.
‘You must miss her, Mrs Hudson.’
‘Call me Samantha, Charlie.’
‘You know, Samantha—’ She looked at Moya as if for approval. ‘Maybe there is something we can try.’
‘What do you mean? What thing?’
She and Moya exchanged glances again.
‘The night Edie went missing was a full moon. I know this because we were playing Quiet Mary. If you go under the police tape right now you’d find the stubs of our candles on her grave.’
‘So?’ I stared at her. It was now getting so dark she was just luminous eyes, a snarl of white teeth.
‘Imagine. If we spirited her away, maybe we can spirit her back.’ She patted my hands gently, still smiling. ‘Think about it. We’ll do it if you want. We’re good at rituals.’
She stood up carefully, unfolding her long limbs like a mantis. She’s so beautiful, I thought. No wonder all these girls are in awe of her.
‘You can bring your knife, too, if you like, Mrs Hudson,’ she said, and blew me a kiss before walking over to where Moya was standing and looping an arm around her waist.
I found I couldn’t stand. My legs wouldn’t lift me. I watched the two girls flit off into the gathering dusk, all blue and violet shadows cradled in the hollows of the trees. A magpie barked from somewhere behind me, chk! chk! chk! That smell again, rolling on the slow-moving breeze, beneath the fragrant wood and moss and old stone, of ripe decay.
What are you doing, Samantha? I asked myself, creaking slowly upright like a woman twice my age. Sitting out here in the dark with teenagers? And why are you even considering this? A spell won’t bring her back.
Hope shatters you. It does it with great care, so slowly you barely notice it. It carves you hollow, leaving nothing but the seed of itself, and of course you plant it and nurture it because even though it is destroying you, without it you are a shell.
So no, it might not bring her back.
But what if it does?
When I got home that evening Rupert fussed over me, rubbing my damp hair with a towel, pressing a cup of tea into my numb hands.
‘Your detective called. Tony.’
‘Okay.’ I lit a cigarette. ‘Any news?’
‘Nothing to report, he said. The man is worried about you. I’m worried about you.’ Rupert looked at me suspiciously. ‘Where did you go?’
‘I went to the school to talk to those friends of hers.’
‘Those goth girls?’
‘That’s them. They want me to join them in a ritual.’
He scoffed. ‘A what?’
‘A ritual. Like a spell. They said they were doing one in the graveyard when Edie went missing.’
Rupert was silent, anticipatory. He was waiting for me to tell him the punchline. I shrugged and turned away from him, jettisoning my cigarette into the sink, where it hissed and died.
‘Come on, Pot, really? Really?’
‘Yes, really.’
He put his hand to my forehead dramatically. ‘Are you feeling all right, Pot? Think we should call a doctor? How about a witch doctor?’
‘Stop it.’ I brushed him off more angrily than I intended. ‘I’m the only one left looking for Edie. I’m all she has, Rupert. Don’t fucking patronise me.’
‘Oh, Sam—’
‘Besides. What if it works? What then?’
‘If the spell works, you mean?’
‘It’s not a spell, it’s a ritual. What if it could bring her back and I haven’t at least tried it?’
‘Pot, you’re not thinking straight. Edie will come back when she’s good and ready. I’ve never met a more headstrong girl. Not even all the combined forces of hell could budge her. You must know that. This is madness. It’s madness. Let the police do their job.’