Harvest (9 page)

Despite being seated,
Rachel swayed slightly and Claire embraced her to support her. The
care and intimacy of the action left Rachel uneasy considering the
knowledge she had about her daughter but couldn’t share.
“I’m sorry,
Claire.”
She decided to
escape with a broad truth.
“I couldn’t get any idea of
what happened.”
Rachel felt Claire’s arm slide from her
shoulder as she moved to crouch at her feet, but any relief at
being free of Claire’s kind gesture was short lived.

Rachel knew from what
Claire had said that the phenomenon had occurred around Amy after
Emily’s disappearance. Rachel now knew from her experience that
something unnatural
had been present
during
Emily’s disappearance.
Did the connection indicate a pattern? Did that mean this
wasn’t over? Did that mean Amy wasn’t safe, and might share her
sister’s fate? They were questions that she couldn’t share with the
family yet she imagined they were also Claire’s fears and
nightmares.

If Claire’s idea
that it was a spirit that had “taken” the child were to be
believed, then how was it possible? Where had she gone? Rachel’s
defiant inner self was riled, how could
“it”
be stopped from doing it again?
Rachel shrugged off her fear and anger for Amy’s safety, what
Claire believed went against
everything
Rachel understood. It bordered on
Hollywood
fiction
– if not the beliefs of insanity.

“
I
think you were right, something was here with Emily,” Rachel
reluctantly and diplomatically conceded before the tug-of-war in
her head could drag her in another direction. “I can’t say what
happened that night. I don’t know how to believe,” she stumbled to
change her words, “don’t know how to
understand
it – how this could happen as you believe it has. But I feel
there is something more to this…” Rachel hesitated as if the words
were too difficult to speak. “Perhaps a malignant spirit or some
paranormal activity that I have not experienced or heard of
before.” She could not help sounding doubtful, but Claire didn’t
respond to her tone.

“
If
something happened to Emily that’s related to the lights and
strange things that have been happening, then these things
are
still
happening. So where
does that leave Amy?”

Rachel found the responsibility
was back firmly with her again, but couldn’t answer. There was so
much uncertainty, and so much she couldn’t accept. “I don’t know,”
she stated simply, once again relying on the truth in the face of
an awkward question. “I don’t have any explanations for you.”
Claire and Brian shared looks again over the same response they had
from the police. They didn’t need to hear it again.

“
I am
uncomfortable with what I am going to suggest.”
She
paused as she considered the enormous demand it made of their
family at an emotional time. “With what you have been through, I
don’t want to be intrusive on you –” she stepped around what she
wanted to suggest. “But what you have described warrants
investigation.”

Rachel observed Claire search
Brian for his opinion and support but received a blank stare in
return. Rachel understood that this was being left for Claire to
deal with.

“
I’m
going to lay my cards on the table.” Rachel made eye contact with
both of them and held their gazes a moment. “I have a friend at a
university; a technical boffin. He has access –
well
,
unofficial access – to
university equipment: cameras, motion detectors, temperature
sensors and lots of other things I couldn’t hope to explain to you
–
I have to ask him to set the timer on my
video so don’t even get me started on what other things he may
have.
”
She laughed flippantly. “Friends
have used him before to set up investigations on supposed
hauntings. However, this is a difficult time for you and I know
everyone values privacy. That’s where the investigation might be
unwelcome. It involves cameras being in nearly
every
room...” she paused allowing what she was
saying to sink in. “Usually everyone stays over in the place under
investigation, but the last thing you want at the moment is a group
of people sitting around your lounge. I think it can be done by
remote though; I will have to ask Dave about all the technical
side. It all tends to go over my head you see.” She passed a hand
over her head in a mime of her inability to
understand.

Claire laughed and Rachel was
pleased to disarm any tension within her, but Claire’s laughter
subsided abruptly and her mood was abandoned in mid-air as if she
had forgotten what laughter was and its sound and presence startled
her. Rachel thought how lonely and empty that laughter had seemed
in the home where the family’s loss echoed so cavernously.

Brian frowned and cut in. “Have
you ever seen anything on your investigations?”

His question stumped her;
she was unsure if it was genuine interest or bare-faced
scepticism
.
“I see things all the time,
Brian. However, I doubt my experiences will convince you of the
spiritual world. I can be just as sceptical as you when I hear
second-hand accounts or see an unexplainable image in a photo that
I have had no part in taking. After all, you have to rely on
someone else’s word that it’s genuine. Even
I
have the sceptical voice inside me. The day
someone finds something that’s conclusive proof is the day it will
be on the news and front page of every paper. Even then there will
be doubt. I have seen film footage that has passed tests at photo
labs and been unexplainable, but is unlikely it will make it to the
attention of the general public or create a rethinking of what we
think we understand. You will always get people that will say it
was set up at the time the picture was taken – all lighting,
mirrors and wires. You can do so much these days with modern
technology.” She wanted him to know that she wasn’t blind to
understanding scepticism and she wasn’t beyond having her own
doubts when it came to the paranormal, his wife’s claims were a
perfect example of that.

“
So it helps to be a
believer?”

“
Yes,
quite. And I don’t mind from a spiritual or religious perspective,
just simply that in the absence of conclusive tangible evidence, it
helps to be open-minded. People with open-minds are at a greater
advantage at explaining things that are ambiguous or difficult to
understand. What’s different here is that whether we want to
believe or not, ‘something’ is happening and if we can get some
evidence of activity, it isn’t going to help with the police or
anyone else, but it might go some way towards confirming your
suspicion that something unnatural is going on here. That might
take you closer to the truth, whether that truth lies more in my
field or has more of a rational explanation.
Enlightenment is not much to offer you. But at the moment all
you and I have are questions.
”

For a few minutes there was
silence. Claire sat back with her husband and searched his eyes for
any sign that might indicate what path his thoughts were on. Rachel
could only see the cloud of loss that glazed his eyes.

Brian broke away from her gaze
and cleared his throat. “I trust my wife. I love her and if she
says she believes something beyond our comprehension and
understanding has happened then I can only agree, because I have
lost a daughter and I don’t have any way to explain her
disappearance. I have to trust her.”

Rachel realised that all
he had to do to draw strength to believe, was to ask himself how a
seven-year-old-girl,
his daughter
, could
vanish with no trace and no leads from a locked ninth-floor
flat.

Chapter
Seven

Craig stepped out of the lift
on the twelfth floor and headed for Kelly’s flat. Kelly had been
reluctant to share any information on the Chambers’ case with him,
but he reasoned that giving her a heads up on the Chambers calling
on a medium might serve to gain her trust and favour. If it was
suspected that Emily was dead, it certainly hadn’t been leaked to
the press. Kelly might even think Craig could have a lead that
hadn’t been released, and that would provide him with leverage to
bargain for a little more information from Kelly. ‘It’s not what
you know, it’s what others think you know,’ that’s what Vicki said.
He would have to become a little more like Vicki if he wanted to
get stories; hard, unrelenting, able to read between the lines and
put words into mouths that don’t or won’t speak when you want them
to; although he doubted whether he could be that person and wasn’t
sure if he wanted to be. After helping the older woman get past
Harry and in to the building, and continuing his good deed by
keeping her company until Claire Chambers had arrived, he felt mean
running straight to Kelly to use her presence as a bargaining chip,
but it could be his way in to a story.

Craig reached for the knocker
at the same time the door opened and Kelly rushed out. His hand
landed on her chest with a soft pat. They both stared at it. Craig
retracted it, but not as quickly as he would have liked.

“
Sorry, I meant to get
your...” He decided not to finish his sentence and added another
flustered apology, frowning at himself and the embarrassment of the
situation, wanting the world to instantly snuff him out of
existence.

“
You scared the life out
of me.” She said, politely ignoring his discomfort.

Craig stepped away to let her
out of her flat and he eyed her up and down discretely. She was
stiffly uniformed with her hair drawn back into a tight bun, her
small glasses hiding her eyes; this was the Kelly he was used to
seeing.

“
I can’t stop too long;
have to start my shift...” She closed her door behind her and stood
before him expectantly.

“
Sorry, it’s just that –
well, I was downstairs earlier checking my mail and it would appear
that the Chambers have a guest.”

Kelly motioned for him to
continue their conversation while she walked. “They aren’t under
arrest, Mr Digby.” She clipped on her weighty utility belt as she
walked.

“
Craig,” he interrupted,
smiling disarmingly, trying to get onto a more personal level;
formality felt uncomfortable and he wanted her onside.

“
They can have as many
people as they like to come and visit them. I don’t know what you
have heard but they aren’t prime suspects.”

Of course they were.
“Who
are?
” Craig challenged
firmly and saw her instant frustration with him.

“
Where are you going with
this? You didn’t come all the way up here to tell me they had
visitors, surely?” Kelly opened the lift and they both stepped
in.

“
I spoke to the woman.”
He related what had happened in the lobby, and Harry’s strange
comment about her ‘type’ not being welcome, the woman had assumed
he knew her from ‘the hall’, Craig had taken that as meaning she
worked at town hall but she had corrected him. “She’s from a local
spiritualist hall. It seems she’s a medium.” Kelly’s attention was
full on him. “I thought that might get your attention. Thought I
should tell you because I didn’t know how vulnerable they could be
at this time.”

Kelly glanced away thoughtfully
as the lift doors rattled shut. She hadn’t selected the floor she
wanted and for a moment they stood in the blanching strip lighting
of the lift, going nowhere. “Strange…”

Strange? Strange had been Harry
not wanting the woman to come in, then the door itself had fritzed,
although when the woman had gone up in the lift with Claire another
resident used the door without any problems. He didn’t mention this
– it was bad enough being seen as a mercenary journalist circling
around a story without being a kook as well.

“
Thanks for letting me
know about this. I could stop by, see how they are doing,” Kelly
conceded, pressing the button for the ninth floor and the lift car
rumbled downwards towards the Chambers’ level. “Not sure how I am
going to approach them though.”

“
So you got anything for
me in return then?” Craig beamed.

Kelly shot him a look of
disappointment. “I should have known you didn’t have their
vulnerability in mind. You’re all the same, you people.” She
stepped to the doors as the lift slowed down, distancing herself
from him.

Craig deflated as her spike of
anger and disappointment lanced him. He tried to cover the wound by
rationalising that negative reactions came with being a journalist,
but the wound ached all the more as he was defending himself
against the very criticism he often levelled at Vicki. He cared
about what people thought of him and he didn’t want to be hard,
tactless and relentless as so many people saw journalists. “I’m
sorry, it’s just I need a story – I’m looking for my first story. I
kind of hoped...”

Kelly stepped out of the
lift and her frame stiffened and filled out her uniform. Especially
where his hand had been. “This isn’t a trade-off. It might mean the
start of your career, but who do you think would be under suspicion
if I gave you insider info? That wouldn’t do
my
c
areer much good.” Craig looked
to his shoes in a display of boyish guilt, and her indignation
softened. “Besides, you probably know just as much as
me.”