Resurrectionists (17 page)

“I once found half a frog in a glass dish behind his work bench. The back half. I almost didn’t recognise what it was, divorced from its context like that.” More laughter, the kind that we rely upon to disperse discomfort.

Their conversation turned elsewhere, and Virgil came to bed shortly after. I have not been able to rest for worry, so I left him sleeping peacefully and came here to the parlour to write. Dawn would be upon us if the sky were not so laden with the coming day’s rain. I am all confusion, not knowing what to do with this new knowledge. I want to ask Virgil what it is that Flood does, but I find that I am irrationally afraid. Monstrous science? I simply cannot imagine. I shall think on it some more, for I cannot sleep. I cannot even close my eyes.

Maisie sat back to contemplate what she had just read. The rest of the page was empty, but Georgette always started a new entry on a fresh sheet. So Sacha was probably right, the diary didn’t end here. Maisie had recognised her grandmother’s handwriting in the margins clarifying a word here or there, and then, under the last entry, Sybill had written in pencil: “look up”. Whatever that meant. Maybe she’d intended to look up some information about Dr Flood, or about Georgette herself.

Far from putting her to sleep, the diary had awakened a sense of unease, although she couldn’t quite put her finger on why. It could have been the last mention of Dr Flood as some kind of monster, it could have been because Georgette had described the house –

this house – in ways that made it seem old and grim and with a history that stretched back into a darker past. She tipped her head back on the armchair and looked up at the ceiling. No black beams in the roof now. A new ceiling, painted pale yellow, had been put in. Double glazing blocked the wind, and electric lights warded off the night’s shadows. The shadows that were deepening towards midnight beyond the windows. No, she knew why she was unsettled. A “pious Reverend named Fowler” had come calling on

Georgette when she first arrived, just as his namesake had called on Maisie. And Sacha had told her that very evening that Sybill, obsessed with finding out how old he was, had dated her own Reverend Fowler to at least ninety. But of course it
was
just his namesake. It was probably common for parishes to stay in one family for centuries. Or common to be surnamed Fowler in North Yorkshire. Or common for fabulous

coincidences to occur when a girl was all alone in a cold place away from loved ones.

It meant nothing.

Still, she left the lights on in the lounge room when she went to bed, hoping the bright electric yellow would keep at bay the eerie shade of centuries. The cold haze of morning hadn’t yet lifted, and Maisie’s breath made dragon puffs in the air as she left the house and headed towards the road. Icy threads of wind tangled in her hair. She jammed her hands into her pockets. Even with gloves on, her fingers felt numb. Saturday. Empty time stretched out before her until Christmas. Since she had woken up that morning, her loneliness and emptiness had woken up with her. The cold was everywhere and she was a long way from home.

She headed towards the cemetery, intending to seek out her grandmother’s grave. She could hear the sea battering the bottom of the cliffs and thought about what Sacha told her Sybill used to say: “The sea knows something about me.” Well, perhaps it knew something about Maisie as well.

All the trees lining the main road were now completely stripped of their leaves. Their bare branches were stark against the freezing sky. A blackbird on a gnarled branch watched her approach and flapped away. The abbey rose up like a phantom watching over the graves. Maisie still hadn’t managed to shake her first impression of it, that unsettling, almost uncanny, sense of deep-buried dread. Other old ruins she had seen were beautiful, but there was something dark and rotted about the stone Solgreve Abbey was built from. She turned from it and headed towards the low cemetery wall: pale stone, covered in moss and creeping lichen. A sign on the wall, old and weather-beaten, said, Church Property: No Trespassers. She assumed it didn’t apply to mourners and clambered over into the cemetery proper.

Maisie walked right down the centre of the

cemetery until she came to the cliff, and stood there for a few minutes watching the sea foaming and bubbling, grey and white. Seagulls ducked and weaved above her. The yearning was back, that thing that lived inside her like a ravenous, puling child. How was she supposed to be happy while she had this feeling: this queasy, bored feeling which attached itself to the weirdest objects as though they had the answer to all life’s problems? Every morning for as long as she could remember she woke up hoping that today she’d feel satisfied, contented, fulfilled. But then the feeling would start to seek her out. It hid in her favourite songs, or it lazed on the eyebrows of exotic boys, or, like now, it rolled in with the grey waves as she watched them.

She turned her back on the sea and surveyed the expanse of the cemetery. How on earth was she to find her grandmother in here? Perhaps she should have contacted Reverend Fowler, asked for directions. She inspected the graves nearest her. Wind and rain had worn away the inscriptions on the headstones, nearly eaten the entire surface to wormwood ribbons. They looked as though they had rotted in sympathy with the bodies they stood guard over. One had worn through completely. The top half lay in the grass, as though in disgrace. She wandered slowly up towards the road. If only she hadn’t been thinking obsessively about Sacha all morning. Adrian was a known quantity, everything about him was known to her: his irrational fears and his vain habits and even how his breath smelled first thing in the morning. All was open with him, and she did love him. Of course she did. But here was Sacha, all darkness and mystery, exotic, dangerous even. She had gone over their conversation in her mind, scoured it for evidence of his feelings for her –

(feelings for her? was she mad? she’d only met him twice) – and in her more reckless moments, imagined in shadowy detail where things could lead one freezing midwinter night.

Stop.

These graves were all too old. She paused to look at one. Sheltered a little from the wind by other headstones, some of its inscription was still legible.
Here lieth Mary Margaret Hapselth. Born . . . Died 14-
5-1715 of . . . from Heaven and returned . . . Forever
missed.
Forever? The inscription wasn’t even going to make it to three hundred years by the looks of it. The entire mid-section of writing was missing. People died, and then some time later their mourners died, and then some time later, even the material signs of grief died too. There was nothing permanent about life, not even the loss of it.

Morbid thoughts again. She felt like she had been living entirely inside her head for the last two weeks. Perhaps even Cathy and Sacha were spontaneously created figments of fantasy.

Further back from the cliffs, the inscriptions were closer to entire. She stopped to read one, and was surprised by what she found. Below the usual details of name, date, birth, and mourners, were two extra lines:
Whoever disturbeth this peaceful bower/Shall fall
soon after to the devil’s power.

A curse. She read it again and backed away. She was probably standing right on top of the remains. Was that disturbing the grave? Too much weird stuff had happened in the last two weeks for her not to be superstitious about things like that. She moved up the pathway, looking from gravestone to gravestone. It took only a few moments to realise that more than half the graves were protected by curses.

Damned is he who troubles this grave.

Eternal hellfire to all who attempt to resurrect
the occupant.

The men who dare to diggeth upon this tomb
will face God’s mighty wrath.

It wasn’t the cold that made her shiver this time. She strayed off the path, trying to be mindful of where bodies might be lying below the ground, and read as many headstones as she could.

The cold grey sky arched above, the cold grey sea endlessly pounded below, as Maisie flitted from grave to grave in the enormous cemetery, reading curse after curse. A few drops of rain spattered here and there, and the wind pulled her hair around, impatiently making knots. Maisie filled her eyes with grey stone and dark promises, and wished she wasn’t totally alone. She wove up through the cemetery towards a newer area. But over near the abbey were graves that looked even older than the eighteenth-century headstones on the cliff-top. She remembered what Cathy had said: “I bet there are burials over a thousand years old there. Could be some amazing stuff in the ground.” Maybe she’d go over and have a look after she had found her grandmother.

A motor stopped nearby: Constable Blake’s patrol car. She paused to watch as he got out and climbed over the cemetery wall, strode towards her. Her heart sped up a few beats. What did he want?

“What’s the matter?” she called.

He didn’t answer until he was with her. “I’m sorry. You’ll have to leave.”

“Leave?”

“The cemetery. It’s private property.”

Maisie nearly laughed, but he looked totally serious. “Private property? But I’m just looking for my grandmother’s grave. To pay my respects.”

“It’s this way.” He began to move off towards the west wall, and she had no choice but to follow him.

“Here,” he said, coming to a halt.

Maisie stopped next to him and looked down. A simple plaque set into a flat stone said:
Sybill Gloria
Hartley. At peace.
She gazed at it, aware that the police officer hadn’t left her side. Growing irritated, she turned to him and said, “Is there any chance of being alone with my thoughts?”

He nodded. “You have to have church permission to come into the cemetery, and Reverend Fowler will accompany you. I’ll just be over there.” He indicated the wall nearest where his car was parked. He strode off, and Maisie watched him go. This was too bizarre.

“Hi, grandma,” she said softly. “Sorry, I can’t chat, but there’s a hairy policeman watching me. You lived here for a long time, so you’ll probably understand.”

She wished she had brought some flowers.

Constable Blake was watching her like a hawk from his car. She gave him a quick wave and left her grandmother’s grave, headed out of the cemetery, over the wall and back up the main road home. She heard his car start and a moment later he drove past her. How embarrassing to be moved along like that as though she were a teenager. What was so wrong with visiting the cemetery? It wasn’t like it was midnight and she planned a Satanic rite. This village was full of crazy people. Crazy enough to do what they did that night. Around ten-thirty, when she was getting ready for bed, Maisie was shocked to hear a loud thump on her roof.

“What the hell . . .?” She dropped her toothbrush and went into the hallway. The noise again: a loud thump and a clatter. Tabby started and ran towards the back door. Please, not the hooded shape in the garden again – she couldn’t handle another bout with that. Then the sound of smashing glass from the front of the house. Maisie raced up the hallway and into the lounge room. Someone had thrown a rock at the window. Glass lay in shards all over the floor. She immediately reached for the phone, but then remembered Constable Blake’s warning: he went off duty at ten p.m.

Instead she crept across the hallway to her bedroom, and peered out the window cautiously. If she saw that hooded figure again, she was going to pack up and move tomorrow. But the hooded figure wasn’t there – just a perfectly ordinary male of the species throwing another rock at her roof. This one clattered into the eaves and fell to ground. She fumbled with the latch and hoisted the window open.

“Hey! What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

The man, whose face was obscured by shadows, immediately backed away and began to run down the street. Maisie raced to the door and threw it open, but thought better of chasing him. In the distance she could hear a car start, and knew she would never catch him. The bastard had probably timed the attack so that she couldn’t call the police. She closed the door and walked carefully into the lounge room. She began to collect some of the glass. How was she going to patch up the hole in her window until she could get someone out

here to fix it?

The sound of an engine outside brought her to the window again, but she wasn’t in time to see the car or its licence plate. Only in time to hear the man bellow one bewildering word from his car window.

“Witch!”

***

Reverend Fowler placed his elbows carefully on his scarred desk and tried to look stern, but the five people facing him displayed no signs of discomfort. They were Tony Blake, who had called this meeting; Douglas and Elsa Smith, local busybodies by most standards, but invaluable members of the community in Solgreve; and their neighbours and close friends Walter and Margaret King. Last night, Walter King, encouraged by his wife and neighbours, had taken it into his own hands to try to run the girl out of town. Perhaps it had seemed like a good idea at the time, but by mid-morning it had turned out badly. She had called Tony up to the house to inspect the damage for an insurance company, her solicitor had arrived huffing and puffing and getting quotes from glaziers, and now, at three p.m., there was a truck parked out the front of the cottage and two workmen taking their time fixing the window. All it had caused was trouble.

“I don’t understand what the problem is,” Walter King was saying, his hairy eyebrows shooting up in consternation. “Nobody’s told her I did it, Tony’s not going to fine me over it, so why bother with this meeting?”

“Because you have to stay out of it. You have to let me take care of it,” the Reverend said, trying to sound reasonable but firm.

“
You
take care of it?” This was Elsa Smith, a sharp-eyed octogenarian with a shock of white hair.

“What have you done? Sat here and waited and hoped

– that’s all. Walter was just trying to scare her. We all want her out of here.”

“But his action brought more people to town, focused more attention on us. That solicitor could mention it to people he knows in York. We don’t want to arouse that kind of suspicion.”