Resurrectionists (63 page)

And as for you, Diary, you who have been my indifferent companion through all that has befallen me, you are to remain after me as my memories, as the house’s memories. I shall take you to pieces and hide you in the foundations and the walls. And perhaps some day somebody will find you and read about my life and have a little sympathy for me, a woman who chose eternal torture to punish her guilt.

Lying deep in the earth.

A letter to the Constabulary:

Virgil Marley, St Mary’s Lane, Solgreve.

17th December, 1794

Dear Sir,

I write of acts, arcane and heinous, which take place in Solgreve. A certain Doctor there,

named Aaron Elijah Flood, has his residence in the foundations of the ruined Solgreve Abbey. In his chambers, he performs mystical science designed to prolong human life. Flood himself is over three centuries old. Others in Solgreve can expect to live to at least one century in age, with good health and no pain.

The price to be paid for this prolonging of life is dear. One thousand years ago, Solgreve was a site for heathen worship. Three priests in this godless religion cursed the ground in Solgreve for their own wicked ends. The curse works in this manner: normally, the soul of a man departs the body upon the point of death and begins its journey (no man knows, still, where this journey leads). If a body is buried in Solgreve, however, the flesh acts as an

anchor for the soul. The soul is called back to the body and buried with it, thus denying it its true passage: no heaven nor hell, no rebirth nor rejoining the vast spirit of the Universe. By far the most horrifying aspect of this

entombment of the soul is the soul’s awareness of its lot. They are buried forever
and they
know
. The unfortunates interred in the earth in Solgreve are as though buried alive, trapped forever in their graves, conscious that they may never leave. Misery has saturated the

ground in this village.

The benefit of this curse for the heathen

priests, and now for Flood, is that the souls may be extracted and used for other purposes. The soul, you see, is a small sliver of eternal power. With these pieces of eternity trapped, Flood draws upon their power to prolong his life, and grants immaculate health to the

villagers in exchange for their co-operation in his art.

The extraction of souls was taught to Flood by the three heathen priests, whom Flood calls the Wraiths. He called them up from their

graves (they were killed and buried here during the Christian conversion) and now they work for him. In exchange, Flood uses Solgreve’s evil magic to find ways to bring them back to life. They are gradually gaining more density, but are a horror to behold, being composed of old bones and evil.

I have read Flood’s writing on extractions, which he calls “soul magic”. I do not

comprehend entirely, but will include here, if my memory will serve me, some of the lines

which I have read:

“To use its power, the soul must be trapped where the practitioner can see its light. One takes an appropriate vessel, with one hand on the body and one on the vessel, and calls forth the soul with these words:
spirit flows from
right to left.
A practitioner must be an adept of many years’ standing to be effective in this wise. Once the soul is immured and visible in the receptacle, the receptacle need only be caressed to release its power into the

practitioner’s hands.”

Beyond the many bodies in Solgreve

Cemetery, Flood sometimes imports bodies

from other places and buries them shallowly in his chambers, long enough to perform soul

magic. Their bodies are then dumped in the

poor’s hole. Flood also dissects many bodies, for he is curious to know to which fibres of the body the soul is attached. I do not believe he has yet found this answer.

The local Reverend, Brodie Fowler, is

complicit in this black art, as are other local authorities (including constabulary and

physicians). This village feeds off the despair interred in its soil for a few selfish years of extra life. Dr Flood must be arrested and forced to relinquish his soul magic, if an eternity of atrocity is to be averted.

Yours in truth

VIRGIL MARLEY

Maisie stopped reading and looked up. Mila’s mouth was open in shock. Sacha said, “Read the letter again, Maisie.” She did so.

“It’s too awful,” said Mila, finding her voice at last.

“Too unspeakably
awful
.”

“Do you think it’s true?” Sacha asked.

“Why wouldn’t it be?” said Maisie. “The rest is true. We’ve seen the Wraiths, we know Flood is still alive, we know the village is obsessed with the graveyard, why should we start doubting now?” Her mind kept returning to Virgil’s phrase,
the
unfortunates interred in the earth in Solgreve are as
though buried alive
. What would it feel like to be trapped in the ground? Frantic? Terrified? Desperate?

She thought about her grandmother, her ambitions for the Afterlife. If Sybill was still stuck there in the ground, she wasn’t progressing towards eternal bliss as she had hoped. She must be mad with despair. And she’d only been dead four months. What of those who had been trapped in the earth for centuries?

“But what can we do?” Maisie said, closing the diary and putting it to one side. “I’ve scarcely a week left.”

“You have to do something,” Mila said firmly.

“You have to rescue Sybill.”

“Me? Why me?”

“It’s your path. Don’t you see, this is why you’ve been brought here.”

“What can
I
do?” Maisie demanded. “This problem has been around for centuries. Sybill couldn’t fix it, why me?”

Sacha touched her wrist. “Don’t worry, Maisie, we’re in this together.”

Maisie didn’t look at him, kept her eyes fixed on Mila.

“It’s your path,” Mila said again.

“I don’t even know what that means.”

“You should. You’re given your power for a

reason.” Mila picked up the diary and opened it once more to the letter. “And the only way to defeat magic is with like magic.”

“Meaning?”

“You’re going to have to perform some soul magic of your own.”

Maisie felt a tremble start in her ankles and was glad she was sitting down. “This is what Sybill was doing out in the cemetery, right? She wasn’t vandalising the graves, she was trying to dig someone up, to extract a soul.”

“She must have been,” Sacha said.

“We’ll never be able to get into a grave. The way the villagers watch the cemetery, and the Wraiths, it’s simply impossible.”

Sacha shook his head. “Not impossible. We don’t need to go to the cemetery.” He tilted his head towards the back garden. “We have Georgette.”

The knock on his bedroom door surprised Adrian, because he’d assumed he was home alone. Janet and Roland had gone out for dinner. But when he glanced at the clock by his bed, he realised it was after eleven. He had been immersed in his vocal score for five hours.

“Come in,” he called, closing the book and placing it neatly on the side table.

Roland opened the door. “Sorry, didn’t wake you, did I?”

“No,” Adrian said indicating the score. “I was reading.”

Roland glanced at the cover. “Congratulations.”

“Thanks.” Adrian had just been cast in his first lead role with Churchwheel’s: Manrico in
Il Trovatore
.

“Can I have a quick word with you?” Roland said.

“Sure,” Adrian replied.

“Janet and I just had a chat over dinner. We know you and Maisie are interested in buying a house this year.”

“That’s right.”

“We’ve decided to sell one of our investment properties and lend you the money. You’ll still have to pay it back, of course, but we won’t charge you interest.”

Adrian sat up, excited. “Roland, that would be wonderful. I don’t know how to say thank you.”

“We want to give you a head start. It’s tough now for young people.” Roland looked at the ground then up at Adrian again. “Janet has a small condition, though.”

“What is it?”

“Maisie must be employed full-time before we’ll lend you the money.”

“Just full-time? Not full-time in music?”

Roland laughed. “Well, that’s what she wanted to stipulate, but I told her she’s being unreasonable. Maisie is an adult, if she wants to work somewhere else, that’s up to her. But it would have to be stable, full-time work. Janet’s worried that she’ll become lazy and dependent. Of course, if you two were to decide to have children, we wouldn’t expect her to work.”

“I can’t wait to tell Maisie,” Adrian said.

“We’ll put the place on the market after the weekend,” Roland said. “If we’re lucky, we might have it sold in a couple of months and you kids can start looking for a place of your own.” Roland glanced around him. “You’re both getting a bit old to be living here. You need your own space.”

“Exactly,” Adrian answered, realising he sounded too enthusiastic, but not bothering to check himself.

“That’s what I’m always saying to Maisie.”

Roland smiled and nodded, said goodnight and left. Adrian reached immediately for the phone. Could life get any better? The perfect job, a new home on the horizon, and Maisie coming back in a little over a week. He couldn’t wait to get started living. When the phone rang at about one o’clock on Thursday afternoon, Maisie was dozing in the chair by the fire. Sacha had put the fireplace back together before heading off to work, and Mila was somewhere in the back room, reading or perhaps sleeping. They’d all had a late night. Maisie sat up with a start and reached for the receiver.

“Hello?”

“It’s me.”

“Adrian, hi. I wasn’t expecting to hear from you.”

“I have good news.”

Maisie tucked her legs up under her, made herself comfortable. “What is it?”

“Your parents are going to lend us the money to buy a place of our own.”

Yes, she supposed that under ordinary

circumstances, that was good news. It wasn’t Adrian’s fault that at the moment all she could think about was whether or not she wanted to try to solve the problem in Solgreve, or just run away from it. She feigned excitement. “Really? That’s great.”

“Isn’t it?”

“What’s the catch?”

Adrian chuckled. “You don’t trust your parents.”

“I don’t trust my mother. What’s the catch?”

“You have to be in full-time employment.”

“She didn’t specify which kind of employment?”

“No. I think Roland convinced her it would be a bit harsh to demand you go back to the orchestra. But still, you’re going to have to get work as soon as you come home.”

“No problem. I’m going into business for myself.”

“Doing what?”

“Telling fortunes.”

A long silence. Maisie felt further away from Adrian than she had ever felt. Obviously, he couldn’t bring himself to express his opinion about her new scheme, just as she couldn’t tell him about the momentous decision she was facing right now. They were suddenly strangers.

“Adrian?” she said after a while. “This is an expensive way to give me the silent treatment. I take it you’re not happy with my choice of career.”

“Not happy? I’m
horrified
.”

“Horrified? That’s a strong word.”

“Maisie,” he said slowly, “your mother told me stuff about your grandmother. I’d be happy if you didn’t want anything to do with her legacy.”

“Mum really got to you, didn’t she?”

“No, Maisie, if you’d heard what I heard . . .”

“Go on then, tell me.”

He proceeded to tell her, in a whisper, about some kind of weird seance Janet had witnessed when she was a child. Maisie listened carefully, not liking what she heard but determined not to let it affect her decision. When he had finished she said, “But Mum might have been exaggerating.”

“She didn’t act like she was exaggerating. She was really freaked out when she was telling me.”

“I won’t be doing seances. I’ll just be reading fortunes.” She could hear the flap on the mail-slot snap.

“Maisie, you know you’re not that kind of

person, not really. You’ve never been into that alternative stuff. It’s one of the reasons you never liked Cathy and Sarah.”

“But I’m really good at it.” And I love it, she wanted to say, but she could sense Adrian wouldn’t want to hear that.

“Let’s not talk about this now.”

Good idea. She had too much else on her mind.

“Maisie,” Adrian continued, “I want you to think about whether you want us to get married when you get home.”

“Is this a proposal?”

“I suppose it is.”

“Sure, I’ll think about it.” She had a sudden vision of herself on her wedding day, pledging herself until death do them part to Adrian, looking into his eyes and knowing that she had been unfaithful to him. It was going to haunt her forever, wasn’t it? Every important moment in her relationship with Adrian was going to be tainted by this. Wedding anniversaries, birthdays and Christmases, the birth of their first child – all the key moments were going to jolt her conscience. Her heart contracted with pity for Adrian. He deserved better. If she weren’t so selfish she’d tell him now, get it over with, let him break it off with her. But she was selfish, she knew she was. She felt so overwhelmed that she groaned.

“It’s not that bad, is it?” Adrian asked. “The idea of marrying me isn’t so bad?”

“Of course not. I was just thinking about

organising a wedding. And my mother. She’ll boss us around.”

“We can do it however you want. We can go to a registry office while nobody’s looking.”

“Let’s discuss all of this when I get home.”

“Not long now.”

“No, not long.” Mila had entered the room and was hovering nearby, doing a bad impersonation of somebody who wasn’t listening in. Maisie turned her back on her. “It must be late over there,” she said.

“Yes, I’d better get to bed. I’ve got my score here for
Il Trovatore
.”

“Exciting. Better than a girlfriend.”

“Not quite, but close,” Adrian said, without a glimmer of humour. Maisie smiled to herself.

“Well, goodnight, sweetheart,” he said.