Phil Rickman - The Cure of Souls

Merrily had come down with a bump that was almost audible to her. ‘I’ve been stupid.’ She felt herself sag in Sophie’s chair.

‘Have you?’ the Bishop said.

‘I should have made the connection.’

‘Why?’ asked the Bishop, a lilt in his voice.

‘ Why? ’

She felt like crying. Driving into Hereford, she’d still felt high, swollen with… what? Faith? Certainty? Arrogance? She’d cast aside her scepticism, opened her heart, broken through – six hours passing like minutes.

Tails . The coin kept coming up tails. She’d been given her answer.

And it wasn’t the answer. It wasn’t any kind of answer. The inspiring and apparently mystical circumstances had obscured the fact that little had been revealed to her. It might even have been misleading.

‘Where did this happen? These ouija board sessions?’

‘You don’t know?’

‘You don’t have to rub it in, Bernie. I don’t know. The kid wouldn’t talk to me.’

The rain was coming harder, rivulets on the window blurring Broad Street into an Impressionist painting. She felt a pricking of tears and looked down into her lap.

‘I really don’t think you do know, do you?’ The Bishop’s voice had softened. She shook her head. ‘Or the identity of the girl who led Amy into these spiritualist games?’

She looked up into his fat, kindly face. His eyes were full of pity.

The room tilted.

‘What are you saying, Bishop?’ She turned on Dennis Beckett. ‘What are you saying?’

Bernie Dunmore shuffled uncomfortably. ‘Your daughter Jane goes to the same school, doesn’t she?’

‘Yes, she—’ It was as if her mouth were full of cardboard. ‘ No! ’

‘After the service, Merrily, Mr and Mrs Shelbone invited Dennis back to their house, where Amy admitted to Dennis that she’d been lured into what had become quite a craze at Moorfield High School for attempting to make contact with the dead. She said—You’d better relay the rest of it, Dennis, I don’t want to get anything wrong.’

Dennis Beckett cleared his throat. He didn’t look directly at Merrily.

‘Amy told her parents, in my presence, that a Jane Watkins had approached her one day in the playground and told her that a group of them had been receiving messages from a certain… spirit… who kept asking for a girl called Amy. Amy gave this – this Jane short shrift, until the girl told her the woman had identified herself as Amy’s mother, from whom Amy had been parted as an infant. Amy, of course, had always known that she was adopted.’

‘And she was then persuaded to attend one of these, ah, sessions, was she?’ said the Bishop.

‘Which, it seems, proved somewhat convincing – and immensely traumatic, apparently. The child claims she was able to communicate with the spirit of her mother – who gave her some very frightening information. Mr and Mrs Shelbone, however, declined to tell me what this information was.’ Dennis leaned back, as if exhausted, his head against the wall. ‘For which, to be quite honest, I was grateful. Suffice to say that Amy asked the Shelbones certain questions about her birth-mother and then proceeded to give them information about things which they did know but had never revealed to the child. Beginning with the significant disclosure of the mother’s name.’

‘ Justine ,’ Merrily whispered. ‘Oh God.’

‘They were so shocked to hear her saying these things that Amy could tell at once, from their reactions, that she must be in possession of the truth. All of which was quite enough to reduce both the girl and the parents to a state of absolute dread.’

The spirit of a dead person .

The Bishop said, ‘Did she tell them then , Dennis, about the ouija board sessions? Because—’

‘No, she didn’t. This initial exchange took place immediately following Amy’s… upset, during the Eucharist. When they got home, there was an attempt at a family discussion, which ended rather abruptly when Amy realized that her adoptive parents had concealed this – whatever it was – disturbing information from her. She became resentful and spiteful. She told them she was in contact with her real mother, but she didn’t explain how this had come about. She was, I would guess, behaving in a rather sly way: playing her parents off against her natural mother.’

‘Pretty un natural mother, if you ask me,’ Bernie Dunmore spluttered. ‘So this, presumably, is what led to the adoptive mother’s request for an exorcism.’

‘Hazel Shelbone didn’t tell me about any of this,’ Merrily said tonelessly. ‘And as for Jane’s—’

‘It was only after Mrs Watkins’s latest visit that Amy explained, somewhat reluctantly, about the ouija board,’ Dennis Beckett said. ‘Which I would imagine carries less kudos than direct personal contact with one’s late mother.’

‘Do we know when the mother died?’ Bernie asked.

‘No.’

‘Not in childbirth, then.’

‘I don’t know, I’m sorry.’

‘Are they still asking for this exorcism?’

‘I was able to pray with the child,’ Dennis said.

Merrily felt the Bishop’s glare this time. More than you were able to do .

‘I think it was sufficient,’ Dennis said. ‘But I’m prepared to go back.’

‘Look…’ Merrily fumbled for words. ‘I… I accept that I probably mishandled this from the beginning. And maybe I shouldn’t even have attempted to talk to Amy when her parents weren’t there. But I can’t accept that Jane’s in any way involved in this.’

‘Merrily,’ the Bishop said, quite gently, ‘I think I’m correct in saying that it wouldn’t be the first time Jane’s exhibited curiosity about things that—’

‘She would not do this .’

There was silence, the two men looking anywhere but at Merrily. The door was open; Sophie, presumably in the Deliverance office next door, would have heard everything.

‘She’s my daughter,’ Merrily said. ‘I would know.’

Bernie Dunmore pulled out a tissue, blotted something on his beach ball of a forehead. ‘You’d better tell us the rest, Dennis.’

‘Amy…’ Dennis Beckett half turned to face the Bishop. ‘I’m afraid that Amy maintains that Mrs Watkins was fully… fully aware of her daughter’s involvement.’

Merrily shut her eyes, shaking her head.

‘And when Mrs Watkins came to see Amy on Saturday evening – when her parents were out – she warned the child very forcibly—’

‘ What? ’ When her eyes reopened, Dennis Beckett was finally staring directly at her, perhaps to show how much he wasn’t enjoying this.

‘—that she’d better keep quiet about Jane Watkins—’

Merrily sprang up. ‘That’s a complete and total—’

‘—if she knew what was good for her,’ Dennis said.

‘It’s a lie,’ Merrily said.

Bernie Dunmore breathed heavily down his nose. ‘Sit down, Merrily,’ he said. ‘Please.’

Church of England

Diocese of Hereford

Ministry of Deliverance

email: deliverance@spiritec.co.uk

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Haunting or spiritual infestation of property is a complex problem which constitutes most of the work of the Deliverance Service. It falls into a number of clear categories and each case needs careful investigation before a particular course of action is undertaken.