Phil Rickman - The Cold Calling

‘Some kind.’

‘Weird.’

‘You need a drink.’

‘I do,’ she said gratefully. ‘Jesus, do I need a drink.’

‘Well, that’s it, isn’t it? I’m finished. And I’m not sorry. Couldn’t give a flying fart.’

Mrs Willis had been buried in virtual silence, Marcus tossing in his clod of earth and turning away, avoiding eyes, almost running out of the churchyard. Cindy had caught up with him in the lane, under a dripping horse chestnut.

‘Like to buy a serious, parapsychological quarterly, Lewis? Christ, you can have the bastard. Change it to Shamanic Times . Have the fucking castle, too. I’ll get a council flat. They still have council flats or did Thatcher flog them all to slum landlords?’

‘This isn’t helping anyone, Marcus.’

‘Why should I want to help anyone? Mrs Willis helped people, and where did that get her? Perhaps you were right. Perhaps she was murdered. Perhaps the village murdered her with three-quarters of a century of indifference.’

‘Aren’t you coming back to the pub?’

‘What do you think?’

‘You’ve paid for the funeral tea. That gives you the right to watch them all eating it and feeling uncomfortable. I think they owe you an explanation.’

‘Then you don’t know the people of St Mary’s.’

‘And I think you owe me one.’

Marcus stopped. ‘What?’

‘Why did you keep it to yourself?’

‘What?’

‘About Annie Davies.’

‘I don’t know anything about Annie Davies.’

‘Did she tell you to keep it quiet?’

‘She didn’t tell me anything. We never discussed it. Piss off. Go and find your serial killer. I’m tired.’

‘OK. If you must know,’ Grayle said, ‘it’s not that kind of shivering.’

Maybe finding the guy easy to talk to because he looked kind of like she felt. Beat-up. Exhausted. That eyepatch. And with this air of apprehension — it was maybe an illusion, maybe she needed to feel there were other people around like this, after Roger and Adrian and the mad Cindy, who were all so sure of everything, but she felt the guy didn’t trust anybody any more.

He opened up the woodstove and tried to position a couple of logs. Not looking at her as she talked.

‘Like … things … things you see. Jesus, this doesn’t happen in my part of New York. We say it does. We love to think it does. We have a million psychics and people claiming they talk to the spirits, see the future, read stuff in the Tarot, purify your aura …’

Hearing her own voice going higher and higher, as if she’d taken a hit from a helium balloon.

‘Have another drop of Marcus’s whisky. I’ll make some tea in a minute. Go on, Miss …’

‘Underhill. G … Grayle.’ Feeling her shoulders shaking, like an apartment block about to collapse, under the sweatshirt he’d left out in the bathroom for her.

‘You weren’t attacked or anything, were you?’

‘I, uh …’ Grayle took a big swallow of whisky and coughed, tears and stuff smeared all over her face. ‘I just had to get outa there.’

‘This is Cefn-y-bedd?’

‘What? Oh hell, no, this is … this was … Black Knoll? The prehistoric … whatever you wanna call it.’

‘What were you doing there?’ His eyes going a mite watchful.

‘That place is … I mean, seriously …’ Grayle shuddered a breath down, like the dregs of a glass of milk gurgling through a straw. ‘… haunted. Right?’

Haunted. Just saying the word … it was a whole different word now.

‘Are you saying you saw something? At Black Knoll?’

‘Would you think I was real crazy? Would you think, like, here’s this insane American tourist, she’s only been here like a couple hours and she’s already going around seeing-’

Another word. Another key player from the Holy Grayle thesaurus. Ghost. Phantom. Apparition. Spook. Revenant …

‘What was it you saw?’

‘You’re gonna think I’m crazy.’

‘I’m not. Honest.’

‘OK.’ Grayle pushed her hands through her still-damp hair. ‘A girl. A young girl. In a blue dress? With flowers on it? Like billowed out, kind of Alice in Wonderland? She had also … she had like, pigtails. And she was, you know, majorly upset. Like she was as scared of me as I … Or scared of something . A frightened ghost, Jesus, how can you have a frightened ghost?’

Grayle gulped down the rest of the Scotch.

‘This is crazy. They can’t harm you. In my column — I had this column — I was always quoting people who say, Oh they can’t harm you. Like all aliens are good aliens out of Close Encounters , never Independence Day . I mean, how the fuck do they know? You’re supposed to stand there, and like, Hey, this thing can’t harm me, maybe it needs my help? Are there people who could do that? I don’t believe it. I listen to all these assholes talk about communion with the spirit world, and now I know the truth, and the truth is it never happened to them. Never … happened. To them. Or else they’d know it is not nice, not good. We shouldn’t have to see them. It is truly terrifying, even when you think you understand. It is …’

This could send you terminally crazy. Was this how it started for Ersula? Any wonder she got the hell out?

‘Oh boy.’ Grayle started to shiver again, held on to the fat dog with uneven eyes. ‘Oh Jesus.’

No more than two dozen villagers had arrived at the Tup for the tea and sandwiches paid for by Marcus. Amy Jenkins let them get on with it and joined Cindy at his table in the deepest corner.

‘It’s a can of worms, love,’ she said. ‘Fair play, if it was happening today, I don’t think there’d be a problem. But the church doesn’t have that hold any more, see.’

‘A good thing,’ Cindy said. ‘But also a bad thing. So, let me get this right, the Church said, well, visions of the Virgin Mary, that’s a Catholic thing, so we don’t want to know.’.

‘Got to remember there was a big chapel influence, too.’

‘All hellfire and damnation. And at vision at a pagan place. Devil’s work?’

‘Well, it destroyed her family, isn’t it? That was the thing. Annie’s dad, Tommy Davies, he was never much of a churchgoer, apparently. Real old farmer, the kind you don’t get much nowadays, knew everything about the weather and the … you know … the land.’

‘Moods of the land?’

‘That sort of thing. Black Knoll was a forbidden place because of the bodies of hanged criminals they used to put there. Be people then could still remember it. But Tommy Davies, he wasn’t afraid. He’d say they put up these stones to help the old-time farmers. So he’d take Annie up the Knoll on the quiet and that’s why she was never afraid. Wouldn’t have got any other village girls going up there before sunrise.’

‘Does Marcus know about this?’

Amy snorted. ‘Nobody’d tell Marcus . Fair play to him, but he’d write it all down for his magazine, and nobody wanted that.’

Cindy bit into a cream cheese and celery vol-au-vent. ‘What do you mean, it destroyed her family?’

‘Because Annie’s mam, Edna, she was all for the Church. Headmistress of the school, ran the Women’s Institute, the Parish Council. Tells Annie she’d better forget this nonsense and pray for forgiveness, and when she won’t drop it, out comes the strap. Have the social services on to her now, see, but then …’

‘Didn’t her dad do anything to stop it?’

‘Edna was the dominant one. A Cadwallader. So it was a long time, see, before Tommy Davies did what he did.’

Cindy noticed they were getting some attention, now. A big woman in a hat giving Amy daggers.