Chapter 4. HOPELESS CHOICES
thursday, december 31
Dylan
Everyone knows New Year’s is pretty much the worst night of the year bar Christmas. Especially when you’re living with two attractive women, who both unexpectedly ditch you at the last possible minute. Not that there was much hope with either of them. I was not suffering under any delusions. Unless you call vivid daydreams delusional.
Ani, for all her forthright talk and bouncy friendliness was really pretty mysterious and wasn’t even around most of the time. Don’t get me wrong, she was very wantable, and I wanted her, but I wasn’t stupid enough to think that she would do. It was Indigo that I was stuck on. It was taking me a while to face it, but I knew the moment she was taken that I actually loved her. True, I couldn’t fully unravel how much was being ‘in love’ and how much was the shock of losing a friend, like losing a limb, and wanting it back. Fiercely wanting to have held onto her. To fix her safely to the spot. Thinking why did I choose to give her up? Now I can’t choose.
But I knew why I’d let her go in the first place. Her instinct that led her stubbornly and unerringly to danger and utter chaos. I did not want chaos. It could exist on a book shelf or a disordered room, and (I admit) I spent much of my time managing it. She seemed to move around in it somehow, like she was native to it – in her element. It kind of trailed after her. So now you know. It hadn’t been to protect her from my world that I had left her, but to protect my cowardly self from where she was leading me. The vast unknown, the unclassifiable mess of not-knowingness that I guess is truly at the heart of what people call ‘the supernatural’. The thing was, while she was gone, her kind of chaos didn’t seem so bad anymore. Because I’d found a worse kind of chaos. A big grey void of it where nothing seemed to make any kind of sense.
She was back now, but no more available to me than before. She was going for long walks or shutting herself up in her room (decisive click of the lock). These days I considered extended eye contact a success with her. She’d withdrawn from me and was so patently ‘not mine’. Even when I offered to take over her rent for a while, just a loan, that rebellious look of ‘not in your debt’ as she thanked me. I was not so clueless as to miss the message. So I was stuck between two hopeless choices (door number one – too beautiful, not interested in me, don’t love her anyway, door number two – distracted, distant, possibly still hates me for dumping her).
And yet, I’d kind of assumed we’d all go out for New Year’s drinks together, and one thing might lead to another between at least two of us (I was unsettled on the configuration). I don’t want to seem shallow, but anyone who’s lived with two beautiful girls who show not the slightest interest in you will know how powerfully humiliating life can be. How full of yearning and resentment.
Despite all this, I was not so far gone as to doubt that Indigo was right. It was clearly unhealthy that not one of us was socialising outside our little group of three. At least that’s what I’d thought until they’d both materialised, dressed to the nines and announcing they had plans with friends. New Year’s angst complete.
Of course, they’d left two bottles of champagne in the fridge and I’d spent a few minutes considering whether it would be sadder to drink it on my own, or not to drink at all. The decision came down on the side of drinking. (Lure of black emptiness? Only not quite enough). And then the sound of it. Is there anything sadder than the sound of a champagne cork popping in an empty house? Especially a listening house, like Indigo’s.
I was onto my third glass, (and who knows how tragic the evening might have become?) when I heard a sound from downstairs. It had somehow filtered through the stupidity of the TV. I stood up and turned it down, listening hard. Nothing. I waited a few counts. Still nothing. I sat down again, turned the volume up. Obviously I should have gone down to investigate straight away, but to be fair, I was kind of sleep-deprived and not thinking clearly.
But now there were voices, I heard it even past the TV. I went out to the landing. It was very clear then. Nails groaning out of wood somewhere downstairs.
‘Indigo?’ I called, looking at the wooden boards still shut down tight. I was pretty sure it was her voice. It would take too long to pull up the boards. She must have gone in one of the windows. Which didn’t surprise me at all (selfish and strange stab of joy – she didn’t have a party to go to either!). But then there was something like a thud, barely audible, and a cry and I was running down the hallway and throwing the outer door open before a thought had fully formed in my mind.
It started forming as I clattered down the outside stairs (I was in real danger of breaking my neck). Who was down there with her? And what had they done? And what exactly was I going to do about it? I jumped down the last three steps. And stopped for a moment. At the end of the narrow garden, the window was open. I could see a gaping hole in the wall. I was afraid. I’m not proud of it. It wasn’t a supernatural fear. It was simply this: If she was hurt beyond help, I didn’t actually want to see. There was no question the follower was physical – could do physical harm. I had no light and I had no weapon (where was that hammer?) and I didn’t want to go in there and see what it might have done to her. I stood there for what was probably only five seconds, but seemed like five minutes, feeling like I was being tested and failing horribly. The high walls were looming, the window stretching away, a closing tunnel.
I felt it in my chest first. The crackle and boom of the fireworks. The light of them was pulsing on and off in the sky, turning the brick walls pale then dark. But between the explosions I heard more muffled noises, something like a piece of furniture falling. I ran for the window. As I reached it there was a movement. I went forward instinctively and caught Ani in a warm tangle of arms and legs. She slid to the ground and sat there like an unstrung marionette. Indigo scrambled out after her and pulled down the window with bang. Ani was clutching the back of her head, swaying forward.
‘She needs help,’ said Indigo. ‘She’s bleeding.’ She had a wild look on her face, I could see it with the pulse of each new light – a smudge of pale blue, pale green, and her eyes very big.
‘Get the first aid,’ I said. She left. I heard her clanging up the stairs.
‘What happened?’ I asked Ani.
‘Indigo hit me,’ she murmured, dazedly. It came out like one slurred word. She was reaching for the back of her head but her hand wasn’t quite connecting. She kept suddenly tilting forward as if she were going to black out. It was kind of nightmarish with the fireworks flickering on and off. I couldn’t see anything properly. I reached to the back of her head and pressed my hand against the warmth there.
‘Why?’ I asked, running through a series of scenarios, but pretty much at a loss.
She shook her head, dazedly.
‘Keep still, you’re bleeding.’
‘We had to go in,’ she said.
‘Don’t black out.’ Ridiculous thing to say. As if it was a decision she could make. I glanced up at the window behind her. ‘Was it just you two in there?’
‘Yes, just us … and …’
‘And?’ I tried not to yell it out, I was so impatient. The adrenalin was flowing again and I was getting ready to drag her as far as possible from the window. And?
‘No. I think it was just us.’
This wasn’t very satisfactory, but she was clearly too dazed to be more specific. Indigo was back, flinging open the first aid case and scattering it all over the ground. ‘I don’t know what we need. Gauze? I can’t see a thing. What do we need?’
‘Just give me that, and that bandage. You’d better call an ambulance,’ I added, seeing how fast the blood soaked through the gauze.
‘No ambulance!’ gasped Ani, trying unsuccessfully to stand up.
‘Calm down,’ said Indigo. ‘We’re going to emergency.’
‘Then we’re going to my place,’ I added.
‘No,’ said Indigo immediately. I could see her eyes very dark and wide. ‘This is my
house. I’m not leaving.’
As far as I could tell, they’d both gone completely crazy. ‘Let’s talk about it later,’ I suggested, but Ani was shaking her head.
‘She’s right,’ she said. ‘She has to stay. We all do.’
Ani absolutely refused to get an ambulance. I guess we could have called one anyway, but I suspected there’d be a pretty long wait on New Year’s. A taxi in the early hours of New Year’s Day was out of the question too. Still, it didn’t seem right that she had to walk. We only had to cross a block, then go through the Exhibtion Gardens to the hospital, but it started raining when we were halfway through the park. Really raining, like a tropical downpour. We went slowly, one of us on each side of her. If Indigo had hit her, Ani wasn’t bearing a grudge. She let Indigo support her, was even holding tight to her arm. Or maybe she was just too stunned to know what was going on. ‘I’m so, so sorry,’ Indigo had said, a few times, as we crossed the park. But when we passed the pond she just went very quiet and had been silent ever since. I knew about the pond of course, what had happened with the child there. But it didn’t seem the time to say anything (and what could I say anyway?).
If you’ve never been to the emergency room on New Year’s Eve – my advice is, just don’t go. We thought we might have to make up some story but the place was full of people with head wounds. Every so often a ‘code green’ would go off – which basically meant someone had gone nuts and needed restraining. We sat there waiting for quite a while. Indigo had her face in her hands and her head kind of resting back against the wall. I knew from experience this either meant she was crying (rare and hence alarming) or that she was thinking really, really hard. The fluoro light was shining on her throat and I was remembering when I first met her. There was still a scar there if you looked closely. I could see it now, under the harsh light. Not neat, Hollywood punctures, but a whole row of savage half-moon teeth marks, top and bottom. They had been so rude to us that night, the emergency room staff. And I only realised in retrospect they must have thought it was some weird consensual thing that got out of hand. In which case they really should have reported me, instead of just glaring prudishly at me from behind the desk. She had healed really fast though. Within a few weeks you could barely see anything. You only really noticed it now if you looked for it. That was something I noted pretty carefully. Healed much faster than a normal wound.
‘She doesn’t need stitches. But it’s a pretty nasty hit,’ said the nurse, briskly. ‘They might want to do an MRI. Do you think you could watch her for concussion while you wait?’ He handed Indigo a little sheet with hasty, handwritten notes on it. I’m not sure strangers were meant to hang around assessing the patients, but they seemed a little desperate. Indigo was looking at the sheet of paper as if it was written in ancient Greek. I took it from her and read down the list. Unevenly dilated pupils. Was I meant to just sit and stare into her eyes for the next half hour? I gave it back to Indigo.
We waited outside the door when Ani went in for the MRI. Indigo still had the list clutched in her hand. Hours had passed by that stage, but we were still damp from the rain. Indigo’s dark hair was hanging stringily by her cheeks, and she looked like a half-drowned escapee from a garden party.
‘What happened?’ I asked. It was the first time we’d really been alone.
‘We went in the front room,’ said Indigo. ‘And someone was there,’ she said it so quietly I had to lean in to hear.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Ani wanted to go in. I followed her. And there was someone else.’
I couldn’t hide the look on my face, but she was staring at the floor.
‘As soon as we got into the room they grabbed my ankle and I fell over. I took a plank and I got up and I just swung really hard. It was stupid of me – kind of a panic reaction. It’s all a mess after that. I realised I’d hit Ani.’
‘Ani grabbed your ankle?’
She looked strained. ‘No, she was standing right in front of me …’
A nurse appeared and Indigo shut up. He stood in front of us, looking compassionate. I was so drowsy by this time, I couldn’t honestly tell if we’d seen him before. He looked about my age and I had this feeling that I wasn’t ready to totally trust someone in their twenties with life and death situations. Which says something for my own self-confidence I guess. I tried to look alert.
‘I probably shouldn’t tell you this yet, but the doctor’s had a look and the MRI seems fine.’
‘Oh thank God,’ muttered Indigo. ‘I thought I’d brained her.’
He seemed to hesitate. I was a bit unclear whether ER nurses were bound to secrecy on assaults, or whether we might end our night writing out statements for the police.
‘Piñata,’ I said, just in case. ‘A piñata accident.’
Indigo actually laughed, but somehow it seemed to be the right thing to say.
‘Those things should be banned.’ He was shaking his head. ‘The amount of accidents they cause is absolutely unbelievable. We’ll just keep her here for a few hours. I’ll write down what you need to look for when you take her home. Just bring her back in if there are any problems.’ He looked at us, somewhat pityingly. ‘Aren’t you a bit old for piñatas?’
‘What are you? My mum?’ asked Indigo, glaring at him.
‘It’s been a long night,’ I said, quickly.
Luckily he was smiling (though I guess if I’d talked to him like that, he would have kicked me out). ‘Tell me about it,’ he said, widening his eyes in mock horror. ‘And there’s more to come.’
Ani finally reappeared, looking blotchy-faced, her shimmery dress clutched in her hand, replaced by a blue hospital gown from which her legs stuck out like a gangly deer’s. ‘I think I need to be sick,’ she whispered.
The nurse disappeared promptly and reappeared with a totally inadequate looking pan. Ani sat down and clutched at it. They’d cleaned away the blood and it wasn’t that bad. Cuts on your head always look ten times worse than they are. Mostly it was just a pretty bad bruise. You could see it quite clearly through her pale hair, a red/purple stain under the harsh lights. You couldn’t hide anything under hospital lights.
‘I am so, so sorry,’ said Indigo.
We did eventually get Ani home, though it was at that grey, predawn time when you feel at your most tired, before the buzz of a new day has kicked in to prop you up. We didn’t say much as we crossed the park. Lorikeets were already whistling and squawking and revelers were trailing by, the girls looking cold and miserable and carrying their shoes. I guessed we didn’t look much better. Ani was walking delicately ahead of us, her dress shimmering in the half light, her head swathed in a too-white bandage. Indigo and I walked close together, too tired to speak. She had her arms wrapped around herself for warmth. We were so tired we just filed slowly up the stairs and into our respective rooms without saying a word.
Ani stayed in bed for most of the next day. All of us did, though every few hours Indigo would go in to check on her. I’d hear her coming up the stairs, see her tip-toeing past the kitchen door. Then I’d hear the sound of their murmuring voices. She’d pass again, looking towards me but apparently not seeing that my eyes were open. It might sound callous, but considering how much worry Indigo gave me generally, it was a relief to know she could wield a plank with such good effect. If only everything could be despatched so easily.
It must have been around four in the afternoon when I finally went in to see Ani. I’d been putting it off, but I knew I had to do it. It really was a beautiful room – the two tall windows big enough for you to step out of – right onto the balcony. A huge tree stroked right up against the building and turned all the inside light green. I’d never really understood why Indigo didn’t take that room but she said she didn’t like having windows onto the street. Ani’s bed was just a thin mattress on the floor. She was curled up tightly, her eyes watching from over the sheets.
‘I’ve been waiting for you to come in,’ she whispered.
I didn’t know what to say to this. ‘How are you?’
‘My dress has a little pocket,’ she said, looking behind me.
I looked around and saw the dress hanging from the back of her chair. I went and caught hold of it and it slithered off the chair with a kind of sibilant rustle of beads. I felt something out of place straight away. It was an envelope, tucked away inside the silk. There was no address on the front, just Indigo’s name. I turned it over and kind of froze when I saw the sender’s name.
Ani pushed herself up on her elbow. ‘I didn’t want to give it to her at the hospital, it’s going to be a big shock.’
‘Where did you get this?’
‘I guess it was downstairs by the door.’
‘You guess? She needs to see this.’
‘Yes, but not from me. She doesn’t trust me right now.’
I knew a polite lie was required, but I didn’t say it with much heart. ‘No, she likes you.’
‘It’s actually better if she doesn’t because …’ It seemed she didn’t know how to say it. She shifted her long limbs under the sheets uncomfortably. I tried not to stare.
‘You see … I’m not always me.’
‘Not always you?’ But I was already getting a cold sensation of possibility.
‘Well, I don’t remember much after the last time we spoke. You know, just before I left last night. I know I said I was going to a party, but I wasn’t. So it had already begun. I was already lying for her.’
‘Well, you’ve been concussed. It’s not surprising you might have trouble remembering what happened …’ Lying for who? I was thinking.
She wasn’t listening to me. ‘I do remember being in the front room. But nothing before. It was really black in there. I heard someone call out and fall, and then a moment later there was this like … pain explosion at the back of my head. But before that …’ she had a kind of vague, sweet smile on her face, and was shaking her head as if sharing some insignificant little foible. ‘Well, you know, sometimes I’m just not myself at all.’
‘I see.’
‘Give her the letter. It’s better if you do it, Dylan.’
I always got kind of a shock when she said my name. Like a pleasant little electric shock. But I was not a complete push over.
‘You should have given it to her right away,’ I said.
She didn’t say anything, just looked at me. I put the dress back on the chair, glad to be rid of its cool weight. Then I left, feeling her eyes on my back the whole time.
saturday, january 2
Well, I let a whole night pass without giving Indigo that letter. We were sitting in a café on Sydney Road the next morning and I was pretty much out of ways to procrastinate about it. Indigo said she wanted to talk without Ani. So this was clearly my moment. She was steadily eating honey-soaked baklava, one after another. ‘Comfort eating’, she called it, quite happily.
‘You know, if they didn’t do the MRI I’d think she’d got some sort of brain damage,’ she said. ‘She looks totally stunned. She can’t seem to speak to me properly.’
‘You’re lucky she’s not in a coma. How hard did you hit her?’
She was watching a tattoed man with his arm in a cast, floating by (I guess he was on a skateboard) and she didn’t really seem to hear me. ‘She was so strange down there, Dylan. Like someone else.’
I shut up for a bit because I was trying to think of how to tell her about the whole medium thing, without seeming like I’d been lying about it. It was just that it had never come up (though how could it, if she had no idea?) and I wasn’t really sure I had permission to tell (but wasn’t I on Indigo’s side first and foremost?). I was pretty confident that now was the time to tell her though – with Ani’s voice still echoing in my head – sometimes I’m just not myself. I was trying not to analyse it too much, but I didn’t like the sound of it at all. There was no point beating around the bush.
‘She’s some kind of medium.’
Indigo looked at me and I couldn’t tell if she was taking a while to process it, or just furious that I hadn’t told her sooner.
‘Well regardless,’ she said, and I still couldn’t tell. ‘She wasn’t the one that grabbed me. She was just in the way when I swung.’
We sat in silence for a while. ‘I know that’s what you think, but you can’t know for sure.’
She shrugged and neatly licked the honey off her fingertips in a way that told me, yes, she was angry. ‘I do know it. The problem is you don’t believe it.’
‘It was the follower?’
She shook her head decisively. ‘No. It wasn’t a man.’
‘The follower isn’t a man.’
She ignored this. ‘It was definitely a woman.’
‘How could you know that?’
She gave me really quite a dark look. ‘So you believe in mediums but not intuition?’
There was no point arguing about it. It seemed to be moving into some sort of weird jealousy territory. I couldn’t bear those relationship games.
‘That’s right, Indigo. I only believe Ani now.’
She managed to smile.
‘But you should know, Ani was the one who found you. If it wasn’t for her you might still be down there.’
She looked thoughtful at this news and I was only half regretful that I had to give up my role as rescuing hero. Then again, there’s nothing worse than getting credit where you don’t deserve it. I took the envelope out of my pocket, but held onto it for a moment.
‘She gave me this letter. She thinks she found it downstairs. But she kept it, because she thought … it wasn’t the right time.’
Indigo’s eyes were locked onto the letter. Maybe you don’t know this about Indigo, but she has kind of hazel eyes. Sometimes they look brown and sometimes almost green. I’m never sure if it’s her surroundings or the mood she’s in that changes them. They were looking kind of green now. She was sipping on her coffee but her eyes hadn’t left my hand.
‘It’s for you.’ I handed her the envelope with her name showing on the top. I couldn’t bring myself to turn it over.
She took it, looking at me – and I had a feeling I was doing something horrible to her.
‘She thinks she found it? Who’s it from?’ she asked, with a kind of suspense in her voice. I didn’t say anything and she opened it without looking at the sender address. I guess she already knew who it was by my face. She read the letter. She put it down, smoothed it out with her fingers. She seemed to hesitate, then pushed it towards me. I took it very carefully. It must have been sitting near the front door for a long time. It felt kind of stiff and fragile. The writing was large and looping and had become all cramped up towards the end as if the writer had written more than they at first meant to.
Dear Indigo,
I hope you don’t mind me writing to you. It’s been so long since it all happened. I’ve joined a church and they’re helping me to see that Forgiveness is the only way I’ll ever be truly happy. You remember Jason. My lovely boy. Well, you should know that in a way he wasn’t really mine. I adopted him when he was eight months. He was only with us a year. You can’t understand how long a year is until you have a kid. They wouldn't tell us anything at the time. Except that they didn't know who the mother was. So he was abandoned. I just wanted to say sorry for the things I said to you. I still don't know what happened, but I know in my heart you weren't to blame. The truth was I never really felt he was mine. It’s as if God decided to give him to us just for a short time and then take him away. Just so I’d know how precious he was. I thought it was the hardest time of my life – all that work looking after him – but it turned out to be the best. I hope you can forgive me for blaming you so long.
Grace.
It seemed like we couldn’t look at each other. ‘Why don’t you come and stay with me for a while?’ I said.
She’d taken back the letter and was folding it up into a very small square and pushing it into her purse, although it didn’t quite fit
. ‘I want to be home. It’s my house – why should I have to move?’
It was clear she didn’t want to talk about the letter yet. There was a red flush in her cheeks and her eyes were shining. The house suddenly seemed like a neutral topic.
‘It might be dangerous for you to stay there. For any of us. We’ve always known there was something about the house. And now I’ve been downstairs. It’s pretty clear that it’s haunted.’
Her eyes were really luminous now and I was starting to worry that she might cry.
‘Well, I guess we’ll find out if that’s really true,’ she said. ‘It certainly doesn’t take a medium to know there’s something weird going on downstairs. She held my gaze as if she was about to jump up and fight me. ‘I want another look.’ She seemed to get energy from making crazy decisions.
I couldn’t help it. I smiled. She was kind of charming when she was reckless. She didn’t smile back but took a little sip of coffee.
‘So what’s next then?’ I asked.
‘I’m thinking a séance with Ani, and then you and I have a proper look downstairs, with lights.’
She’d managed to undo my smile, but I tried to speak lightly. ‘Low profile then?’
She laughed, but there was a dark edge to it.
‘I’ve had enough of sitting upstairs, waiting for something to happen.’ She looked at the edge of the letter, sticking out of her purse. ‘I’d forgotten he was called Jason,’ she said, her voice changing quite suddenly. ‘He’d be going to school now.’
‘It wasn’t your fault,’ I said.
I think she chose not to hear me. ‘Dylan, would you do me a favour?’
‘Of course.’
‘Would you ask Ani if she’ll help us with the séance?’
Long silence. The séance was a terrible idea. And, on top of that, I seemed to be becoming some sort of messenger between them. I could see us all over dinner in a few days’ time, sitcom style – Dylan, would you ask Ani to pass the salt? Dylan, would you tell Indigo it’s right in front of her?
Indigo wasn’t looking at me, but was using her nail to push the edge of the letter deeper and deeper into the purse.
‘Okay,’ I said. ‘I’ll ask her.’
sunday, january 3
I found Ani in the kitchen sipping tea. I wasn’t going to bother making small talk – it didn’t really seem to be her way.
‘We need to find out what’s going on in the house. Indigo says something grabbed her downstairs.’
Ani looked at me. I was waiting for her to say who or what she thought it was. But she just nodded and blew on her tea.
‘Well, you’ve got to face that stuff you know,’ she said. ‘It just gets bigger when you don’t face it.’ She sipped her tea philosophically. ‘I mean sometimes you have to like face death and all that before you can really know who you are.’
I waited to see if she’d run out of clichés. I was starting to wonder if it was all just an act with her – because who really talks that way?
‘Well, I’m kind of hoping death isn’t on the cards,’ I said. The cliché thing was catching.
She fixed me with her big blue eyes. ‘All we can do is wait and see.’
‘Indigo wants to do a séance.’
There was a tiny pause. Then she shrugged. ‘Sure – if she feels it’s right.’
I knew that the idea of the séance was wrong, wrong, wrong. There was a lot I wanted to specifically point out, but I confined myself to noting it down in my light blue book that afternoon (light blue was for ‘spiritualism and miscellaneous’).
First, we are all in a state of heightened suggestibility, given the events of the past few months (and as far as I can tell, Ani is constantly in a state of heightened suggestibility anyway). Second, given this collective frame of mind we are likely to achieve an altered state of consciousness. Third, achieving an altered state of consciousness is in no way conducive to a successful séance and is likely to lead to personal ideas leaking into the exchange (like some sort of uncontained, collective stream of consciousness spelt out via ouija board – fascinating, maybe, but not at all useful in terms of the matter at hand).
On the other hand, I most definitely do not want to have a successful séance for the following reasons:
1. Spirits are unreliable and frequently incoherent.
2. The dumbest teenage dabbler knows the theory that opening a board risks creating a locus for unfortunate supernatural events in the future (although I’m starting to suspect that Indigo is in herself already a locus for unfortunate supernatural events).
3. For various reasons I don’t want to record right now, I believe that séances are immoral, reckless and just plain wrong.
What I didn’t write was why I’d agreed. Basically, I was at a loss. The sorts of things that were happening to Indigo were completely out of the ordinary. The way we’d found her after the follower took her. The hand on her ankle, strong enough to pull her down. Sure, in horror films maybe. But in real life that stuff was off the charts. I’d thought of asking Ani if she could help, but realised that was out of the question. Please Ani, go into a trance. See what you can randomly pick up. We’ll watch your back. Maybe we’ll get really lucky and you’ll be possessed by a malevolent spirit. As it was it seemed safer to let the board be the medium. Mostly I was trying to convince myself that because Indigo had come back through the most irrational means, perhaps it was through irrational means that we would bring it all to an end.
Evening arrived much too soon. We were in Ani’s room. It had been a junk room since Indigo had moved in (she called it ‘the study’) but it had always been the nicest space. Now it was Ani’s, it looked strangely bare, except for her mattress on the floor, a rack of clothes and a dresser covered in scarves, jewellery and mysterious little phials. The air smelt of Ani in more concentrated form – vanilla perfume and something indistinct but pleasant that I noticed whenever she passed too close on the stairs.
We’d been caught kind of off guard and didn’t even have a proper board, if there was such a thing. A Parker’s game board for example. Ani turned a round drinks tray upside down, then carefully wrote out the alphabet on a piece of paper and tore it into separate letters. Then she wrote ‘yes’ and ‘no’ and placed them at opposite sides of the board. She looked like a twelve-year-old, with her hair actually in pigtails tonight and her tongue just about poking out with concentration. But her girlishness hid something dark and not at all appealing. That she could become ‘not herself’ at any moment. And when she was not herself, she could lie about it. It was dawning at me that whoever she’d been (if that’s really what she was suggesting) it had been aware enough to pretend to be Ani. To tell us it had a New Year’s party to go to. To lure Indigo downstairs. To take her to the source. Whatever that meant. I tried to bury my thoughts as she placed the letters neatly around the outside of the board. And I suddenly realised I hadn’t spelt this all out for Indigo (secrecy can become such a strong habit you no longer notice when you’re doing it). But Indigo was smart and open-minded. And she had said that Ani hadn’t seemed herself. But it was just an empty phrase. I wasn’t sure if she’d thought of the literal possibility that something else had been in Ani’s body.
Indigo put a glass coffee cup, the kind you’d use for caffe lattes, turned upside down on the tray. She gave me a look to show she was noticing me staring at her.
‘If there’s one thing I know about vengeful ghosts, it’s that it’s always better not to pay attention to them,’ I observed. I couldn’t help it. Maybe it was just to assuage my guilt – if something did go wrong. A supernatural disclaimer.
Indigo was ready for this. ‘But I thought you were meant to find out what they need, so they can move on?’
‘Spoken like a person who’s picked up her knowledge from the collected works of Dickens.’
‘TV actually,’ she said.
It was impossible to intimidate Indigo with scorn. I always liked that about her. Ani lit some candl
es and switched off the light. She hadn’t said a word since she’d started cutting up the letters. The windows were open, curtains billowing inward then sucking outward. The candles guttered pretty fiercely in the breeze, on the verge of ominously winking out at any moment. Well, that would add to the suggestibility, I supposed, with the growing sense that we were poised on the edge of disaster.
We sat down around the board. Ani closed her eyes and intoned slowly, ‘We are protected by white light. Anything that might wish to harm us will be burnt up in light.’
I looked over at Indigo and had the terrible feeling she was about to laugh – that it was just going to come snorting out in the most ridiculous way possible. Instead she bit her lip and looked very solemn.
‘Let’s begin,’ said Ani, opening her eyes and looking right at me. I was struck by the kind of power she had by being totally without irony. Or maybe it was just that she was beautiful and she startled me a little whenever we locked eyes. We reached forward at the same moment to place a fingertip on the glass.
‘Left hand or right hand?’ Indigo asked.
Ani looked at her a little pityingly. ‘Really, there’s so much energy in this place, we barely need any of this stuff.’
Despite her claim, we sat there for quite a long time, outstretched fingers just gently connecting with the glass. I was starting to wonder when would be appropriate to break the mood and speak, (relief – it hasn’t worked) but suddenly the glass jumped a little and slid a few centimeters off to the side.
We all kept our hands on it and waited. Slowly, dragging a little against the surface it began to move, round and round in lazy circles.
‘Is anyone there?’ asked Ani.
The glass was circling a little faster now, singing against the metal, like a finger drawn around a crystal rim. It span briskly around the tray then slid to ‘no’ and stopped.
Ani frowned a little. ‘Are you sure there’s nobody there?’
The glass didn’t move.
‘I know you’re there,’ Indigo interrupted. ‘And I really need to talk to you.’
We waited. There was a humming feeling under my fingertips, I assumed the others could feel it too. It was like holding a moth enclosed in your hand, the million barely felt beats of its wings. Either something real was happening or suggestibility was kicking in. Slowly the glass shifted across to the right, then the left, making little angles across the tray. Clearly we’d all done this before so we skipped the bit where everyone says – are you doing that? No, it must be you! I was trying to write down the letters now – I, L, I, L, I, L, but then it was darting everywhere and the hum was becoming a kind of whine.
‘Please stop that,’ said Ani, and something in the plaintiveness of her voice made me start to feel afraid. ‘Who is this? Lily?’
It just went faster and faster.
‘We should stop,’ I said. ‘This is pointless.’
‘Wait!’ said Ani, but her voice was strained and different.
It felt then as if someone had grabbed the glass and shoved it right off the board. We all snatched our hands back at once.
‘Well, that was useless,’ said Indigo, after a moment.
Immediately, there was a heavy thud downstairs. We sat there for a moment, registering the sound. I looked at Indigo and she looked at me and there was something almost comical about it, although my heart was thudding.
‘That’s bad,’ she said, with a nervous smile.
‘We should say a prayer,’ said Ani.
‘I think it might be a little late for that,’ I said. ‘But we should close the board.’
‘No!’ Indigo said, suddenly decisive. ‘Keep it open!’
I was tired of telling her she was nuts, but I was just opening my mouth to do it once more when she sprang up and rushed from the room. The candles flickered out in the draught, leaving Ani and I in near darkness. I could make out her head and shoulders against the dappled street light outside, but she didn’t say anything.
‘Yes, let’s split up and get picked off one by one,’ I said, loud enough for Indigo to hear.
It was then I got the feeling. A crawling up the backs of my arms and on either side of my spine, up to the top of my neck where it started to spread hotly across my skull.
‘Go and stop her,’ said Ani.
****