The Salt Marsh (7 page)

‘Revolution,' he said.

There was something odd about the way he was looking at the badge, as if he could divine that she'd nabbed it from the dressing-up box of a dead undercover cop. The dope was adding to her paranoia.

‘I reckon you've got the powers.' He rocked back in his seat, assessed her. ‘I can sense that kind of thing.'

His observation took her by surprise; she opened her mouth to speak, emitted a puff of smoke.

He said, ‘Some people don't know they've got them. I've known since I was a kid. I hear the voices. Calling me from the other side.'

A cold breeze brushed her neck.

‘You can't deny the powers – all you can do is try to master them, otherwise they can be dangerous. You have to learn the techniques – sorcery, witchcraft. A spirit guide can help.' He lifted his head, gazed into space. ‘We live with the dead. The ghosts walk among us. Some people are just better at seeing it than others.'

And as he spoke, the House of Levitation filled her head, the day of the corpse, crossing the threshold, bright light, flight, cold air on her skin. She could hear the dead calling, see the hands reaching. He was right; the ghosts were always present.

‘I have a spirit guide,' Alastair continued. ‘A person. It doesn't have to be a person, though; could be a bird, an animal of some sort. You need another being outside your head who can help you channel what's going on inside. Show you the way. Something to give you focus.'

Focus. She had to focus. Stop her mind wandering. She concentrated and gold-tinged wings fluttered in front of her eyes.

‘If I had a spirit guide it would be a bird,' she said.

‘I knew it. An owl, I bet.'

Good guesser.

He bent forwards. ‘Let your mind travel; wherever it goes, your body can follow.'

She leaned away.

‘So who is your spirit guide?' she asked.

‘John Allin. He was a philosopher of the occult. A seventeenth-century sorcerer.'

A spider dropped from nowhere, landed on her hand, then launched away on a gossamer thread and disappeared.

‘How did you find Allin?'

‘I didn't. He found me. That's how it happens. You can't go looking, but you can't stop it either.' He nodded at her. ‘Like you and the barn owl.'

Barn owl? She hadn't told him she was thinking about a barn owl. He must have seen her fondling the wing.

‘I was at the local records office when it happened, searching for stuff about witchcraft trials. I got chatting to the librarian, and she dug out this box of old court papers. Accusations of maleficence – women turning their neighbours' milk sour, widows cursing newborns, cavorting with their familiars.' He pressed his chin with his index finger. His nails were long. ‘At the bottom of the box I found a bundle of letters, each one sealed with a red wax skull and crossbones. Memento mori. I touched the seal, rubbed the skull, and I felt a presence.'

She jumped; a tingle on her arm, a fingertip running over her skin. She looked for a spider, but there was nothing.

‘Did you sense something?' he asked. ‘Somebody touching you?'

‘No.' She rubbed her arm. ‘So the letters were from John Allin?'

‘Yes.'

‘Did he live in Dungeness?'

‘He lived near here. He was a dissenting priest in Rye during the Civil War, the years of Cromwell's Commonwealth. This area was a hotbed of radicalism, power to the people. These things, they go hand in hand. Dissent, smuggling, sorcery, witchcraft – rebellion. When the monarchy was restored after the Civil War was over, Allin had to go on the run. He disappeared in London, Southwark.'

His head was nodding to a silent beat, as if he had a Bob Dylan track playing in his brain, a hard rain's a gonna fall.

‘1665. That was when the plague hit town. People thought it was a curse, blowback from the attempted revolution. Punishment from an authoritarian divinity for daring to rebel.'

‘The Empire Strikes Back.'

He smiled. ‘Exactly.' He toked, blew grey smoke slowly. ‘Allin worked as a physician, a plague doctor.'

She pictured a caped figure in a black-beaked mask, a crow-man in a darkened street of red-cross-marked doors. She shook her head, trying to rid herself of the image, uncertain where it had come from.

‘Allin concocted pills and medicines. But his real skills were on the mystical side. He had a gift for magic: seeing spirits, reading the signs, alchemy.'

She coughed, the dense fug of the spliff too much, reached for the barn owl's wing, fanned the air.

He said, ‘That which is below is like that which is above, and that which is above is like that which is below. Hermes Trismegistus, the
Emerald Tablet
, the source of all alchemical wisdom, the godfather of science.'

She was finding it hard to follow his thread. ‘The godfather of science?'

‘Newton had a translation of the
Emerald Tablet.
He knew its importance, understanding the rules, the patterns that shape and govern.'

His drawl lulled her, his words washed around her brain.

‘We are a microcosm of the universe. We are made of the same matter. Master ourselves, master the universe.'

Her head drooped, the owl's wing slipped, fell on the floor. She snapped back to her surroundings. He was still talking.

‘Alchemy is the transformation to a higher plane. Purification.'

She managed to formulate a sentence in her head and transfer it to her mouth. ‘I thought alchemists were interested in making gold.'

‘Well, making gold from base metal was a means to an end. The real prize was spiritual growth, mastery of the supernatural powers governing ourselves and the universe. Allin was searching for spiritual cleansing and healing to soothe the pain of the failed revolution here on earth. Alchemy was the opposite of black magic, it was about purification, positive transformation.'

His features tensed, he raised a dirt-scuffed warning finger. ‘Of course, alchemy is no different from any other of the occult arts. Once you unleash the powers, they can be flipped, used for malign purposes. What starts off as a blessing may become a curse.'

The word
curse
stirred her. ‘Reverse alchemy,' she said.

He nodded. ‘The downward spiral. The sinistral spin. That's when the spiritual becomes separated from the material, we lose control and become corrupted. The darkness takes over.'

He lifted a glass test tube from the school science rack, chucked it in the air so it twisted, glinted in the flicker of the hurricane lamp, round and up, floated above the smoke cloud for a few seconds then flipped and plummeted, down and down. He didn't move and she thought he was going to let it smash, but he stuck his hand out at the last moment and caught it, cradled the vial in his palm.

‘How do you contact Allin?' she asked.

‘He comes and he goes. I can't always command it. Like a signal, an interference in my mind. Sometimes his voice is flaky and I can't tell what he's after. Sometimes it's clear. Insistent. When people are in trouble of some kind or another...' He stretched out an arm, selected a white tern's wing from the avian ossuary on the crate, fanned it in front of his face, scrutinized her through the wafting grey vapour. ‘Do you want me to see if I can contact him for you?'

She folded her legs up in the chair, feet on seat. ‘No thanks. I'm fine.'

She grabbed her mug of tea, slurped, swished the tepid liquid around her mouth, swallowed, conscious of the noises she was making.

‘You've lost something,' he said. ‘I can sense it.'

She shook her head, alarmed at his clairvoyance.

‘Seriously. Maybe I can help. What are you searching for?'

She squirmed around in the chair, tried not to watch the white wing fluttering, and then she thought, why not give it a go. Perhaps he could help.

‘A person actually.'

‘Oh? Who?'

‘Luke. My boyfriend. I was supposed to meet him down here this evening and he hasn't materialized.'

‘Luke. The guy who organized the meetings?'

‘Yes.'

‘He's your boyfriend?'

‘Yes.'

‘You were supposed to be meeting him this evening?'

‘Yes. We were going to drive down together but then something came up.'

‘Drive? Did he drive down alone then?'

‘Yes.' His questions irritated her, she couldn't see the need for his tone of surprise. ‘He drove down this morning. I was going to meet him on the beach at six, but he didn't turn up. Misunderstanding, I think.'

‘Misunderstanding, yeah, must have been.'

He sounded wary now. Uncomfortable. He thought she'd been stood up, she was sure. She wanted to correct him, let him know it was nothing like that. ‘We missed each other. He must have had a different meeting place in mind.' She was annoyed with herself for blurting, her voice cracked with emotion.

‘A different meeting place,' he repeated. ‘Of course. Let me see if Allin can help.'

He took a deep breath, flicked the white wing in front of his face in rhythmic sweeps, stared at her through the feathers, mumbled, ‘He's not on the beach. He is somewhere else.'

‘Sorry?'

‘He's in another place.' He paused. Flicked the wing. ‘I can see a boat.'

Her stomach tightened, her eyes caught his; all pupil, no iris.

‘A boat?' she demanded. ‘Where?'

He fanned the wing again, stalled, looked embarrassed. She wondered whether Allin had let him down this time, failed to deliver any useful information.

‘On the flatland.' He whispered the words.

‘The flatland? The marsh?' A starburst flashed in her head, she shouted, ‘The Lookers' Hut.'

Obvious. Now she understood. The Lookers' Hut on Romney Marsh, that's what Luke meant when he said they should meet at the usual place. Not the beach.

‘I can taste saltwater,' he said.

She wasn't listening, eager to leave and drive to their secret camping spot, filled with a certainty Luke was waiting for her there. Alastair replaced the wing among his table-top mortuary, carefully avoided her eye.

‘Did that help?'

‘Well, you confirmed what I half knew anyway.'

He smiled, seemingly relieved by her answer.

‘Sure. Communicating with the spirits is almost a way of accessing the subconscious. Our sixth sense. Things we instinctively know to be true but can't trust ourselves to believe.'

She couldn't be bothered with any more dope-fuelled hocus-pocus, she was back on firm ground, wanted to get going, find Luke.

‘I see what you mean. Thanks.'

‘No problem.'

‘I'd better be leaving. Check out the Lookers' Hut. It's where we usually go.'

‘You're going to the marsh now?'

‘Yes.'

‘In the dark?' He wrung his hands. ‘No, don't do that. Crash here if you like. Wait until morning.'

She stood, her legs wobbled. ‘I'll be fine. Thanks.'

‘You can come back if you don't find him.' There was something pleading about his tone that put her on edge. What was he after?

‘I know my way around the marsh,' she said. ‘I'm not scared of the dark.'

He gave her a tentative nod, shrugged, crossed to the door, held it open. A low black car was parked outside the next cabin along the track – a scarab in a clump of viper's bugloss.

‘Porsche,' he said. ‘I've seen it a couple of times recently. There's lots of new money around here these days. Dungeness is becoming too fashionable for the likes of me. Time to be moving on.'

He hunched his shoulders and stuck his hands in the front pockets of his fading jeans.

‘Remember,' he said. ‘You got the power, you just gotta learn to channel it. Don't forget the barn owl.'

‘Right.' She smiled glibly.

‘The birthmark,' he said. ‘I spotted it. You can't escape your legacy.'

She opened her mouth, couldn't find a response, turned and walked away.

THREE

S
HE HAD LEFT
the camper van in the pub car park, Belisha beacon tangerine in the darkness. She clipped a kerb as she swung on to the road and headed north into the marsh, her head more befogged than she had realized. She wound the window down to clear her brain, inhaled sea air – brine, kelp, dead fish – and saw stars reflected in the obsidian waters of the flooded gravel pits. Her eyes drooped, lids dope-heavy, the tarmac dissolved in the lapping roadside shrubs. Bright light behind made her start. She gripped the wheel, blinded by the dazzle, swerved, left tyre hitting uneven verge, van tipping at a mad angle before she found the tarmac again. She slowed, allowed the black Porsche to overtake, a fleeting impression of a thick neck and a shaved head behind the steering wheel as the driver sped away. Jerk. Probably the Porsche from the spit; there weren't that many flash cars down here, whatever Alastair's concerns about the tide of new money. Most of the marsh was takeaway and trailer-park country. Isolated, run-down houses with Alsatian dogs, pick-up trucks and boundaries marked by chainlink fences to keep out the bleakness. Southern badlands, nothing quaint nor pretty here. An owl shrieked as she crossed the Rhee Wall causeway into the waterlogged meadows of Romney Marsh. Alastair was right, at night the marsh felt like a place where death hung close – spirits easily summoned from the drifting vapours and black waters. She had said she wasn't scared of the dark, but she hadn't been out on the marsh at night before without Luke, and now she was travelling alone through its morbid contours.

She pulled up by the narrow turfed bridge, certain she would see Luke's dented blue Polo squatting on the tyre-rutted verge. It wasn't there. He could have parked on the other side of the field for some reason. She checked her pocket for her torch and penknife – the talismans she always carried – then fished around in the back of the van for her sleeping bag, water bottle. She stood and listened: sheep bleating, breeze rustling the willows, toads croaking. She knew in her gut she wouldn't find Luke waiting for her in the Lookers' Hut. She half wished she'd taken up Alastair's offer and stayed at his place, left it until first light to look for Luke. Too late, she was here now. She might as well investigate, see if there were any signs that he had been there earlier.