Waking the Dead (12 page)
Without words, he and John paused at the edge of their property and waited for the others to catch up. Caitrin looked exhausted, her face pale, and Josh was stumbling along beside her, in no better shape. Behind them, walking slowly, the two visitors looked half asleep, their expressions blank. Clouds were drawing in, darkening the sky, and a wind was whipping the thin, sharp grass of the field around their ankles. The four crossed the road to where Nick and John stood waiting. A rental car was parked a few hundred yards away, tucked neatly into a passing space, but Bonnie and Fred ignored it.
“We’ll say good-bye, then,” John said with a terse nod at Bonnie. He jerked his thumb at his niece. “Come on, you two, get into the house and don’t be dripping everywhere.”
“Go on with them,” Nick told him. “I’ll be right in.”
John gave him a look, but nodded and followed the younger ones inside.
To Fred and Bonnie, Nick said, “Look, I’m sure you mean well, but my brother’s only here for two weeks, and I want to spend my time with him, not with people who’re just interested in me as some kind of sideshow. I’ve had enough of that.”
“That’s not what we want from you,” Bonnie said, eyeing him with a new, different kind of interest that verged on making his skin crawl. Nick wondered what Josh would have been able to sense from her. “But I suppose we’ll just have to…live without it.”
“Yes, you will.” Nick didn’t know what was going on, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to. He was keeping his barriers raised in case the
“Nick, are you--” It was Josh, come back to check on him. He’d changed into dry clothes and had a blanket wrapped around him. His eyes locked with Bonnie’s, and she smiled in a feral, deeply unpleasant sort of way. He didn’t finish whatever it was he’d been about to ask.
“Josh?” Nick glanced between them, worried.
“Oh shit,” Josh whispered. “Nick, it’s--”
Bonnie made a small, shocked gasp and stepped backward like someone had shoved her shoulder; something dark flew from her to Josh, disappearing like it had gone into his chest, and Josh staggered, then put a hand to his chest, looking down at it.
“Josh?”
Lifting his face slowly, Josh smiled in the same way Bonnie had half a minute before.
‘Shit’ was right
, Nick thought, as Josh’s eyes flashed from green to a brown so dark it was nearly black.
Chapter Ten
“It’s been a long time,” Josh said in a Scottish accent, looking directly at Fred.
“Aye, brother, it has,” Fred replied. His features shifted subtly, as if another will was trying to shape them in ways this body wasn’t used to, and Nick shuddered even though Fred had done nothing more than smile.
Possession. It was something he’d heard about, something he feared, in a distant, won’t ever happen to me kind of way. Most of the ghosts he dealt with weren’t interested in anything but sharing whatever was holding them in place, tethered, bound, and asking for help. He didn’t know why the
They had to stop.
“Get out of them,” he said, his voice as controlled as he could make it, addressing his words mostly to Josh. “I can help you; if you’re in their minds, you know who I am and what I can do, but you have to leave their bodies. You’re hurting them.”
He didn’t know what the effects of possession were, but he didn’t think sharing mind and body with an angry, centuries-old ghost was a good idea. Two wills couldn’t coexist, and if one was submerged in the other, was that reversible? God, he was lost here, consumed with concern for his brother and, if to a lesser degree, Fred and with guilt because some of this was his fault; if he hadn’t forced the spirits away…
There was no time to think it through. Bonnie was still glassy-eyed, leaning against the low wall bordering the grounds of Rossneath, but the other two were poised to leave. They grinned at him, feral, fierce, and began to walk away.
“No!” Nick went after them and grabbed Josh’s arm, calling out for John to help him, his voice lost in the roaring in his ears. It was like a nightmare where all his screams were silent. Josh’s head jerked around, and he snarled.
Nick turned his head, too, and saw John appear at the head of the driveway, too far away for his expression to be visible. Then pain, bright and hot, blossomed at the side of his head and when he put his hand to it, he brought it away wet with blood.
Fred grinned, dropped the stone he was holding, and he and Josh ran off toward the car, their bodies moving clumsily but still too fast for Nick to even contemplate chasing them, given that his knees were buckling, turning to water.
John was there, holding onto his arm and saying something urgent; it was hard for Nick to make himself think, but he did his best to convey what he needed to. “It’s the ghosts -- they’re in Fred and Josh. God, John…”
“Easy,” John said as he wobbled on his feet, getting an arm around him. “They’re off -- we won’t catch them now.”
“We have to.” Nick tried to get his body to cooperate, but only managed a few weaving steps in the direction Josh had gone before he almost fell again, saved only at the last second by John’s support. He watched, stunned, as the car Fred and Bonnie had arrived in started and drove away, kicking up a thick spew of dust and pebbles and swerving far enough off the road that it flattened a short hedge in the process. “I have to sit down,” he said weakly, and did, so suddenly that John couldn’t stop him.
“Nick. Love.” John’s hands were on his face, looking into his eyes. “He needs a doctor.” This last seemed to be directed at someone else.
“Here, I’ve a handkerchief,” Bonnie said, her own voice shaky, and a moment later, the soft cloth was being pressed to Nick’s head.
He hissed and tried to jerk away, but John steadied him. “No, let me. I’ll have to get him into the car.”
Finally finding his voice again, Nick said, “I’m okay. It just took me by surprise.” He looked up at Bonnie, who was standing above them. “What about you?”
She shuddered and rubbed her hands over her upper arms as if trying to warm herself. “I’m all right, now that he’s gone. I suppose you’re willing to admit now that the legend was true?”
Nick forced his mouth into a wry grin but didn’t try to nod. “Yeah. I wasn’t lying before -- I really couldn’t sense anything until that wall came down. It must have been one hell of a spell.”
“It felt like having…I don’t know, some sort of monster inside me.” Bonnie crouched down and caught Nick’s gaze in her own. “I think they’re after the ones that put them in that cave and let them drown. Well, after their grandchildren, at this point, I suppose, but I definitely…I felt it. Their anger.”
“Then we have to stop them,” Nick said.
“Easy said.” John rubbed the back of his hand over his mouth. “Back in the house,” he said decisively. “You’re going nowhere until you’re in dry clothes with something for that lump on your head. I’m thinking ice, some aspirin, and a dram of whisky.”
“Oh, you should never give people with head injuries alcohol!” Bonnie protested, which left Nick completely convinced that nothing of the ghost remained in her. “It’s not recommended at all.”
“Maybe not where you’re from,” John said, his arm around Nick, supporting him as they began to walk up the driveway. “Here, it’s the most important part of the treatment.”
Nick thought that Bonnie was too far away to hear John mutter, “You’d think even an English woman would have more sense than
that
,” but he was past caring. The side of his head was throbbing and he couldn’t make his feet move in anything but a slow plod toward the house when he wanted to run, race after Josh.
Inside, they left Bonnie with a glass of water at the kitchen table and went upstairs, just as slowly, so that Nick could change into dry clothes. Caitrin was still in the shower by the sound of it.
“We have to find him,” Nick said to John, who was kneeling on the floor putting dry socks on his feet so he could continue holding Bonnie’s handkerchief to his head.
“We will,” John said shortly, finishing the job. “There. How’s your head?”
“Hurts.”
“I’m not surprised. Well, let’s get you back downstairs and find some ice.”
He was sitting at the kitchen table with a makeshift icepack held to his head when Caitrin came downstairs, having changed into a pair of John’s jeans -- they were too big, and held up with a belt -- and a wool sweater that’d had an unfortunate accident in the laundry and become two sizes smaller. She stopped in the doorway, frowning. “Where’s Josh?”
John cleared his throat and glanced at Nick. “Well, now, that’s a bit of a long story.”
“One of the ghosts is borrowing his body for a while.” Nick looked at John and lifted one shoulder in a half shrug of apology. “Not so long.”
“What do you mean, ‘borrowed’?” Caitrin asked.
“Possessed,” John said. As her expression changed, he quickly reassured her. “It’ll be all right.”
She gave him an incredulous look. “Did you hit your head as well as Uncle Nick?”
“Don’t be so cheeky,” John admonished her, but it sounded automatic. He sighed. “It
will
be all right, love. We’ll see to that. Nick will talk to the ghosts, get them to see reason, and help them move on. It’s what he does.”
“Oh, this is crazy,” Caitrin cried out. Bonnie shifted uneasily in her chair, the glass of water she’d been given barely touched. Caitrin rounded on her. “And you! What con are you trying to pull?”
“I -- I assure you --” Bonnie began.
“Caitrin,” Nick said, interrupting Bonnie, who was looking distressed, her face showing what he guessed was a rare expression of confusion and indecision. “The lady’s been through what Josh is going through now. She’s got information that can help us and a friend of her own who’s in danger, so back off, will you?”
Caitrin flounced -- there really was no other word for it -- to a chair and thumped down in it, glaring around at all of them before slow tears began to trickle down her face. John walked over to her and stood beside her, his hand gentle as he stroked her hair. “There now,” he murmured. “You cry, hen.”
She wiped her face and jerked her head away from his hand. “I’m not crying. I’m
angry
.”
“My mistake,” John said, a gleam of amusement in his eyes. “The tears confused me.”
“
They’re
angry,” Bonnie said. “I don’t understand what they want to do this for, though. I mean; they’re dead.” She looked at Nick appealingly. “They are, aren’t they? They can’t -- they can’t stay here?”
“Like this? I don’t know. Maybe.” He didn’t know enough about it, damn it, and there wasn’t time to go looking for the information he needed. “They can…um. They can stay a long time, just as regular ghosts. I don’t know what happens when they’re like this.”
“They were confused, at first.” Bonnie was looking down at the table. “
He
was. He didn’t like me because I’m a woman.”
Nick shifted the icepack and winced. “What else did you get? Anything?”
She shook her head. “It was all…I don’t know.”
“You’re trying to tell us that thing was in your head -- in you -- and you don’t know anything more than it was ‘confused’?” Caitrin’s cheeks were flushed. “You must know something!”
“It was…” Bonnie closed her eyes as if she could remember better that way. “He was angry. So angry. And…I think, afraid. Underneath it. But mostly angry. He wanted --” She opened her eyes and met Nick’s. “I think he wants to find the people who did this to him. The ones who were responsible.” She’d said that before.
“Long dead,” Nick said briefly. “So they’ll target their families.” He glanced at John. “Who were the main people responsible for leaving the brothers in that cave? It wouldn’t have been the whole village; there are always ringleaders.”
John’s forehead wrinkled in a frown. “I don’t know,” he said doubtfully. “The priest, aye, and maybe whoever was important back then; the richest farmer, the man who owned the most land… the teacher of the local school. The story doesn’t really say.”
“Oh, yes, it does,” Bonnie said, sitting straighter and looking invigorated by the chance to put someone right. “I brought along a small selection of books concerned with the folklore and history of the islands, and the
“Is that so?” John said. “And what do these books say?”
“Probably no more than you already know,” she told him, “but one of them lists the people who died, supposedly because of the ghosts’ revenge, and I’d say that would make a good starting point?”
“If they killed them then, why would they want to kill their ancestors now?” Caitrin asked.
“Maybe they didn’t get them all before the binding spell trapped them?” Nick shrugged. “This is all guesswork.”
“Did they mention who organized the spell and who did it?” John asked Bonnie. “Stands to reason the people most in fear were the guilty ones and I imagine they’d have a grudge against the witch, too.”
Bonnie pursed her lips. “I think so, but I only skimmed that story. We’re here for the stones and that was just something that caught my interest.” She flushed. “It was a long drive up here,” she confided. “And Fred isn’t -- well, he can be just a little tedious at times, sweet though he is. If I’m reading, he doesn’t talk to me.”
“So you buried your nose in a book all the way up from
She looked torn. “I want to help, of course I do, but… shouldn’t we report this? Tell someone?”
Make it into someone else’s problem
, Nick translated. “Who do you suggest we tell?” he asked bluntly. “Until they do something illegal -- and I guess it might not be long until they do, but still -- the constable can’t do anything, even if he wanted to. Which I doubt he would.”
Nick glanced at John for confirmation. Lewis Armstrong was the man who put the fear of the law into Traighshee’s citizens, when it was necessary, which wasn’t all that often. Lewis would be the first to admit that he didn’t believe in what he couldn’t see, an admission that lessened his favor in the eyes of the church but meant that the young people on the island looked up to him. “He’d think we’d all had a bit too much to drink,” John agreed, nodding.