The Blackwood Curse: A Night Shades Novel, page 19
‘He’s broken through,’ Lucinda whispered.
The look on her face made my blood freeze in my veins. ‘What do you mean? I thought the spell was an impassable barrier?’ My heart was now racing as Lucinda was on her feet.
‘A barrier, yes. He’s had no reason to break through it before.’
I looked fearfully at the door as the only way out, while Lucinda ran to the furthest corner of the room.
I stood for a second, bewildered, then ran blindly after her. She began to frantically run her hands across the wall as if feeling for something hidden, until she pushed a wooden panel and a small door opened for us. We squeezed into a small passage, Lucinda keeping hold of the door and clicking it shut behind us. My mouth was dry and the sound of my breath deafening as we crouched in the dark. I had to put my hand over my mouth to quieten my gasps for air as a voice bellowed from the room we’d just left. ‘LUCINDA!’
I looked at Lucinda to gauge her fear, who seemed more real than ever in the darkness. Her chest was rising and falling as hard as mine and she was listening just as keenly to the heavy footfalls on the floor beyond the little door that separated us. She offered no comfort; she was scared. My eyes strained against the dark and fixed on the thin strip of light around it.
We waited.
My heart drummed the walls of my chest and was so loud it was all I could hear in my ears and the sweat that pooled in the centre of my back sent a cold chill trickling down my spine. I don’t think I’d ever been so scared. It was a whole other level of fear.
Then, at last, we heard the heavy march of his steps as he finally assumed she wasn’t there and left. I went to reach out my arm, but Lucinda pushed it back down again. I don’t know who was more shocked that we could feel the other. She flickered more translucent for a moment. Then, before I could check myself, the words left my mouth, ‘What happened to you? Why are you here?’
She relaxed back against the wall and sank down onto her haunches. I joined her and waited. ‘I guess I was just a loose end that they wanted tidying. I was smothered in my sleep.’
I looked at the flimsy door and heard Jed bellowing somewhere else in the house. ‘Ainsley,’ she said, without me needing to ask.
‘But why? He had everything.’
‘Not the mine. Jed refused to work it or give it to him, either.’
Then the shriek of the angry ghost of Jed sent the final piece crashing down into place. ‘He killed his own brother.’
She nodded her head, sadly. ‘A shooting accident.’ My heart stalled with sympathy when I remembered their small, vulnerable sons, but she was way ahead of me and shrugged. ‘Strangely, he needed them. Their wardship was enough. The Waxley-Black name had to be assured to bring Lila back from the mirrors.’
I put my head back against the dusty wall and let it all sink in. The small space was hot and I was beginning to sweat heat instead of fear. The enormity and far-reaching effects of it all was astounding. Everything they’d done and the whole one hundred and fifty years in between had been leading up to this very day. My doom was here, sitting in this dingy secret passageway, waiting for an angry ghost to cease my existence completely. I fought back the urge to cry. ‘I’m not even English. I live halfway across the world,’ I began to babble to myself. ‘How could they know I would even have an accident?’
Lucinda was studying my face, as if it was the first time she’d had the chance to have a really good look at it. ‘You know Lila was in the sleep from which no body wakes when her spell brought her here. Her body remained breathing and warm, but her spirit had already left it.’
She was looking at me intently, as if there was some major point I seemed to be missing.
‘You are a Shade, but not like the others.’
Then sudden comprehension stopped my breathing. My heart stopped and I blinked at her for several seconds. Her words from earlier echoed: A foot in both worlds. She was trying to tell me somewhere, somehow, I was alive. In a coma.
My heart and mind raced with the million possibilities that it brought with it: seeing my parents. Waking up. Having a chance at life again. Wax. Yes. I could come here and meet Wax as the real me. He could have a life. I could have a life. We could have a life together. Then I noticed Lucinda watching me regretfully and I knew it wouldn’t be as easy as that.
‘All the while you are here, you will never wake.’
My mind went to my parents standing over my bedside as they’d done with Pete. Except it would be months, or maybe even years. Until, eventually, they would nod and have my monitors and life support machines switched off. And I realised what she was saying. I didn’t have forever. In fact, after all these months, I probably didn’t have that long at all. My mind went straight to Wax, drugged and manipulated by his uncle. He’d served his purpose too.
My eyes flashed to Lucinda’s when I got it.
‘The boy. The Waxley-Black son. My living blood relative. He is in great danger,’ Lucinda said, steadily, as if it was imperative I understood.
My heart beat wilder at the realisation. ‘You! It’s you who protects him.’
Something sounded a little way off, as if to protest at what I was saying. ‘From Jed,’ I whispered, straining to locate the direction of the noise in the house.
Then I heard a shuffle to my left and I turned my head to where the passage went off into darkness. I could just make out the silver outline of a huge man. My stomach fell into my bowel as I took in the holes in his skull meant for eyes. It was the angel of death himself.
I struggled to stand, to scream, but my motor skills had gone. I couldn’t kick or run and my scream came out as empty air.
He didn’t move. He hovered there and Lucinda whispered behind me, ‘No, Jed protects us all.’
Chapter 20
I stood, shocked rigid, knowing there was nowhere left to run. The ghostly apparition appeared to move and swirl, even though he was standing still. It was as though his black robes were alive with roaming snakes. However, he was less corporeal than even Lucinda. I could see the corridor disappearing off behind him. His eyes were hidden beneath a deep hood and his mouth was a thin slash across his pale chin. It was clear to me that he was a very different entity entirely. I wondered if he was one of those malevolent ones Wax had spoken of. He looked right through me, to Lucinda. Then, as if he was satisfied I was a friend and she was OK, he receded into the blackness, until he was gone completely.
I turned to Lucinda, still numb, hoping for more of an explanation, but she was becoming dimmer too. Suddenly the thought of being totally alone scared me far more than any spirit. ‘Don’t go … don’t leave me,’ I said, reaching my hand through dust motes.
I started to cry.
‘Protect my youngest ancestor and undo the curse,’ floated on the air. I looked frantically around me to catch where her voice came from, but there was nothing of her left. ‘Go back to the Shades and, remember, Jed and I will do all we can to help you.’
I had no more time to process what she said. She was gone. The light from her form was soon replaced with a creeping blackness that seeped into the room like a damp mist.
I sank to the floor and cried heartbroken, hopeless tears, right from the depths of me. A great outpouring of emotion that I didn’t know I had left after Pete had died. Sitting in the dust of a hundred years, my sobs subsided and things started to come together with a weird kind of clarity. As if I gradually accepted what couldn’t be changed. I came to understand that it was that realisation that made me strong.
Pete had died while I’d been on life support in the hospital. I’d wandered around in my old life trying to fit into a world that couldn’t see me. That was why no one took any notice of me at home or at school. Then Ainsley’s spell had pulled me to England, while my muddled mind rationalised the journey. I was summoned to this house to free Lila. Lucinda and Jed were wronged, malevolent spirits that needed closure. Someone needed to break the Blackwood curse to stop Lila and Ainsley and to free all concerned, once and for all.
I knew now that was me. My purpose here. I was neither alive nor dead. I was literally the only person who could do it. Lila was behind everything, for sure, and the real danger. Now she was alive and free to go anywhere and do anything. She was with Wax – my Wax. I had to get back to the others and tell them all I’d learned.
I got up, clicked open the door to my aunt’s sitting room and retraced my steps to the long tunnel back to Wax’s place. Strangely, after meeting the spirit of Jed, I was no longer afraid. He had to be the scariest of all the ghosts and, according to Lucinda, they were on my side.
For the first time since I’d been there, I had something to do. I had something to live for. I would beat this thing, get back to my body and live.
* * *
The tunnel seemed a lot further going back than it had been coming, but, eventually, I came out in the greyed-out version of Wax’s hallway. After the colour of my aunt’s, it still came as a shock that I was a prisoner of the Inside Out.
I went up the stairs to Ollie’s room and straight to the mirror above his dressing table. At first I panicked that there was nothing there but my own reflection. Then, after an agonising minute of despair, it began to cloud over. Colour replaced the grey and a moving canvas of Ollie’s room appeared in front of me. ‘Psst! Guys!’ I whispered.
One by one they looked around and asked if anyone had heard something. Then Sam pointed and they all rushed over to the mirror. The sense of relief – that they could see me – left me overwhelmed with emotion and out of breath for a moment.
‘Thank God you’re back,’ Ollie said.
‘You’ve been ages. What happened?’ Tallulah asked, pushing in front of everyone else – again.
‘I’ll tell you everything. Is Wax awake?’
Ollie shook his head and looked concerned. It was worrying. It was a long time to be out cold. ‘No, I think they tranqued him up enough to fell an elephant this time. They know how pissed he’s going to be when he wakes; that’s why they’ve called back my parents.’
I absorbed that. They were an added dimension I hadn’t thought about. I wondered what kind of people would leave an impressionable young man with the likes of Ainsley and whether they would be of any help. Somehow I didn’t think I’d like them very much. Butterflies kicked in my stomach that Wax would be furious because of me and I secretly liked it.
I relayed what had happened with Lucinda and Jed and what she’d said. It left many of them shaking their heads in disbelief. None of them argued the truth of it, though. It was a pretty evil thing to do to a bunch of kids just to satisfy your own selfish ends.
‘So the big bad one is Jed, my great, great, great…’ Ollie said, giving up after three. ‘And really a good guy?’ he said, trying to look past me as if he wasn’t convinced and Jed was going to pounce out of the mirror at him at any minute.
‘So Lucinda says. She sent me back here and told me they were both on my side.’
‘What happens if it works?’ Tallulah said, stilling his arm on the keypad.
He searched her eyes, puzzled for a moment.
‘You know, if we’re all freed, do we just die? I mean, do we want that?’
She was right. I’d been so selfish being wrapped up in myself and my own predicament that I hadn’t given a single thought to what would happen to my friends.
Ollie understood immediately and pulled her into a hug and spoke into her hair. ‘Don’t worry. Whether we stay or cross over, I won’t let you do it alone.’ He pulled apart and held the sides of her face. ‘OK?’
Tears were making the top of her cheeks shiny, but she smiled back at him and nodded with a sniff.
I took the opportunity to quickly wipe them from my own eyes.
‘And that goes for everyone,’ Ollie said, looking at each of them in turn.
They all nodded, me included. Archie put a hand on his shoulder and gave it a squeeze and brought a lump to my throat all over again. Seeing the warmth in such a cold world, from people who should have left it, made it impossible not to cry. Then Ollie looked directly at me. ‘I’ve been working on a static link from my laptop to Wax’s,’ he said, pulling his laptop closer again.
Everyone huddled in, glad of the distraction. I was growing to love these new friends I’d made. Too bad a girl had to almost die to get some.
‘I don’t think it’ll work on the ordinary web as we’re not part of the worldly plane – particularly you, Becks. You’re somewhere else entirely,’ Ollie said.
I was desperately trying to keep up. Tech was certainly not my major at school.
‘I’ve kind of borrowed the technique Wax used to talk to you, secretly, before.’
Heat went straight to my cheeks. I looked nervously into each of their faces and no one seemed surprised. Everyone seemed to accept me connected with Wax; without question, now. I liked it and schooled my features to look interested in the tech know-how.
‘How did he do that?’ Josh said, speaking for everyone. ‘He must be like some super hacker or something.’
Ollie’s fingers worked lightning fast across the touch keyboard. ‘He must have gone in through the Dark Web. There!’ he said, with a louder tap on the Enter tab. ‘I’m in!’
I watched his eyes moving up and down and knew he was scrolling fast. The others were glued to what he was doing too. It was frustrating being this side of the glass.
‘There’s this one paranormal site called White Noise,’ he said, thinking aloud. ‘Wax told me about it once. There!’ He straightened up and looked at Tallulah. ‘Check your Fitbit.’
Tallulah frowned, then looked at the band on her wrist. She touched the side and then looked back at Ollie, confused.
Ollie tipped his head to me. ‘The rest is up to you.’
I looked blank, not sure what he wanted me to do.
He looked around him as if searching for inspiration, then back at me intently. ‘Think about what you do when you want to be seen in a mirror.’
I hadn’t done much of it, but I concentrated on what actually happened. It wasn’t so much about being seen, but seeing through, like through a window. When I’d come back from speaking to Lucinda this had been just an ordinary mirror. In the end I’d waved my arm and the answer came to me. ‘I just willed it.’
‘Can you do that with Tallulah’s watch? Remember, you’ve not actually gone anywhere. In reality you’re in a hospital bed in California. It should be a small hop from a mirror to a watch.’
I stared at him, gobsmacked. He was so right. All this was in my head. I had to keep telling myself that.
‘I mean it is genius tech work on my part,’ Ollie said, half-laughing. Tallulah gave him a light shove in the shoulder. ‘Just imagine the broadband light as tunnels or something.’
I closed my eyes and gave it a go. I concentrated and held my breath. When I peeked through my eyelashes, everyone was pulling a pained face just watching me. I let out a blast of air and sagged. ‘It’s no good.’
Ollie seemed a little frustrated with me, then he looked down at his laptop. ‘Maybe we’re trying to run before we can walk.’ He looked up and turned his laptop to face me. It looked speckled with static. ‘Try the laptop first. It’s closer and bigger and might be easier for you.’
I saw what he meant, but I still wasn’t sure.
‘Concentrate,’ Ollie said. ‘I don’t want to hurry you, but I want to close the link to the site. It’s built for hackers interested in the supernatural. I don’t want to even think about the type of viruses circulating in there.’
That was enough to get me to focus and try again. This time, I visualised the static on the screen and my moving out through the mirror and through the circuitry to reach it. I was suddenly sucked through. Moving in a white-knuckle ride through a tangle of fibres – each one narrower than the last. I couldn’t breathe. The light got brighter, until I couldn’t stand it any longer. My head began to split with the pain until I fell in a heap on the floor.
‘Where is she?’ I heard someone say.
I slowly opened my eyes. I’d replaced a grey box for a black one. Sheer black windowless walls hemmed me in on every side. Except this one had a small square of glass in front of me – the laptop screen. I’d done it.
‘There she is!’ Tallulah squealed.
They all congratulated Ollie and grinned back at me. Ollie most of all. ‘Am I out, have you broken the spell?’
Ollie’s smile was a little sad when he shook his head. ‘Think of it more like we’ve added a little extension to the boundary of it. But you did it,’ he said, more brightly.
I smiled back more enthusiastically than I felt.
‘Now you’ve done that, it should be a short hop to our phones or Tallulah’s watch. You should be able to get into anything with a circuit board now. So cool.’ His eyes were wide with excitement. ‘The only thing to remember is the device has to be switched on and, better still, have Wi-Fi.’
I nodded, bewildered. I saw the genius of it, I did, but my world had been pulled out from under me so many times since I got here that I didn’t know what was real or not anymore.
‘Trust me,’ Ollie said, and, for a moment, he looked startlingly like Wax, reminding me of the danger he was in too.
I rolled my eyes. ‘If you lose me in cyberspace, I’ll haunt you like you wouldn’t believe.’
He grinned, letting my lame threat roll straight off him. ‘I’m linked to everyone here through my laptop: Messenger, email, social media. All you have to do is go wherever you wanna go from here. Like a bus terminal,’ he said, picking me up in his laptop and giving it a little shake.
‘OK, OK, you’re making me dizzy,’ I said.
What he said made perfect sense. If I remembered I had no physical body, then, in theory, I should be able to go anywhere I wanted within the confines of the spell. ‘So your laptop is like an anchor?’
‘Exactly!’ Ollie said. ‘From here you can go anywhere. And now you’re away from that Dark Website, we should be pretty confident that you’re alone in there, so it’s safer too.’
