Echoes of the Past (25 page)

Tom
sat on the edge of the bed and rested his head in his hands. He sat there in silence for a long time.

He
felt the anger rise inside of him. He lifted the brief case from his bed and fired it across the room.

“Why
don’t I feel you, Sara? If you are there, why can’t I feel you?”

*****

Lee made a cup of herbal tea and carried it upstairs. She passed Jess’s bedroom on the way to her own. The bedside lamp was on and the door was half-open, Jess and Topaz were huddled under the quilt, only the two heads visible.

Poor
thing
, she thought as she looked in. Lee realized how cruel she had been dismissing Jess. She knew only too well how afraid she was when things were happening that she couldn’t explain and she at least had Elsie to talk to. As she crossed the hall to her own room, the floor boards creaked under her step. A familiar sound from her childhood.

She
switched on the lamp and sat on the bed sipping her tea. The phone call from Tom had left her feeling unsettled. It was not like him at all to show any interest in psychics, or anything of that nature. Something had changed. He didn’t have the mockery in his voice, in fact he sounded more concerned than anything else. She preferred it when he didn’t believe, she thought.

Lee
could hear Jess moaning in the other room. She knew it would be another dream. She listened intently to see if it would pass.

The
sobbing started.

Lee
put her tea on the bedside table and got out of bed. She walked back across the hall and in to Jess’s room.

“Jess?
Jess, sweetie, it’s just a dream, wake up.” Lee was sitting at the edge of her bed. Topaz had vacated the warm spot under the quilt and was now standing in the door way puffed again. Jess began to wake from the nightmare.

“Are
you all right?” asked Lee stroking her hair.

Jess
nodded still sleepy, her eyes incessantly flicking between Lee and the other side of the room.

“If
you’re looking for Topaz, she’s over at the door. If this keeps up that cat will need valium.”

Jess
turned to see the kitten at the door way puffed up to twice her normal size yet again, she gave a have hearted smile.

“Do
you want to settle back down?” asked Lee pulling the quilt back around her shoulders. Jess pushed it away.

“I’m
scared. The dreams are getting worse. I feel as though I’m being watched.” Jess spoke in a hushed tone as she glanced to the far corner of the room where she could see the constant companion that terrified her so. “You think it’s all in my mind don’t you?”

Lee
didn’t even think about her answer. “No, Jess, I don’t. I just don’t want you to be any more afraid than you already are.”

“Have
you ever seen a ghost, Aunt Lee?”

“No,
I sometimes feel things, but I have never seen anything conclusive, I think sometimes I see things out of the corner of my eye, but that probably is just an over active imagination.”

Jess
flicked her eyes to the corner again. She was becoming clear, stronger, as though she were feeding off Jess’s own fear.

“So
you still don’t see her over there?” She flicked her eyes back in the direction of the shadow.

Lee
sighed. She spread her hands as she turned to survey the room. “I don’t see anything …” As her eyes scanned the far corner, she stopped talking. Her eyes met with the deathly pale face of a young woman. standing there silently in the corner watching them.

Lee grabbed Jess by the arm and pulled her from the bed. Her first instinct was to run but her legs wouldn’t move. Pushing Jess behind her, she backed out of the room, not once taking her eyes from the woman.

Lee
headed down the stairs and straight for the kitchen. She switched on the light and closed the door at their back.

“Aunt
Lee?” Jess looked at her questioningly. Lee could feel her whole body shake. She ran both her hands through her long hair pushing it back from her face as she stared at the closed door as if it held an explanation to what had just happened. As the minutes passed in the silent kitchen, Lee began to question what she saw, or thought she saw.

She
turned to Jess standing by the table.

“That
thing in your room, have you seen it before?”

“She’s
there most of the time; well, anytime I have a nightmare she’s there. At first it was just a shadow, I could barely make it out I just felt afraid, but over the last week it has become clearer, more distinct, I think.”

Lee
stood with one hand on her hip and the other on top of her head. A scratching sound came from the kitchen door.

“It’s
all right Aunt Lee, its Topaz.” Jess walked forward and let the little cat in.

“I’m
sorry, Jess, I can’t take this in. I don’t believe that spirits hang around to terrify us. It has to be a shadow or something.” Lee wracked her brains looking at a mental picture of the bedroom in her head, looking to see what could possible cause such an illusion.

Jess
had never questioned what she had seen; still shaken from the dream she sat down at the table with Topaz and stroked her silently while her aunt processed what had just happened.

“I
don’t want to go back up there Aunt Lee, do you think we could sleep in the living room tonight?”

Lee
looked at her in disbelief. Is this what she had been putting up with all this time? Or was this something that she and Gemma had brought through when they messed with that damn board?

“No!
This is the kind of thing you read in a James Herbert novel. Not the kind of thing that happens in real life, Jess.” Filled with defiance Lee pulled the kitchen door open and walked in to the hallway; anger more than bravery was the driving force behind her actions, mixed with more than a little disbelief. She switched on all the lights on the ground floor and headed up the stairs. She walked in to Jess’s bedroom and put on the ceiling light. An ominous atmosphere seemed to have settled through out the upstairs of the house. Her eyes scanned the bedroom, stopping at the point where she thought she had seen the battered and bleeding face of a woman. The room was empty. Her anger and bravery diminishing slightly, she pulled the quilt and pillow from the bed and went back down stairs leaving the upstairs lights still burning.

She
went into the living room and prepared a makeshift bed on the couch for Jess. Jess followed her from the kitchen holding Topaz.

“Has
she gone?”

“If
she was ever there, yes.”

“Don’t
you believe me?”

Lee
stopped what she was doing and turned to face her. “Yes, that’s why I’m making beds in the middle of the living room. I don’t know what it was, but we certainly saw something. I need time to think about it. Tomorrow, you will be changing rooms, when I get a chance I’ll clear out the other spare room for me when I stay over.” Lee began to wonder if this was the danger to which Sara had been referring.

“Will
you tell Dad?”

“Honestly,
I don’t know what your Dad will make of it. He’s been a lot more open minded the last couple of days. But this, this is too much even for me to take on board. Come on jump in.” Lee held the quilt back for Jess to settle down. “I’ll put the television on low, see if you can fall asleep.”

“Where
are you going?”

“I’m
going to get the spare quilt from the study; I’ll sleep on the recliner.”

*****

Tom had chased the promise of sleep into the early hours of the morning, before exhaustion took over. As he drifted off, he realized that his impatience toward Lee wasn’t simply because he didn’t believe in the after life, he was jealous. Jealous that Lee could feel Sara, smell her and sense her around. He ached for that conformation. As dream state took hold of his thoughts, he was transported back to a happier time, a time when the three of them had been happy in Edinburgh. A time when he could keep them safe. He could hear Sara’s voice, clearly; hear the laughter the three of them had shared.

The
8am alarm sounded unusually intrusive. He didn’t want to come back from where he was.

Tom, wake up.

Tom sat bolt up right in bed. He was sure he had just heard Sara. He switched of the alarm and rubbed his hands briskly up and down his face. He had a little over an hour to get ready and eat breakfast before it was time to meet with Eva Brook.

Tom
showered and packed his bag and put it in the car before going for breakfast. The hotel had a large buffet of cooked English laid out on a table in the dinning room. His eyes scanned what was on offer before he decided on black coffee and toast; his appetite still not back since last night. He finished his food and went to reception to check out. The usual pleasantries were exchanged with the receptionist, and he paid his bill.

Tom
drove to Edinburgh new town to meet with Eva. He parked outside a row of large Georgian style town houses and walked down the hill toward Eva’s. As he climbed the front steps, he noticed it appeared to be a very elegant old house.

A
tall slim woman with blonde wavy hair and cat like green eyes answered the door. Tom introduced himself and the woman led him through the front foyer into a large hall with a Georgian staircase sweeping upwards on one side. He followed her through into a large bright living room.

“I
recognise you from the pictures your wife kept on her desk,” she said as she offered him a seat. Tom could not draw his eyes away from her. She looked so familiar to him; the unusual green eyes seemed to draw him in. “Detective, Is everything all right?”

Tom
realized he had been staring. “Yes, call me, Tom. You seem very familiar to me, Miss Brook.”

“Eva,
please, I would have remembered if we had met before, can I get you something to drink?”

Tom
declined the offer and sat down on a chair with his back to the large Georgian windows that made the room swim in light.

“Your
wife used to keep a photo of you and your daughter, Tess? On her desk.”

“Jess.”
Tom corrected.

“Sorry,
Jess. I was envious of her, you all seemed so happy in it.”

“We
were. You said on the phone that you owed it to Sara to meet with me, what did you mean.”

Eva
took a deep breath and leaned back on the sofa across from him.

“I
was referred to Sara by my GP. I was suffering from a deep depression; I had hit the bottle quite hard. Sara saved my life. She helped me come to terms with what had happened to Jill, in fact.” Eva spread her hands and indicated her surroundings. “You could say I owe all this to her.”

“Why?”

“After a few sessions with her she told me she taught a creative writing class at the university in the evenings. She said I might find it therapeutic to attend. She got me started in writing. Before long, I got my first paid writing job with Bailey and Hill. I made partner by the time I was forty.”

“What
are Bailey and Hill?”

“We
do advertisements mostly; we have even been known to do some PR work for some prominent MPs in the past.”

“Looking
at this place, it certainly pays well.”

“Quite
a change for a depressed barmaid in a two bedroom flat.”

“You attended the writing course; I found this in Sara’s things.” Tom lifted the papers from his brief case and handed them to her.

“Oh
good, my early stuff,” she remarked sarcastically as she took the papers with a smile. Tom watched the smile fade as she read the first few lines of the story.

“You
told me on the phone you had never been to Coppersfield. That is undoubtedly Coppersfield you describe.”

Eva
sighed and placed the papers on the coffee table between them. Tom watched as she picked imaginary specks from her black trousers.

“Tom,
have you ever kept a secret that scared you so much, that even when you escape that life, when you move on, you still can’t seem to utter the words that you have held in?”

Tom
watched her silently.

“I
knew this day would come, God, I almost welcome it. Yes, the story was about my experience in Coppersfield.”

“Who
were you visiting?”

“My
father left when I was very young, my mother struggled. Her sister had married a man from Coppersfield, he was very wealthy. My mother went there to ask for help. I don’t know what happened between her and her sister, but we never went back, she had nothing to do with any of her family again.”