Stark left his office at 5pm. He’d had the room to himself for most of the day. After Jenny’s clandestine cigarette break, she’d got a call, and left in a fluster – urgent fucking court hearing, she’d explained, and she hadn’t returned.
To his surprise, Maggie was sitting in the waiting room, in jeans, an old rugby top, a pair of unbranded trainers. Across her shoulder her somewhat frayed and drooping satchel.
“It wouldn’t wait,” she said. “Is there a coffee shop we can go to?”
“There’s one not far. We can walk. The prices are wondrously expensive.”
“Excellent. You’re buying.”
The place was ten minutes away, in a narrow cobbled lane away from the main traffic, pedestrian only, where the shops were quaint and colourful, where people browsed on a sunny day. The coffee shop was called The Yellowbird Coffee House. A wooden structure of irregular dimensions painted blue and yellow in an almost haphazard fashion; an undulating, red-tiled roof; porthole windows with white frames.
Maggie looked at it askance – “Is it falling down? Or falling in? I can’t tell which.”
“Either way, let’s hope not.”
They sat at a table. The interior was brushed sandalwood, the air tinged with the aroma of coffee and soft spice. Candles fluttered. The atmosphere was intimate. Not unappealing, thought Stark. They ordered two coffees. Stark was mildly surprised his sister hadn’t ordered something more elaborate. Her mood was taut.
She looked at him square in the eyes. She wasn’t smiling.
“You promise me this is not some huge bullshit joke.”
“I’m not joking.”
She held his stare. “Say it!”
He raised his hands – “Hey. I promise.”
“Right.” She leaned forward. “If I discover there is bullshit even the size of a rat’s testicle in all this… thing, whatever this fucking thing is, then I swear, little brother, I will dissect your duodenum with a dessert spoon.”
“A rat’s testicle? That sounds very small.”
She had placed her satchel on the table. She opened it, pulled out a sheaf of photocopied pages, and a pad with handwritten notes.
“Where the hell do I start?” There was no humour in her voice. Stark sat back. In her phone call, she had said she was scared. This, coming from his unflappable sister. She looked pale and tired. Suddenly, he was scared as well.
“I went to the Mitchell Library. The archive section. It has copies of every Scottish newspaper printed. I used to go there when I was studying. The hot chocolate is still amazing.”
Stark couldn’t help smiling.
“You said the newspaper was the Hamilton Bugle, and the date was 29th April 2011. Correct?”
She picked up the topmost photocopy, handed it to him. It was the front page of the newspaper, bearing the same date.
“The Hamilton Bugle, as the name would suggest, was a local newspaper for Hamilton and the surrounding area. It had an office in Campbell Street. The company which produced it went bust, and the paper went out of circulation in 2012.”
Stark stared at the black-and-white copy. The headlines comprised a half page of a picture of Prince William and Kate Middleton, embracing, on the balcony of Buckingham Palace. Also, other smaller sections, of more mundane matters.
“You said you saw page eighteen in your dream, yes?”
“Yes.” His mouth was dry. “I’m frightened, Maggie.”
A girl arrived with the coffees, put them on the table.
“Enjoy,” she said breezily.
Maggie continued, her face set. She handed him another sheet of paper. “These are the notes I made last night, when I copied down what you remembered.”
Stark said nothing.
“And here is a copy of page eighteen of the Hamilton Bugle.”
She handed him the third sheet.
There it was. His dream, laid bare before him, morphed somehow into reality, comprising letters, words, paragraphs. He felt dizzy. Everything was exactly as he remembered it. The format, the layout, the spaces between each article. Jesus, he thought, even the misprints.
“It’s identical,” she said. “Bottom right-hand. The suicide of a young woman.”
She fell silent. Stark read, but he didn’t need to read, because he knew what it said already.
He put the copy to one side. “How can this be?”
Maggie sipped her coffee, placed the cup carefully back on its saucer. The cup was the extra-wide type, making her hands look small.
She pursed her lips, as if deliberating her next sentence.
“It seems to me, there are three explanations.”
She scratched the end of her nose with the tip of her index finger – a reflex he knew well enough, usually occurring when she was weighing thoughts in her mind.
“Number one. The whole thing is an elaborate prank. For reasons unknown, you memorised an obscure piece of news, and you’re pretending you dreamt it. Weird, bordering on creepy, but nevertheless, an explanation.” She eyed him again. “We will however discount this. You’ve promised it’s not bullshit, and I’ll stick to that. One thing I do know about my brother is that he’s not a liar.”
“That’s very kind.”
“Don’t mention it. Explanation number two. Somehow, maybe years ago, you read this article. It’s dated 2011. Or perhaps someone showed it to you at a later date. Perhaps it was kicking around the house. Maybe it was used to wrap fish and chips. Who knows? But maybe you read it, and then, as one would expect, you forgot all about it. And then, maybe years later, something triggers your subconscious to bring it back into life. An event. Perhaps you heard about a suicide on TV.” She looked at Stark. “Perhaps…”
“Perhaps,” interrupted Stark, “…the Alfie Willow massacre spewed up stuff buried deep in my mind. That’s what you’re saying.”
Maggie gave a lame smile. “It’s entirely possible. It’s a thing. The boffins call it Semantic Memory. But this theory has a flaw.”
“Yes?”
“If it really was an old memory, you would remember it. I mean, you would remember the moment, when you read the article, and the circumstances surrounding you reading it – the context. But that’s not the case. Not here.”
Stark shook his head. “No. It came from a dream.”
She took a deep breath. She lifted the huge cup, sipped, placed it back.
“Then there’s number three.”
“Number three,” repeated Stark in a heavy voice.
“We look beyond the explainable. We look at psychic phenomenon. We look at factors beyond our understanding.”
“Witchcraft and black magic.”
“The supernatural. Something outwith the laws of nature.”
Stark took a glug of his coffee. It was tepid. He hated tepid coffee.
“I picked up a file in the basement of the building where I work. A place affectionately coined ‘the dungeon’. An eerie place. The file shouldn’t have been there. It had been put on the wrong shelf. By accident? By design? God only knows. It hardly matters. I looked through it. I don’t know why. But I did. It was a file concerning the estate of a dead woman. The firm acted in finalising matters. It didn’t consist of much – a collection of assets and general correspondence. And her death certificate, which stated the cause of death as ‘asphyxiation’.” Suddenly Stark had a thought. “The article in the newspaper didn’t give her name.”
“Oho!” Maggie lifted her arm, pointed up into the air, as a person might do answering a question in a classroom. “But I found that out!”
“Really?”
“I checked ahead. Three days later – 2nd May – the newspaper produced the name of the woman.” She glanced at her notepad. “I have it here…”
“Deborah Ferry,” said Stark, in a dull monotone.
Maggie looked up. She blinked. She did that when her mind required to compute complex information.
“Yes.”
“Yes.”
Maggie did not respond. She was waiting.
“I know all about her,” he said. “My dream – if that’s what it was – wasn’t simply me observing a series of scenes. I lived those scenes. I was that person. I knew everything she knew. Her past, her present. I felt her fear.” He shivered. “Her disgust.”
Maggie spoke, almost in a whisper. Her face was a pale orb in the soft glimmer of the candlelight.
“What happened to her, Jonathan?”
Stark stared into his coffee cup. The events of the dream tumbled over and over, like a beast squirming in his mind, all claws and teeth.
“I watched her being abused. I was in her bedroom. I saw him enter her room, and violate her as she lay in bed. Only I was her, and I felt every hellish second of that violation.” He swallowed, blew through his lips, as he recollected the terror. He felt sick. “She was ten years old. The rapes had been a constant thing since she was eight. Every night she lived in dread.”
He took a breath, composed his thoughts as best he could.
“Then, I was in a wood. I watched as this little girl, who was now a woman, tied a rope around her neck, and hanged herself on the branch of a cherry-blossom tree. And you know what she felt, right up to the very last second of her life?”
“Tell me.”
“Guilt. She felt she was to blame. That it was all her fault. That she deserved to die. Her heart was consumed with self-loathing. She felt she had no other choice but to rid the stain of her existence from the earth.” He ran his hands through his hair. “Jesus, this is fucked up.”
Maggie reached over, took his hand. He welcomed her soft touch.
“I don’t know what to say, Jonathan. It’s all so weird.”
He gave a tremulous smile. “I know what you’re thinking.”
She raised a dubious eyebrow. “Mind-reading as well?”
“You’re analysing this with your doctor’s mind. That I need to go back to a shrink, who will doubtless provide some obscure and incomprehensible reason for the whole thing.”
She wrinkled her nose. “I might, if it weren’t for the overwhelming evidence. But there is explanation number four.”
“I thought there were only three.”
Again, the scratching of the tip of the nose. Then she said, “You were in a coma for eight weeks. Your mind was encased in itself, devoid of any external stimulation. Almost like a form of hibernation.” She hesitated, made a small gesture with her shoulders, suggesting she wasn’t entirely sure how to articulate her next words. “Maybe… maybe it became hyper-sensitive. Maybe, during this time, it developed a capacity to become… how can I put it… receptive.”
Stark’s lips twitched into the semblance of a half-smile. “Receptive? To what, I wonder.”
“Maybe,” she continued, “it developed a form of extra-sensory perception. There’s been studies on the subject. Telepathy. Telekinesis. The mind can be a powerful thing.”
“You know what I think?”
“Tell me.”
“You’ve been reading way too many Stephen King novels.”
She sighed. “Gave up on him years ago.” She sat back, folded her arms in that entrenched way, displaying a defiant courage. “I’m worried, Jonathan. I don’t understand what’s going on. And I don’t like things I don’t understand. But we’ll get through it.”
The smile left Jonathan’s face. He had never been more serious.
“Can I give you my take on things?”
Maggie nodded.
“How about this scenario. What if, while I was in a coma, down in the darkness, a monster slipped into my head, to become entangled in my mind. What if, this monster tore a hole open, and now whispers to the dead. And what if, the dead whisper back.”
It was Maggie’s turn to smile. “Wow. That’s a lot of ‘what ifs’. A monster? Very Gothic, little brother. If I’m reading Stephen King, you’re reading Dracula.”
Stark also sat back, gazed at Maggie. “It’s a very scary book.”
“It is.”
“What am I supposed to do, Maggie?”
“Wait and see,” she said. “Maybe it’ll pass. Maybe it’s a ‘one-off’ thing.” She blinked, looked briefly away, then focused back.
“Can I ask you something?”
“Of course.”
“In your dream, the little girl was the subject of prolonged abuse. You said you knew everything about her – her past, her present. And her future. If that’s so, then you would know who he was.”
“He?”
“The abuser.”
“Yes,” he responded somewhat bluntly. “I know who he is.” He didn’t expand.
Maggie knew when to let something go.