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As I sit in the dark in the empty flat, my actions trouble me. Why did I run to the cliff edge as soon as the woman looked at me? At the time my reason was compelling – to see what the hell she was staring at – but now, as I replay the incident, I’m sure she wanted me there. That was the spell she wove around me. With her stillness and her searing look, she...called me. And if she was trying to kill me, I played right into her hands.
Wanda comes home and goes straight into the shower without noticing me. She emerges from the bathroom naked and is startled to see me huddled on my bed.
“Didn’t mean to give you a full frontal,” she says.
She does a gyration with her hips – she’s got the gift for Hula, a body-blend of soul and earth, she calls it – then pulls on a nightie and sits on the bed opposite me.
“Shoot.”
“How did you know?”
“Just psychic.” She grins. “And you’re sitting in the dark looking worried so I figure you’ve got something on your mind.”
“It’s the woman. The one in your mirror. She turned up again. On a cliff.”
“Let’s get a drink, then tell me everything. Any of that organic wine in the fridge?”
“I thought you didn’t drink wine from Chile.”
“I don’t buy it, but if it’s already in my fridge...” She winks.
“That explains why a vegetarian makes art from dead fish. I have wondered.”
“Yeah, it’s the same. I wouldn’t kill for my art, but since they’re already dead...” She talks as she gets the glasses and I feel myself relax. “I’m in good company. Take the Buddhists – vegetarians who don’t hurt a living thing, right? But if something dies of natural causes it’s edible. So in Bhutan they tether their pigs near the cliff, then if an animal accidentally falls over the edge...light up the barbecue.”
It would be funny if my own escapade wasn’t so close to it. She returns with the wine and we settle down on our beds, like teenagers at a sleepover.
“Shoot.”
I tell her the bare facts. How the woman materialised then vanished when I snapped her photo.
When I’m finished she says straight away, “Let’s see this picture.”
I can’t believe I haven’t looked at it. I open my tote bag and start rummaging, but the camera isn’t here. And still isn’t after a thorough search. Where the hell is it?
“Look again,” Wanda says.
I empty everything onto the bed. “I don’t know why it isn’t here. I didn’t give it back to Roger.” I try to remember if he picked it up.
“OK. You haven’t got it but you saw her, right? Was she wearing white?”
“Naked. But her skin was pale. Almost white.”
“It could be her.”
“Who? Shit, Wanda. Do you know who she is?”
“Pele. The volcano goddess. I didn’t think of her last time, because I was thinking ancestors, but Pele’s always appearing to people. She looks like a normal woman and is usually wearing white.”
The volcano goddess. A local mirage. She turned up on my internet search. If Wanda’s right, I’m off the hook. ‘Always appearing to people’ means she’s got nothing to do with me. I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.
But twice?
“It means she’s got a message,” Wanda says.
I sigh. “What kind of message?”
“For you. She’s not just some ghost, right? She’s Pele, the volcano goddess, and she’s trying to tell you something.”
“Like what?”
“Usually it’s a warning. You’re in danger, you’re heading in the wrong direction, you’re about to start a project that’s going to collapse on top of you. She’s telling you to pay attention, Selkie.”
“She does a lot of staring, then she disappears. What the hell am I supposed to pay attention to?”
“Cool it. I haven’t told you everything I know.”
“Sorry.”
“With Pele, the location is crucial. You’re about to build a house where there’s going to be a lava flow or something.”
“So, once in the mirror and once in the cemetery. Are they connected?”
“Have to be. You saw the same woman in both places, right? Did you know you were psychic, by the way?”
That makes me laugh. “I’m not psychic.”
She shrugs and takes a sip of wine. “Let’s join some dots. The mirror and the cemetery – that’s the underworld...and death. Did you get any kind of...communication?”
If I want her help I have to tell her everything.
“Someone is trying to kill you? Fuck, Selkie. She gave you a message like that and you’ve been sitting on it like a bomb that’s not going to go off?”
Put like that, my denial sounds stupid.
“It’s a warning,” she continues, “and it’s serious so it could be Pele. Roger was with you, right? She might be warning you off him.”
“What? Roger is trying to kill me?”
“Probably not literally, but he might be trying to...possess you in some way. Steal your soul or something. Some men do.”
I think of Andrew.
“What’s he like?” she asks.
“Eccentric. Selfish. A bit patronising. I don’t think it’s Roger.”
“How many other people do you know in Honolulu? Besides me?”
“I think it’s the woman.”
I tell her about the dream and what happened on the cliff.
“So Roger got to play hero,” she says. “Interesting. But if the woman lured you out there, she isn’t Pele.”
We sip in silence then Wanda gets a thought.
“Coral. The kahuna. She’ll know more about spirit women than me. But she only speaks Hawaiian and pidgin. Come on.” She jumps off the bed and pulls on cut-offs under her nightie, then pushes her feet into her boots.
We make an odd sight as we descend to the street in our nightwear but no-one gives us a second look. On Kuhio Avenue, pairs of working girls are strutting their stuff in hotpants and fishnets as potential patrons cruise by. This is one end of the Track, which stretches four blocks towards Honolulu. When we stop at the kerb, a naked women rushes by, crisscrossing the street in bare feet with a man in hot pursuit. “Put your shoes on,” he screams, waving a pair of killer heels above his head like rotor blades. They disappear in a blaze of horns and headlights.
“No wonder we’re invisible,” I murmur. “We’re seriously overdressed.”
Coral is perched in her usual spot. Does she sleep in the bus shelter all night? She’s massive, so she’s not starving, but I promise myself to bring her some food, whether she helps me or not. She shows us what’s left of her teeth in a smile and Wanda sits beside her and starts talking. I stand between them, watching their faces and picking up the occasional word, like pali. Coral nods and smiles, as if she’s lost a marble or two, but Wanda looks serious.
She pulls me forward so Coral’s outstretched feet are pressing against my bare thighs. “Stand in front of her feet. That’s how she reads things.”
I lift my bathrobe out of the way and try not to think about tinea.
Coral looks at me, her eyes full of depth if not intelligence. After the woman, it’s all I can do not to look away.
Then she says one word and Wanda translates. “Interference.”
“Pilikia,” Coral says.
“Trouble.”
“Interference in what?” I ask.
“The spiritual process. If the camera’s missing, someone is trying to stop the woman from connecting with you.”
“I probably just left it in the cemetery.” Shit. Roger’s going to kill me.
“Coral doesn’t think so. First you saw the woman in the mirror. You didn’t understand what she wanted so she appeared again in the cemetery, and you took her photo. The photo will tell you who she is, right? Then you’ll know why she’s haunting you, what the message means. Who’s trying to kill you. But now the camera’s disappeared and the question is: who took it?”
I’m not sure about any of this. What about the woman’s attempt on my life?
But Wanda thinks Coral’s infallible.
“It’s urgent, Selkie.” She paces up and down the bus shelter. “You can’t put faith in this dame – and her message – until you know who she is. I don’t have to tell you how serious this is. You heard the warning and ignored it, so she had to tell you again.”
“I know. I just don’t see –”
“We’re talking life and death, for fuck’s sake. Yours.”
***
It’s all too much for me, I’m exhausted. But as I crawl into bed and drop off to sleep something visits my dreams. Not the woman or the cliff, thank God. But something just as disturbing. First I’m overcome by sadness. Is someone crying? Then my ears fill with a series of sounds steeped in melancholy and longing. Not words, not music. A kind of tuneless singing.