“Tell me again why she jumped into the pond,” Becca says, sprawling on the beanbag in the corner of Peter’s bedroom, her legs stretched out across the floor. He isn’t used to having another person in his room. It makes the space feel much smaller, though in a good way.
“She said she saw Ifor.” He swivels his desk chair to face her. “And then she said the pond was glowing. I couldn’t see it, but she could.”
“So she could tell the connection between the worlds was open. That Ifor had used the key.”
“Right.”
“But that means she saw him in Endarion before he opened the way back. That doesn’t make any sense.”
“Yeah, but her visions show the future, remember? At least, that’s what she wrote. So the actual order of things would have been the other way round.”
Since their meeting with Dr Whyte, over a week ago, they’ve both read everything that Alyssia left at his office, starting with the handful of pages she took on her first visit and ending with the notebook she gave him just before she disappeared again. Some parts are written from her own perspective, detailing the time leading up to her original disappearance – these, Peter winced to read, remembering how he and Colin behaved – as well as what happened to her afterwards. Other parts record what she saw through other people’s eyes. Peter was already familiar with the bones of most of it, from the story she told him after he found her in the road near the site of the original accident, but there’s much more detail in the written account. And it doesn’t stop with her return, either. The notebook contains a few final entries, ending with Becca’s party invitation. After which, Peter supposes, she handed it to Dr Whyte and promptly disappeared again.
“It feels like we read her diary,” Becca says now. “D’you think she’d be mad with us?”
“I mean … yeah, probably. But at least we did it because we believe her. That’s something, right?”
She pulls a face. “It’s all right for you. You get Peter Lampforth is too pure sometimes. I get Her name is Rebecca, I think.”
“But that was before she got to know you better.”
“Pete, I was at least half joking.” Rolling her eyes, she slumps back on the beanbag. “So now what? It’s not like we can do anything until she comes back. If she does.”
“I thought, maybe … there have to be rules to it. The crossing. Maybe we can figure them out.”
“Trust the sci-fi nerd,” Becca teases, but she looks interested. “Like what?”
“First of all, she needs a reflection to do it. That seems clear enough.”
“Agreed.”
“And she crosses between specific places. When she left the first time, it was through the window of her bedroom. And when she came back, it was in the same place as she came through originally, when she was twelve – ”
Becca frowns. “You think there’s one place to leave and another to arrive?”
“No, because when she left this time, it was through the pond.”
“Multiple leaving points, but only one arrival point? So if we staked out the bus stop where you found her before, she might turn up again?”
“Maybe,” Peter says doubtfully. “Or maybe she was sent through from the same place in Endarion twice. Maybe here somehow maps onto there.”
“How can an entire world map to a single town?”
“I don’t know. But if I’m right, what struck me was this bit.” He flicks through the notebook until he finds the page he’s looking for. “A woman who used her own blood to make a key of glass. With it, she could hide on the other side of any mirror.”
“I remember … she took her baby with her through the mirror, and it vanished.”
“Right. That woman must have been another like Alyssia. Someone who moved between worlds. In which case, if our town really is the other side of the glass from Endarion, then – ”
“Then this has happened before,” Becca finishes for him. “Someone has appeared here out of nowhere in the past. And maybe there’d be a record of it.”
“Exactly.”
Peter spins back to face his desk, opens his laptop and types Clifton Ree appearances into his browser’s search engine. It throws up a bunch of results about the annual flower show, some random stories about mildly famous people with the surname Clifton, and several entries from a different town with a similar name. Clifton Ree mysterious stranger gets him a work of vampire fanfiction set in King’s School, their own school Lakeview’s chief rival – though why an immortal being would choose to spend time there, of all places, he can’t fathom. And Clifton Ree unidentified people showing up out of nowhere gets him nothing at all.
“Look for hauntings,” Becca says suddenly.
“Hauntings?”
“The woman that Luthan was talking about, she’s a story they have in Endarion. Not a recent event, something living people remember happening, but a story. In which case, it must have happened at least … what, a few hundred years ago? And since time seems to run at the same speed there as it does here – not like Narnia or whatever – that means the random appearances we’re looking for must have been hundreds of years ago too.”
“Makes sense,” Peter agrees.
“OK, so now imagine you’re a person living centuries ago and you see someone materialise out of nowhere. You’re not going to think portal to another world, because no one had even imagined such a thing yet. You’re going to think ghost. Or maybe witch,” she adds reflectively, “but ghost seems more consistent with a human figure who appears and disappears.”
“That’s smart, Becca.”
She grins. “I know.”
Peter types Clifton Ree ghost into the search bar. The top hit is from the sporadically updated blog of a local historian. Becca joins him, and they skim the page together.
Supernatural Stories from Clifton Ree
Today I’m going to tell you a bit about Relady Walk. Locals will know that this is one of the oldest and longest streets in the area, starting at the train station and extending out past the western boundary in what is almost a straight line to the village of Mayne. Although it’s been broken up over the years by redevelopment, several stretches of the old road still exist. Not only that, but historians believe that Weeping Lane – the street in Mayne that leads to the old church – was once part of the same track.
What you may not know is that both Relady Walk and Weeping Lane are named for the ghosts that are said to haunt them. Relady Walk – originally Red Lady Walk – was the location for a spate of sightings in the 1500s. Several witnesses claimed to have seen a mysterious woman in a red dress passing along the track, though their accounts varied: one said she was carrying a wailing baby with cloven hooves instead of feet, another that she was wringing her bloodstained hands and sobbing bitterly.
This tale bears several striking similarities to that of the ghost who haunts Weeping Lane, a cloaked and faceless figure known primarily for the eerie weeping that emanates from beneath her hood. Local legend names her as one Mary Luscombe, a young woman who is said to have thrown her baby down the well in the grounds of Mayne church after she was convicted of being a witch and bearing the Devil’s child. If you visit the well at night and listen very carefully, you may still hear the baby’s lonely crying.
“This is it,” Peter says. “This is what we’re looking for. If you ignore all the superstitious stuff about cloven hooves and faceless figures and murder, what you have left is a woman walking along the road one way with a baby, and coming back the other way without it. Which means …”
“Which means the baby didn’t disappear between the worlds, like Ifor did,” Becca agrees. “She took it somewhere. But why does that matter, Pete?”
“Because it proves you can take other people through the glass with you. If Alyssia could find out how, just think of the possibilities.”
“She could bring people here,” Becca says. “Use Clifton to travel quickly and safely from one place to another.”
Peter nods. “Or … she could take us with her to Endarion.”