| |
‘Do you think we should leave?’ Martin asked. They had walked away from the computer screen and the blurry image of the sparrow girl, wings wrapped around Marcia for an instant before she fell down the stairs. Now they were in the kitchen, and Deirdre was making coffee for everyone. Her hands were shaking as she filled the cups, and Martin wanted to go over there and comfort her. He wondered why Stacy wasn’t. He dragged his gaze away from the woman who looked exactly like his Sparrow Girl. His question hung in the air.
Jeremy pulled a silver hip flask from his pocket and doctored his coffee. He held the flask up in silent offering. The professor took it and poured a healthy swig into his own cup.
‘Here, give that to me,’ Martin said, and upended it into his own mug. He didn’t usually drink much, but then, things didn’t usually get this weird. Even in their business. Passing the flask back to Jeremy, he looked around the table. No one was meeting his eye. Deirdre had sat down next to Stacy, and he felt a sharp twinge of jealousy when he saw that Stacy was holding her hand.
It was Jeremy who broke the silence that hung in the air after Martin’s question. He looked towards Stacy. ‘You’re second in command,’ he said. ‘What do you think?’
She shook her head. ‘It’s not up to me to make such decisions. We’re all in or we’re all out, we decide which together.’
The professor’s ponderous voice drifted across the table. ‘The trouble is, that we don’t know exactly what is going on.’
‘Yeah we do,’ Martin said. He did anyway. ‘We came here, and I invented the Sparrow Girl. Who just happens to look a lot like someone I’d never met before. Now we’re being plagued by actual sparrows, which are probably really psychopomps, and the Sparrow Girl that we meant to manifest, has beaten us to the punchline, and manifested herself.’
Silence greeted his outburst, then the professor again. ‘The question I’d most like to know,’ he said, ‘is whether you invented the Sparrow Girl, or whether she invented herself.’
‘What? What do you mean?’ Martin had forgotten all about his coffee, even with the whiskey in it. ‘You mean I was possessed or something?’
The professor shook his head. ‘Nothing that dramatic. Not at all. I just meant to ask if you subconsciously or maybe even psychically picked up on something that was already here.’
‘The birdcage was already here,’ Stacy said.
‘That was my inspiration,’ Martin said. ‘Remember?’
‘And the photo?’
‘Well, that was just a random find too.’
Stacy sighed, looking tired. ‘Yeah, but a random find of someone who probably lived here at some stage.’ She turned to the professor. ‘It makes sense, James,’ she said. ‘After all, the activity has started without us, pretty much. We haven’t had a chance to do anything yet.’ She shook her head. ‘And I’m not at all impressed that Darryl brought us here, without telling us about the history of the house. Not properly, anyway. He left out quite a few relevant bits.’ She took a sip of coffee. ‘Or I think they’re relevant bits, anyway.’
Martin looked at his own coffee. ‘You never got to tell us what you’d learnt. Not properly.’
‘There isn’t that much,’ Stacy said on another sigh. ‘This property is still owned by the coven...’
‘How can that be?’ Jeremy interrupted. ‘This place was built like a hundred years ago.’
‘It’s still running, is what I know,’ Stacy said. ‘Still active, though obviously not with the original members. Anyway, apparently the coven members are some pretty heavy hitting guys. Businessmen, politicians even.’ She pursed her lips. ‘What I want to know is this – these guys have never let anyone else come here, ever, so how did Darryl get them to rent this place to us for six weeks – and why?’
Deirdre piped up. ‘You mean, the house is kept private, used only by these bigwig coven guys who’re into who-knows-what weird magic stuff, and then they rent it to a ghost hunting crew who are planning to invent a ghost?’ She leaned back in her chair. ‘Who else reckons that’s fishy as hell?’
There was silence around the table. It was Stacy who broke it. ‘We need to talk to Darryl. Ask him what’s going on. What’s really going on.’
‘And where he was this afternoon,’ Martin said. ‘It was like he disappeared.’
‘And then we decide what we want to do,’ Stacy said, and looked around at each of them. ‘Or do you just want to pack up and leave now?’ She blinked. ‘Marcia was packing to leave.’ Her voice faltered. ‘She said this house was a terrible place, that Darryl had forced her to lie to us, tell us that it was clear.’
That was new information. Martin shook his head. ‘What was Darryl thinking? Just what’s going on here?’
‘I don’t know. What I need to know, though, is what do you all want to do?’
Martin couldn’t make up his mind. On the one hand, he thought they should just get the hell out of Dodge, but on the other...things were happening here, and it was the perfect chance not only to make a terrific programme, but to really investigate something worthwhile. Something real. Something that had already been captured on film.
‘I think we should stay,’ he said. ‘We’ve caught so much on film already. Think about it – all the stuff with the birds, and now, the actual Sparrow Girl – on camera. Recognisable and everything. Not just some misty cloud we can misinterpret to our heart’s content, but we’re getting real, verifiable footage here. We’re getting ghosts on camera. That’s never happened before. Not like this.’ He put his mug down and leaned over the table. ‘I think we should stay. This is a once in a lifetime chance here.’ Just saying it out loud convinced him he was right. ‘We need to stay.’
Stacy raised her eyebrows. ‘All right.’ She turned to Jeremy. ‘What about you?’
Jeremy was slumped in his chair, fiddling with his hipflask. He tapped blunt fingers on the table, then sniffed. ‘Stay,’ he said at last. ‘I vote to stay, see this thing through a bit longer. Like Martin says, it’s an opportunity we’ve never had before. We’ve captured the odd thing on camera, but nothing like this. It’ll make us fucking famous.’
Stacy didn’t comment, just turned to the professor. ‘Do you agree?’
The old guy was clearly conflicted. Strangely, he glanced Martin’s way before clearing his throat and answering. ‘I think a couple more days would be interesting,’ he said. ‘Give us a bit more clarity as to what is happening here.’
‘Huh.’ Stacy turned to face her girlfriend. Or were they married, Martin wondered? No, they couldn’t be married, it wasn’t legal in Aussie yet. ‘What about you?’ she asked.
Deirdre caught her plump lower lip between small white teeth. ‘I get a say?’ she asked.
‘Of course you do,’ Stacy told her, and Martin detected some underlying tension between them. He wondered briefly if Deirdre swung both ways, so to speak.
‘Well,’ Deirdre said. ‘I guess I’ll go along with the majority, then.’ She turned her dark eyes on Martin. ‘I want to specifically know why the Sparrow Girl has my face. So I guess I’ll stick around until that’s answered, at least.’
Stacy blew out an audible breath. ‘Well, I guess that’s that, then. We’ll stay a couple more days, see if we can’t get some answers.’
Martin had something more he wanted to ask. ‘What about the séance we had planned for this evening?’ He looked around the table. ‘We were going to start trying to manifest our ghost, remember?’ He shrugged. ‘She’s already up and doing business, so what about our séance?’
Everyone looked to Stacy, the way they always did when Darryl was around. She shrugged. ‘I say we go ahead with it. Obviously we don’t have to work so hard to manifest her now, so maybe we can just communicate with her.’
Martin nodded, satisfied. He glanced out the window, noting the sun was still well high in the sky. They’d wait for darkness for the séance. The ghost box and other bits and pieces always seemed to work better at night. Plus, it was scarier for the audience. Then he sobered, thinking about Marcia.
He decided the first thing he’d ask the Sparrow Girl was whether she had pushed the medium down the stairs, or tried to save her.