“Look around you, Meredythe. You’ve covered this whole world with blood.” I don’t need to look. I’d seen it happen, felt the first drops of blood splatter across my cheek. Instead, I stare at him, searching his face for something - anything - to let me know that things haven’t changed.
“What were you expecting me to do?”
“I don’t know,” he shakes his head. “Not this. I’ve never seen anything so terrible.” His eyes are fixed on the bloodied fields.
“You mean terrifying.” My throat swells around the words, trying to trap them deep inside. My chest aches with the pressure of forcing them out. “I…” my throat chokes that sentence off entirely. “You’ve known from the beginning.” I move to stand in front of him and he stares at my feet. “What does this change?”
“I didn’t know this,” he says. “I didn’t know you had that much… death, lurking beneath the surface.”
“I’m the same person I was yesterday. Remember yesterday. Please. Just look at me and you’ll know.” My voice breaks on a sob and I can’t hold the tears back any longer. They streak down my cheeks, hot and muddied with blood. “Look me in the eyes, at least.” I watch his eyes crawl up my body. They stop at my waist.
“I can’t.”
I fling my arms around him and hold him as tightly as I can, trying to squeeze his heart into mine. If he was dead, I’d probably be able to manage that, but he’s alive and my powers have no dominion over the living. He doesn’t push me away. He doesn’t hold me. I sob into his chest. Just for a minute, I tell myself, just one minute pretending he’s still mine. That’s all I’m going to give myself.
I try to memorise the scent of old leather and sandalwood which clings to his shirt. Try to imprint the sensory memory of his skin against mine.
Realising how long I’ve spent hopelessly pressed against him, I wrench myself away. I turn quickly, barely glancing at his face. His eyes are shut. No chance of even the most fleeting eye contact.
I clutch the pendant around my neck and fall through the hole at the centre of myself. I fall through darkness, thick and heavy, struggling to hold onto thoughts of home. Home. Where I can curl up in a ball and cry alone…
The portal takes me to my kitchen. I lie down on the floor, wedged between the island bench and the sink. I curl up as tightly as possible, drawing my knees up and pressing my forehead against them. Shut out the light. Sob. I want to cry until my head and my lungs hurt as much as my heart does; until I feel dehydrated; until I feel like throwing up. I feel as though I might cry until I die… I wonder if anyone has ever died of a broken heart before. None of the dead I’ve spoken to have mentioned it. Though, I suppose it would be terribly embarrassing to admit it, in this day and age.
“Meredythe?” Someone is shaking me. I sit up slowly. It’s Rory-James. “Are you okay? Where are you hurt?” He’s looking at my blood-soaked clothing. So much blood and -
“None of it’s mine,” I say, wishing it were. “What are you doing here? Didn’t you leave?”
“I didn’t get very far,” he smiles, embarrassed. “All of my things are here.”
“Oh.”
“And, I thought, maybe I should come back anyway because I can’t stand not knowing what I saw.”
“I think you know what you saw,” I say, “that’s why you ran away.”
“I think I saw you practicing dark magic, but I’m a journalist, kind of, so I don’t care what I think I saw.” Rory-James bends to peer into my eyes, “I want the truth.”
“You sure you can handle it?”
“No,” he takes my hand and pulls me to my feet, “but I’m willing to try.”
An hour later I’m sitting across from Rory-James, drinking tea and trying to figure out where to start. I’m wearing my oldest jeans and my warmest jumper but I still feel cold. I pile my curls up into a bun and wrap a hair tie around the wet mass. It will probably go frizzy when it dries, but I don’t care enough to work a leave in conditioner through it right now.
“So,” I take a sip of tea. “I can raise the dead.”
“Those ghosts I saw then… they were ghosts, right?”
“I think you saw them because of my aura.” I frown into my cup, “I think it illuminated them.”
“Right,” he nods, “because the spectrum of light in your necromantic aura shone through the astral plane.” I raise my eyebrows at him, not entirely sure I understand what he just said. “Um, there was an episode of Sliders where the vortex did that.”
“Okay.” I said, remembering Rory-James’ obsession with old TV shows. He’d once told me that the reason he wanted to be a journalist was because of Lois and Clark. You know, that trashy superman show from the 90’s where Clark Kent is played by that guy who was Gilbert in Anne of Green Gables. Rory had made me sit through all four seasons of Lois and Clark just after he moved in. He got pretty pissy with me for referring to Clark as Gilbert whenever he wasn’t wearing the tights. Granted, when he was wearing the tights I was a bit too distracted to do much talking.
“We can watch it later, if you want.”
“Um, that’s okay…” we sit in silence for what feels like hours. “I’ve never really talked to anyone about this before. It’s harder than I thought it would be.”
“You can’t have thought it would be easy.”
“No. I still can’t believe you’re sitting here, asking me.”
“Curse of the journalist,” he shrugs.
“You’re not going to write about it?” I try to keep the question out of my voice. He was scared of me once - even if it was only for a couple of hours - maybe I can use that to make him keep my secret.
“Are you scared about people finding out?” Rory-James tilts his head to one side, like an inquisitive puppy.
I sit up straighter and glare at him. “Do you know what they used to do to people who were suspected of witchcraft? Of communing with the devil? Imagine what they’d do to me.”
“Nobody’s going to hurt you.”
“We have a catholic club on campus,” I snap at him. “They told me that I’m going to hell just because I don’t believe in Jesus. What do you think they’d do if they knew about this?”
“But people wouldn’t - ”
“You know what people do for religion…” even people who don’t care about world news have seen enough to last a lifetime. And we thought we were so good about avoiding religious prejudices after the Holocaust. If there’s one thing I know about people it’s that they never change. Not even death changes a person.
Rory-James nods. He nods slowly, sadly… but he nods. It’s enough.
“Okay.” I nod. Silence falls, thick and heavy, between the two of us. “Why don’t you tell me what you want to know, first?”
“How long have you been involved in all this?”
“I was born ‘involved.’ Nothing made me this way.”
“When did you find out? Did you get it from your parents? Is it the kind of thing you can teach someone?”
“My parents had nothing to do with death. I have an aunt, Catriona-”
“The one who raised you?”
“Yeah. She’s like me. But my dad never had anything to do with it. And he didn’t tell my mum about Cat. Mum didn’t even know it was possible until…” I drink the rest of my tea. “Do you want another cup?” He shakes his head. I don’t really want one either but I can’t sit still. Making tea seems as good an idea as any. Rory doesn’t say anything while I boil the kettle and refill my cup. As soon as I sit down, he’s at it again.
“How did your mother find out it was possible?” he asks.
I sigh. “She found a corpse in my bed.”
“Oh?”
“I was six years old. My cat died. I missed him.” I can still remember lying awake that night. My heart was crying out for Hamlet. Even though I didn’t know that I could call him from the grave, he still heard me. I don’t think I’ve ever loved anything as completely as I loved that cat. I don’t think I ever will. It was the kind of love that you can only have when the idea of loss and rejection is completely removed from your own experience. I think, only a child can love that way. “He was buried in the backyard. They buried him somewhere else the second time.”
“The second time?”
“My mum killed him.”
“Oh?”
I sigh, not really wanting to give him the details but knowing he won’t stop asking until I do. “I woke up with Hamlet in my bed and I was patting him… he wasn’t exactly whole so it was a little gross but I didn’t mind because I was so happy to have him back. Then Mum came in and freaked out. Dead cat crawling all over her daughter’s bed. You can imagine she found it a little disturbing.”
“You saw how I reacted to the ghosts,” Rory-James said softly. “I don’t know what I would have done if I were her.”
“Yeah, well, I wish she’d done something different. I don’t know what exactly, but I think she really overreacted.”
“What did she do?”
“She beat him to death,” I said. “With a broom. Then Dad took him away. Next thing I knew I was being packed off to Catriona’s. My mum didn’t even say goodbye. And Dad just dropped me off at Cat’s door. Didn’t even carry my bag in for me.”
Misery burned every detail of that day into my memory. It left a lot of scar tissue behind. I wonder if I’ll ever be fully healed. Probably not, in light of more recent events. It seems like every time I think I’m safe - loved? - I end up proving just how much of a monster I am. It’s inescapable, I guess.
I used to lie awake at night, wondering what I had done wrong. I couldn’t figure out what I’d done to make my parents stop loving me. That was assuming that they’d ever loved me in the first place. I think they were a little bit afraid of me. Even before it happened. Like they could sense something. Then I gave them a reason.
My father nailed the cat flap down. “I think that'll do it,” he said, putting his hammer back in the tool box. The hammer had a yellow handle. I’d given it to him for father’s day just a few weeks before Hamlet had died. If I’d known what he’d end up using it for, I’d have gone with the clip on tie.
“Will it?” my mother squinted down at the cat flap. Strips of plywood were hammered flat across the door. No chance of Hamlet crawling through there.
I went into the other room and lay down on the couch. Sesame Street was on. I still remember that the letter was J that day. The number was 7. Lucky seven, they say, not that I’m entirely sure who ‘they’ are. It didn’t seem very lucky to me.
Aliens made of string danced across the screen. They were singing about family. I could hear my mother getting breakfast ready. When she puts the pan on the stove it clattered, like it fell too fast out of her hand. Or like she slammed it down.
“Do you think she'll grow out of it?” my mother's voice was soft and hard to hear. I wanted to turn the TV down but I didn’t want them to know that I was listening. It seemed like it was the only chance I’d ever get to find out what my parents really thought about me. About what I was. “Did you ever...?” she left the question unfinished, hanging in the air.
“No,” my father said. He spoke softly but his words came out sounding short, not long and hissing like my mothers. “I could never do anything like that. Catriona's the freak. I guess our mother used to do that sort of thing but I thought,” his voice became quieter, even harder to hear. “I thought it would be safe. I didn't think she'd be able to get it from me.”
“But now?”
I couldn’t hear what my father said to her then but when my mother called me in for breakfast her voice sounded like it hurt her throat. I tried not to look at her when I sat down. I wasn’t hungry. No matter how hard I tried I couldn’t get the image out of my head. I knew that it would be a long time in hell before I’d look at her the same way again. I just didn’t know that that’s what my life was shaping up to be.
“We thought...” my mother began, haltingly. My dad looked away from me when I glanced up. “We thought it might be a good idea for you to go and visit Auntie Catriona for a while.”
“I didn't mean to do it,” I tried to explain. I still don’t know if either of my parents noticed the desperation in my voice.
“Just a little while,” she spoke over me. “Maybe a week. Two.”
“I won't do it again.”
“I don't think,” my father said, “that it's something you can just decide not to do.”
“We're hoping,” my mother added, “that you might be able to learn not to do it. We think Auntie Catriona can help you.” I guess she thought of it like toilet training, or something. You know how parents pass the buck on who has to do it based on who has the matching equipment. When it came to training a necromancer though, neither of my parents were equipped to handle it.
I remember crying all the way to my Auntie's house. Neither of my parents looked at me. They didn't even look at each other.
There was blood on her doormat.
“Thank you for taking her,” my father muttered, pushing me over the doormat, handing me into the house.
“No problem,” the woman took my hand in hers. It was cool and dry. Her hair floated down her back in gentle waves of darkness. I thought she smelled like moonlight and mysteries.
She took me into the kitchen. I remember staring at her little island bench, plants growing from hanging pots above it. I didn’t know then how much that room would come to feel like home but in my memories it’s always felt like that. I watched sunlight flow over the plants and form pools in the middle of the bench.
That was the first time sunlight had appeared cool and gentle to me. The first time it had looked like something helpful, rather than something people made you sit in on holidays at the beach, until you were burned. Get some colour in your cheeks, they’d say. I preferred mine cold, white and painless. Mostly, I’d rather stay inside when it was sunny. Lucky for me, it rained a lot at Catriona’s place.
A plate of cookies sat in the middle of the pool of light. They were chocolate chip.
“I baked them when your father called,” Auntie Catriona said, like she can read my thoughts. “They should still be warm.” She pushed the plate towards me and poured a glass of milk. The chocolate chips were still gooey from the oven. “Do you want to talk about what happened?” She asked, gently.
“I don't know what happened.”
“John said something about a cat...”
“Hamlet.” I couldn't take my eyes off the cookies. “He was in my bed when I woke up. I didn't put him there... he just came in.”
“When did he die?” I glanced up at Auntie Catriona. She smiled gentle understanding. She had the deepest eyes I'd ever seen.
“Two weeks ago.”
"I suppose John buried him in the backyard," she shook her head. "Never thinking that you'd be like me." She sighed. "Were you scared when you woke up?"
"Not really," I finally relaxed enough to take a cookie. My mother never made cookies. She said it was a waste of time when you could just buy them. "Not at first."
"Did you remember that Hamlet was dead?" I searched her face for signs of fear. She just looked curious. I suppose that’s why I found it so easy to talk to Rory-James now. He reminded me so much of that time with Catriona.
"Yes," I answered her truthfully. "It's not easy to forget. And he still seemed dead, you know? When I woke up it was good, because he'd come back to me but it wasn't like he'd come back the way he was before. He still felt dead. Only wriggly. Like a cat that hasn't died. And he purred when I patted him. But I still knew."
"So, what made you feel scared?"
One of my shoelaces had come undone. I wonder when that happened. Maybe in the car. Or on the way in.
"Meredythe?" Catriona bent down, trying to take my attention off my feet.
"My mother came to wake me up," I kept looking at my shoelace, "and she made Hamlet the other kind of dead again." I didn't want to look at Auntie Catriona. I didn't want to see her face change. I didn't want her to agree with my mother. Please, please, I prayed, don't let her say that was the right thing to do. She put her arms around me and pulled me close. At first I didn't know what she was doing.
"You poor little thing," she whispered, hugging me tight. "You poor sweet little thing." That was the first time I remember anybody holding me.
I take a sip of my tea. It’s not exactly hot anymore but at least it isn’t cold yet. “I never saw my father again,” I said. Though, it wasn’t technically true. I’d seen him once, just after he died, but I didn’t really feel like talking about it. Besides, I thought, if you don’t speak to a person, it doesn’t really count, does it?
“And your mother?”
“She’s still hanging around.”
“I thought both your parents were dead,” Rory-James said, confused.
I stare at him.
You’d think, since she wanted nothing to do with me when she was alive, she’d leave me alone now that she’s dead. But she won’t. Something about needing to have a relationship with her daughter. Blood’s thicker than water and all that.
“But you don’t have any blood now, do you? You’re a ghost.”
“Is that supposed to make it easy, or something? Because it doesn’t, you know. It isn’t easy being dead.”
“I didn’t say it was easy, Mum. I’m just saying that you don’t have to do this. I’ve never asked for anything and I don’t know why you suddenly think it’s your duty to watch over me.”
“Meredythe…”
“I’m trying to do my work.”
“You’re just drawing pictures,” she frowned down at me. I was sitting on a stool at the island bench in my new kitchen. My kitchen. I’d inherited it when my mother died. Her will hadn’t said that she’d come with the house.
“Yeah,” I snapped, “that’s what you do when you’re studying animation.”
“Oh.” She looked over my shoulder at what I was doing. “I didn’t know.”
“Yeah, well,” I scooped my drawings together and stood up, “you wouldn’t, would you? You don’t know anything about me.”
I grabbed the table salt and stormed up to my room. It was on the second floor - what must have been the attic at some point but had since been converted into something resembling a granny flat. The kind that most renovated Queenslanders ended up having beneath the main house, with one huge room and a little ensuite bathroom tucked into the corner.
I poured salt across the doorway of my room. I’d think of a more permanent solution later. For now, I lined the edges of my room with salt, holding a visualisation of a circle as I went. Aunt Catriona had taught me how to cast a circle almost as soon as I got to her place, all those years ago. I hadn’t even unpacked my bag before she dragged me down to the beach to practice.
She hadn’t used table salt, of course. Aunt Cat was stringently traditional when it came to ritualistic practices. I sometimes thought that the only reason she’d moved to Stradbroke Island was so she could collect her own sea salt. I suppose the small local population also helped. Everyone on the Island knew Catriona as the local witch but nobody seemed to mind. They’d gotten used to her, I guess.
Nobody even stared at us tracing circles in the sand.
“Stand here,” Catriona told me, placing her hands on my shoulders and turning me towards the sea. She pulled a stick out of her bag. That’s what I thought at the time; just a stick. I didn’t know that she’d spent three years leaving offerings to a ghost gum before a storm had given it the opportunity to gift her with one of it’s branches. I didn’t know, at the time that she’d whittled it down to a perfect wand herself, hunched over an old book trying to figure out how to do it properly.
I’d find out, of course, right before I was encouraged to make my own. But that day, staring out at the ocean, it was just a stick to me. There were no gemstones or sparkling stars to signify it as a wand in a child’s eyes. So, I didn’t know the huge trust Cat was placing in me when she pressed her wand into my hands.
“I’m going to teach you to cast a circle,” she said. “You’ll use this more than anything else I’ll ever teach you. When you’ve cast it properly, a good circle will keep out anything that you don’t want to get in.” She bent down so she looked me straight in the eye. Hers were a deep and murky blue, as dark and turbulent as the winter’s ocean. “But more importantly, for now at least,” she whispered, “your circle will keep your powers from getting out.”
I imagined how my Catholic mother would have felt about my Pagan upbringing. Probably almost as distressed as she was by having a necromancer for a daughter. Funny, really, when you think about it. Wasn’t one of Jesus’ great miracles raising Lazarus from the dead?
I finished pouring the salt in an unbroken line around my room. I could almost see the ethereal dome rising around me. For some reason, it was amber. Always the same glassy shade of burnt orange. I don’t know why. I asked Cat about it once and she told me hers looked more like ice, in her mind’s eye. I wonder what she’d say if she knew I’d cast a circle to keep my mother out of my room.
I wouldn’t have had to do it if she were alive. Most teenagers just had to slam a door to keep their parents out of their rooms. The perks of being normal, I guess. The dead leave you alone.