The Sister(157)

‘The people who bore me,’ she reassured him, ‘are the ones who presume to think they’re interesting. To them, it’s unthinkable they might be boring. You don’t bore me at all, far from it,’ she said. Lifting a handbag onto her lap and fidgeting around inside it, she pulled out a compact mirror and checked both sides of her face before putting it back in the bag. Leaning forwards, her elbows on the table, she supported her chin on her hands and said, ‘Go for it.’

He grimaced and scratched the back of his neck, unsure exactly where the beginning was and then inhaled deeply. ‘This isn’t going to be easy,’ he said, exhaled a short puff of air and then began. ‘When I was a kid, I was involved in an incident where three of my friends died.’

‘That’s awful, what happened? How old were you?’

‘I was fifteen. We were on a field trip with the school.’

He’d reached the point where the boys had drowned, and he realised he’d tightly twisted the corner of his napkin and wrung it between his hands; he let it go, laying it on the table. Slowly, it unravelled itself.





He stalled and shook his head. ‘I don’t know if I can just stop there, without telling you about Dr Ryan.’

‘So tell me about Dr Ryan!’





He looked at his watch. ‘I’m going to have to leave it there; I have to be up early.’

Carla put a hand on his shoulder and squeezed it as she passed him to visit the cloakroom. He called for the bill, and while he waited alone, his thoughts turned to Ryan. In the dim corner of the deserted room, the light from outside threw horizontal bars of light across the table top nearest and up the wall. In the shadows, he imagined Ryan sitting there, one eye narrowed and focused on him.

That book I never wrote, Miller. I never told you this. I had a great interest in the paranormal from an early age; meeting her only fuelled it further. One element that interested me particularly – because it was recurrent – was the part water played in sightings and hauntings. So much testimony down through the years, not provable of course, but to me it made sense. If ghosts, spirits and apparitions are residual traces of energy fired by a tragic or traumatic event – recorded somehow in the fabric of buildings or rocks or places – and if that energy is electrical in some way...I mean, we know people can generate static electricity. We can measure its fields and detect changes in it with polygraphs, EEG and so on. We know people on rare occasions can generate enough power to spontaneously combust, although we don’t know how. Water is a conductor of electricity. Could it be then, it aids the playback of whatever impulses have been recorded during extreme circumstances, such as suicides or murders? I think so, and I think it goes a long way to explain why you see your apparitions most clearly in the rain. And here’s another fascinating thought for you I seem to have overlooked until now. Your friends perished on 15th July, St Swithun’s day.

Miller shrugged at the shadowy corner. ‘Is that supposed to mean something to me?’

It marks the anniversary of the mine disaster that took place nearby in 1857. It rained so hard it flooded the workings, killing dozens of people. Your friends drowned on St Swithun’s day.

‘You’ve lost me, what’s the significance?’

Local superstition has had it for years, on that day, the ghosts from the mine return to walk among the living. Belief is a powerful thing, Miller. If you believe in something strongly enough, anything is possible.

‘Ryan, that’s just fairy tale stuff.’

Is it? Consider the Tibetans – they’ve mastered a technique based entirely on the belief they can create a thought creature. A Tulpa they call it. Other people can see these things, as well. There was a documented case, where an English woman was able to create one following the prescribed methods, but she lacked the inner spirituality to control it, she had to get help to get rid of it. Do you believe in ghosts, Miller?

He laughed. ‘It’s a bit late for me to be in denial!’





‘Who were you talking to?’ Carla cast her eyes about the room.

‘Was I talking?’ Miller drew his hand across his face and said, ‘Phew! Thank heavens I only had one of those beers. I’ve got to go.’





Chapter 131



Outside, Miller checked his watch. ‘I’ll walk you to your hotel. You’re only five minutes from mine. I haven’t stopped talking about myself all evening. We really should have talked more about you, Carla.’

‘Don’t worry about it.’ She smiled. ‘I want to hear more about you.’

‘I don’t think we have time.’

‘Come on, at least until we get to my hotel.’

‘It was July 15th, a Tuesday,’ a voice rose within him, circumventing all barriers to it, catching him unawares. His story, rarely told, tripped off his tongue. What are you doing, Bruce? I’m never drinking Northern Lights again!

The recollections were vivid; he brought them to life for her. ‘The tragedy was bad enough, but when they started pulling these old skeletons out of the water from years before…’





As they arrived outside her hotel ten minutes later, he was still talking. ‘I don’t know what’s happening to me. It’s like everything converging at once, outside my control. I can’t make any real sense of it.’ He stared up into the yellow haze that held back the darkness around the streetlight. ‘It’s like everything has been coming to this. Whatever it is. That’s why I called Doctor Ryan.’