Death of a Ghost - Charles Butler

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had only been to Lychfont once before – that summer with Colin – but he found he remembered every gate and hedge, every dip in the road. Expected them, in fact. They slotted neatly into his mind like puzzle pieces. It was a strange sensation and he searched for the phrase to describe it. Not déjà vu, though that came close. More like—

      “Bloody cats!” cursed Jack, narrowly avoiding a ginger one as it dragged a twitching pigeon to the ditch. “You’d think they owned the place!”

      It had been the summer after his mum left, the summer of Jack’s first Royal Academy exhibition, the summer Ossian had turned nine. Catherine Frazer, already making a name as a patron of the arts, had taken pity on the abandoned painter and his son and given them the run of Lychfont for two months. It had been kind of her – although had she and Jack been having an affair, Ossian wondered? It hadn’t crossed his mind at the time. If so, it must have ended badly; they hadn’t been asked to Lychfont since. Until this new commission.

      “Cathy likes her artists up and coming,” said Jack when the email reached him in Philadelphia. “I’m surprised I still qualify.”

      No wonder he was nervous.

      Falling with the road into a sudden trench of shadow, Ossian saw the Corn Stone disappear below the horizon for a moment. When it rose again it was no nearer, but tangled behind a nearby church wall. Just a wall, no church. A stairway was hacked into air. There was a solitary arch. Grass curled against the pillars where they lay. That was Lychfont Abbey, a gaunt Reformation ruin. And in the distance, still topping its ridge next to a line of birch, sat the Corn Stone.

      Except that now it did not look so pearly or so low. Now it looked like a grey box, blue-grey, almost metallic. And the top of it was smooth. All the better for laying out corpses, Ossian reflected. He should know.

      A series of black-and-white chevrons pointed to a sharp curve ahead. Concealed Entrance. Out of the sun the road seemed smoky-dark and Jack reached up to adjust the visor. Again, Ossian tried to interest himself in Lizzy’s book. Then something made him look up.

      “Dad! Look out!”

      A large animal – too big for a dog – had run in front of them. A pony had wandered on to the road. It had a pony’s shaggy head and fetlocks.

      But ponies do not stand so four-square with flame-red eyes and a mouth all dripping crimson.

      Jack, with one hand on the wheel and two lunchtime ciders in his belly, saw it just too late.

      “Jesus!”

      The car flipped off the road, clearing the ditch with a powerful thud on the back axle. Jack and Ossian both lurched forward with the shock. Ossian’s seat belt did not prevent his forehead hitting the windscreen, though the fabric bit savagely into his neck. Immediately, a dampness began to spread down his face and Lizzy’s book was sprayed with red. Jack was stamping at the brake pedal, swearing. Yet the car was still moving, fast enough to take out the wooden gate up ahead. Beyond it, on the yellow grassy mount in the middle of the field, the Corn Stone glinted. The wheels jolted from rut to rut of the baked earth – and when Ossian looked again the Stone was nearer and larger. There was someone lying on it! And they were almost – it was—

      “Look out! Dad! We’re going to—!”

      “I can’t! I can’t!—”

      SULIS AWOKE THAT morning with the sudden knowledge that she was alone. A fire curled in the grate. The sun, flicked by the stiff-fingered trees outside her window, scattered light across her face, lap and feet. But the bed was cold.

      “Husband!” she cried out. She sat up, tense and frightened. Angles of sharp sunlight slid over her skin as the white sheets fell from her. “Husband! Brother!”

      There was no answer. Ossian – her brother, her husband-to-be – was no longer there. Only the forbidding busts of the immortals by the hearth. She rang for Alaris.

      Alaris wafted into the room. A shimmer of rose and sandalwood announced her. “Yes, mistress?”

      “Where is Ossian?” Sulis demanded. Her voice was steady, but the intensity of it made Alaris tremble. “Did he go hunting again?”

      “N-no, mistress. I haven’t seen him since yesterday when he was resting in your ch-chamber.”

      “Don’t lie to me, Alaris! I have to know. Did Ossian leave the house this morning?”

      “I h-have not seen him, mistress. I’ve been in the kitchen since an hour before dawn and have seen nothing.”

      “Then call the head groom! And the chief huntsman! I must know where he is! Saddle my grey mare!”

      “At once, mistress!”

      Sulis panted with the effort of being so afraid. Her heart pounded and, as Alaris left, she fell back on her pillow of swan’s-down. Ossian gone! And today of all days! Someone must surely have abducted him. But the blank walls denied it and the fireplace opposite leered back at her with blackened teeth.

      The head groom and the huntsman came. She heard the grey mare stamping on the flags in the court below, bells jangling on its bridle. No one knew where her husband (as good as) might be. On this, their wedding day! Bridal bells! She threw vases at groom and huntsman, and watched them shatter on the wall above their cringing bodies. Ordinarily, she would have derived some satisfaction from this, but not today.

      “You’re all useless!” she screamed, and leapt across the marble floor to the curtain of her antechamber.

      Sulis stormed from room to room. Servants cowered in doorways as she passed and they muttered low what everyone but Sulis already knew. That Ossian had stolen away by night – stolen himself, for he was Sulis’s property in every way that mattered – and made for the mortal shore. Later, they found her in one of the garden walks, looking through a trellis of vines towards the milky river, weeping.

      “He would never have left me,” she said. “Not Ossian; we were made for each other. He knows that.”

      By the middle of the morning she had gathered herself and a painstaking search of the house was under way. Chimneys were being peered up. Long-sealed cupboards were having their locks levered off. The kennelmaster was sniffing with his dogs around the riverbank and the mudflats were being scoured for Ossian’s prints. Sulis immured herself in her osier tower, scanning the horizon for signs of movement. The tower was built upon a willow island and a willow ladder led to it from the ground. In this floating bower, Sulis sat until Alaris came, out of breath from the climb, some two hours later.

      “There is no sign of Ossian, my lady.”

      Sulis grunted. “Then despair must be my portion!”

      Alaris was tactful enough to wait a good ten seconds before adding: “But I have heard that a seeing-man – a scryer – is lodging near Lychfont.”

      “A mountebank!” Sulis muttered. “What of it?”

      “He has a good reputation, mistress. They say he can set a bridge between the worlds as easily as I can wring a shirt. He has not only knowledge but power too, and… oh, elegant devices! If he is all they claim he might even be able to help you find Ossian.” She hesitated shyly before daring to ask: “Shall I send for him?”

      “And hold up my shame to public scorn?” said Sulis, as if hearing her for the first time. “Certainly not!”

      Sulis had no use for scryers. Most of them were frauds, and even when their talent was genuine they were infuriating, either secretive to a fault or else so garrulous (in a riddling, unhelpful sort of way) that one soon longed for silence. Nor was the whiff they brought with them of other worlds, to her mind, a charming feature. “No,” she repeated thoughtfully. “We must find Ossian ourselves. Make a further search of the cellars.”

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