The Anniversary

Amelia feared she was going to be stuck in her car overnight. She was only five miles from the cabin but the way the snow was coming down now, five miles or a hundred did not make much difference. Even when she'd set out, three hours before, the sky had threatened snow. The clouds had that special iron-grey dullness that speaks of something more than rain. Any other day she'd have stayed in her comfortable, warm suburban house, curled up with a book and watched the weather from the other side of her double-glazing. She'd loaded up with thermal gear and a large flask of coffee, just in case.

Amelia was in her mid-thirties, fit and a very experienced driver - that went with her job. The prospect of a long drive with some snow did not concern her much, but the forecast was for a lot more than just 'some' snow. Heavy snow, and high, gusty winds the forecaster had said. Amelia had driven enough to respect the dangers that implied. Nonetheless, this was the day she had to drive.

The closer she'd got to the cabin the more the clouds seem to loom out of the sky at her.
"Up in the hills, along roads I don't know, to a cabin I've never seen. I must be mad." Amelia started to berate herself. That was as much part of the day's ritual, its tenth repetion, as the long drive. She knew she had to do it. She couldn't really say it helped, but dared not find out what would happen if she skipped a year.

Ten miles from the cabin there was still no snow, but the wind had picked up. She was almost there but the remaining miles were up deep into the hills, the forest, and towards those ominous clouds.

"Nearly there - but I mustn't tempt fate." It was tempting fate had got her in this mess in the first place. In educated company she did not believe in fate or in her ability to tempt it, but privately she had become very careful. Too many coincidences can shake ones faith in rationality. It was just then the snow started to fall, huge flakes whipped into a wild flamenco by the gusting wind. Amelia knew it was going to take every ounce of her concentration and skill to reach the cabin.

The last five miles were exhausting. The four-wheel drive coped well with the snow, but distinguishing road from ditch in all the swirling whiteness was really taking it out of her. Now the light was starting to fail. She'd set off in good time, but progress had been painfully slow for the last few miles, and the thick cloud cover brought its own twilight.

This was so different from the clear, crisp day ten years before. Then the sky had been cloudless and purest winter blue. Amelia rejoiced to be alive on days like that. She'd just been given a raise a work. That had allowed her to move into the house she had wanted since she was child. It had come on the market at a ridiculous price just when she could afford it. To cap it all, an uncle she hardly knew had left her a car in his will. Not just any car, but a classic Cadillac which he had loved like a child. It still smelled new even though it was twenty-some years old. The winter sun glinted off her Cadillac as she drove to her next appointment that day, exactly ten years before.

In the half light and hypnotic whiteness Amelia almost missed the sign for her turning. Relief swept over her as she read it. Her cabin was just a hundred yards off to the right. The snow looked pretty thick on the track though.

"Well I could walk it from here if I really had to."

She didn't have to. The snow was thick but along the track it had not drifted and the car easily forced a way through right up to the door.

Five minutes of feverish activity had her and her bags securely in the cabin and the door sealed against the perilous beauty of the blizzard outside. The cabin's owners had a fire laid ready for her. All it needed was one match. The fire took straight away and within a few minutes flames were leaping up the chimney and cutting through the cabin's chill. Amelia sat and watched, mesmerised by the growing blaze and the pleasant heat on the skin of her face, as the incense fragrance of wood smoke filled the air. Minute piled on minute. Amelia stared into the fire and listened to the groaning of the trees as they fought with the blizzard. She felt safe, snug and very sleepy.

Amelia did not remember where the TV remote had come from, but like a lab rat she automatically pressed a button. The image which half-heartedly illumined the room was that face, his face. The eight year old on the bike had suddenly appeared right in front of her newly acquired Cadillac. She had no chance of stopping. The bike crumpled like tissue paper beneath the wheels of her great iron monster. The boy landed face down on her windscreen. His blank, blooded face was looking right at her. He would be eighteen now - if she hadn't killed him. His lifeless face was staring at her from the television. Amelia's own screams awoke her from the nightmare. She sat bolt upright. The fire had almost burned out and a chill was returning to the air. Another anniversary had started.

Incubus

She stood in rapt concentration facing the high altar of the cathedral and the dusk darkness gathered. The last rays of the setting sun penetrated the great west window and cast a rosy glow over the ancient stone of the building. Lisa stood, entranced, watching the colour fade from the old stones as the sun sank, and listened to the organ fugue filling every crevice of the building, echoing down from the hidden recesses of the ceiling. The deep notes reverberated too through the spaces of her own body and she could feel each note tingling down deep within her chest and abdomen. She slipped past a barrier so as to be able to absorb the music from the high altar itself.

As the sun set a darker shadow eased forward from the gloom in the body of the building and started to move purposefully toward the spot where Lisa stood. At first she did not notice this new presence, feeling that she was alone in the cavernous space with only the organist as her companion, though such solitude would be rare in this tourist hotspot. Then, from the corner of her eye, she notice the moving darkness heading unhurriedly towards her. She suspected that it might be a dark-robed church official coming to tell her to move, since she had ignored a couple of signs saying that the area around the high altar was prohibited to the public. Despite the gathering tension in the pit of her stomach Lisa had no desire to move.

Still caressed by the music she became fascinated by the gliding shadow steadily taking form as it moved towards her, though still hard to make out in the gathering dimness of the building's twilight. As she strained to see she made out the form of a man, a good head taller than herself, and swathed in a long black cloak. It struck her that this was unusual dress in this day and age, except for the most exclusive of formal dinner attire, but simply accepted what she saw as the antique attire of some cathedral attendant.

As the man came closer a glint of light caught his face. Lisa became aware of the most penetrating pair of eyes she had ever encountered. Was it the chill of the air, or his electric stare which caused a sudden eruption of goose-flesh all over her body? She did not know and did not care. Lisa's gaze was now fixed on the penetrating dark of the eyes moving steadily closer and closer.

She was hardly aware of how close he had moved to her before he stopped, his face mere inches away from hers, but the feel of cold breath stroking across the skin of her face and naked throat made her suddenly aware of their proximity. She did not exactly feel scared, but held her breath in anticipation of whatever might come next. It felt to Lisa that the look of those eyes bored down through her mind into her very soul and knew every atom of her being, outside and in.

He moved closer and Lisa moved back slightly, a tinge of deepening anxiety adding further to the tightness of her erect goose-flesh. Leaning forward he placed his lips lightly on the outer rim of her ear and whispered words in some rolling Slavic tongue. They seemed to caress her as they passed down through her ear-drum. Lisa had no idea of the meaning and yet reacted instinctively to his words of power, relaxing and making the one necessary step backwards so that the small of her back rested against he edge of the altar.

All this time the deep resonances of the music had tingled through her young form and performed a subtle massage deep within her which no human caress could ever have achieved. She had a great desire to scream.

Without a moment's regard for the sacrilege involved he lifted Lisa effortlessly seating her on the edge of the sacred space. His cold lips traced a line down from her ear tantalising the skin of her throat as they passed. She could feel the edge of his sharp teeth describing a pattern on her exposed pink vulnerability.

Hormones coursed through her arteries and brought to fruition the natural cycle of her body.

With deep breaths and flushed cheeks she expected to feel the exquisite agony of his long pointed canines sinking into her innocent flesh at any moment. Suddenly her assailant sank down. In an instant he lifted the edge of her skirt towards her waist and exposed the sanctuary of her femininity. Before she knew what was happening he buried his face in her lap and ran his tongue over Lisa's blood tinged lips. She squirmed with inexpressible rapture, suffused with sensations which she had never experienced before. Each passage of his tongue impossibly amplified feelings for which she had no words. The scream she had contained for all the long strained minutes was climbing her throat and would not be held back. Arching and writhing she both wanted this delicious torture to go on without cease, and to stop before she lost all control.

Suddenly she awoke - and once again wanted to scream. To her profound horror she found herself the object of the curious gaze of a group of tourists, lying as she was on the Cathedral High Altar with legs spread wide and evidently giving herself considerable pleasure. The organ continued to play its stirring anthem. Her audience muttered disapproval and general agreement that such a thing should not be allowed.

It was a long time before Lisa dared to venture again into the Cathedral in body, but returned nightly in the privacy of her own thoughts and dreams.

Deep in a dark corner amid the ancient gothic arches he waited for the next victim ripe for the plucking savouring memories of each sweet vintage.

Dental Fear

Dental Fear

© 2002 Hal Westhead

[Winner on 'Writer's Online' competition]

Time for another check-up. The appointments came round far too quickly for Lisa's liking. The calendar said they were six months apart. That was not how it felt. Lisa always looked for an excuse to postpone the appointment. Her teeth were not in great shape - too many toffees in her teens and not enough brushing. There was always a little more filling or drilling or capping. It always hurt more than the dentist said it would. Why, she wondered, did they bother lying? She knew it would hurt, he knew it would hurt and soon after he'd reassured her he was proved a liar by the very real pain she felt. Did he think she'd trust him more than the pain?

Lisa looked out of the window. The sky looked very black. They were in for a real storm. Much too wet and dangerous to drive to the surgery. It was only a check-up after all. Next week would do just as well as this.

"Oh come on you wimp. Just do it. If you put if off to next week, you'll have to live through another week of counting down the days." Lisa had decided she was going to turn over a new leaf - be more assertive and strong. This was where she was going to start. She needed to be assertive with herself.

"Just go now, get it over with, and then it will be another six months in which you can just get on with life."

As she got into the car she heard the first distant roll of thunder. She could feel it more than hear it, resonating in her body. The storm was the perfect excuse not to be out on the roads but she was determined to take herself in hand, and she loved driving in thunderstorms. The deep vibrations and the sudden crack of lightening were a real turn on. The prospect of oozing pheromones over Saul as he leaned in close to her quite made up for the torture he would put her through.

It was only about a mile to Saul's practice, but with each passing yard the sky became darker. The black clouds shrouded the nearby hills as though they were belching smoke.

She pulled into his small car park as the first heavy drops of rain started to fall. Each drop hit the car with a distinct metallic clunk, as though she was driving through loose dirt. This was no light shower. Each drop was a small water bomb exploding on her car.

There were no other cars there. This was good news. She'd be able to go straight in to Saul. Sitting around in the waiting room just made her more tense. Opening the car door she prepared to sprint the short distance to the front door. A window rattling boom of thunder met her as she stepped from the car. She took in a deep lungful of the ozone filled air. That's what people said the smell was, but Lisa did not care about the scientific accuracy. To her it was simply the smell of a thunderstorm.

"Hi Lisa, I wasn't expecting you to show up," Clarissa boomed as Lisa crashed into the reception area. Clarissa had been Saul receptionist forever as far as Lisa knew. She knew more about the patients' lives than Saul did. She was also not the most discrete of people. "What with this storm I'd have thought you'd prefer to stay home."

"Hi Clarissa, I've turned over a new leaf. The new Lisa starts here. No more cancelled appointments."

Clarissa looked over the top of her glasses and gave Lisa a sceptical stare. "Whatever you say, Lisa. I'll wait for your next appointment before I say anything." She chuckled and shook her head. Clarissa had been dealing with Lisa's cancellations for too long to be swayed by a few fine words.

"Anyway you can go right in. Saul's free. Mrs. Wallace did cancel her two o'clock."

Lisa went straight into the consulting room and sat down in the dental chair. She'd been going through the routine for long enough not to wait for an invitation to sit down.

"Its good to see you Lisa," Saul said with a warm smile.

Lisa knew that this was not just 'bedside manner': Saul was a wonderfully caring man. However that did not stop him lying to her about how much pain was involved in each treatment. At least that was Lisa's view of things.

"OK. You know the routine. Open wide. Let me see. Mmmm. Ahhh." He poked around a little with a dental probe and moved the lighting gantry around to ensure that there was no crevice or niche in shadow.

"Well that is good. You have been following my advice by the looks of your teeth. You don't need any work done apart from cleaning away a little plaque."

Lisa was astonished. Saul had been fighting a losing war with her dental hygiene for years. This was the first indication that he was making any headway.

"Just sit back and relax. I'll go over your teeth with the brush - and to celebrate I won't even charge you this time."

"So this really isn't going to hurt?"

"This won't hurt a bit."

Saul inserted the cleaning head into the dental drill and started to lean forward towards Lisa.

The thunderclap shook the building as the lightning strike came to earth on the power line and sought to dissipate its energy along every conducting surface it could find. Saul's burnt body was thrown across the room by the blast, his charred hand still holding the drill head.

When the paramedics arrived they tried their best to comfort Lisa.

"It was such a powerful surge of energy, he probably did not feel a thing."

Lisa could never again hear a dentist say "this won't hurt a bit" without bursting into tears.

Loneliness

Coming and Going

© 2002 Hal Westhead

Sally looked at herself in the mirror. She was not impressed.

"Oh God. Do I really look like that?" There was no one to hear her question, and her anguish. That was the major part of the problem. She knew it was her own fault for peering at herself before she was ready to face the world. Even the soft-focus provided by no contacts lenses was not enough of an antidote for the view that met her this morning.

For some reason the solitude of being widowed had all come to a head this grey October morning. Nothing had outwardly changed - well not in any dramatic way. She had dragged herself through another anniversary of Ed's senseless death a little more than five years previously . Ageing just kept on happening at its own remorseless pace, and Sally fought it back with whatever aid cosmetics could provide. Her friends were just as lovely and just as annoying. Nonetheless, this morning the whole history of being alone had decided to descend on her, leaden and suffocating.

Stepping back from the mirror she shuffled the towelling robe off her shoulders and allowed it to slip down into an inelegant heap on the bathroom carpet. Sally took a long hazy look at herself.

"Not too bad for a mother of three, I suppose, but long past its 'seduce by' date." She ran her hands firmly over her stomach and remembered the feel of Ed's hands on her skin. Thinking that there was no point dwelling on what could not be, she briskly stepped into the shower and started the process of getting herself ready for the world. The shower too held memories: too many shared playful moments with Ed for it not to. She concentrated on getting herself fresh and presentable, trying to drive the past back into its closet.

Smartly dressed in a rather conservative grey skirt and white top, with her 'face' on and her hair tamed, she went down to the kitchen for breakfast. Breakfast was always the hardest time. It was the most constant reminder. Before the accident they had almost always had breakfast together. Other meals were in the hands of chance and sudden business arrangements, but breakfast was one of the rocks of their togetherness. It was often bathed in 'morning after' tenderness. Now sitting alone at their table in their kitchen, eating the habitual toast and reduced-fat spread, Sally could feel the solitude creeping up like a chilly choking smog.

Her eye was caught by the business card that had been pinned to the top right corner of the kitchen noticeboard for months. She remembered the evening Melanie had offered it to her with a wicked twinkle in her eye. Sally was shocked to realise that the card had been there for almost eighteen months, neither used nor thrown away. It simply remained there, kept in limbo by an indecision that Sally found hard to admit to. Its black shape with gold lettering was very striking. Sally knew it was there, as though it was whispering to her: 'Go on, phone me, what have you got to lose?'

What the card actually said, with elegant directness, was:

Dr Habib,
Psychic Therapist,
Bereavement a speciality.

This and two phone numbers were the only things printed in plain gold lettering on the soot-black background. Sally could have recited what it said without ever looking at the card again. She had read it over and over. She had held it over the waste bin time and time again. Each time the card had somehow earned another reprieve and had been returned to its corner of the noticeboard. This morning its silent whispers were particularly insistent.

"All right," said Sally in a voice edged with irritation. Addressing the business card from across the kitchen, "I'll give you a try. Now just let me get on with my breakfast in peace." The card, naturally enough, remained inscrutably quiet.

Ed had gone into hospital for a routine minor operation. He'd been waiting for it for months, but routine surgery has a habit of being postponed. Sally now wished it had been postponed forever and simply forgotten. The operation went well, completely routine, until the infection set it, the complications, the rush to intensive care and the final sickening phone call. Sally could still hear the words echoing in her head, the words telling her that she really ought to get to the hospital urgently. Even after five years she wept when she dwelt too long on that last visit to the hospital. After the initial disbelief and anger passed off (in their own bitter time) came the first crevices of hollowness. She spent a lot of time with Melanie. Melanie was patience itself. Sally knew what true friendship was: it was Melanie.

Theirs was a strange friendship, and few people who knew them both ever expected them to become such firm, fixed friends. On one side was Melanie. She had biblically 'had' more boyfriends before she was twenty than Sally had coyly smiled at in the whole of her life. She was up for anything: flamboyant, passionate and intimate. She threw herself at life and seemed to enjoy the bumps and scars that resulted. Sally was the shadow to her bright flame: conservative, reserved but warm. Sally frequently was driven to beetroot blushes by Melanie's uninhibited conversation. Melanie, by contrast, envied Sally's steady, loving, faithfulness. Although she could never imagine living Sally's life, she saw in her someone who had found their soul-mate and was content in ways that she would never be herself. Sally was the swan and Melanie the hummingbird. Ed's death touched Melanie deeply. The utter, casual, brutal unfairness of Ed's death pained her bitterly. Sally was left bereft by the loss, but Melanie was stabbed through by its pointless tragedy.

Breakfast finished, Sally decided she was not going to allow the leaden weight of lethargy and guilt bring her to a halt again. All of her friends, most especially Melanie, had told her not to rush into anything. They all advised Sally to allow time to do the work of healing and not to expect too much of herself. After all, Sally was in pain after Ed's untimely death. He had been ripped from her, leaving a bloody ragged wound in her soul. Her friends could see her distress and all believed that she was ready to accept anything that would relieve the agony - no matter how ultimately addictive, debilitating or habit forming it turned out to be in the long run. Many of them had tried to solve their past woes with drink, disastrous relationships and (most crippling of all) prescription drugs. They all had their instructive tales to tell. Sally needed no convincing. There was only one real, close, tangible piece of Ed she had left: the pain. It wasn't much but it was the most immediate presence she had of the person who still meant everything to her. Healing meant losing half her life. So now her friends worried about her. She wasn't healing, wasn't moving on. Melanie had even told her to her face that she was clinging on to the past and being self-indulgent. Sally looked at the black and gold business card and could feel the muscles of her abdomen tighten with guilt at the thought of the infidelity it was inviting her too.

"Hi Sally," said the very dozy voice on the phone, "are you OK? Is something wron...?" Melanie's struggled as long as she could but the irrepressible yawn stamped out the final sound of the word. Melanie whipped the telephone handset away from her mouth and yawned noisily and enthusiastically.

"I'm fine thank you Melanie ... well no, I'm not fine at all really. Could we meet later? It's nothing really that urgent. You don't need to come right away. Tomorrow would be fine if you are busy .... but are you free this morning? Are you busy?"

Melanie made no attempt to interrupt Sally since she seemed to be making a very good job of doing that all by herself. In the course of many conversations with Sally Melanie had learned a very important lesson: don't interrupt too soon. This rule applied just as well to direct questions as to idle musings. What, with anyone else, might have been a genuine opportunity to break into the conversations, was mostly likely not that with Sally. It was far more likely to be just the next meandering verbal country lane, simply explored because it was there, and not leading to where Sally really wanted to go. It was an important part of the journey for Sally, but not really for her fellow travellers.

Melanie did not do mornings. Everyone who knew Melanie knew that about her. Consequently, Melanie knew that a call from Sally this early meant something serious.

"Sally love, its only just gone 8.15 in the morning. If you are calling me, of all people, at this time then I'd better get round straightaway. It'd damn well better be serious."

"No don't be silly Melanie ... really you don't need to rush round ... makes it sound like the place is on fire or something. It's really not that serious. Later today would be fine, tomorrow even ... I'm not going to die if its the day after am I? Is it really that early? I am sorry for disturbing you. Didn't notice the clock."

"I'll be round in about 15 ... no make that 30 minutes. Will you be all right until then?"

"Oh Melanie you are such a love. Thank you - I'd love to see you this morning."

"Thirty minutes then. I'll see you then. Get the coffee on - strong and black."

The phone hummed. Sally held on to the handset for a while, wondering what to do next. There was always plenty to do, but not the right sort of something. All the energy which had driven her into making the call was now just swirling round with no place to go. "Until Melanie arrives," she thought. Sally's imagination wandered on to the most likely reason Melanie would be exhausted and in need of a shower this morning. It was like picking at a sore: it did not help how she felt, but she couldn't stop herself.

Just before 8.45 the door bell rang. It was Melanie, on time for once, and looking a vision of doubtful taste in a pink jogging suit and trainers, with her recently washed blonde hair imprisoned by a large cheap plastic hair clip.

Melanie said hello and walked straight in and to the kitchen. She never stood on ceremony with Sally, and in any case the aroma of freshly brewed coffee coming from the kitchen was more than she could resist. Sally shook her head in disbelief and mild disapproval as she watched Melanie back heading towards the kitchen.

When Sally got to the kitchen Melanie was already seated on a stool, sipping coffee from a mug.

"I've poured one for you." She gestured to the table where a cup of coffee stood waiting. "It's just unnatural having your breakfast coffee in a cup ... with a saucer. However today I'm pandering to you."

Melanie looked at Sally and waited. Sally sat at the table and drank her coffee. Cups and saucers at breakfast were part of her life with Ed.

"Well?" Melanie asked when she could contain herself no longer.

Sally did not reply. Instead she stood up and walked over to Melanie. She moved in very close, much closer than Melanie expected. Sally's idea of personal space was quite a bit bigger than her friend's, so Melanie found it really surprising to have her bit of the room so intimately invaded. Sally handed over the black business card in a rather secretive manner, as though she thought she was being watched while doing something that she shouldn't.

Melanie instantly recognised what she had been given. Her eye's widened.

"Have you been to see him?" She asked quite incredulously. Knowing of the unique service Dr. Habib provided she doubted that Sally could have been to see him.

"No - but I'm going to. I've decided I've got to."

"When?"

"I haven't made an appointment yet. That's what I wanted to speak to you about. What do you know about Dr. Habib?"

Melanie had been the one who had given the card to Sally in the first place. It had been a source of constant mild amusement to Melanie that the card remained on the noticeboard, neither used nor discarded.

"He's tall, black, well-built," Melanie winked, "gorgeous and totally genuine."

"How do you know? How can I be sure? I don't think I could stand building my hopes up and then being let down."

Sally had done the rounds of therapists. They had all told her the same hard message, each in their own warm fuzzy way. Until Sally wanted to get on with life she was wasting her money and their time.

"Sally, this is something you've just got to do. Either do it or forget about it. You will know when you meet him."

Melanie took hold of Sally's hand and held it in hers. She knew how hard this was for Sally. Trying out a new dress shop was an adventure for Sally, so the prospect of visiting Dr. Habib was interplanetary exploration. She had never in her wildest dreams imagined that Sally would ever make use of the elegant business card.

"Sally love, I could introduce you to a dozen people who would all say Dr. Habib will change your life, but really you've just got to decide whether you can face this."

Sally hovered in front of Melanie for ten seconds of agonised inaction. She thought she had decided, but (so she discovered) not quite enough to move. Melanie knew, even in her still half-awake fog, that Sally needed her there. She had lots of experience of letting go: Sally did not want the experience, but needed it.

Sally took the card back and crushed it in an over-tight grip. That was it. She turned briskly and marched to the phone. Without turning towards her friend she asked, "Will you come with me?" Then, quietly, added, "I don't think I can do this by myself."

"Of course I will. You don't need to ask." Melanie had seen Sally's solitary torment for too long. Sometimes she just wanted to shake Sally and tell her to get over it, but she knew that, satisfying as it would be, it wouldn't do Sally any good. That was not the way to exorcise Ed's ghostly shadow.

Sally had loved Ed before he even knew her. She had slept with him before he'd even smiled at her. Sally noticed him one day as she walked between lecture halls at the University. The moment she saw him a fire was lit within her. She had no idea who he was, what he was like or how she was ever going to be introduced to him, but she knew for certain that they were one soul in two bodies. Ed, the real, living, flesh and blood person, became the embodiment of Sally's romantic fantasies. He was more real, more heroic in Sally's mind than any human being could live up to. Hero's live in the world of myth and don't succumb to post-operative infections, or even have minor operations in the first place. Sadly, the Ed who hugged and kissed her, the Ed who shared breakfast with her, was tinged with mortality and had left her in cold solitude.

"I have been expecting you to call." The voice on the other end of the phone was deep and sonorous, filled with West African music. Sally was taken aback. She had expected (and hoped) to speak to a receptionist and just make an appointment. She thought she was simply going to buy a ticket to see the lion and instead she had stepped right into the lion's den.

"Oh ... err ... "

"I am sorry. I seem to have taken you by surprise." The voice spoke each word carefully. "I am Dr. Habib. You wished to speak with me?"

"err ... yes ... I wanted to ... err .. book an appointment ... or whatever."

"I am free to see you this afternoon at three o'clock."

Sally was not used to an appointment system like this: no receptionist, no waiting, and no negotiation. She felt that she had not so much been offered an appointment as told when she would be visiting him.

"Please bring a friend with you. You will probably feel a little exhausted afterwards." She noticed how each melodious phrase was highlighted by the trill in the way he pronounced the 'R's. Already she felt she could trust him. Dr. Habib also seemed to inhabit her world of myth. He was not making any effort to be charming. He seemed friendly but businesslike.

"OK ... right ... three o'clock this afternoon ".

"Perhaps you would like to tell me your name?"

"Oh ... right ... sorry - Sally, Sally McIntyre."

"I will see you at three o'clock Mrs McIntyre. You will need the address."

Sally took down the address and a few brief but clear instructions on how to find it.

When Sally said goodbye she realised that she was speaking to a dead phone. She was a little annoyed by this. She was walking across emotional hot coals, and he did not even have the courtesy to say 'goodbye'. Sally was looking for any excuse to back out. She did not want to back out just yet, but wanted the security of knowing she had some reason she tell herself (and Melanie) if she got cold feet.

Three o'clock came around very slowly. Sally could not settle to doing anything, and wandered from room to room first starting on one task and then another. Melanie had gone to the fitness centre, assuring Sally that she would be back by two o'clock at the very latest. Sally had no further trouble with ghosts that morning. The greater worry cast out the lesser distress.

Melanie was as good as her word. By quarter past two they were in Melanie's car and on their way. Melanie already knew the route and thought it would only take about twenty minutes to complete the journey. She kept that to herself and hustled Sally into the car. She just could not bear to sit and watch Sally wandering about like a caged leopard. At least if she was in the car she was strapped into one place.

Melanie concentrated on driving and made occasional encouraging noises to Sally. Sally chattered away, exploring every conceivable 'what-if', but never waiting for Melanie to contribute anything of substance to the conversation. Melanie for her part was happy to let Sally preoccupy herself.

They arrived quarter of an hour before the appointment. Melanie had driven quite sedately and taken a few long-cuts to extend the journey by a few minutes. The area where Dr. Habib had his consulting rooms was a suburban residential street with plenty of street parking at that time of day and Melanie found a parking place very close to the house.

"Here we are." Sally hardly needed to be told that they had arrived, but Melanie felt she had to say something. When Sally had made no move to leave the car after two minutes, Melanie said, "I'll come with you to the house." Without further ado she got out of the car. Sally got out a few seconds later and stood on the pavement by Melanie with white knuckles and a tense expression.

"After you." Melanie was determined that Sally was going to keep the initiative. She could vividly remember her own experience with Dr. Habib. Sally had to do this for herself.

Sally looked at the crumpled card, got her bearings and set off on the few yards walk to the front door of the undistinguished suburban house. There was nothing in the least gothic about it: a simple 30's semi with boring green paintwork. The small front garden was mostly covered in lichen-covered crazy paving. Three exposed patches of earth supported rose bushes. They looked very cared for. Everything seemed very neat and not in the least flamboyant.

The brass digits screwed to the front door confirmed that they had arrived at the address Sally had written down. The only indication that this was not simply another suburban dwelling was a small black plate beneath the letter box bearing the name 'Dr. Habib' in elegant copperplate lettering.

Melanie stood slightly further back from the door. This was Sally's appointment, and she had to be in the driving seat. Sally looked for a doorbell, but not finding one grasped the brass door knocker. It was large and heavy, and felt very satisfying to her grip. It hit the striking plate with a resounding bang. It seemed very much in keeping with the impression Dr. Habib had made on the phone.

The seconds passed and Sally felt her tension rising. She felt that until the door opened she still had the option of running away, like a child knocking on a front door and fleeing. She felt cold and shivery. The day was cold and cheerless, but her sudden chill was more the work of anxiety than the weather and she knew it. Then she heard the door catch being turned and saw the door starting to open. She swallowed hard, wondering what she was doing here.

"I am pleased to see you Mrs McIntyre. I am Dr. Habib."

Sally put her hand to her mouth and gasped. A tall, very dark man with a round face and smiling eyes opened the door and greeted her. As she looked at him Ed was there too. Dr. Habib was much taller and more muscular than Ed had been, and yet they seem to occupy the same space in the doorway, scintillating between one existence and the other.

"Do come in." Dr. Habib turned now to Melanie and said, "Please return for Mrs McIntyre in exactly one hour and thirty minutes."

Sally shuffled into the hallway as though half in a dream. As the closing front door dimmed the hallway she heard Ed's voice saying, "I have missed you Sally. This will be our only time together."

Sally turned. Although it was still Dr. Habib standing by the front door, he now seemed to have more of Ed about him than of the mysterious psychic therapist.

"We must use our time well. You will never again be able to touch me and hold me. But for the next ninety minutes we can together just as in life ..."

She flung herself into his arms to feel an embrace which she thought lost to her forever.

" ... and then our lives together will be complete and we must go our separate ways."

Sally breathed in the familiar reassuring smell of her beloved Ed as she felt the warm of this chest against her cold cheek.

The first person Sally broke the news to was her eldest daughter Julia. She had not spoken to Julia since the appointment with Dr. Habib. Julia could hardly believe that the animated, happy voice on the end of the phone was that of her mother. She was shocked to complete silence when Sally announced that she was going to have another baby.

Sally looked at herself in the mirror. She shared a smile with herself.

The Inheritance

The Inheritance

© 2002 Hal Westhead

As the key turned in the lock Emily was overtaken by a stomach-wrenching wave of fear, as though she had looked up and seen a truck bearing down on her. What she saw was, for Emily, far worse: the living nightmare vision of her sister surrounded by the flames shattered Emily's down-to-earth pragmatism. Leaving the key in the lock she fled back to the car in which she had taken so long to steel herself for this moment. The worst she was expecting was to be confronted by the lingering smell of death indelibly etched into the fabric of the building. As Emily fled she decided that the house could have its dead and was welcome to them. This was one gift which she could not afford.

Here was the house and a very grand affair it was too. How strange it seemed to Emily that she should be transformed from poor student to a lady of property by one sudden accident. 'Accident' is not quite the right word - and 'sudden' only describes the final step in a chain of events. There was nothing sudden about the bequest. Her sister had made a will, so she must have gone through all the legal process of getting it drawn up properly. This was all very deliberate - not at all sudden. Had it not been drawn up with meticulous care she risked (if it can be said that the dead can take risks) her in-laws contesting it at every turn. They were practically blood relatives of the house.

"But why," Emily wondered, "had Celia never told me her plans."

Celia was ten years her senior, and they had never been particularly close. Being sisters they were thrown together at family gatherings, but in reality lived very different lives and were utterly different people. It had astonished the entire family that Celia had left most of her estate to Emily. There were other, far more likely, recipients of her enforced generosity. That description begs the question: if you slice your wrists and bleed to death, is that an enforced act? How much choice did Celia have over the decision she made? What freedom did Celia really have if sinking into a bath of your own blood seems the best option? Celia had made the will just two weeks before being found in tub of her own diluted blood, suggesting that Celia's unexpected generosity was entirely premeditated.

Emily's sister had been married for only a short time before she became a very wealthy widow. She was wealthy in goods that is, but quite destitute in her soul. After living with Karl for two contented, idyllic years, to see him burn to death mere days after their marriage seemed a fate guided by a malicious intent. Could fickle chance be so cruel? To say that Celia never recovered from the trauma would be like saying that Pompeii was never the same after the eruption of Vesuvius. Whilst literally true it really did not capture the magnitude of how changed Celia was. She blamed herself so utterly, so profoundly that she seemed intent on committing herself to Hell in her own lifetime. What seemed strange to Celia's family was the way Karl's family also placed the blame for his death on Celia's head. Celia's parents simply could not understand what she was supposed to be guilty of. It was as though Karl's family thought that Celia caused his death by their marriage.

That Celia should blame herself was, in many ways, only natural - she had been forced be a bystander and watch the man she adored engulfed in a ball of fire. Guilt was not the judgement of reason or mercy but it was a quite understandable human response, and utterly self-destructive. There was nothing she could do: she almost died in the accident herself but had been thrown clear. Thrown just far enough away to survive and just close enough to see Karl's face as the fire consumed him.

Celia never slept easily from that day onwards. At least she could not do so without the help of drugs, some legal and some not. Love and laughter also abandoned her, finding her to be an inhospitable host. She was wading through the swamp of despair breathing in the foul air of insomnia, self-hatred and drugged debility.

After Karl's death Celia decided to remain in the house which had been his. Despite being a couple for two years, Celia always thought of the house as his. It was full of his family history and his heritage. Although technically and legally it was in part hers, this claim on the house seemed a terrible presumption to Celia. The house had been in Karl's family for almost 200 years and no shallow ritual could forge a birthright which two years of loving intimacy had been unable to create. Many of the house's contents had been passed down through the generations long before they came to rest in the house. When Celia came to hold the title on the house she felt she could no more sell it than sell a grandparent. Yet despite it being full of family heirlooms and almost a shrine to the history of his people, Karl's family refused to visit Celia after the accident. There was a bitterness and reproach which neither reason nor compassion could assail.

The house was impressively large, standing in its own grounds, and much too big for one person to live in alone, comfortably. Celia made up her mind that she would live in it by herself, and sacrificed the luxury of being at ease in her home. The house was luxurious and on one level did afford her with every comfort. On another, more significant level, it was for her the most uncomfortable place on the face of the Earth. Celia chose to live there, her days surrounded by reminders of Karl and her nights filled with nightmares fresh-cast in the forges of hell. She craved and feared sleep in equal measure.

Emily sat in her car, parked on the drive and looking at the house. She sat there almost motionless for a long time, trying to face the simple task of entering this house she now owned. Emily still thought of it as Celia's house and it was only the superficial auditor of her thoughts that corrected her from time to time, reminding Emily that this house, its grounds and all it contained were hers almost to do with as she would. There were complicated legal restrictions on what she could do with some of the contents but Emily did not care. She knew that as long as she sold those items back to members of Karl's family she was in the clear. As she sat in silent combat with her nameless anxieties she clenched the hefty bunch of keys in her hand. She fingered their shape. The longer she held them, the more they reminded her of her task and her fears: the keys felt sweaty in her grip.

"No wonder Celia put an end to it, but did she have to be so ghoulish? ... and why leave this monument to me?"

Unlike Celia, her younger sister had no special attachment to Karl's family or their history. As she looked at the house all she could see was a very large pile of blood-stained money. Despite her no-nonsense approach Emily had to admit that the house was off-putting. She was not prepare to credit it with any malevolence, but even as an inanimate pile of building materials it drew power from her. Emily cursed herself for being weak. Before ever she could think about visiting the house there was a particular job she had arranged to be done by a local builder. The door to THAT bathroom had to be sealed shut. Emily did not want to accidentally wander into the room. She wanted to be certain that its secret and its all-to-awful stains were locked away until she was well away from the house. Merely thinking about the scene which greeted the cleaner that damp Thursday morning when Celia's body was discovered led Emily very close to panic. The sooner she was done with the place the better. However for the next week she was to be owner in residence and lady of the manor - complete with jeans and T-shirt rather than ball-gown and tiara.

It really annoyed Emily to be so irrational. She had dealt with enough blood stains in her life.

"So why," she asked herself, "am I letting this freak me out?"

Beneath the facade of philosophical belittling she knew that they were not just stains. There was a story and a life written in those marks, and the life was her sister's.

If she was going to take charge she would have to go in. It was, after all, just a house - a large one to be sure, but simply stone, plaster, history and its non-human residents. Emily imagined that a house of this size hid quite some population of spiders in its cavernous depths, and they had to live on something. The house could not be entirely dead. Emily berated herself again for stupid but very real fears.

"A blood stain is just a nasty mark." Emily chanted this mantra followed by the equally unconvincing, "A suicide is just something that happened."

Somehow the house managed to convey a presence to Emily far more than any soulless semi on the estate on which she'd grown up. Emily resented the house for having more strength of character than she did herself: it was against nature that she, a centre of free will and creative force, should be unable to face a mere building. Leaping from the car she ran to the house, keys in hand. Indecision would be fatal at this moment. Taking the bull by the horns she plunged the key into the lock, keeping her mind focused on what she had to do, never allowing a reflective instant to interrupt her dynamism.

At last she had her hand on the iron door handle, and heard the last tumbler fall. Only then did she understand just how much strength of character the house had been imbued with in all the years of its turbulent history. Only when she was faced by the presence of Celia, adorned as at the last moment of life, did Emily's certainty about the realm of the possible start to crumble.

As the key finished its circular passage and the final tumbler fell into place Emily found herself transported into the world of a vision. Standing directly in front of her was Celia: naked, wet and looking distraught. Around her the flames danced, not touching Celia but reflected in the water droplets giving her the appearance of being enshrouded in a cascade of opals. Like some saint carrying the instrument of their martyrdom as an emblem, the water neither ran down Celia's slim frame nor was it dried up by the flames' heat. In her left hand she carried the single razor blade and from her right hand, hanging loosely at her side, dripped a steady, rapid succession of viscous globules of crimson blood.

Celia did not seem to speak, her face as still as a Byzantine icon. Even so Emily heard her voice. It was expressionless and distant, as though the form of an icon had taken on the nature of sound.

"Welcome to my world, sister. This is your true inheritance, and I am freed."

Emily was dumb-struck. The chilling dead voice announced:

"You are owned by the house and its blood-line now. You are the ransom I had to pay."