Dark Confluence (22 page)

She sat back in the driver’s seat, breathing hard. Not only were the dead rising, but also they seemed trapped in this plane against their will. Was this the intent of the rebels, something planned and malicious, or was it simply a side effect, a natural reaction to what was going on. Jen stared out at the mist-filled streets, tears streaming down her face. Surely, the dead deserved their rest. It was intolerable that they were being driven out of their graves.

Jen stilled, the thought freezing in her mind, remembering what she was doing here and what lay ahead in the day. Immediately, she turned the key in the ignition. The newspaper would have to wait; there was someone she urgently needed to speak to and this might be the only opportunity to do so.

*

Despite the hazards of the mist, Jen drove fast to the cemetery just outside the town. Her car was the first one there, so she hastily parked and hurried over to where the gravestones were located.

It did not take her long to find the one she was looking for, the slender young red-haired woman sitting atop the gravestone was as good a marker as any tall cross or spire. Jen walked self-consciously up to the grave, feeling at a loss of how to act, or what to say. As she moved closer, it seemed to Jen that the woman did not look the least bit like a spirit. She seemed to be solid, not the translucent portrayal of ghosts in movies and on television. The only thing that marked her as different was the fact that her clothing and hair seemed to move of its own accord, as if tossed by an unseen wind, and that a subtle light seemed to shine within her. She also seemed oblivious to Jen’s presence, staring down, fascinated by her own gravesite.

Jen cleared her throat, “Anna?”

The shade looked up curiously at Jen, “I...I think that was my name.”

“You’re young.”

“It is how I remember myself.”

Jen hesitantly smiled, understanding, “You waiting for Tom?”

“Tom? Tom. Yes, that was his name also.” She cocked her head as if she listened to something beyond, “He will come soon enough.” She smiled gently, “His spirit is still tied to his body, but once he sees me here, he will understand that it’s time to move on.”

“Tom’s a good man, he was a good friend,” Jen simply said.

“A good husband too,” Anna said, “Even in this altered state, I felt sad for leaving him behind for so many years.”

“What is it like?” Jen asked simply, lifting her hand in a vague expression that questioned everything about her.

Anna seemed to understand the question that Jen could not properly put into words. “More wonderful than you could ever imagine,” she replied. “Death is not something to be feared, just a transition into another phase of our existence. Like a butterfly emerging from the chrysalis of mortality.”

“Is there a Hell?”

The brightness in Anna’s face clouded a little, “Not a place, but a spirit can be imprisoned in a hellish existence. I have seen the trapped ones, replaying their mistakes and sins over and over again, like a film clip caught in an endless repeating loop.” She sighed, “Until they can forgive themselves they cannot move on.”

“And the Fae?”

“The Fae are...themselves, a part of nature, a part of the natural world, just a part that is hidden to most humans.” Anna looked at her, “You’ve been touched by them. Sighted?”

Jen nodded.

Anna fell silent again as if listening to voices unheard and others unseen.

“You must aid them. Your suspicions are correct about what has been happening. The Fae path is corrupted and almost entirely blocked. When that happens, there will be terrible consequences for the mortal world. You must unblock the Fae path so the Courts can move through and hunt these...rebels.”

Jen shuddered, “I’ve thought and thought, and I don’t know how to do it. I fear that no one will listen to me. I don’t have that sort of influence, standing, or connections.”

Anna looked at her, “Then you must take direct action.”

“How?”

Anna smiled gently, “You will know when it is time, but aid will be given, if you are strong enough to call for it.”

“Fionn?”

“Fionn...aye, the
Gancanagh will aid you, but first you must call for him.”

Jen’s face drained of blood, “But that will be a sin!”

“Which is worse?” Anna asked. “Is the greater sin the one against your principles, or to sin against all those innocent children taken by the rebel Fae?”

Jen looked at her feet and mumbled, “It seems that I don’t have any choice, since you put it like that.”

Anna smiled gently, “Even in death, we have choices, and the possession of the answers to those choices.”

She looked up and across the cemetery, “Others are coming, it would probably be best if I fade now. I don’t think the others are Sighted, but still, I don’t want to distress them today.”

She looked back at Jen, “If you are able, tell my son...” she seemed to think for a moment, and then recollected his name. “Tell Matthew that I am happy and that Tom will be well looked after. Oh, and tell him to get that mole checked on his neck.”

Jen gulped and nodded. She glanced back to the carpark; it was indeed starting to fill with a number of vehicles. When she looked back a moment later, Anna was gone.

Jen knelt briefly at the gravesite and offered up a silent word of thanks to Tom’s wife. Standing, Jen noticed a distant figure at the far end of the cemetery, a figure hooded and garbed in grey and holding something, cloth or perhaps a robe in their hands. The figure seemed strangely familiar, as if a recollection from a memory or dream. For a brief moment, their eyes met and the woman, for Jen had determined that much about the figure, inclined her head, then turned and vanished into the trees. Distantly, she heard a voice calling, or was it in song, it was hard to tell, the mist tended to swallow up all sound.

Jen shivered, goose bumps rising upon her skin, and she briskly she walked away towards the chapel, rubbing the warmth back into her arms.

*

The funeral service was simple, yet touching. Jen had sat at the back of the small chapel adjoining the cemetery and joined in with the other country folk in singing the hymns and listening to the various people who came forward to speak about Tom’s life.

Towards the end of the service, Jen noticed a bright sphere of light rise up from the coffin and drift haphazardly down the aisle, stopping and bobbing at several points. At each stop, the sphere of light increased in brilliance, bathing the people nearby in light, although the people involved seemed to notice nothing at all.

Eventually, the globe of light had drifted down to her and Jen, her eyes brimming with unshed tears smiled gently at it.

“Go, Tom, Anna is waiting for you,” she whispered.

At her words, the light brightened again, and she felt gentle warmth suffuse her. The light bobbed and danced, as if for a moment unsure of what to do, and then it moved purposefully at the door and then through it, and finally it was gone.

Jen sighed and dabbed at her welling eyes with a tissue. ‘So that is what death is,’ she thought. Anna was right, a shedding of the mortal frame to become... energy, light, something unknowable. She felt comforted. It was reassuring to know that despite the trials of mortality, life goes on.

When the chapel service had ended, Jen did not go back to the gravesite with the others. She had already said her goodbyes and she had a gut feeling that both Anna and Tom had moved on. It was not necessary to be there and she would rather not encounter any further spirits that might be active in the graveyard this day. No, she had plans to make and if what she sensed about the woman in grey was correct, then she had a lot of work ahead of her and little time to complete it.

*

Chapter 19

Senior Sergeant Maxwell sat back in his ancient cracked vinyl chair and rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand. He was finding it increasingly difficult to concentrate on the paperwork spread on the table before him. Thankfully, there had been no further child abductions, although the last one, forty-eight hours prior, had taken the number to five in total. To make it worse there was no hint, no clue, and no trail that he and the others on the case could follow. A federal investigative agency were now in the town, a strike-force comprising twenty-three officers from Brisbane and interstate, replacing the state police counterparts who had been sent back to their own branches. Technically, they were here to deal with the abductions, brought in under the umbrella of the newly coined Operation Autumn-Mist. Yet their investigations seemed to extend beyond the confines of the abductions to areas that, to Senior Sergeant Maxwell’s eyes, seemed totally unrelated. He was not at all happy about the intrusions onto his turf, and both he and the Senior Constable had written emails back to headquarters complaining about it.

He stared at all the reports and ticked the numbers off on his fingers. Five abductions, three mysterious deaths, livestock mutilations, a host of missing or dead domestic animals, a school block slowly but surely being consumed by an out of control watermelon vine, and reports of flocks of birds and mobs of native animals moving, fleeing almost, from the Hinterlands down to the lowlands of the coast. Of course, there was the storm, the earth tremor and the recent shocking news from the local council that many buildings in the town itself were starting to crumble and crack, forcing the council to put up warning tape across many entrances and doors.

The Senior Sergeant shook his head, trying to clear the damned cloudiness from his mind. If he was a superstitious man, he would be thinking that the town was cursed, or at any rate, rapidly heading to hell in a hand basket. He just could not understand it. Years, even decades of quiet policing, then all this all at once. A few days ago, he had tried to find clues to link it all together, trying to understand what was causing the disturbances. He even had outlined it all on a brand-new whiteboard, to no avail. The troubles that Emerald Hills was experiencing seemed to have no rhyme or reason.

It was a good thing that most of the old families had decided to up and leave, or take lengthy vacations away. One by one, they had filed into his office, or sent phone messages, telling him various stories of being called away, or needing a well-deserved holiday. The families with young children had been the first to go. The school finally forced to close, as pupil numbers dropped to single digits for most classes. The only families that remained seemed to be the newcomers, the ones with the most tenuous hold to the region. He wondered why. Even the perennial CLS had temporarily closed up shop, their Chairwoman citing extenuating circumstances.

He held up one piece of paper, it was a request from his own Senior Constable asking for redeployment off the Hinterlands. The Senior Sergeant stared at the request and tossed it back into the ‘in-tray’. He knew that Sanderson was eager to rejoin his family in Gympie, but with all this work here, well he would have to think on that. He was reluctant to allow the feds full reign here in Emerald Hills and he did not want to lose his partner. No, Sanderson would have to remain, at least until he could contact the Superintendent at headquarters on the coast and arrange for a replacement.