My Name Is Lydia (Jack Nightingale short story) (2 page)

“I entirely agree,”
said Mahoney. “Which is where you come in. Jenny says you’re something of an
expert in supernatural matters.”

“I’ve seen more than
my share of odd stuff,” said Nightingale. “Though I wouldn’t claim expert
status.”

“I’d like you to come
with me to see the girl.”

Nightingale shook his
head. “I’m not interested in watching an exorcism. I don’t believe in them.”

“No, no. And I
certainly can’t contemplate carrying out an exorcism without the express
authority of the Bishop. I’d be hoping that together we could persuade the
parents to abandon the idea, and perhaps seek more conventional help.”

“Well, as it happens,
I do have a few holes in my current schedule,” said Nightingale. “When were you
thinking?”

“No time like the
present,” said Mahoney with a smile. “Shall we take my car?”

* * *

It took just over an
hour for Father Mahone’s grey Kia to get to the Warrens’ house in Strawberry
Hill. Nightingale took in the double frontage, the large garage, the
immaculately tended front lawn and
flower beds
, and
decided that the family definitely weren’t short of money. Father Mahoney
parked on the
drive,
the two men got out and headed
for the front door, where the priest rang the bell.

The woman who answered
the door was tall and slim, wearing a neat pink suit that looked as if was
probably Chanel. Her hair was an immaculate golden-blond, but it didn’t
disguise the fact that she was in her mid-fifties. Christine must have been a
very late arrival in her life. She smiled at Mahoney, and offered her hand.
They shook, formally, as if she was thanking him for a stirring sermon. “This
is Mr Nightingale,” said the priest by way of introduction. “I mentioned him.
He’s very experienced in matters like this.”

She nodded and flashed
Nightingale a worried smile. “Susan Warren, Mr Nightingale.”

“Call me Jack,
please.”

Another nod, but she
made no attempt to use his first name, just showed them into the hall.
Nightingale took a look around. The hall seemed bigger than his whole flat in
Bayswater. The Warrens definitely had money.
A lot of it.

“Father Mahoney said
you have had some experience in possession,” said the woman.

“Susan, we’re not sure
that Christine is possessed,” said the priest.

“How else can you
explain what’s happening to her,” said Mrs Warren.

“That’s why Jack is
here,” said Mahoney. “Let’s let him tall to her and we can see what he thinks.”

“She’s in her
bedroom.”

“She didn’t go to
school?”

“We’re keeping her at
home until this is resolved,” said Mrs Warren. “Last night she…” She shuddered
and didn’t finish the sentence. She led the way upstairs, past three closed
doors,
then
opened the fourth with a key which she
took from her jacket pocket.

“You keep her locked
in her room?” said Nightingale.

Mrs Warren flinched as
if he’d struck her. “Christine is my daughter and I love her with all my heart,
but you don’t understand what she’s like.”

“What happened last
night?” asked Nightingale.

Mrs Warren continued to
stare at the door, the key in her hand. “We have a dog.
A
small dog.
A Jack Russell.
Lovely little thing.
So loyal.
Loved Christine to bits.” She shuddered.
“She killed it last night. We’re not sure how. But at some point she used a
kitchen knife. She cut Poppy up and spread her insides around the kitchen.” She
shuddered again, then took a deep breath and composed herself before opening
the door. “Christine, some people to see you,” she said. “You remember Father
Mahoney, and this is Mr Nightingale.”

The girl lay on the
bed, watching ‘Frozen’ on a wide-screen TV on the opposite wall. She clicked
the mute button as they entered, then stood up to meet them, shaking her long,
blond hair over her shoulders and straightening
her
skirt. “Hello, Father Mahoney,” she said. “Hello Mr Nightingale.”

Nightingale’s eyes
were drawn to the bandages wrapped round both of her wrists, but, apart from
them, she looked a normal, cheerful eleven year-old, her smile showing perfect
teeth and her blue eyes lively and intelligent.

“Why have they come to
see me?” Christine asked her mother.

“They’ll explain,”
said Susan Warren. “I’ll leave you with her, gentlemen.”

“Mummy, I want to go
outside and play.”

“Maybe later,” said
Mrs Warren.

“And where’s Poppy. I
keep calling her but she won’t come.”

She opened the door to
leave but Father Mahoney held up his hand. “No, no, Susan, we shouldn’t be
alone with Christine without a parent present, please stay.”

“Well, it’ll be rather
crowded,” she said. “Perhaps we should go downstairs?”

“Fine,” said Mahoney,
and Mrs Warren led them all down to a large drawing
room
which
looked out onto the rear garden. Christine and the priest sat on
the long dark-green leather Chesterfield sofa, with Nightingale and the girl’s
mother in the matching armchairs facing them. Mrs Warren looked at Father
Mahoney and nodded.

“So, Christine,” he
began. “How have you been?”

“Fine thank you,
Father.”

She held up her
bandaged wrists.

“Except this. I was
sleepwalking, and mummy says I fell and cut myself. It hurt a bit at first, but
it’s healing up now.”

“Do you often
sleepwalk?” asked Nightingale.

“I don’t think so, do
I mummy? But I don’t know really, I’d be asleep when it happens. I don’t
remember.”

“Sometimes she does,”
said her mother. “But she’s never hurt herself before.”

“Do you know anyone
called Lydia?” asked Mahoney.

“Lydia?” repeated
Christine, wrinkling her face into a puzzled look. “I don’t think so. She’s not
in my class.”

The priest opened his
briefcase and took out a well-thumbed copy of The Bible, opened it and handed
it to the girl. “I wonder if you could read that for me Christine, where it
says Twenty Three.”

She smiled.

“Oh yes, I know that
one. Mrs Hemmings reads it in assembly quite often. The Lord is my shepherd. I
shall not want...”

She read confidently
and fluently, and Mahoney let her carry on to the end of the psalm before
resuming his questions. “Do you believe in Jesus, Christine?”

“Oh yes,” she said. “I
really like Bible stories.”

Father Mahoney nodded
and took a small vial out of his pocket, took off the top, sprinkled a few
drops of liquid on his hands, then drew the sign of the cross on the girl’s
forehead. “May God bless you and keep you safe, my child,” he said.

Christine smiled
again. “Thank you, Father,” she said. “Do you think if I pray enough, He might
stop me sleepwalking?”

“Maybe He will, my
dear.”

Father Mahoney looked
at her mother and nodded.

“That’s fine,
Christine,” said Mrs Warren. “You can run along upstairs and finish your film
now.”

“Thanks, Mum,” said
the girl. “Nice to see you, Father.
And you, Mr Nightingale.
Are you a priest too? You don’t dress like one.”

“Not quite,” said
Nightingale. “Though today I’m a priest’s assistant, I suppose. Nice to meet
you, Christine.”

The girl left the
room, and her mother turned her attention to Father Mahoney.

“Was that it?” she
asked. “That was the exorcism? Surely there’s more to it than that?”

“That wasn’t an
exorcism, Mrs Warren,” said the priest. “And I won’t be performing one.
Whatever’s wrong with Christine is nothing to do with demonic possession.”

“But how can you
tell?”

“She took the Bible
and read it aloud, I crossed her with Holy Water and she accepted Jesus. No
demon would ever do any of those things, much less all three.
There’s no grounds
at all for recommending an exorcism. It’s
not a priest you need, but a doctor.”

The woman slumped
forward and buried her face in her hands. “But what am I going to do? I’m at my
wits’ end. She killed our dog. Killed her and mutilated her. What 11-year-old
behaves like that?”

This time it was Nightingale
who spoke.

“Why don’t you tell me
a little more about what has happened, Mrs
Warren.
Perhaps I could offer some suggestions. When did these episodes start?”

The woman raised her
head and looked over at him as if she’d almost forgotten his presence. She took
a deep breath before answering him.

“She’s always been
prone to nightmares, ever since she was a toddler. Maybe once a month or so,
she’d wake up screaming in the small hours, never anything coherent, just
babbling nonsense. Once she woke up properly, she never remembered anything
about it. In fact the nightmares got less frequent after about the age of
eight. But all of this new stuff started about four months ago.”

“Did anything seem to
cause it?” asked Nightingale.

“Not directly. Though,
it was around the time of her first... well, when she reached puberty.”

 
“So what exactly has been happening?” he
asked. I’ve heard about the self-harming.
And the dog.
But what else has happened?”

 
“Well, about three months ago, she
started having nightmares again and would wake up screaming, but this time
there was a pattern to it. One of us, Matthew my husband or I, would go into
her, and she’d sit bolt upright in the bed and start cursing us. Really foul
language, stuff we had no idea she knew.
And wishing such
awful things on us.
That was bad enough, but what really drove her to
hysterics was when we used her name. She’d scream torrents of bile at us, and
insist we called her ‘Lydia’. Then after half an hour or so, she’d slump back
exhausted and sleep through till morning. In the morning she’d have no
recollection of anything, and just be her normal self again. As sweet and
caring as ever.”

“Have you seen a
doctor?”

“My husband is a
doctor...but neither of us want...want to have her labelled. As you can probably
tell, she came to us late in life, and she means the world to both of us. We
don’t want to involve psychiatrists.”

Nightingale found that
a little hard to believe. If a much-loved child
was
showing evidence of a psychological disorder, then surely the parents would
seek professional help?

“But your husband
would know specialists, surely? Him being a doctor.”

“Matthew says it
wouldn’t be a good idea.”

“But it hasn’t just
been nightmares and hysteria, has it?” he asked.

The woman nodded.
“That’s right.
We were told by a family friend
that
they’d seen Christine hanging around with a group of older boys on her way back
from school. They even thought she was smoking.”

“What did she say to
that?”

“Denied it absolutely.
Said she didn’t have any friends at school except the ones in her class, and
she hated smoking. That part’s true, she nagged Matthew for months until he
gave up. But after...after the time she cut herself, we found a packet of
cigarettes in her room...and her breath smelled of smoke. It’s just not like
her. It makes no sense.”

“And the car? Father
Mahoney said she’d damaged a car?”

“Yes.
Matthew’s Jaguar.
One night we heard the garage door open,
and we found her in there with a front door-key, scratching every panel of it.
She just hurled abuse at us when we tried to stop
her,
she scratched Matthew with her nails when he pulled her away. Again she said
she couldn’t remember anything about it in the morning.
And
then this last thing.
Cutting herself.”

“Tell me.”

“We found her in the
bath. It looked worse than it was because it doesn’t take much blood to
discolour the water. Matthew said the cuts were superficial, across the wrist
rather than up. As if she wanted to make us worry. And then she started
screaming and swearing at us again while we were bandaging her. In the morning
she was crying and wanted to know what happened. We just made up the
sleepwalking story to calm her down.”

Nightingale nodded,
looked across at Father Mahoney, shrugged his shoulders and shook his head. He
had no idea what was going on.

“Susan,” said the
priest. “There really is nothing either of us can do here, it’s out of our
area. Honestly, I can only suggest again you seek medical advice for her.”

The woman nodded. Her
lower lip quivered and she was clearly close to tears. “I’ll talk to Matthew,”
she said. “Thank you both for at least trying.”

“I’ll just pop up and
say goodbye to Christine,” said Nightingale. He headed up the stairs.
Christine’s door was open. She was sitting on her bed, her hands in her lap.
“We’re off now,” he said. “Nice to have met you.”