‘We’ll wait,’ said Lydia at the head of the oak table. Her hooded eyes were in a fixed gaze.
The three sisters looked at her in anticipation.
Rain battered the windows. There was a rumble of thunder in the distance.
‘Maybe he’s struggling to get through because …’ Joan looked outside.
‘Shall we close the curtains?’ asked Shona.
‘It makes things cozier,’ said Lydia. ‘No lights.’
Shona stared up the street, then closed the curtains. She hurried to her seat.
Helen asked, ‘Do you think he will come?’
‘Possibly …’ The answer hung in the air.
A flash of lightning made the orange drapes glow.
Helen gasped, putting her pallid hands to her mouth.
Shona counted to herself - one, two, three. The thunderclap was overhead.
Helen clamped her hands tighter over the scream trying to escape.
Joan glanced at her sideways, then looked at Lydia.
Lydia’s eyes were closed. Her chest moved rhythmically under the black lace of her long-sleeved blouse.
‘I hope he comes,’ said Joan in a whisper.
Shona nodded. ‘I’ve missed him.’
Another flash was followed immediately by a boom. The living room door rattled. Reaching for Joan’s hand, Helen’s eyes shut tight.
‘I’m cold,’ said Joan. ‘We should light the fire.’
‘No lights,” Lydia said. Shona grabbed Joan’s other hand. Her skin felt dry and hard. ‘You’re shivering, Joan.’
‘It has gone chilly,’ chipped in Helen. ‘I can feel a draught on my ankles.’
The three women looked at each other and then at Lydia. She was pale. Her eyelids were veined and violet. Her pursed lips blue around the edges. Her chest moved up and down.
‘Is she okay?’ asked Shona, reaching for Lydia’s hand. ‘Not cold,’ she said.
The rain tapped at the window behind the orange curtain. Tap, tap, tap. A gust under the door caught the drapes, lifting them away from the panes. The orange billowed like a flickering fire.
Helen’s eyes widened as she watched the ‘flame.’ Another thunderclap made her heart thud. She resisted leaving her seat and saying she wasn’t waiting for him any longer; instead, she took Lydia’s other hand, completing the circle.
Lydia’s head fell back, and her eyes opened – dark, staring eyes. She began breathing deeply. Snorts came from her nose.
All three sisters watched as green vapour emanated from Lydia’s mouth. It swirled and twisted towards the middle of the circle, where it hovered for a few seconds before spiraling upwards – stretching itself – thickening itself.
Helen felt sick. The smell. It was like … It was like … death. The stench of death. The morgue. The covered trolley.
‘Yes, it’s him – I think,’ she’d said to the police that day after Joan’s call, then rushed two hundred miles home to her family. She’d driven like a maniac through fog to get back to Pete and her kids. She’d escaped the insular world her father had created and hadn’t returned to see if he’d moved on with his small-minded opinions. And now … there was remorse.
Shona could smell death too; she could even taste it. Rusty blood and rotting meat. She’d been travelling in South America. He knew that. She only got back that morning. She couldn’t phone; there was no signal, no internet. But he didn’t understand. He was opposed to her ‘freedom.’ Shona was his youngest child. The one he loved. The only one who hadn’t in his eyes – deserted him.
Her sisters had long gone. One to the first decent man who ever showed an interest in her, and the second lost to …
Joan gripped Shona’s hand. Her ragged nails dug into her sister’s flesh. The memory flashed into her mind.
His body. His lifeless, maggot-ridden body, lying where he’d fallen from his bed.
A neighbour had forced the door. The stench from the flat was unbearable.
Joan had the call in the middle of the day. Two empty wine bottles lay on the living room carpet, and a third stood open on the table. She’d got a taxi. Arriving just ahead of the doctor and the police, she saw the full impact of her actions.
Neglect.
Was it neglect? It was certainly escape, thought Joan.
Firstborn Joan had endured most of her father’s moods. At seven years old, she had two younger sisters and had lost her mother, who’d died giving birth to Shona. Life in a block of flats in London’s East End. The thought made her shudder.
At nine, she took control and became the housewife. The little flat was spotless. She pleaded with him to buy her a washing machine. It was a twin tub, and she had a huge pair of wooden tweezers to take the washing from one section and put it in the next. For a while, she enjoyed doing things around the flat. School phoned up, but he was always clever at telling them what they wanted to hear.
Brenda, the next-door neighbour, popped in now and again to make sure the two younger kids were okay. Sometimes she brought home-cooked shepherd’s pie, and they’d all sit on the sofa with their plates on their knees and watch Wacky Races on TV.
When Joan was ten, her father started to go to the pub and left her in charge of the others. He came home steaming drunk. Joan could hear him stumbling past their bedroom. She stayed silent and hugged her siblings in their double bed.
She hadn’t hugged anyone in a double bed since she left the flat ten years ago, at seventeen. All she hugged in her tiny bedsit were her wine bottles. One of the traits she inherited from him.
Joan had heard about his lottery win from Brenda. They’d met in Sainsbury’s. Joan turned around and went the other way when she saw her, but Brenda had called Joan’s name. She looked in Joan’s wine-filled basket and raised her eyebrows.
‘We don’t talk anymore,’ Brenda said. ‘He thinks everyone is out to get the money off him. I know he goes down the Dog and Gun a lot, but otherwise, he keeps himself to himself. Misery.’
And there it was – that inner voice giving Joan guilt.
She looked up at the form standing on the table.
‘Dad?’ she asked.
The form nodded.
Helen began to cry.
‘We’ve been waiting for you,’ said Shona, shaking.
Lydia snorted.
The form bent down to Shona’s eye level, inspecting her. It lifted its arm high above its head. The index finger pointed at Shona.
‘You left me,’ Lydia rasped in a deep, controlled voice.
‘I didn’t leave,’ said Shona. ‘I came back from travelling to see you.’
The voice from Lydia said, ‘And I was dead!’ The word dead echoed off the walls.
Shona bit her lip. Joan squeezed her hand.
Their father turned towards Joan.
Lydia grunted as the form moved. Her face contorted; it was grey, and her cheeks were hollow.
Joan looked from Lydia to the old man, who was staring at her. The eyes were formed in its face; they bulged. Red veins showing in the yellow, which was once white, before the old man’s drinking made him ill. Joan was mesmerized.
‘My turn,’ she said.
Lydia laughed maniacally. Spittle from her mouth hit Joan on the cheek.
Joan wanted to wipe it away. She hated the feeling and the smell, and the memories. She’d had that spittle on her face before.
‘You did it,’ Lydia shouted, as the form pointed at Joan.
Joan closed her eyes.
‘I only ever helped you,’ she managed to say. She forced herself to look at him.
Again, a maniacal laugh.
Joan shuddered.
The orange curtains shivered as the form pursed its lips and blew.
‘You selfish mare,’ shouted Lydia. ‘All you want is my money and it’s hidden from you.’
‘Selfish! I lost my childhood to you.’
Helen caught Joan’s eye and shook her head. If they had any chance of getting the money, they had to stay on the right side of him.
The form now turned to Helen. Lydia grimaced with the effort.
‘You ran away with that man. The only man that ever looked at you.’
Helen’s eyes prickled.
‘You whore!’ Lydia’s body jerked as the harsh words were forced from her.
‘No!’ said Joan, summoning the courage to protect her sister. ‘Stop this.’
‘She got herself pregnant,’ said the form. ‘And he didn’t have the guts to tell her to piss off!’
Helen sobbed. Her throat hurt with the effort she’d made to stifle her pain.
‘You nasty, old bastard,’ said Joan, under her breath.
Lydia let out a long sigh. The women could smell their father’s breath: whiskey and tobacco.
‘Is she fading?’ asked Shona.
Joan looked at Lydia. She was pale. Her eyelids flickered, threatening to open and end the séance.
‘Dad,’ said Joan.
The form turned.
‘Dad.’ Joan was using the voice she’d honed as a child. The voice that she tried to manage him with when he was drinking.
He tipped his head as if listening.
‘Dad, pleeese,’ she said like a nine-year-old child begging for a new toy.
The form bent down to Joan.
‘What?’ came through Lydia.
Joan recognized the tone and flinched.
‘Dad, we’re all skint,’ she said bravely. ‘After all we’ve done, could you just help us a little? We deserve it. Please tell us where the money is.’
‘Money?’ said Lydia.
‘Please, Dad.’
The ethereal form thickened further. It turned orange like the glow of the waving curtains. The face of the being went pink and then red. Its eyes protruded and focused on Joan.
Joan shrank. She was reminded of the time he spanked her with her hairbrush after she threw half a bottle of whisky down the drain. His love of drink was greater than his love of his children, apart from Shona.
‘You!’ roared Lydia. ‘How dare you!’
Joan didn’t take her eyes away from her father, but the other two sisters looked at Lydia, who began coughing as if her throat was raw.
Helen felt Lydia trying to release her hand. She held tight. If they broke the circle, the séance would finish, and they would never find out about the money.
The medium gasped for breath.
‘Dad, look what you’re doing to Lydia. Please,’ begged Joan.
The front door banged open against the banisters; the sisters gulped. Wind came under the living room door and made the curtains wave frantically.
Lydia’s chest heaved.
The two younger women looked from the curtains to her.
Joan’s eyes narrowed but remained fixed on her father.
Lydia started wheezing.
‘We have to stop,’ shouted Helen.
‘No! Where is the money?’ Joan demanded.
‘You,’ shouted Lydia. His finger indicated Joan.
‘You,’ Lydia’s voice was weaker.
Joan’s breath came rapidly as he stared at her.
‘You, murderer!’
Lydia screamed, broke the circle, and the women’s father disappeared.
The wind died down. The curtains stopped billowing. The front door clunked.
The sisters looked at each other in silence.
When they turned to Lydia, her face was white. There was a blue tinge around her mouth, and a tiny dribble of spittle was making its way down her chin.
‘She’s okay,’ said Shona, holding Lydia’s wrist between her fingers.
‘I want to get out of here,’ said Helen. ‘I feel sick.’
‘We’ll never know where that money is now,’ said Joan, sitting back in her chair.
The women left Lydia in her front room. They fastened their coats against the wind and rain and bent into it.
‘Let’s go to the pub,’ said Joan.
‘Hello, ladies,’ came a voice from across the road. ’What are you doing in this neck of the woods?’
It was Brenda, their father’s former neighbour. She looked good in a brown fur coat and Russian style hat. She waved her leather-gloved hand at the sisters.
‘Fancy seeing you round here,’ she said, looking Joan up and down. ‘I live here now. A much nicer area.’
Helen bridled. ‘You come into money then, Brenda?’ she asked.
. ‘Well… I …er … met a man,’ she said.
‘We haven’t seen you since that day,’ said Joan, alluding to the day her father’s body was found.
‘No, I moved not long after,’ said Brenda. Her face under the Russian hat began to flush.
A light bulb went on in Joan’s head.
‘We’ve just been to see a medium,’ blurted out Shona.
‘Oh,’ said Brenda.
‘Yeah, Dad told us where the money went,’ lied Joan. Shona and Helen looked at her.
‘Yes, Brenda. He told us it was you!’
Brenda looked startled.
‘What?’
‘You, Brenda, you took it. The silly old git kept it under his mattress, didn’t he, and you stole it.’
‘How dare you,’ Brenda retorted.
‘I know it was you, Brenda,’ said Joan. ‘That money wasn’t there when I last saw him.’
‘The day he died, Joan,’ said Brenda. ‘I saw you there that day.’
‘You don’t know what day he died, Brenda. We didn’t find him till later.’
Shona and Helen stood away from Joan and stared at her.
‘I do, Joan,’ said Brenda. ‘I saw you running away. You didn’t shut the door. I went in just after you’d been, and he was dead.’
‘Then why didn’t you tell the police?’ screamed Shona.
Brenda and Joan both looked at each other. They knew why.
Brenda pushed past Joan and marched away. ‘Don’t even think about contacting me. I know too much,’ she shouted.
‘What was that?’ asked Helen. ‘What does she know?’
Joan walked on. ‘I need a drink.’
‘What did you do?’ asked Shona, pulling Joan back by her arm.
‘We needed the money,’ spat Joan.
‘Joan, what happened?’ asked Helen.
‘It was for us,’ Joan said quietly.
‘What?’
‘Okay, I hit him,’ she shouted. ‘I went to see him, and I hit him with his whisky bottle.’
Her sisters recoiled.
‘He tried to kiss me, like he always did. It reminded me of those nights. He was pissed as usual. I’d heard about his win, and I begged him for money. For all of us. He just laughed. The spit hit my face and I … It was for us.’
‘You bitch,’ shouted Shona.
‘No, I …’
Helen shook her head.
‘Pleeese,’ said Joan.
Her sisters walked away from her.
‘Pleeese …’ she cried into the wind. ‘It was for us.’
A thunderclap boomed.
Joan sank to the ground. ‘Pleeese …’
Through her tears, she watched them leave. She put her face in her hands. The rain poured down on her and she didn’t care.
***
‘Joan.’
A hand was under her arm, pulling her to her feet. A second hand helped.
Joan looked up. It was her sisters.
They both hugged her.
‘God, Joan,’ said Helen. ‘We didn’t realize what went on.’
Joan sobbed into Helen’s shoulder. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘We know,’ said Shona. ‘We know.’
About the author
Lynn is a regular writer for Cafelit. Her first flash fiction collection, The City of Stories,' is published by Chapeltown Books. See 5-star reviews - #amazonthecityofstorieslynnclement Lynn has stories in The Best of Cafelit 11 12 & 13. and 14
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