“You’re my mum,” I said, a look of enlightenment no doubt appearing upon whatever kind of face I had.
“Your mum isn’t dead.”
“Oh no, I suppose not. I’ve rather lost touch with my mum. Then who? Sandra, is that you?”
The beautiful being shook her golden head and rolled her eyes of summertime blue.[24]
“You young dodder,” she said. “I’m Mother Demdike!”
Now, I have to confess that this caught me by surprise.
It did.
It really did.
But if that caught me by surprise, then what happened next and what happened after that, caught me by even greater surprise. And, as surprises had never been particularly happy things for me whilst I’d been alive, I suppose I should have had no good reason to suppose that they would be any better at all now that I was dead. So to speak.
And they weren’t.
“I can’t stay for long,” said Mother Demdike. “I have a lot of bad memories and I don’t want to dwell upon them here and find myself stuck. I just wanted to tell you that I don’t bear you any malice for what you did.”
“And quite right too,” I told her. “Because none of it was my fault. I was used. I was manipulated.”
“That is true up to a point,” said the hag who now was beautiful. “You were not responsible for all of your actions later.”
“Never,” I said. “None of it was my fault.”
“I’m afraid that is not true. The being that chose to use you did not choose you at random. It chose you because you were a suitable vehicle. The badness was already in you. You were already a wrong’n, Gary. A bad, bad boy.”
“I never was,” I protested. “What makes you say such a thing?”
“I thought you could remember all of your life, Gary. All the missing pieces. All the pieces that it seemed that you slept through.”
“I can,” I said.
“So you’re not, perhaps, blocking one or two of them out?”
“Why would I want to do that?”
“Because you don’t want to remember what you did. Not what the being that controlled you did. But what you did, when you were young.”
“Oh,” I said. “I know what you’re talking about. You’re talking about Mr Penrose. How I brought him back from the dead. Well, I am sorry about that and if I see him I will apologize for that.”
Mother Demdike shook her head. “Not him,” she said. “Before him. What you did to me.”
“To you?”
And then I remembered. Oh yes. I remembered what I’d done to Mother Demdike.
“I …”
“Say it, Gary.”
“I …”
“Go on.”
“I … killed … you …” I said.
“Yes,” said Mother Demdike. “You did. That night in my hut. You said that I was hideous. Ugly. You said that you were doing me a favour. Doing everyone a favour. And you cut my head off and used my skull to mix up the herbs you needed to reanimate Mr Penrose. You said that at last I’d be useful for something.”
“Oh God,” I said. And I wept. I did, and the tears fell down whatever face I had. “I did do it. I’m so sorry.”
“You were psychopathic from childhood. You were just the kind of person Valdec Firesword was looking for. He entered you moments after you killed me. You opened yourself up for him, Gary, once you had murdered someone by your own hand.”
And I wept some more. Like a child, like a baby. Because it does make you weep when you find out for the first time in your life, or in my case for the first time after you’ve died, that you’re a psycho.
A thing like that can really upset you.
“Oh, I am so sorry,” I said with a sob.
And Mother Demdike smiled and patted my shoulder. “I know,” she said. “I knew that you would be. Which was why I came to see you. And to see the look on your face, of course.”
“When I found out what I’d done?” I blubbered.
“That too.”
“That too?”
“It was the other look I wanted to see. And I think I’m about to see it now. Oh yes, here it comes.”
I stared at her and I’m sure some strange kind of look must have come over the face I had. Because I could feel something altogether odd happening to me. Something really uncomfortable. Painful, in fact. Really, really painful. Something was pulling at me. Pulling in all directions at the same time. As if all the little bits of universality that had been filling up my emptiness were being torn right out of me again. And it hurt like crazy, it really, really did.
“Oooh,” I went, and “Ow,” and “Eeeek!” And I clutched at myself and writhed from the ghastly pain.
“That’s the look,” I heard Mother Demdike say. “That’s the look I wanted to see. But I can’t stay to see more – I’ll get stuck. Goodbye, Gary. Enjoy eternity. If you can.” And she laughed. And I saw her rise up before me and float off into the sky. Then my eyes crossed with all the terrible pain and I blacked out and tumbled once more down into that whirling pit of oblivion so often tumbled into by Mr Lazlo Woodbine.
And then I woke up.
I opened my eyes and stared up. At what? Surely that was my kitchen ceiling. And I could feel something. I felt cold, very cold. And wet. And horrible all over, really.
Then I heard this voice. And it was a voice I knew.
And this voice was joined by another voice that I also knew. And both these voices shouted a single word.
“Surprise!”
I turned my head and I stared through foggy, bleary eyes. And, yes, it was Dave. And, yes, it was Sandra. And they both shouted, “Surprise,” once more.
And Sandra blew one of those plastic whistle things. And Dave popped a party popper.
“What?” I went. And I spat out something, lots of something. Dirt. Dirt? Dirt?
“Surprise,” said Dave. “We’ve brought you back from the dead.”
25
It must have been a horrible scream, and a dreadfully loud one too. I’ll bet it rattled the chimneypots. And, had it continued, it would probably have awakened the neighbours from their beds. But it didn’t continue, because Dave rammed his hands across my mouth.
“Shut up!” he said. “You’ll wake the dead. Hey, wake the dead! Eh, that’s a good’n, isn’t it, Sandra?”
“That good’n, Dave.”
I fought to disengage Dave, but I didn’t have much strength in me. No muscle tone, what with my heart not pumping and no blood reaching my muscles and everything.
“Easy, boy,” said Dave. “I know this must have come as a bit of a surprise. But just compose yourself. You can thank Sandra later.”
“Thank Sandra,” said Sandra.
Dave lifted a hand from my mouth.
“Thank Sandra?” I said slowly, spitting out a bit more dirt.
“Her idea,” said Dave. “Her idea to nick your body from the prison, bury it in Mr Doveston’s grave, then reanimate you using that book you borrowed from the library all those years ago. The one you used to reanimate Sandra. She was returning the favour.”
“Gary belong to Sandra now,” said Sandra. “Gary call Sandra ‘Mistress Sandra’.”
“I’ll do no such thing,” I mumbled. Then I felt the pain and remembered just how the spell worked. Whoever reanimates a dead person has control over that dead person. As I’d had control over Sandra. And abused that control. “All right,” I mumbled and spat this time as I mumbled. “I know how it works. But it wasn’t my fault, Sandra. You were at my trial. You know it wasn’t me who did those awful things.”