Chapter 4.44 – Talk to the Dead

The bearded man switched out of his politeness almost as quickly as he’d switched into it. He rounded on the bespectacled brunette. “What could you possibly have to say about my daughter?”

Jessica chewed her lip. “I’ve been talking to her—”

“My daughter’s dead,” Broof said bluntly. “So how exactly have you been talking to her?”

“That’s the thing… I can talk to the dead.”

Now that was a claim and a half. Broof looked to Lilith, who shrugged. He turned back to Jessica. He wasn’t getting any sense that the woman was a witch, or in any way magically inclined, but then his witchy senses were dulled at the best of times.

“Prove it.”

Jessica looked at the floor, up the walls and around the room, then jumped.

She nodded as if listening to something he couldn’t hear. “Sage says ‘hello’.”

“What the hell?” Lilith gasped, stifling a laugh behind her palm. “What kind of weird joke is this?”

Unperturbed, Jessica continued. “She says that she’s thankful that you cleaned the toilet, Broof. The thing was getting frightfully filthy and she knew that Wyatt wouldn’t think to do it. But next time you don’t have to use a toothbrush – there’s a toilet brush in the purple caddy.”

“How do you—?”

Jessica shrugged. “Just passing on a message.”

“This is hilarious!” Lilith guffawed. “I’ll play along. What else has the old witch got to say?”

“She has a message for you too, Lilith.”

“Wait, how do you know my name?”

“Sage says you’re welcome to the bottle of absinthe you found tucked under the kitchen counter, just try not to drink it all in one go like you did with… with the vodka.” Jessica winced then looked confused before she spoke again. “She wouldn’t want to witness a repeat of the 1902 pool incident? Um, does that mean anything to you?”

“Oh my word,” Lilith whispered. “She can talk to the dead.”

The short bus journey to beach had flown by without event. It hadn’t been as crowded, or as exciting, as April had thought it would be.

As the pair trekked up the path to the Borough’s best amusement park, it suddenly dawned on them that it was very quiet. Far too quiet. Despite it being the school summer holidays, the park was abandoned and, when they got nearer, they saw why.

“Closed?” April whined. “How can it be closed?”

Melinda looked at the sign pinned to the gate. “Power failure, apparently.”

“Boo!” April walked in to the park, up to the closed ticket booths where a low barrier blocked her way. “Now what do we do?”

Melinda grinned – it looked kind of maniacal with her light eyes and fiery hair – and she clambered over the barrier.

“What are you doing?” April hissed. “Mel! Come back here in this instant!”

“Why?” Melinda smiled impishly. “No power, no alarm! Come on! No one will see us on the cameras and, and if they have a security guard on, what of it? We’re in disguise remember?”

“Mel!” April admonished her. “This isn’t like you!”

“But I’m not Mel, not today. Today I’m Maude.”

April giggled. “I think these potions have gone to your head, Maude!” She looked around carefully and, seeing no security guards, followed her girlfriend into the empty park.

The two girls stood and surveyed their vacant surroundings.

“It’s kind of eerie, isn’t it?” April whispered.

“Post-apocalyptic,” Melinda agreed. “It’s like we’re the last people on Earth.”

“Ooh, I like this game!” April gushed, clapping her hands together. “So, Maude. We’ve survived the zombie apocalypse, what shall we do first now we have the Earth all to ourselves – go on the ghost train or take the tunnel of love?”

It had been a good while since Lilith had been fully tuned into a good, juicy brain and she was being spoiled with a room full of them, buzzing and questioning their new guest, Miss Jessica Spoon, or rather, Officer Jessica Spoon.

The pair, plus Wyatt who had materialised in the sitting room after what seemed to have been a small cauldron explosion that he explained away with a microwaved potato, were interrogating the poor woman, who was claiming she could speak to ghosts.

“So, let’s get this straight,” Wyatt said, facing Jessica. “You’re not a lunatic?”

Jessica shook her head. “I swear, I’m not.”

“So, Mum’s really still hanging around here?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

Jessica flicked her eyes towards the fireplace then back at Wyatt. “She doesn’t know.”

“Creepy. Does she like… watch me all the time?”

Jessica paused, then blushed. “No. She learned in life not to interfere, especially when you’re alone in your room…”

“Fair,” Wyatt muttered.

“She’s really glad you decided to move back home, though. She says that she’s also really glad that you found your creative spark again. The girls looked incredible this morning…? Are you also a hairdresser or something?”

“Or something. Woah,” Wyatt muttered under his breath to Lilith who was seated beside him. “I think she’s the real deal.”

Lilith nodded her agreement, but her attention was caught elsewhere. She was scrolling through the photos of purple apples and pink-streaked trees on Jessica’s phone that apparently had been sent to Wyatt and that he’d deleted, the dope. Lilith could only see glimpses of the background in the photos but the bathtub of skulls and the collection of bric-a-brac on the coffin looked unerringly familiar.

She was pretty certain that there were no witches buried in her crypt though. So this couldn’t be a plasma fruit tree.

Could it?

“So, you really did find this weird tree in a crypt, along with the ghost of Broof’s daughter?”

“Yes.”

“Where is this crypt?” Broof asked. “I need to visit her.”

“It’s in Forgotten Hollow,” Jessica replied.

“Forgotten Hollow?” Broof repeated. “Why would she be there? She passed and was buried in Glimmerbrook.”

“…She was?” Jessica asked.

“Yes. Did she not know that?”

Jessica was thinking back over her conversation with Rose in Lilith’s very own kitchen. Lilith was a bit spooked to realise that Rose had been hanging around her kitchen for years: she wondered what the teenaged ghost had heard.

Jessica pursed her lips. “Hm. Something’s not adding up here.”

“I knew it!” Broof yelled. “You’re a con artist!”

“I swear I’m not!”

“Get out!”

Jessica went to leave but Lilith turned on her. “You’re not going anywhere and you, calm down,” she snapped at Broof.

“Calm down?! This… this… woman bursts in and tells me that she’s talking to my dead daughter, only for it to be a sick joke?”

“I don’t think it’s a sick joke, Broof,” Lilith said quietly.

“And how do you know?” Broof yelled, jumping to his feet.

“Oh, I don’t know, maybe I can read her mind,”Lilith said, finishing her sentence with a little jolt to his head and fixing him with a hard stare. He snarled at her and then sat back down.

“How old is this girl purporting to be my daughter?”

“Seventeen, her name is Rose and she’s not purporting anything. DNA matches you with her remains.”

“DNA?” Broof asked aghast. “But… how is that possible?”

“Oh my God, dude,” Wyatt butted in. “I’m not the only one with a secret daughter? After all the grief you gave me about Apes!”

“Shut up you; I don’t have a secret daughter.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I’d know!”

“Sounds like a familiar argument,” Wyatt sang. “Who was the unlucky woman? Was it that Sheila you dated in the mid-cent— uh, in university?”

Broof glared at his buddy, then turned his attention back to Jessica. “Does Rose know who her mother was?”

“No. Rose says she was a foundling, found when she was about ten near the graveyard in Glimmerbrook. I know, who leaves their child in a graveyard, right?” Jessica went silent when she realised that the man in front of her might have actually done just that.

“That’s… that’s where Cabbage was buried,” Broof said quietly. “No… I… it can’t be.”

“Can’t be what?”

Broof looked at the floor, and Lilith restrained any kind of reaction. He was thinking of the night he’d tried to resurrect his daughter. He had waited for hours at her graveside, exhausted and bleeding to find out if his spell had been successful before he’d determined that it hadn’t.

But what if he’d just needed to wait a little longer… what if he had just left her there? Newly risen… afraid… impressionable…

With Broof lost in his memories, Lilith took over. “Did Rose say anything else?”

“Yes, Rose said that she herself had a daughter. Jennifer.”

Lilith licked her teeth. It had taken her a long time to tease out of Caleb what had happened between him and Rose that night sixteen years ago. All he’d been able to tell her was a bunch of gibberish: the girl had flown from the moon to commit suicide in front of the local forest-dwelling pervert, apparently.

Oh, and that she’d had a baby daughter.

She made a face. “Jenny.”

Broof must’ve notice the familiarity and confusion in her voice. He turned to her with an inquisitively lifted eyebrow.

“Yes, Jenny,” Jessica said with a beat of suspicion. “We haven’t been able to find Jennifer yet. We only know that she was adopted when she was an infant.”

“And Rose told you all of this?” Broof said, still disbelieving.

“Yes. I know it sounds absolutely out there, but please, trust me. Rose asked me to help find her parents and I walk in here to ask Wyatt about the fruit tree I found and – lo and behold – I find you, Mr. Hogwash. What are the odds?”

“Slim to none,” Broof muttered still not quite believing and caught up in his what if? Could he have raised Cabbage from the dead after all? And then, if he had, what had happened to her afterwards?

“I’m definitely her parent? Not a long-lost cousin?”

“We’re fairly certain that you’re her father, yes.”

“What happened to Rose?” Lilith asked.

“Yeah,” Wyatt jumped in. “Was she adopted, fostered?”

That wasn’t what Lilith had been asking, but she played along.

“In a manner of speaking…” Jessica replied carefully. “She was placed under the care of the Wangshafts.”

Silence fell around the room. Everyone within thirty miles had heard of the Wangshafts and the wayward heir who had recently died. The family, although secretive, were often in the news for all the wrong reasons. And yet no one had heard that they’d had a girl in their care.

It made Lilith feel even colder than she usually did.

How and why Rose had ended up in the forests of Forgotten Hollow was something Lilith had often wondered ever since Caleb brought the dying girl to her kitchen. Now she knew what Rose had been running from, it made up a full picture that got less pretty the more she looked at it.

“Why did she end up with the Wangshafts?” Broof asked.

“She was found by Will Wangshaft, the late Wangshaft heir, and no one came forward for her.”

Broof was having another crisis, but Wyatt jumped in again. “Why did she go to Forgotten Hollow?” he asked. “There’s nothing there but trees and cliffs.”

“She ran away. She heard that people vanished there.”

“And how… how did she… die?” he asked quietly.

Jessica chewed her lip. “She said she encountered a, um, a man who was her unfortunate end.”

“She was murdered?” Wyatt asked.

“Yes.”

Lilith looked back at the photo on the phone, at the plump-looking purple fruit and the glowing, gnarled tree. Could it be? Was the plasma fruit she’d been searching for, for centuries, in her very own backyard?

Because if Rose was Broof’s daughter – then Rose was a murdered witch.

Broof sucked in a big gulp of air and looked at Lilith with some accusation. “Murdered by a man in the forest.” He turned back to Jessica. “I need to see her.”

“I don’t know if that will be possible, I don’t think she can manifest to anyone, but we can certainly let her see you.”

“Yes. Let’s do that; let’s go now.”

“No!” Jessica and Lilith said together.

“No?” Broof questioned them both.

Jessica looked at Lilith quizzically so she had to think fast. “There might be a murderer on the loose!”

“I thought Rose died sixteen years ago?”

“Yes, but there’ve been disappearances and unexplained deaths as recently as a few months ago,” Jessica said. “And it’ll be getting dark soon.”

Lilith jolted as she saw something in Jessica’s mind. Or rather, someone.

How did Jessica know of Seth? Why had he let her remember him? Lilith was rarely interested in humans, but she found Jessica Spoon fascinating.

Had he thought the same?

“I’m not afraid of a murderer,” Broof said, puffed up like an over-inflated balloon. “In fact, the way I’m feeling now, he’d better watch out.”

“Still, I’d feel better going along tomorrow, in the daylight,” Jessica said. “It’s a tricky path to take and won’t be made any easier at night.”

“Yes Broof, listen to the nice police lady,” Lilith said softly, unless you fancy losing your spleen.

My spleen? Broof thought back. Are you threatening me?

Lilith rolled her eyes and Broof grunted. “Okay fine, tomorrow morning, first thing.”

“First thing,” Jessica agreed. “I’ll meet you at Joe’s Bar – are you familiar with that place?”

“I am, I’ve been there once or twice,” Lilith lied.

“Great I’ll meet you there at eight.”

“See you at eight.”

“I’ll see you out,” Wyatt offered. “I’d like to say a few things to my Mum, if you can help? If she’s still here?”

“I’d be happy to.”

As Wyatt escorted his new friend out, Broof turned to Lilith. “I could feel you in my brain then, Lilith.”

Lilith didn’t apologise. “You think Rose and Cabbage are one and same?”

Broof nodded. “It adds up, as much as any of this adds up. She died twice,” he managed around a small sob. “This murderer; is she talking about who I think she’s talking about?”

Lilith looked around cautiously, wondering if Sage had followed her son or whether she was listening in. “Yes.”

“So you knew? You knew that bastard killed my daughter?!”

She waved her hand dismissively. “He’s killed a lot of people; besides, I didn’t know Rose was your daughter, heck, you’ve only found out today, but this does make it interesting.”

“I successfully raised my daughter from the dead only for her to fall in with the Wangshafts, run off and be murdered.” Broof sat back in his chair and let out a cry-laugh. “How could this be any more interesting?”

“Because not only do I think that’s a plasma fruit tree growing in the crypt, I think I know who Rose’s baby ‘Jennifer’ – and therefore your granddaughter – is.”

“I think it’s Melinda.”

The amazing amusement park is by hopkinsis on the gallery.

< Previous Chapter | Index | Next Chapter >