Silencing the Dead by Will Harker (ereader ebook .txt) 📕

Haz reached out and laid a comforting hand on the back of my father’s. It was amazing really. If I’d done such a thing, the old man might have belted me one. As it turned out, he just smiled and gave my boyfriend a grateful nod.

“I’m all right, son,” he said. “But Tilda ain’t. She’s asking to see you. Both of you.”

“Me too?” Haz asked in a wondering tone.

“You come as a pair now, don’t you?” Big Sam grunted. “Sal, would you be all right looking after the juvenile until they come back?”

“Course.” Sal nodded, unconsciously patting the head of a carousel lion. “Tell Aunt Tils I asked after her.”

Without another word, my dad turned and led us through the crowds towards the quieter end of the ground. It was a spectacle that never failed to astound me, how punters would automatically make a path for him, as if they knew on an instinctive level that he was the master of the show. As we walked, I shot a few questions at Big Sam but he said it would be better if I saw for myself. I knew this was the old man’s instruction, and I suppose it made me proud. He understood how I liked to approach a puzzle, fresh-minded and without preconceptions.

A puzzle. The word resounded in my head. This was what Garris had said I needed. I thought back to how I had questioned Miss Rowell about Purley Rectory and its ghosts, probing her strong but weirdly abstract revulsion for Darrel Everwood, then interrogating Nick about Everwood’s morbid certainty that he would die if he came here. Unconsciously, perhaps, I had been seeking a problem.

I looked again at Haz. Here was another.

“How was practice?” I asked.

“Fine.” He nodded. “Good.”

“Still working on that Mozart piece?”

“Yes. Lacrimosa.”

“Remind me of those lyrics again.”

“I’m not sure—”

“The ones you sang for me a few nights ago,” I persisted. “You remember.”

He cut his gaze away. “Lacrimosa dies illa; Qua resurget ex favilla; Judicandus homo reus.” He spoke in a sing-song voice but without its usual melody. “Full of tears will be that day; When from the ashes shall arise; The guilty man to be judged.”

“The guilty man,” I echoed and thought again of how he had so ostentatiously shown us his music bag when I asked where he’d been.

I kept him in view for the remainder of our walk to Aunt Tilda’s. A blaze of colour in those endless cheekbones, his shoulders slumped. I wanted to reach for him, to ask what was wrong, but fear kept my hands at my sides. If I pushed too hard, that final thread might snap and then what would become of us?

We came at last to the red-and-white striped tent, set a little apart, on Aunt Tilda’s orders, from the other stalls. Apparently, it gave the impression that even her fellow Travellers (who were under strict instructions to bring her tea and sandwiches only when there were no punters about—their joskin smell putting her off her scran, so she said) were a little afraid of her, adding to Madam Tilda’s allure.

A sign outside the tent did the business too: LOVE! DESTINY! FATE! MYSTICAL PROGNOSTICATIONS—FORTUNETELLING, CRYSTAL BALL-GAZING, PALM-READING, TAROT CARDS. ENTER NOW AND MEET THE FUTURE!

The antiquated charm of the fortune teller’s tent was a rare sight on modern fairs. My dad, who could never be accused of being a sentimentalist where money was concerned, nevertheless gave Tilda her pitch practically rent-free. She had been a friend of my mum’s and I still had fond memories of them together, shelling peas on their trailer steps, trading gossip between each other like a game of pass the parcel.

Pushing aside the damp canvas flaps, Dad led us into the tent. Almost at once the chaos outside was muted. Here incense fragranced the air while lamps shaded with coloured veils cast an eerie light across the painted enlargements of tarot cards that hung around the walls. These consisted of the usual suspects: the Sun, the Moon, the Devil, the Hanged Man, the Wheel of Fortune, the Hermit, the Lovers, the Fool and the rest. An obligatory crystal ball sat at the centre of a circular table that was covered in a red damask cloth. The only incongruous detail was a small electric heater gasping away beside Tilda’s high-backed chair.

The mystic herself rose to greet us. A small, hunched figure, her stubby fingers mounted with rings up to the second knuckle, Aunt Tilda possessed a wide, generous mouth, her blonde hair only now turning grey in her seventy-third year. She walked with a stick in her right hand, and just occasionally her features would tuck up with pain. A case of crippling arthritis meant she rarely stood if she could help it.

“You wanted to see us, Aunt Tils?” I said.

I bent down so that she could kiss both my cheeks. She then moved on to Haz.

“Ain’t he got an handsome mooie, this mush,” she said, her voice redolent of forty-a-day habit.

“She says you’ve got a nice face,” I translated for Haz. Old-timers like Tilda used the secret Traveller tongue more than most and some of her words were a mystery, even to me.

Turning a gummy gaze upon us, her expression darkened. “Someone broke into me tent this afternoon. Didn’t chor nothing but left me a little treat.” She waved me closer. “You ain’t got the sight, Scott Jericho, but you can see almost as well as any genuine dukkerer. I wanted your opinion on it.”

She swept her hand towards a small wax figurine laying beside the crystal ball on her table. It was a crude effigy, childish in its way, and yet horribly sinister. For one thing, the face was featureless and had, in fact, been spooned out so that all that remained was a shallow well carved into the head. Steel sewing needles peppered the rest of the body like the quills of a porcupine, while the arms of the figure appeared a little foreshortened. Attached to the left leg