《Sentinel of the Deep》17 - Ondine

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I stare at Thom, trying to read his thoughts. I think he might be saying we should stay in Ballaig because he knows I have unfinished business here, and I don’t want him to stay for me.

“This is where we’re meant to be, or where I’m meant to be?”

“Us, both of us.” He looks sincere, but then again, he’s so damned polite that it’s possible he’s still saying what he thinks I want to hear.

“What about Robbo of Skye?” I ask, trying hard to keep a straight face.

“Well, I suppose I’ll have to go and see him at some point. But right now, I think we should stay here. We both have a lot of information to uncover.” He looks at me expectantly, like this might be an opening, like I might tell him what’s going on with me.

“I don’t want to be the reason you stay, but I have to be honest with you Thom – something’s happening to me. I can feel a change in how I feel about all this. I’m beginning to think maybe I’m supposed to do something good with whatever it is that I have, instead of feeling like a freak.” My throat’s dry, and I hear myself gulp loudly. Being this honest – this unguarded – doesn’t come easily to me.

“You thought you were meant to do harm?”

I nod. “That’s how the story goes – my family legacy I mean. But now I’m wondering what the whole story is. I gave up early on, because I didn’t believe the intention was good. Now I’m not so sure.”

He’s nodding, but I can see the confusion in his eyes. After a minute he says, “You need to go back to first principles. Look at the story from a different perspective. Look at all of the evidence again.”

“I do – you’re right. And I need to talk to Elena, tell her I’ve reversed my decision to never talk about any of this again. But right now, I think we need coffee. And breakfast.”

Thom’s eyes light up, and we make the short trek to Pearl’s café, a few doors down from the archive. Pearl was the first person I met in Ballaig – well, before I’d even actually arrived here. I’d been walking on the main road to the village in the rain after getting off the bus, heavy drizzle coating my hair and skin. The sky hung like a heavy grey woollen blanket over the dark sea, a churning slate mass with white peaks.

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Three sharp toots of a car horn pierced the thick air, and I turned to see a small black car, high beams blazing, speeding towards me. It came to an abrupt, jolting stop just a finger’s length away from me. The window rolled down and a woman with a jolly, round face yelled at me to get in.

“You’ll catch your death walking in that rain. The devil’s spittle, my father used to call it. I take it you’re heading to Ballaig.”

I nodded, my body heavy with fatigue after a sleepless night.

We introduced ourselves, and I was relieved that Pearl didn’t ask any questions about what I was doing on that road, in the rain, in the middle of the afternoon. I leaned my head back and closed my eyes, almost lulled to sleep by the motion of the car, and the sound of the windscreen wipers.

Pearl’s voice brought me back to the present. “Are you sleeping, dear? We’re almost there, and I didn’t want you to miss your first sighting of Ballaig.”

I rubbed my eyes, and peered through the windscreen, unable to see anything other than the weary gleam of the headlights in the mist. We drove over a ridge in the road and then I saw them - tiny golden lights, in a curved row, peppering the gloom. It looked like a twinkling half-moon resting on the edge of the landscape, something out of a fairy tale, or a dream.

“Wow.”

“It’s really something, isn’t it?” Pearl drove slowly along the main street, and pulled the car into a small space in front of a café. I saw people sitting at the tables in the windows, which were partially steamed up. She told me it was her café, and invited me to join her for a cup of tea, and a slice of freshly-baked peach cake.

Pearl’s generosity didn’t end there. Without prying, she managed to learn that I had left home, and needed both a place to stay and a job. I didn’t tell her about why I'd run away, nor did I tell her about the increasingly strange experience I was having with the journal in my bag, the one I’d taken from my mother’s cupboard without permission.

Pearl let me stay in her spare room, and she gave me a job in the café. As much as I owe her, I’m glad she’s not in the café this morning. I don’t want to explain what I’m doing back in Ballaig, or who Thom is, or what I’ve been doing since I left. I’m not quite ready for a round of conversational catch-up, no matter how much I know I owe Pearl.

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Someone I don’t recognize is working behind the counter in the café, and Thom and I order large coffees and cooked breakfasts. We eat like two people who haven’t been near food in days, and then I push my plate away, lean back in my chair, and rest my hands on my stomach.

“I need to tell you about this place,” I say, taking a deep breath. “Something terrible happened here, about a hundred and twenty years ago. There were sixty-four residents of Ballaig, and sixty-three of them were found in their beds one morning, not alive.”

I pause, and Thom dabs his mouth with his napkin. “Holy moly.”

“Holy moly indeed. The residents looked like they’d all died in their sleep – the cause of death was never proven.”

There’s another part to the mystery, a part I can’t quite bring myself to say out loud, until he asks me. “Can you tell me who the sixty-forth resident was?”

“My great-great-great grandmother. Jenny Carlin.”

“What happened to her?”

“She disappeared – never to be seen again after that day.”

“Do you know what happened to her?”

I take one last swig of coffee before answering. “Not officially, but I have an inkling.”

Thom nods, patiently, as though inviting me to tell him in my own time. The thing is, I haven’t told anyone. Elena knows some of it, but when I left Ballaig the last time I vowed to never speak of it. It makes me sound crazy, I know. But Thom doesn’t exactly have a straight path to normality, either, which makes us kindred spirits of sorts. What’s more, I trust him.

“She started communicating with me, when I first came here – through her journal, which was passed down from my Nan to me. Well, technically my mother intervened and said it was hers, but Nan told me it was intended for me. So, I took it, the night I ran away from home.”

“Your Nan wanted you to have it,” Thom said, kindly.

“She did. Anyway, it started to feel like a poisoned chalice, because I wasn’t expecting the journal to be a direct line of communication between Jenny and me. It was strange, and a bit scary and, to tell you the truth, I wondered if it was actually her making contact, or if it was something else – something or someone manipulating me by pretending to be Jenny.”

“Did you ever find out?”

I shake my head. “I convinced myself it was some kind of evil spirit. I passed the journal to Elena, told her to keep it far away from me, to hide it in the archive. And then I left Ballaig.”

“But now you’re wondering if it really is Jenny, communicating with you through the journal.”

“Yes, I am.”

“What did Elena say, when you told her to hide the journal?”

“She was just as kind and reasonable as you’d expect. She said it can happen, that messages in the texts get hijacked by the mal-intentioned, distorting the original meanings. The other possibility is that it really is Jenny talking to me through the journal, and she really is evil. That’s what I started to believe before I left here – that Jenny really did kill all of the other villagers. That I’m descended from rotten stock. Evil stock.”

I’ve got to give Thom credit – he’s so kind, so sincere, that he doesn’t laugh at me, even though I was going for deliberately over-the-top with the demon seed line. The truth is, I think I believe it. Nan was one of the most wonderful people I’ll ever know, but my mother – Nan’s own daughter – is rotten to her core. She always told me I was rotten to my core. So, it’s entirely possible that our ancestor, Jenny, was a terrible person who killed all of those people for whatever reason. I don’t want her using me as a conduit to get her twisted, murderous reasoning out into the world.

“Or it could be that there is an entirely good, pure reason why Jenny disappeared at the same time the others died. A reason she’ll share with you, if you go back to the journal.” He smiles at me. “Go back to the story. First principles. Look at it from a different angle.”

“I was afraid you were going to say that again. But I know you’re right. I guess I owe it to Jenny. And, to be honest, I feel like I’m stronger now – more able to handle the truth, whatever it is.”

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