Years of hockey injuries meant I always had a well-stocked first-aid kit, so the first thing I did when I got back to the dorm after my harrowing midnight sojourn was clean and bandage up my bleeding hands. Alice stirred a few times while I was opening sachets of antibacterial wipes, but she didn’t wake up. I didn’t know whether I was glad or not – she terrified me, but I would’ve appreciated some help.
And yet how would I have explained this to her? It probably didn’t matter. She was a goth. They probably got off to this stuff.
My trembling hands were in bad shape. The nails were sanded down to stumps, and the soft skin on my fingertips was ravaged into bloody frays. Bile rose in my gullet as I thought about how hard and how long I must have been clawing at the stone to do this much damage.
The last thing I remembered was leaving the Grandstand in high spirits after an afternoon of hilarity and banter. Jen had convinced me to go for a dance at the Refectory before we retired for the evening. We’d been sampling Lindisfarne Mead in the bar, pretending to be medieval monks – Jen’s impression had me in stitches – and it had a profound effect on my intoxication levels. Once we got to the Refectory, there was just a confusing montage of red light, stained glass, pounding bass, sweaty skin, close bodies, and then . . . the North Tower.
I had to stop drinking so much. Not only had a perilous hangover cost me a starting place on the hockey squad, but those loose nights kept ending in the same place. A place that could see me dead if it got the better of me.
And who drinksmead, for God’s sake?
Banishing the mental image of my parents weeping at my funeral, I swallowed a couple of painkillers and forced myself to get some sleep.
The next day I didn’t have anything on my timetable until the English lit welcome session at 3 p.m., so I got up early – wincing as my bandaged fingertips brushed the duvet – and headed to the dining hall for a hearty breakfast. As I was pulling on a hoodie, Alice noticed my hands, but she didn’t bother asking what had happened. It was a small thing, but it made me incredibly sad. If this had happened back in Sevenoaks, I would have had multiple relatives and about fifteen pals cooing over me by now.
With a sudden pang, I realised how much I missed my friends back home and made a mental note to call my best friend Frankie later. She was studying maths at Bristol and had probably shagged a quarter of the men and half the women on campus already. I longed to hear her tales of hedonism and debauchery almost as much as I longed to talk to someone I could be totally myself around.
Miraculously, Jen and two of the other hockey girls – Alex and Mei – were already in the dining hall. They didn’t look even remotely jaded; they could obviously handle their mead. I grabbed an extra large, extra sugary coffee and a sausage sandwich and slid on to the bench beside Jen with a grimace.
Salem was waiting patiently at the end of the breakfast queue, awaiting her morning kippers. She’d be back again at dinner time for a slice of beef Wellington, which she’d apparently developed a taste for some time in the 1930s.
‘Okay, first of all, what the fuck?’ Jen asked, staring at my bandages. ‘Second of all, what in the name of God? Third of all –’
‘Yeah, I get the picture,’ I laughed, taking an enormous mouthful of my ketchupy sandwich. ‘Honestly, I was kind of hoping you could tell me. I had too much mead. Everything after the Grandstand is a blur.’ My insides squirmed at the half-truth.
‘I was in the bathroom with you at maybe . . . half eleven? Quarter to midnight?’ Mei offered, sipping at a steaming cup of herbal tea. ‘There were two other girls from the drama programme snorting coke, and they kept trying to talk to you, but honestly, you were kind of blackout at this point. Then this weird expression came over your face. Like you were doing an impression of someone else, I don’t know. Your features just kind of changed. I went to dry my hands, and when I turned back to the sink you were gone.’
My appetite rapidly diminished as she spoke, and by the time she stopped, I’d laid down my sandwich half eaten. The way she described my face changing sounded like far too many horror movies about possession.
I had to get to the bottom of this. I was only a few days into my time at Carvell and I was already deeply afraid.
‘Got to go,’ I muttered, abandoning my food and coffee while it was still warm.
*
The Sisters of Mercy library felt like Alice, somehow. It was cold and achingly beautiful; tall mahogany bookshelves and green velvet chairs, antique writing desks by grand arched windows, the scent of leather-bound books and old parchment. There was some slow, moody orchestral music playing somewhere in the rafters – then again, that could’ve been my imagination.
I spent two hours browsing various sections in search of books that might a) give me some ideas on how to start investigating ten-year-old murder cases, and b) help me understand what was happening to me vis-à-vis possible hauntings. For the former I picked up my favourite true crime classics – Truman Capote and Norman Mailer and Hunter S. Thompson – to remind myself of where the greats started their investigations. My heart gave a little flutter as I picked them off the shelf.
The latter was a less orderly research process, with many false starts and dead ends, but I eventually stumbled upon a book calledThe Devil and the Divine: True Accounts of Possession and Exorcism in Religious Orders. I settled into one of the green velvet armchairs – muscles aching from yesterday’s ill-fated tryouts – and read the first chapter.
It told of a demon-possessed Parisian prioress, Jeanne des Anges, and how she was exorcised in the church of Loudun. Nobles and priests gathered to watch the exorcist accuse the devil Balam of possessing Jeanne, to which Balam supposedly responded: ‘It is true, I am responsible for all the evil things that you are complaining about,’ and caused Jeanne to ‘contort her body grotesquely, horrifying the onlookers’. The contextual sections explained that in the 1600s, exorcisms were both a public spectacle and a lucrative source of revenue, with ‘spiritual tourists’ travelling hundreds of miles in the hope of catching a glimpse of the casting out of a demon.
Jeanne’s story went on to inspire many writers – exclusively male writers, I noted, including Burgh himself – to adapt it for mass entertainment. Alexandre Dumas wrote a five-act play entitledUrbain Grandier and the Devils of Loudun, and Aldous Huxley published a book in the fifties calledThe Devils of Loudun. There had also since been a Broadway play, an opera, and a gratuitous X-rated Ken Russell movie from the seventies.
So many men profiting from the pain and fear of these women. It made my stomach curdle like off milk.
I laid the book down on the arm of the chair and tried to tamp down the rising dread.
Demonic possession. Was that what was happening to me at the hands of the tower? It seemed an almighty leap, but I was stalking the grounds of a potentially haunted convent and investigating its bloody past. It made sense that if possessions were actually true, I’d be a prime target.
I had just picked up the book again to read another pamphlet when none other than Alice came into the library. I first caught the glimpse of claret hair from the corner of my eye, and my initial thought was ‘God, it’s really annoying how beautiful she is’ – then I felt the stomach-dropping sensation I’d already come to associate with her. What was she going to do or say next that would make me feel two inches tall? Or was she going to apologise, to say something nice, to give me another flicker of satisfaction like the one I’d experienced when she let me in on a brief private joke? In fairness to her, she’d gauged Nat and Sara’s nonsense from the outset.
After scanning in, she approached the place where I sat, eyes fixed on the spiral staircase just behind me. Nerves beat in my belly like moth wings, and I forced a stiff smile.
She slowed her footsteps, flicked her gaze in my direction, and opened her mouth just a sliver as though about to say something . . . and then kept on walking.
I sighed inwardly, packing up my bag to leave. Demonic possession was nowhere near as stressful as my roommate.