Witch Hunt

Chapter Thirteen




I knew I couldn’t keep this to myself any more. I had to share it; had to sound out what was going on with someone else. The hacker, well that was one thing. This, the thing in the mirror, was something else entirely. I just wasn’t sure what.

I’d forced myself into the living room at some point

in the early hours of the morning. The sun wasn’t fully

up but there was enough insipid grey lighting there to see, sure enough, fragments of mirror scattered across the

carpet.

I did my best to clear them up by hand then got the vacuum out. By the time I’d wrapped the glass up in paper and stuck it in the bin, dawn had broken across the estuary, filling the room with tawny hues. It looked cosy, normal. And for about five minutes, I did sit down and wonder if I had been sleepwalking. Or perhaps the hacker had won his mind game and infiltrated my subconscious?

Though I was aware that the sobbing had been female, had got the distinct impression that the hacker was male. But that might just be my own prejudices converging. Anyway, my head was too wired for me to sort through it rationally, so I decided to pay a visit to someone who

could.

She was sitting in the main office with Felicity when I walked through the door. There were only the two of them there. The place felt like it hadn’t woken up properly yet. Maggie looked surprised to see me, but once she saw the expression on my face, she excused herself and showed me into her office, just off the main room.

I followed her in.

‘You all right? You want a coffee?’

I told her yes please. ‘I don’t know if I’m all right though, Maggie.’ Then I spilt it – from the first message, to the strange nightmares and then the woman in the mirror.

Maggie listened carefully as she pottered about the room, filling the machine with coffee beans, wiping a couple of mugs. For the most part she stood by the filing cabinet nodding her head in time with my speech, encouraging me on.

We were sitting either side of the desk when I finished.

She gulped down a lungful of air before she spoke. ‘I don’t want to sound trite, or like in any way I’m trivialising your experience …’

I cut in, ‘Just say what you think.’

She put her mug carefully back onto the table, and clasped her hands together. ‘You’ve been through a lot lately.’

I had a hunch that she was going to say something like that and a small, exasperated sigh escaped me.

She stopped then shrugged. ‘You did say …’

‘I know, I know,’ I waved my hand at her. ‘Go on.’

‘People deal with grief in different ways. The messaging for instance – you said the person on the other end was saying that they were sorry?’

‘That was one of the things they said …’

‘When someone dies, it’s very common for those left behind to feel guilt of some measure – to feel you could have done more, seen them more often …’

‘It’s not like that,’ I snapped. ‘I’m not doing this to myself. I couldn’t have sent those messages to myself. This is not some crazy Fight Club plot twist. This is real.’

‘But, Sadie, listen to what you’re saying. Joe’s not found any evidence on your laptop. These things have been happening when you’ve been alone. When you’ve been tapping away at the computer in a semi-alert, semi-meditative state. Also, and I think this is pertinent, it’s happened when you’ve been researching Hopkins. Do you think perhaps you are projecting some of his guilt? Perhaps as a distraction from your own?’

My face was screwed up into an expression of contempt. ‘You’re joking, right? Why on earth would I empathise with him?’

‘I didn’t use that word. I’m saying it might have a psychological root. All that horrid Hopkins research at a time when you’ve just lost your mother, for God’s sake. Perhaps you’ve drifted into some dark place. It’s a metaphor, but … It wouldn’t be unusual for someone bereaved to do that. And, you know, you should make time to heal yourself. Maybe take a break? Go on holiday. Grab some sun? Let your mind have a rest.’

I collected my thoughts and reformed them so that I didn’t come across as petulant. ‘I don’t think I’m imagining any of this. I think,’ I lowered my voice, kept it firm and stable, ‘whatever is happening is coming from an outside entity. I’m not sure who. I’m thinking this hacker has fixated on me. And he’s clever about what he does. The fact I’m going through emotional upheaval is irrelevant.’

Maggie bit her tongue, then she said, ‘Can you hear yourself, honey? Do you know how you sound? You are so very ready to dismiss the idea that some of this could be an externalisation of your current state of mind. It smacks of self-denial. In your heart, you know that. Give yourself a break. It doesn’t mean you’re going round the twist. It just means you’re stressed out. And that, my dearest Sadie, is quite natural in your present circumstances.’

I frowned. She was starting to sound convincing – though I still didn’t believe her. I couldn’t be hallucinating the interaction with the hacker, could I? Or could I have absently switched off and let my hands doodle across the keyboard while my mind focused on other things?

It was uncomfortable but it was one answer. Maggie was right about Joe and Lesley not finding any evidence …

I put my head in my hands and propped my elbows on her desk. ‘So the woman in the mirror, you think is … ?’

Maggie saw I was catching her drift and let the certainty of her conviction ease into her voice. ‘You woke up from a nightmare, walked into the living room and looked in the mirror. There you saw a woman with a stricken white face and black hair. Someone who was screaming.’

I nodded.

‘I think you may have been looking at yourself, sweetheart.’

‘I wasn’t. It didn’t …’ My voice cracked with new doubt. ‘It looked like someone else …’

Maggie continued on: ‘You were tired, half asleep, maybe even still dreaming …’ She tailed off and let me think on that a bit.

There was logic in it.

Argh. My conviction was wavering.

Crap.

Maybe it had been me who was crying. It didn’t sound like that but it was plausible that the nightmare had disturbed me and that I had experienced the darkness of night, the acoustics of the flat, in some hypnogogic state, which had then got my imagination going into overdrive.

‘Just get some sleep, some counselling and some new software,’ she was saying. ‘If you won’t go for all three, make sure you get the last. I think it’s fairly unlikely that you’ve been hacked in the way you’ve suggested but if there is someone interfering with your computer you should sort that out as a priority. Especially in your line of work. You don’t want anyone nicking your ideas or corrupting your files, do you?’

‘Nope. Most definitely not.’ That was a good point.

‘Make sure you’re backing your work up, yeah?’

I nodded. ‘Yes, definitely. I’m going to get a virus check too.’

My confusion over the mirror woman was beginning to ebb. Of course, I could have dreamed it; after all I was having lots of strange dreams. This was a new twist in the nightmares. I should monitor myself and if they got worse or more physical I’d start using the sleeping pills the doctor had prescribed when Mum … I still couldn’t say it or think the word.

Maggie must have seen my expression, as her forehead wrinkled and she sent me a look of immense compassion. Her red hair clouded round her face, brushing her shoulders and paisley pashmina. ‘Okay?’

I nodded again, relaxed my brows and poked my forehead. ‘Brain working again.’

She smiled sympathetically. ‘Call me, whenever you want to talk. You know there are bereavement counsellors out there. I’m sure I can fix you up with someone I know.’

I got to my feet. ‘I’m okay. I’m just, I dunno. Put it this way, when I’m on my own it all seems pretty real.’

‘That’s the point though, isn’t it? Take it easy for a bit, Sadie,’ she said and grinned. ‘The article you filed yesterday was great by the way. I loved it. Keep positive. Think along those lines. Mind you, don’t for one moment think you’re getting an extension on that other piece we talked about. If that’s what you’re fishing for it ain’t working …’ She winked.

I tugged myself up from more contemplative depths to meet Maggie’s banter. ‘You gotta give me marks for originality,’ I said. ‘Most prevaricating writers would dish up something like writer’s block or “other commitments”. Not me – I go for full-blown psychotic meltdown.’

‘Or tiredness,’ she added and straightened herself up. ‘Though I know you’re really just here for the coffee.’

‘Well, it sure ain’t the company,’ I said as I passed through the door.

She didn’t answer but a pen whacked me on the back as I turned out of sight.

I navigated around the desks to the front door.

‘Er, hi Sadie.’

It was Flick. She’d stuck her head above her monitor in a half-risen position and was looking kind of sheepish.

‘Oh, hi Flick.’

She sat back into her chair, so I moved round the other side of her Mac to see her as she spoke.

‘I’m really sorry, but I couldn’t help overhearing.’ She extricated a strand of dark hair from her mouth. ‘The door wasn’t closed.’

‘Oh,’ I said. Heat touched my cheeks. ‘Sorry, it was meant to be a private conversation. I was just, er …’

She cut in. ‘I know, but it was fascinating. When you were talking about that hacker. When you said you were in the coffee shop? Did you say something along the lines that you’d just written the details about where Hopkins was buried?’

I was looking at her from above. She was slender and petite. Just then her tiny frame seemed so fragile. ‘That’s right.’

‘And you were freaked out because that meant that whoever had messaged you, could see you and what you were writing.’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I thought it could be some virus or remote …’

‘You’re hooked on the idea that they’re trying to spook you by implying that they can see you. What if it’s not about that? What if it’s more about the facts that you’re writing? Could they be suggesting Hopkins wasn’t buried there? What if it was what you had just written that was the trigger, not the fact it was you writing it, if you see what I mean?’

‘You think the hacker is fixating on me because of my research?’ I looked doubtful.

She shrugged and cocked her head to one side ‘Forgive me for saying this, but you’re taking a very ego-centric approach to this for someone who professes that it’s not about them. If it’s not your grief and it’s not your work then what is it about? Your irresistible animal magnetism?’

My eyebrows were practically on the ceiling. The girl had balls – you had to give her that. But she’d gone too far. I was about to respond with unthinking indignation but she continued on. ‘If it’s not about you then surely it’s about what you’re writing. You’ve got a book deal. That means you’ve got a voice, right?’ She looked up, beyond me, to the rafters, thinking through her words as she spoke. ‘I’m not sure. It’s just – is there any doubt about what happened to Matthew Hopkins? I mean, is it concrete?’

I gave up being offended, pulled in by the fact that, although it had flitted through my brain yesterday, Flick might be right. I had been way too focused on poor me. I mentally rummaged through my files. ‘There is some hypothesis, but it’s not regarded as kosher by academics and historians. Might be worth a squizz though, true.’

‘Just a thought,’ she said, as if her comment had been nothing more than a throwaway quip, and drank some water from a glass on her desk. ‘You know there’s this whole thing about automatic writing? Have you heard about it?’

I had a vague memory of some eighties documentary. ‘Remind me please, Flick.’

‘It’s the state that you get into when you sort of lose your overriding conscious and let your subconscious come through. Or other people think, it’s more like channelling, and actually what happens is that a spiritual source is in control.’

‘Well, I don’t think I went into a trance or anything.’

‘No, I don’t think you have to. I think it can happen in a waking state.’

‘I don’t know,’ I said reflecting. ‘It’s all slightly strange. There’s a lot to think …’

She sniffed and broke in, ‘Could be your subconscious coming through, trying to communicate with you? To lead you?’

My frame slumped. ‘Don’t you start. I’ve just had a half-hour psychotherapy session with Maggie.’

Flick laughed and sat back. ‘I don’t really think that,’ she said and smiled.

‘You don’t?’

‘No.’ She shook out her wispy black hair. ‘I’m more likely to think it’s a ghost.’

I examined her face to see if she was joking. Too hard to tell. ‘A ghost? Why?’

She shrugged. ‘Look at me – I’m a Goth. That kind of thinking comes with the territory. I love supernatural phenomena, don’t you?’ She peeked at me, scrutinising my reaction.

‘Well, I like it when it’s on the TV or in books or films. Not when it’s happening to me.’

‘I’d love it,’ she smiled confidently.

There was no time to comment, as she was off again. ‘The automatic writing thing is worth looking into. You could try it out. See if it happens when you’re in control and have a go at bringing it on.’

I rubbed my chin. ‘I don’t really fancy that. It’s too creepy. I’m hoping it’s going to go away.’

‘Okay,’ she said and turned back to her computer. ‘Do me a favour and let me know how you get on.’

‘How I get on?’

‘Yes,’ she said, tapping at the keys. ‘I’m interested.’

To be honest I was more than taken aback. This wasn’t the shy, retiring wallflower I was used to. Still, I told her I would. Then I left.

I had software to buy and a present to pick up for Uncle Roger’s party.