The lid of the box was loosely folded, “Walkers Cheese & Onion Crisps” printed on the side in faded blue letters. She reached out cautiously, nervous its wicked contents might fly out and strike her in the face. With one hand, she gently moved a ragged flap of cardboard to one side. The shapes and colors inside screeched at her. Stark white thighs, a gash of red like raw minced beef, a dark nest of hair, a twisted mouth.
As she ran to her bedroom, maggoty thoughts hatched in Marion’s head. That woman—how could she breathe? Involuntarily she clawed at the collar of her polo-neck, imagining what it must feel like to have someone pulling a black leather strap around your throat. What kind of person would allow their photo to be taken with no knickers on? The most shocking thing of all was the picture being inside the heads of Mother, Dad, and Mrs. Morrison, their normal thoughts struggling to find space around it. And John. How on earth could anyone actually want to look at something like that?
From the way Mrs. Morrison carried the box, it looked heavy. There must be dozens of magazines in there. She gasped at the thought of hundreds and hundreds of women fixed in everlasting torment, a world of shame and terror contained in that old Walkers Crisps box.
Peering through the bedroom window, she saw Dad standing by the box with a plastic bottle in one hand. He poured liquid onto the soggy cardboard and then lit a match. White smoke plumed out of the opening, shrouding the sycamore and the rosebushes, until the whole garden was filled with mist. By the time it cleared, the box had transformed into a pile of silvery ash. The pictures in Marion’s head, however, remained unburnt, and when she closed her eyes, they were brighter and sharper than ever.
BRENDAN O’BRIAN
Marion felt a flush of excitement when she saw the poster sticking to the wall of Northport Library. Tuesday the eighteenth of July. The idea that she might go along entered her head, but she immediately shooed it away. Then she saw one wrapped around a lamppost and several more stuck to the walls of the little brick shelters along the seafront, next to posters advertising comedians and musical groups.
One morning as she was picking up the post, Marion noticed a blue flyer lying on the hall floor.
Brendan O’Brian World Famous Medium
8pm Tuesday 18th July
Northport Community Hall
The name Brendan O’Brian filled her with girlish yearning that she found impossible to repress. The very same Brendan O’Brian she had watched for so long on television. Was this a sign meant especially for her? No, it was silly to think that, they pushed them through everyone’s letter box. Yet she had a strange feeling that she was meant to go. After all, the spiritualist church meetings she had attended with Mother had always been so interesting. Perhaps this was what she needed to break out from her dull life: to meet people and begin to live.
Where else could I go? Surely not to a pub by myself, she thought. Judith had suggested French lessons, but that would bring back all the shameful humiliation of school. And it would be so nice to do something different for a change. She might make a friend, a respectable, middle-aged woman like herself or even a kindly old lady who was desperate for companionship. She knew the idea of meeting a man was ridiculously far-fetched. And even if she did, the type of male that frequented this sort of thing was unlikely to be suitable.
Then she heard Mother’s voice warning her that she would have to walk past Albert Park alone after dark. Something awful could happen to you, Marion, you could be robbed or worse. Don’t you remember that poor girl who got dragged into a van by two men while she was walking by the park late at night?
Marion’s mind flip-flopped constantly in the days leading up to the event. Eventually at 6:30 p.m. on the evening of the meeting she decided she would go and rushed upstairs to find a decent outfit. A state of panic gripped her when she realized there was almost nothing suitable in her wardrobe. Eventually she settled on the drab black suit she had worn for her parents’ funerals, with a gray wool jumper underneath. It was far too warm for July, but at least it looked respectable.
After spending so long deciding what to wear, Marion was left with only twenty minutes to get to the meeting. It was eight fifteen when she arrived at the community hall, all sweaty in her layers and blisters forming on her heels from running. How she hated to be late! The white pillars framing the entrance looked elegant from a distance, yet close up they were shabby off-white and scarred with badly spelled graffiti. JEZUS IS DEA was scribbled in a green marker pen that must have dried out before the writer got to the end.
There was no one to buy a ticket from in the lobby, so the meeting must have already begun. Feeling guilty for not paying, she crept into the darkened hall and sat near the back. There were about fifty people in the audience, most of them elderly or middle-aged women, one or two men.
Brendan O’Brian seemed older and plumper in real life than he did on television, and his dark hair had turned gray, but Marion supposed the series might have been filmed some time ago.
He wore soft black training shoes and a gray velvet tracksuit that made him look rather like an otter. When Marion arrived, he was in the middle of talking to a lady with a long silver-and-black ponytail sitting in the front row. Her head was bowed, so Marion couldn’t see her face. It seemed he had made contact with her daughter who had died of breast cancer. The woman’s shoulders began to rock backwards and forwards when he announced that her daughter was there every night when she read bedtime stories to her granddaughter, Casey.
“I’m leaving her love with you,” he said to the bereaved woman, then held out his hand as if presenting her with an invisible package. The same gesture he’d make on the television show.
He began to pace around the room, waiting for the next spirit visitor.
“Does anyone know a T?” he called out to the audience. “He liked to feed the birds.”
A thin blond girl shot up her hand, the bangles on her arm making a loud rattling noise.
“My great-uncle Terry, he sometimes fed the ducks in Albert Park.”
The spiritualist performed the familiar gesture as though he were throwing an invisible tennis ball towards the girl.
“He’s saying that you won’t pass the first time, but don’t give up. Can you tell us what that means to you, my darling?”
She smiled elatedly as though she had won the grand prize in a raffle.
“That’s right, that’s right. I’m thinking of taking my driving test.”
“Well, you might need a few more lessons, love. And practice those three-point turns,” said the medium in his jolly Irish brogue.