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“Okay. So what’s this all about, then? What is this life-or-death situation you are referring to?”
Beatrix goes quiet for a while, like she’s fumbling for a way to articulate it. “Put simply, I think my son is dangerous and you would do well to steer clear of him. Your very life could depend on it.”
I blink at her stupidly. “Come again?”
“I believe Alex could be a danger to you and I want you to stop seeing him. Your life could be at risk if you don’t heed my warning.”
“Define what you mean by dangerous?”Like I don’t already know. Let’s see, arson, stalking, assault with a deadly weapon…
“Did Alex ever tell you about the circumstances surrounding what happened to his father?” Mrs Kingswood asks.
“Er, no. All I know is his dad died when Alex was ten and that’s it.”
“Well, I’m afraid there’s much more to it then that.” She falters. “Eleven years ago, my husband Neville fell down the grand staircase at Claremont Hall and broke his neck. Died instantly. All a terrible accident…at least that’s the official version of the story.”
“What do you mean? Are you suggesting some sort of a cover up?”
“For you to get a better understanding, I probably need to go back to the beginning.” Cautiously, she opens her briefcase and takes out what appears to be an old library book and a couple of faded newspaper clippings. “A few months before Neville died, Alex discovered an old Ouija board under one of the floorboards in his bedroom. He began playing around with it, and he told me someone was trying to communicate with him from the spirit world, you know, like a ghost or something. He told me the planchette moved all by itself, but I just dismissed it as childish nonsense. I thought he was making it up, but then, after a while, I noticed discernible changes in my son.”
“Such as?” I ask nervously.
“It was as if Alex became a different person. Overnight, he became a musical genius who could play the piano like nothing I’d ever heard before. Suddenly, he excelled in everything, could speak fluent Latin, French, and generally had a vocabulary far advanced for his years. His governess and music teacher were dumbfounded. Nobody could explain the change, least of all me because I was looking in all the wrong places.” Beatrix breaks off and takes a moment to compose herself.
When she speaks again, her tone is low and troubled. “Then weird things started happening around the house. Furniture would be rearranged in an odd way. Doors would slam out of nowhere. There were strange banging and scratching noises at night. A terrifying incident involving knives. The servants began to whisper we had a ghost in the house, but I scoffed initially as I wasn’t a believer in the occult at that time. I was so blind I failed to make a connection between Alex’s newfound abilities and the appearance of this ghost.”
“This is nuts,” I murmur.
“You haven’t heard the half of it,” Mrs Kingswood says sadly. “Things took a dangerous turn the night Neville returned home from working in the Middle East. He was a violent brute who used to physically abuse me, but I put up with it because at that time, a woman had to know her place. The night Neville died we argued viciously, I forget about what, and Alex tried to intervene to protect me. And that was when it happened…”
“What happened?” I ask eagerly, now on tenterhooks.
“That was when I saw something so wild, so crazy, I’m still not sure if I imagined it. Just thinking about it gives me trouble sleeping even after all these years.” She swallows hard and licks her lips. “As Neville and Alex stood on the staircase arguing, I thought I saw…”
“What did you see?”
Beatrix bows her head, almost in embarrassment. “I thought I saw an enormous black tentacle rip through Alex’s shoulder and smack Neville on the head. I thought I saw my son strike the killer blow that sent his father crashing down the staircase to his death.”
There’s a long, dark silence. The park suddenly feels very cold. My jaw drops, unable to process what I’ve just heard. “Are you saying you think Alex murdered your husband?”
“No, not Alex. I’m saying that some unearthly creature within him did. That tentacle didn’t belong to Alex…it belonged tosomething else.”
I give a crazy laugh. “Wow, now I’ve heard everything. Is this supposed to be a joke? Is there a hidden camera somewhere and Jeremy Beadle is gonna jump out from a bush in a second to tell meYou’ve been framed?”
“You shouldn’t laugh. Every word I’ve said is true.”
“I’m sorry, but I just don’t believe you. Do you know how insane you sound? A big black tentacle ripped out from a ten-year-old? What?”
“It was only after Neville’s death that I finally started to do some research and take the whole ghost thing more seriously.” Solemnly, Beatrix passes me a bunch of tattered newspaper clippings dating back to the late 1980s depicting stories of demonic possession from all over the world: South America, Europe, Africa, everywhere.
“Demonic possession?” I say, incredulous. “That sounds like something out of a horror movie. Am I supposed to take this seriously?”
“Just hear me out. Don’t judge me until you’ve heard everything.”
Mrs Kingswood then goes on to say that after Neville died, most of the servants fled Claremont Hall, refusing to continue living in a house that was haunted and where a mysterious death had taken place. Only Hobbs and Mrs Bullivant were brave (or foolish) enough to stay on. And it was then she began to notice that strange things seemed to occur around Alex. For example, if he was angry or sad, the sunny sky would suddenly go dark outside. Sometimes his tantrums would bring rain and gale force winds. Beatrix noticed other things too, like her son could attract or repel animals at will. Sometimes when Alex was seriously mad, an entire flock of birds would flee the woods, only to return when he was in better spirits.
“Oh my God, this just gets crazier by the minute,” I say, shaking my head. “But I still don’t see how you came up with the idea of demonic possession?”
“I’m coming to that,” she says. Her face looks so pinched and pale she sort of reminds me of Nosferatu the vampire. “Okay, so sometimes at nights, I’d hear Alex talking in his sleep and he kept on saying the name Erasmus over and over again, but in the morning when I asked him about it, he said he didn’t know what I was talking about. I thought it was an odd name for a child to fixate on, so I decided to do some research and came up with this…”
