Red Horse Vale

Chapter 2

TWO

YORK, 2020 AD

Heather came home after a long day in the archaeology laboratory to find her husband sitting pale and distressed in his usual armchair as weary as if he had fought in the Battle of Towton that he’d just finished reading about.

“Jake! What’s the matter, darling?”

“It’s complicated.”

Heather bit her lower lip at this brusque answer and considered his countenance. She hadn’t seen him like this since he was fighting to clear himself from a murder charge in Pilkington. “I’ll open a bottle of wine, and you can tell me all about it.”

He thought, She makes it sound as simple as pulling a cork.

Jake sighed heavily and wondered how different his life might have been if he’d looked both ways before crossing the road on that fateful morning, instead of walking out in front of a Jeep. The pop of the extracted cork and the sound of wine pouring snapped him out of his reverie, but where to start his explanation was more difficult. Gratefully he took the glass of ruby red wine from his pretty, smiling wife.

He plunged straight in without sipping the drink. “I saw my mother today, in our bedroom.”

“B-but you told me she died ten years ago.”

“That’s just it. She did!”

“How–”

“She was just as attractive as I remembered her but so…so…grunge. I saw her as close as you are to me. I remember she was always playing Pearl Jam and Nirvana. She was wearing a scrunchie in her long, straight hair, with ripped jeans, Doc Martin boots and a flannel shirt, just as I remember her.”

“Oh, that’s so nineties! It must have been a shock for you, Jake – she was young when she died…”

“Yes, but it wasn’t that, Heather. It was wonderful to see her again but not in that situation.”

“What do you mean? On one of your psychic excursions?”

“Not exactly. But I’ve found the explanation to that. No, it was what was going on when I saw her in the bedroom.”

“I don’t understand.”

“She wasn’t alone. My dad came storming in. He was really angry and began shouting horrible names at her like tart! trollop! and worse. He accused her of having an affair with a colleague, but you see, Heather, I never knew any of this. I always set her on a pedestal. She shouted back that she wanted a divorce, but dad told her to think about me. He said I was only five and about to start school and they had to put me first.” Jake shuddered and downed the contents of his glass in one long draught.

Heather couldn’t bear to see him so upset, so she put her drink on the coffee table and came over to kneel before him, resting her head on his knees. Without looking up, she said, “Poor darling, it must have been terrible for you. But you must continue to think of your mother as you always have done. They didn’t split up for you, after all. Respect the fact that they wanted to shelter you from their lapses.”

Jake stroked her strawberry blonde hair that he’d always loved as he had her unfailing, even-tempered nature and her sensible advice, as on this occasion. She stood, took his glass, and from the kitchen, she called, “You look like you could do with another of these, but don’t drain it down this time. You should savour it; it costs enough to be appreciated.”

As she returned with the wine, she said, “You found the explanation, didn’t you? Why don’t you tell me?”

He took the glass and smiled at her. “You’re so good to me, so understanding. Do you remember when I told you about the premonition I had years ago?”

“When those two poor lads were killed in a crash?”

“Yes. Well, a better term than premonition, in that case, is precognition, and from what I read this afternoon, people who have the gift, or curse, of precognition often have the contrary – retrocognition. It’s a term first coined by Frederick William Henry Myers in the nineteenth century.”

“Really? Was he a psychologist like Freud and Jung?”

“No, actually he was a poet and a philologist, but he founded the Society for Psychical Research. In fact, many psychologists dismissed his theories as quackery. But in the 1960s Aldous Huxley wrote a foreword to a reprinting of Myers’s book, Human Personality.”

“So retrocognition is about witnessing moments in the past, is it?”

“Exactly.”

“Oh, your poor head! How does it work?”

Jake took a sip of his wine. “What I’m about to tell you is scientifically unproven, just a theory, but I believe it’s what happens to me. The universe is made up of energy. So, all past events are imprinted in the surrounding objects or environment in the form of energy that can be sensed by a psychic.”

“Wait a minute! Not just by psychics! Archaeoacoustics! There are audio recordings of prehistoric voices taken from the rock in caverns, like the one in the cave of Niaux in France. Archaeologists can do that in places that have remained undisturbed for centuries. I don’t know the science behind it, but I assure you, it’s been done. There’s a definite, proven relationship between the frequency of cave paintings and the resonance of the acoustics too.”

“Interesting,” but Jake wanted to re-take control of the conversation – once Heather got going with archaeology, she was capable of a long boring speech. Hurriedly, he said, “Anyway, a psychic can ‘tune in’ to these frequencies or vibrations, access the information and experience it. I assume it works in the same way as residual ghost phenomena. Myers explained a branch of retrocognition was psychometry, which is the ability to describe or witness the past by touching or holding the objects related to past events. These events are often highly-charged emotive events, such as a murder or a rage…”

“Hum, or a marital row?”

“Exactly.”

“Jake?”

“Yes?”

“What were you holding?”

“I’d kept mother’s bead crochet scrunchie as a reminder of her. She was wearing it in the row I witnessed. If only I’d known, I wouldn’t have picked it up in that room.”

“If you’d known, we might not even have moved into this house. But I love it so much, Jake.”

Her tone was anxious, so he reassured her. “Don’t worry, my love, I’ve locked the scrunchie away. I can’t bear to part with it. But you’re right, it’s better to cling to my memories of her rather than travel back and glimpse her…like some kind of modern voyeur.”

Heather tut-tutted. “You’re so hard on yourself sometimes. It’s not as if you meant to spy on them. You’re going to have to be careful, Jake. What if you’re holding something really old, say, a Saxon coin? Will you find yourself in a Saxon slave market or something?”

“I think I’ve done it already, Heather. Remember at Ebberston, when I found myself in the middle of the battle and witnessed the wounding of Aldfrith.”

“Yes! In the lab in Bradford, we found damage to the right clavicle consistent with an arrowhead. Wow, Jake, how privileged you are to have really seen that historic moment!”

“I didn’t feel privileged at the time. I was too busy trying to escape from that murderous ghost. He’d already slaughtered poor Livie.”

“Do you still miss Olivia?”

He stared hard at his wife. He was just beginning to understand her tendency to jealousy. His ex-fiancée was a delicate topic, and he cursed himself for bringing up her name, he clearly wasn’t thinking straight this evening. “Not really, but I regret that the last time I saw her, I mistreated her. She didn’t deserve that, Heather, but I can’t turn back time and do it differently. We weren’t getting on, and there was no future for us.” His voice broke, “As it turns out there was no future for her at all. I blame myself.”

Heather took his arm. “You shouldn’t, Jake. The accident that cross-wired your brain wasn’t your fault.”

“If I’d been more careful crossing…”

“Some things are meant to be. You wouldn’t be here with me, now.”

He relaxed. “Yes, I suppose you’re right…as usual!”

“Just be careful on holiday, that’s all. Don’t go poking around reawakening homicidal Saxon ghosts!”

“I’ve done that, and once is quite enough, believe me.”

“Well, Jake Conley, be careful, that’s all.”