Mean Spirit by Will Kingdom Read Free Book Online

something. Just that they usually came over just as gullible as their sad clients, needing to believe they were bonding with the departed. Plus they did tend to be so pious and all knowing, putting on the air of church ministers.
    And sure, in those years as a New Age columnist, Grayle had never encountered anyone she could honestly believe was in contact with the dead.
    Callard had come to sit on a Victorian sofa on the other side of the fireplace from Grayle’s chair, facing the window. She had a tumbler half-filled with some kind of immoderate Martini mixture.
    ‘You know why I drink too much?’
    Grayle said nothing. It was so dark in here, now, that you didn’t like to move in case you knocked something over. She began to feel cold, edged her chair closer to the underfed fire.
    ‘Because when I’m pissed I don’t receive.’
    ‘Right,’ Grayle said uncertainly.
    ‘Nothing significant gets through alcohol.’
    ‘That’s interesting.’
    ‘Don’t feel …’ Callard leaned back, with her head against the wall, maybe observing Grayle for the first time ‘… that you have to fucking patronize me. What did you say your name was?’
    ‘Grayle Underhill.’
    ‘Grayle?’
    ‘Underhill.’ She sipped weak whisky from a glass that felt greasy.
    ‘Oh my God.’ Callard did this short snort of a laugh. ‘Not thatdreadful … You don’t have a column in one of those ghastly American tabloids. Under the name …’
    Grayle sighed. ‘Holy Grayle. But not any more.’
    ‘Holy Grayle.’ Callard threw an arm behind her head and peered at Grayle across the murk. ‘Oh my God. I was in New York doing some television and my agent brought me some copies. You really wrote that drivel?’
    ‘Don’t feel you have to patronize me,’ Grayle said.
    Callard snorted, took a graceless slurp from her glass. She sat up, grabbed a poker, stabbed at the coals until a feeble white flame spurted.
    Outside it was getting too close to dark. Time, Grayle figured, to cut to the chase.
    ‘Ms Callard, why did you write to Marcus?’
    ‘Did I?’
    ‘Marcus Bacton.’
    In the wan firelight, you could see her navel between the bottom of the cardigan and the top of her dark jeans, then a fold of skin creased over it. She was anorectically thin.
    ‘Marcus Bacton’, she said, ‘was the only person in my entire fucking life who ever pitied me.’
    She dug a bare hand into a bucket and came up with a clutch of small lumps of coal, scattering them over the fire, wiping her hand on her jeans.
    ‘People are suspicious of me. Or afraid. Or they want a piece of me. But I mean, pity … that was something new, even at the time. I was profoundly offended at first.’
    ‘Best of all,’ Grayle said, ‘Marcus likes to offend.’
    ‘When I think about him … I picture him striding up and down the corridors, with his wide shoulders and his little pot belly. Glaring through his glasses and roaring at pupils. Teachers too, sometimes.’
    ‘Uh huh.’ Grayle finished her whisky, gratefully put down the glass in the hearth. She noticed that Callard’s tumbler remained half-full. She’d drunk hardly any.
    ‘One night – this is on record … in the books – a big window just exploded in the dormitory. Glass everywhere. I was at the other end of the room, but they knew … the staff knew things happened around me. They actually put me into a room no bigger than acupboard. Locked the door, as you would with a dangerous mental patient. This was the headmaster and the matron. Didn’t know how else to handle it. Mr Bacton was furious. Came out in his dressing gown, and when they wouldn’t give him the key he kicked the door in and brought me out and we went for a long walk in the grounds. Talking. For hours, it seemed like. He resigned soon after that, and I was taken away from the school. I haven’t seen him since.’
    ‘What did you talk about?’
    Callard didn’t reply. Whatever they’d discussed, that must have been the night Marcus