Psychic Surveys Book Two: Rise To Me - A Supernatural Thriller Read online

  Rise To Me

  Psychic Surveys: Book Two

  Shani Struthers

  What they said about Psychic Surveys Book One

  The Haunting of Highdown Hall:

  “I’ve read hundreds of ghost stories, but by far

  this is my favourite.”

  Mrs G Whitmore

  "The best ghost story that I have read for many years,

  kept me gripped the whole way through.”

  J Everington

  “Gripping, different and absorbing.

  Great characters and superb suspense.”

  Amazon Customer

  By the same author:

  Jessamine

  Psychic Surveys Book One: The Haunting of Highdown Hall

  Copyright © 2015 by Shani Struthers

  Photography: Amir Bajrich

  Design: Crooked Cat

  Editor: Jeff Gardiner

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever

  without written permission of the author or Crooked Cat Publishing except for brief quotations used for promotion or in reviews. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales,

  is entirely coincidental.

  First Black Line Edition, Crooked Cat Publishing Ltd. 2015

  Discover us online:

  www.crookedcatpublishing.com

  Join us on facebook:

  www.facebook.com/crookedcatpublishing

  Tweet a photo of yourself holding

  this book to @crookedcatbooks

  and something nice will happen.

  For Patrice Brown,

  who taught me everything I know.

  Acknowledgements:

  Once again thanks to my trusty band of beta readers, Patrice Brown, Lesley Hughes, Louisa Taylor and the long-suffering Rob Struthers who has to put up with me endlessly asking ‘but do you really like it?’. Also my kids, Isabella, Jack and Misty for enduring so many burnt dinners because I was writing/editing/proofing the book.

  Thanks also to my editor, Jeff Gardiner, the kindest editor in the world I think (and the funkiest!) and to Laurence and Steph at Crooked Cat Publishing for all their hard work and belief.

  Finally, thanks to the Psychic Surveys team, Ruby, Cash, Theo, Ness, Corinna and Jed, great characters who are so easy to work with.

  Shani Struthers

  April 2015

  About the Author:

  Born and bred in the sunny seaside town of Brighton, one of the first literary conundrums Shani had to deal with was her own name - Shani can be pronounced in a variety of ways but in this instance it's Shay-nee not Shar-ney or Shan-ni – although she does indeed know a Shanni – just to confuse matters further!

  Hobbies include reading, writing, eating and drinking – all four of which keep her busy enough. After graduating from Sussex University with a degree in English and American Literature, Shani became a freelance copywriter. Twenty years later, the day job includes crafting novels too. Jessamine is her fourth novel.

  Rise To Me is the second story in the Psychic Surveys series.

  Rise To Me

  Psychic Surveys: Book Two

  Prologue

  The noise, the commotion, pulled Ruby from sleep. Where was it coming from? Dreams quickly fading, she realised where she was – in her bedroom. In the home she shared with her mother and grandmother. The shouting, the cries, they were coming from downstairs.

  “Jessica, calm down!”

  “Mum, I can’t. You don’t understand.”

  “I do understand, darling, I do, but you have to remain calm.”

  “He’s here, he’ll always be here. He’s seen me now, he won’t give up.”

  “He doesn’t exist.”

  “You don’t know how wrong you are. He does exist. He does, he does, HE DOES!”

  Wide-awake now, Ruby sat up in bed. What were they talking about? Who were they talking about? In her stomach, she felt a cold, crawling sensation, as though it were filled with hundreds of tiny spiders, clamouring over each other, desperate for escape. She looked down at herself almost in wonder. Was it fear she was experiencing? Aged seven, she’d never felt such a curious emotion before, despite her ‘gift’. She can see the dead – those who have passed as her grandmother says – and they are not to be feared. Gran said that as well. If anything they’re sad, not scary like the ghosts on TV or in books.

  “That’s just make-believe,” Gran insisted. “The living, they can be really quite strange sometimes. Quite a few of them love nothing more than to scare themselves. I see those who have passed, your mother can too, and because we can it’s our duty to help them.”

  This confused Ruby.

  “Help them, but how?”

  “To move on, to let go of their earthly lives, to go home.”

  Which confused Ruby further. To her, home was Hastings, a sweet little cottage in the old town, the only home she’d ever known.

  “Home is where we come from,” Gran had explained patiently. “Where we truly come from I mean.” Her green eyes glistening, she had added, “It’s the light.”

  “The light,” Ruby repeated, not really knowing what she meant but somehow knowing. The thought – the light – gave her comfort.

  If she should wake from sleep to find someone sitting on her bed – it had happened several times before with hunched figures, so forlorn – the last thing she’d be is afraid. She’d talk to them, tell them to go to the light, that they’d be happy there. Sometimes these ‘people’, if people she could call them once they’d died, would talk back; would tell her why they were sad. ‘I thought I had more time,’ or ‘I love my girlfriend, I just told her so.’ Climbing out of bed, she’d sit beside them. After a while, the person – ‘call it a spirit’ her gran advised – would rise and walk towards the door, which she always left slightly ajar, as an exit of sorts, and disappear through it. Sometimes they looked back, mostly they didn’t. Ruby would stare after them hoping she’d been some help at least.

  “You have,” Gran would assure her. “Sometimes they just need to know they’re not alone, that someone can see them, can understand their predicament. If, however, you feel a spirit is unhappy, too unhappy for you to cope with, call for me. I’m never far away.”

  And Gran did keep close, but her mother not so much. Jessica dazzled Ruby. She was… Ruby always struggled for the right word to describe her… so ‘alive’. She had many friends, a wide circle of them; she was rarely at home, but when she was Ruby loved it, her presence completing the trio. But, as exciting as Ruby found her mother, she knew Gran worried about her. Not that she’d say so. Gran never said anything against anyone, least of all her daughter. Ruby would catch the way she looked at Mum sometimes, her brow furrowed, her eyes not as bright. She would hear the things she said. ‘I wish you wouldn’t go out so much. Stay at home. Ruby needs you.’ And, ‘That crowd you knock around with, I don’t like them.’

  But Mum would laugh and go out anyway.

  Ruby wished Gran would confide in her more, tell her why she didn’t like Mum’s friends. But she was a child. No one confided in children. Except, of course, the spirits.

  A loud crash – as though plates and cups had been swept off the kitchen table – brought Ruby back to the present. She clutched at her duvet as voices grew louder.

  “Stop it!” Gran shouted. “Remember Ruby’s upstairs.”

  As if she’d been forgotten.

&n
bsp; Taking a deep breath, Ruby threw back the duvet, swung her legs onto the carpeted floor and propelled herself forward. At the door she hesitated as if she were a spirit herself, unsure about where walking through such a portal would lead. She waited and then she grasped the handle, pulled it towards her and stepped onto the landing.

  There was sobbing now, loud, choking sobs – the kind that rose up from deep within a person. Ruby shook to hear it, the nightdress she had on clinging to her thin frame. With one hand she reached up and pulled at the neck of it, as though it were strangling her when really it was loose. What was going on downstairs? Why was Mum crying like that? Had one of her friends hurt her? Had he hurt her, whoever he was?

  Ruby had a father. To be born you needed a mother and a father. But who he was, she didn’t know. ‘You don’t need to know him. Your Gran and I are enough for you,’ Mum had said once when Ruby asked, irritably so as if she was cross with her. And in many ways her mother was right, they were enough, but still she couldn’t help her curiosity. So many children at school had dads, so many asked why she didn’t. They looked at her as though she were different – and she was, but how different they didn’t know. Not even her best friend. That was Gran’s idea. ‘Keep it to yourself for now, Ruby. Your ability to see those who’ve passed, it… well, it unsettles people.’ A good girl, eager to please, Ruby had done as she was told but why her ‘gift’ would unsettle anyone she didn’t know – it seemed perfectly natural to her. But she didn’t ask too many questions – certainly not the questions that span round and round in her head. She wished she’d asked more about her father though. Especially if he’d caused her mother’s distress.

  “Ruby!” It was her grandmother’s voice. “Go back to your room.”

  Having descended the narrow stairs – thirteen of them – she was in the hallway below. From the living room, her grandmother saw her.

  “I…’ Ruby began but could say no more. Her gaze fell on her mum instead.

  Her dark hair, not black but the darkest shade of brown, was normally flat and shiny, but now it was wild, like a wig worn at Halloween. Ruby didn’t expect her to be smiling, not from what she’d heard upstairs, but she didn’t expect her to look the way she did either – her features twisted, barely recognisable. But it was her eyes that startled Ruby the most. She had laughing eyes normally – eyes Ruby delighted in, so similar to her own. Now they were filled with fear. No, not fear. They were terror-filled, round and protruding as if desperate to burst from their sockets.

  Gran came hurrying towards her.

  “Ruby, please, go upstairs.” It was as though she were pleading with her.

  “What’s wrong with Mum?”

  “She’s… unwell. But she’ll be fine by morning.”

  The fact her grandmother faltered in her reply frightened Ruby even more. Her grandmother was strong, confident. She never faltered.

  “Mum,” Ruby called, a part of her amazed she was defying instruction.

  But Jessica remained mute, not looking at her anymore, staring straight ahead, her body juddering rhythmically.

  “Ruby, I’ll explain in the morning.”

  But would she? Or, like the identity of her father, would the truth always remain hidden?

  “Ruby!” Gran’s voice was torn between anger and desperation. As young as she was, Ruby could sense that.

  Slowly, reluctantly, she turned around; retreated.

  Back in her room, Ruby closed the door and padded over to her bed, sitting down heavily on top of it. She listened carefully. There was silence. Perhaps it was all over – Gran had managed to calm Mum down and everything was going to be all right. Ruby started to relax, her shoulders so tense before, fell to their natural position. Yawning, she realised how tired she was. She had school in the morning, a spelling test. If she was going to do well, she’d need some sleep. Lying down, making herself comfortable, she heard another cry – a wail this time, even more piercing than before. Whatever was happening downstairs, it was far from over. She had to go back, find out more, risk upsetting Gran further. This was something that affected them all.

  As she’d done just a few minutes before, she bolted forward again, but this time she didn’t get very far, not even halfway across the room. Stopping abruptly, as if she’d slammed into an invisible wall, all she could do was stand and stare.

  Spirits – she saw them everywhere, even in school, a child wandering the corridors, not searching for their classroom but in search of something. She was used to them, liked them even but this one she didn’t like. This one caused the hair on her arms to stand upright, her stomach to churn and the fear she had felt earlier to turn to ice.

  “Who are you?”

  Although it took on human form – a man, his age indeterminable – it was not human, instinctively she knew that. It was masquerading as such. The edges of him undefined, ragged almost, he stepped out of the shadows and became more visible. As he did so, Ruby’s breath caught in her throat, threatening to lodge there.

  Surprised she could even move, she took a step backwards and then another. He moved forward, came closer – the two of them engaged in a macabre dance.

  “Who are you?” she demanded again.

  The man, the creature, stared at her in amusement, his features blurred except for his eyes, which were as black as pitch, the yellow around them neon. He continued to stare and it was as though he were devouring her, not with his mouth as a lion might devour an antelope, but with his very being, the core of which she suspected was blacker than the surrounding night. Should she turn? Switch her bedside lamp on? The light might chase him away. But she couldn’t take her eyes off him; if she did she feared he might cross the divide between them. Sink his teeth into her. Rip her apart.

  She tried to be brave, tried to be Lucy from The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, a story she loved. “Get out of my way. I need to go downstairs.”

  There were still sounds coming from below, but somehow they seemed much further away, muffled even. All that was real was in her room, she and this ‘something’ she couldn’t put a name to. This ‘something’ with the malevolent eyes that barred her way.

  “Please…”

  But a part of her hated herself for pleading. Determined, she started to move forward and then stopped. If there had been amusement on his face it vanished at such daring. Instead, fury marked him but not of the wild kind; it was deliberate, focussed and all the more frightening because of it. Lifting his hand, one finger, long and bony protruded, was put to where his lips should be. Slowly, measuredly, he moved his head from side to side.

  Despite this, Ruby still considered rushing past him. It was what Lucy would have done and she encountered magical creatures every day in Narnia. But this creature was not magical and there was no way she could cross it or call for help either. Gran was busy.

  As the being continued to warn her, Ruby did the only thing a child could do. She ran back to bed, dived under the covers and brought down the shutters in her mind.

  Chapter One

  Present Day

  “And that, Cash Wilkins, is what’s wrong with the living.”

  As he looked up from his laptop, Ruby noticed an amused smile on his face.

  “So, come on, Ruby Davis, enlighten me. What have the living done now?”

  Despite feeling irked, Ruby couldn’t help but smile too at his use of her full name. It was something they did – one of their quirks.

  “Don’t laugh,” she said, trying to remain serious. “It’s not funny.”

  “I’m sure it isn’t,” he said, his grin widening. “Tea?”

  “Tea would be good. And I’ll have sugar this time, two spoons.”

  “Two spoons? Woah! Things must be bad.”

  As Cash walked over to the kettle, all of a few paces in her tiny attic office – the headquarters for Psychic Surveys, specialists in domestic spiritual clearance – she sat down at her desk with a sigh. It had pissed her off what had happened this morning.

/>   In a few moments, he was back by her side, placing two full mugs down on coasters before pulling his chair over so he could sit down too. Reaching one hand across to tuck some rogue strands of hair behind her ear, he asked her again what the matter was.

  “Do you know Emily’s Bridge?” she said.

  “Never heard of it.”

  “Me neither before today. It’s the nickname the locals have given to an old disused railway bridge, a few miles from Uckfield. I’ve just come from there.”

  Cash took a sip of tea – the colour of the liquid the same colour as his skin Ruby noticed: a gorgeous shade of caramel – an inheritance from his Jamaican-born mother.

  “And?” he prompted.

  “It’s haunted.”

  “By who?”

  Ruby stared at him in disbelief.

  “Oh, by Emily you mean?”

  “Hence the name...”

  Cash remained unabashed. “So, what you going to do, work your magic? Go back and move her on?”

  “It’s not magic, Cash,” she replied tersely.

  “Hey, come on.” Again he reached out a hand, this time to stroke her cheek. “I’m just playing with you, you know that.”

  Ruby’s shoulders slumped. “Yeah, I do. Sorry, I’m feeling a bit tetchy I suppose.”

  Instead of agreeing, he asked her what she was doing at Emily’s Bridge. “I thought you were going to that house in Crowborough to do a survey.”

  “I did, I went there first.”

  “Anything of interest?”

  “No, it’s pipes again I reckon. There’s no spiritual presence that I could detect. As usual though, the owner is disappointed; she doesn’t believe me, she insists there is. I’ll type up a full report for her later. The thing is, her daughter was at the house too, she’s in her teens, sixteen or so I think. She’s the one who mentioned the bridge.” Cash looked at her intently as she started to explain – she loved the way he did that, the way he was so interested – genuinely so, as though he were soaking up every word. “When I said all was clear, the daughter piped up. ‘If you want to see a ghost, Mum, she said, get yourself along to Emily’s Bridge, that’s haunted.’ Well, naturally, I asked her what she meant.”