Chapter 34

Friday night, Lucy and Gabbie met Millie after dinner, she was in the kitchen supervising a couple of Year 9 girls who were helping the chef and kitchen porter.

“Oh hey girls, give me a sec to finish off here, I’ll come to your room in a couple of minutes.”

Millie knocked on their door five minutes later.

“Listen, I’m really sorry, those girls are doing the washing up for missing deadlines, so I can’t leave them unsupervised. Here’s the keys to the back stairs, keep hold of them, I trust you not to leave them lying around. The laundry is easy to find, next door is an old office, there’s some chairs in there to sit on, and because of the noisy laundry, the whole basement has been soundproofed, you can shout as loud as you like.”

“Thanks so much Millie, you’re a star,” Gabbie said.

“Just remember this at Christmas.”

“Hahaha, we will, definitely,” Lucy said before Millie left the room and went back to the kitchen.

As their door clicked shut Gabbie sat back on their sofa, she looked nervous, Lucy knelt on the floor, resting her hands on Gabbie’s knees.

“Sweetie, are you ok?”

“erm, no, not really. This is it; we’re going to confront them aren’t we, and I’m not sure I’m ready.”

“We’ll be there together, I’ll be right by your side, in the room, and in your head. If we hold hands we’ll be stronger, and if you get distressed you can tell me, shout, squeeze my hand, anything, then we get out of there.”

“I know you’ll be there, but they’re my memories, I don’t want them all coming back once I’ve woken one of them.”

Lucy sat back on the rug, she hugged her knees to her chest and thought hard, she had to come up with a plan.

“Do you know everyone’s names Gabbie?” she asked slowly, as her plan coalesced.

“All the people in the cellar you mean.”

“Everyone you’ve remembered, do you know all their names?”

“Yes, I think I do now.”

“Ok, we’ll prepare ourselves, we’ll think hard, then we’ll invoke them all, and then get rid of them all.”

“You mean get rid of them all now, tonight?”

“Yep.”

“But they weren’t all there at the same time, it was different people each time, usually 8 at the most, but there must have been 20, 25 people in total.”

“Doesn’t matter sweetie, you writing on my picture shows we can control our version of reality if we want to, so if you could write them all down so I know their names, give me an ultrabrief description of them, so I know what they look like, then we’ll go downstairs and call them all, then we’ll tell them all to fuck off out of your life.”

“Oh wow, that would be amazing if it works.”

“We can only try, and if it doesn’t work for them all, and you can still remember some people, or even if you remember more people later, we’ll do it all again.”

“Should we check with Sylvie, you know, just in case she thinks it’s a bad idea.”

“Maybe we should,” Lucy said, so she phoned Sylvie, but there was no answer.

“Ahh, never mind, I’m sure we’ll be fine,” Gabbie said, “I’ll get a list of names sorted, so you know who we’re calling out.

Gabbie spent 10 minutes thinking, frowning all the time, as she eventually compiled a list of 22 names.

“This is all the people who I can remember by name, I’m sure there must be more though.”

As Lucy was reading through the list her phone rang, Sylvie, so she hit the speakerphone icon.

“Hi Lucy, sorry I missed your call, is everything alright?”

“Thanks for calling back so soon Sylvie, we’ve just got a quick question. Gabbie is a little distressed about the prospect of waking more memories as she starts to banish people, so I thought maybe if she listed everyone, and we both called everyone by name and banished them all en masse, would that work, would it be dangerous for Gabbie.”

“Ahh, now remember when I said you should do people one at a time and only one per night?”

“Yes, we remember,” Gabbie said, “but we were wondering if it was possible.”

“Right, so I said to do it one at a time before I realised just how powerful Lucy is, and you Gabbie, your mind seems to be a lot stronger than I expected, so whilst my advice still stands, only do it one person at a time, that’s the safest way to do it, but I think you probably could manage to banish everyone in a single session.”

“Oh great,” Lucy said, “so it’ll be OK, we can do it.”

“Yes, but please be careful, if you feel either of you is getting distressed, pull out, if you’re getting tired, stop. Doing something like this can be extremely mentally draining, so when you stop you’ll need to rest a while. And tomorrow, you may both have a massive headache, like being hungover. I’d love to speak to you both tomorrow, to see how you got on.”

“Definitely,” Gabbie replied, “we’ve got lessons in the morning, can we call you about 1, after lunch?”

“I’ve got appointments in the morning, if they over run leave a message and I’ll call you back, I’m excited about finding out how you get on.”

Lucy cut the call and reread Gabbie’s list as she packed her speaker and the LED candle into her backpack. Once Lucy felt she’d memorised the names and pen portrait descriptions they left the room, exited the house via the kitchen door then took the outside stairs down to the cellar, using the keys Millie gave them to remove the padlock on the mesh outer door and unlock the inner door.

It was so dark Lucy had to use the torch on her phone to find the light switches.

Once they could see they found the cellar was the size of the whole house with lots of rooms and corridors, most of the rooms were either empty, or full of junk, old broken furniture, spare mattresses and bedding. The laundry was easy to find, they just followed the smell of detergent until they found it, a large room with several industrial sized washing machines and tumble dryers, all venting via metal ducting out of the back wall to the big chimneys on the roof.

They tried the next room, the door was locked, Lucy tried the rest of the keys on the bunch Millie had lent them and soon had the door opened.

The room smelt musty, and it was pretty dusty, but it contained a couple of chairs as promised, and as they could hear no noise from the common rooms upstairs, they were confident noone would hear them shouting down here.

Lucy pulled a coffee table closer to the chairs, which were the low, foam upholstered type found in waiting rooms. The chairs didn’t have arms, so they pushed together easily, and they’d be able to hold hands comfortably during their trance.

Gabbie wiped the table and dusted the chairs with an old tshirt she found on the floor before she set the LED candle in the middle of the coffee table, the ‘flame’ would be nicely at eye level. Next, she pulled the Bluetooth speaker from her backpack and set it on table near the candle and queued up a 70’s Brian Eno album, unintrusive enough to be largely unnoticed, but it’ll cover up the silence, which due to the soundproofed walls and ceiling was quite freaky.

With the room prepared Lucy shut the door and turned off the light, plunging the room into almost compete darkness, the only lights left being the LED candle and the soft blue LED on the Bluetooth speaker, it was so dark Lucy nearly sat on Gabbie, but Gabbie saw the shadow of Lucy approaching and quickly scooted onto the other seat.

“Are you ready?” Lucy asked as they composed themselves.

“I’m so nervous right now, butterflies in my stomach.”

“We can go back upstairs, we don’t have to do anything.”

“Oh no, I’m not backing out, this is all in my head, they can’t physically hurt me anymore. The job now is to get rid of them.”

“Great, so are we doing this in the order you wrote them? I’ve got their names memorised, and I can picture them all.”

“Let’s do Malcolm first, on his own, he’s linked to us both, if we get rid of him we’ll know it works.”

“How will we know if it works?”

“You know, that’s a bloody good question. Let’s just get this done and we’ll worry about that later.”

Lucy took hold of Gabbie’s left hand, Gabbie in turn picked up her phone, restarted the music and silenced the notifications.

“Ok, I’m ready,” Gabbie said.

“Me too.”

They watched the candle as the artificial flame danced along to the gentle atmospheric sounds of Brain Eno’s Music for Airports and emptied their minds of anything other than the name and image of Malcolm Johns.

Lucy felt Gabbie’s grip tighten and she knew they both had him in their minds.

“Malcolm Johns! I know what you did to me and you can’t hurt me anymore, get out of my head!” they cried together.

They shouted it three times in total.

“Malcolm Johns! I know what you did to me and you can’t hurt me anymore, get out of my head!”

“Malcolm Johns! I know what you did to me and you can’t hurt me anymore, GET OUT OF MY HEAD!”

Then Gabbie relaxed, still holding Lucy’s hand, but the tightness had gone from her posture.

Lucy waited a few moments before she spoke, “how was that?”

“It felt so good!” Gabbie responded, “liberating. After the third cry he drifted away. I don’t know if he’s completely gone, but it feels like it, I can’t sense him. Hang on, I’ll try to picture him and see how I feel.”

Lucy waited as Gabbie checked her mind, “he’s still in my head, I can see him, but I feel nothing, he’s just there. I can remember what he did, and that memory still hurts, but I feel no revulsion like I did before. You know, I don’t want to forget it all, that would be wrong, I just want the thoughts to be in the background, those events are me, but they didn’t make me, I made me, I’m me despite what happened, not because of what happened. Does that make sense.”

“It makes complete sense.”

“Shall we crack on?”

“Yes, if you’re ready.”

“I am.”

“So, how do you want to do the rest?”

“I want to do three people this time, the Turvey brothers and their sadistic mate Jack Simms. Can you picture them?”

“I’ve got them, so, just to get this right, we say the name, then the I know what you did to me bit, then we say the next name, and the line, and the next name and the line.”

“Yes, I think that’s how I want to do it, then we say the line a couple more times, but leave the names out. Scream them, these people were bastards, well, Will wasn’t, he just did whatever his brother Tony told him to do, the poor guy really wasn’t that bright, but god he was big and strong, when he slapped you, you stayed slapped, and even soft his cock hurt me, but he wasn’t evil, I always felt sorry for him. You know, I now don’t know if we should call him out.”

Lucy thought for a moment, then she said, “I think you should, he’s linked to Tony, if you only banish Tony then whenever you remember Will there’s a chance you’ll link him to Tony, then link Tony to Jack, and they all come back.”

“Oh gosh, you’re right Lucy, I have to be ruthless don’t I, I have to get rid of all of them, right, deep breaths and centre myself, let’s do this.”

Again they watched the candle flicker, and let the soothing music wash over them, and then they thought of the three names, as Gabbie’s body tensed Lucy prepared to bring the first name to mind, then she had a mild panic about which name Gabbie would say first, then the name Tony Turvey swam into view and that’s the name she picked.

As one they called out “Tony Turvey! I know what you did to me and you can’t hurt me anymore, get out of my head!”

“Will Turvey! I know what you did to me and you can’t hurt me anymore, get out of my head!”

“Jack Simms! I know what you did to me and you can’t hurt me anymore, get out of my head!”

“I know what you did to me and you can’t hurt me anymore, get out of my head!”

“I know what you did to me and you can’t hurt me anymore, GET OUT OF MY HEAD!”

Gabbie’s whole body went rigid for a moment, she gripped Lucy’s hand hard enough to hurt her, then she relaxed.