Free The Unseen by Katherine Webb

bony fingers.
    ‘Oh! Surely not … I’m sure the spirit can’t have meant Cat …’ Hester smiles uneasily.
    ‘Have you any elderly female relatives, recently crossed over?’ Mrs Dunthorpe asks her seriously. The eyes of all twelve women fix upon Hester.
    ‘Well … my great aunt Eliza, I suppose … She passed away four years ago, of the palsy,’ Hester admits.
    ‘That’s it, then! That was her – it must have been!’ Esme cries. ‘Oh, Mrs Canning! Do be careful – do heed what was said, won’t you? That a source of evil has entered your house, and will bring dark times upon you … Poor Mrs Canning! Do be careful!’
    ‘Now, now, Esme. Calm yourself,’ Mrs Avery admonishes the woman, who is dabbing at her eyes with the corner of herhandkerchief. ‘I am quite sure that nothing truly evil would take root in the house of a man of God. Isn’t that right, Mrs Canning?’
    ‘Yes, of course,’ Hester says. For the rest of the evening she feels glances aimed in her direction, and catches expressions of pity and wonder on the faces of her peers. She smiles more often than she might usually, to make light of it, but the party is ruined; and beneath her façade lies a kernel of deep unease. She thinks of Cat Morley’s black gaze, and the way her shadowy thoughts stay so well hidden behind it; the smudges under her eyes and the painful thinness of her body, as though some blight is indeed eating her away from the inside.
    As Hester walks home, she wonders anxiously if she will ever be asked back to Mrs Avery’s. Twice she has lied, in one evening – but surely this second time it was the right thing to do? She had decided not to divulge details of Cat’s past – and she does know more than she said, although not much more – and she stayed true to her vow. Thunder is thudding across the sky, sounding like heavy stones rolling, and the wind comes in powerful gusts, making the late spring branches flail, dashing pollen from the blossoms, sending petals flying into the air. A spattering of rain begins to fall. Hester pulls her coat tighter, and struggles with her umbrella for a while before giving up when the wind threatens to tear it.
    With the sky so heavy and low, the road is near invisible. Only the faint yellow glow from the windows of houses lights her way as she passes, and this dwindles to nothing as she comes to the far end of the village, and walks the last stretch to the vicarage. Hester finds herself peering into the darkness beneath the trees and hedges, straining her eyes as she had strained all her senses at the seance. The black depths seem watchful, the wind seems to carry voices, whispered words. Shivering, Hester pauses. Her knees feel weak and unsteady. The wind curls around her, unpins her hair, threatens to carry off her hat; she clamps one hand upon it, eyesscrewed up against the onslaught and the stinging rain. There is a large horse chestnut tree just outside the garden wall of the vicarage, its leaves already full out, broad and young and softly green by daylight. A flicker of lightning lights the tree with the grey tones of the underworld, and there, against the trunk, a figure stands quite still. Hester catches her breath in a gasp. No more than a black shape, a motionless outline, but quite definitely watching her with an implacable patience. Hester tries to cry out but her voice is strangled. She stands frozen, thinking of the violently angry spirit they had conjured that night, and the dire warning of evil which might have been for her. For a moment she can’t think or move, and is wholly seized by a spasm of shock. Then, with a small cry of fear, she bolts for the safety of home, heart beating fit to burst.
    Cat waits until she hears the front door slam shut before she relaxes again. She pictures Hester with her back to the door, eyes shut, panting; and she smiles. From behind her back she lifts her cigarette to her lips, takes a long pull. The smoke makes her lungs burn, and she