Past Life
Contents
Cover
Also by David Mark
Title Page
Copyright
Epigraph
Part One
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Part Two
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Part Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Epilogue
Acknowledgements
Also by David Mark
Novels
THE ZEALOT’S BONES (as D.M. Mark)
THE MAUSOLEUM *
A RUSH OF BLOOD *
BORROWED TIME *
SUSPICIOUS MINDS *
CAGES *
The DS Aector McAvoy series
DARK WINTER
ORIGINAL SKIN
SORROW BOUND
TAKING PITY
A BAD DEATH (eBook only)
DEAD PRETTY
CRUEL MERCY
SCORCHED EARTH
COLD BONES
* available from Severn House
PAST LIFE
David Mark
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
First world edition published in Great Britain and the USA in 2021
by Severn House, an imprint of Canongate Books Ltd,
14 High Street, Edinburgh EH1 1TE.
Trade paperback edition first published in Great Britain and the USA in 2022
by Severn House, an imprint of Canongate Books Ltd.
This eBook edition first published in 2021 by Severn House,
an imprint of Canongate Books Ltd.
severnhouse.com
Copyright © David Mark, 2021
All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. The right of David Mark to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.
ISBN-13: 978-0-7278-9092-4 (cased)
ISBN-13: 978-1-4483-0592-6 (trade paper)
ISBN-13: 978-1-4483-0591-9 (e-book)
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is purely coincidental.
This eBook produced by
Palimpsest Book Production Limited,
Falkirk, Stirlingshire, Scotland
‘Death must be so beautiful. To lie in the soft brown earth, with the grasses waving above one’s head, and listen to silence. To have no yesterday, and no tomorrow. To forget time, to forgive life, to be at peace.’
Oscar Wilde
‘The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.’
Khalil Gibran, The Prophet
PART ONE
PROLOGUE
A pig of a day.
Afternoon bleeds blackly into evening: big dark shillings of rain tumbling down from slow-moving, pot-bellied clouds.
The land, featureless, beaten down. Flat, in every direction; a green-brown cloth draped across the earth and stamped until the wrinkles are smooth. A visitor here could be forgiven for believing the planet to be a disc.
A long, straight road, heading for the coast.
A copse of trees.
And here, the last house before the water: the final man-made structure before the soil becomes the sand; becomes the sea.
A plume of smoke, emerging from a red-brick chimney like an illustration in a nursery rhyme.
Inside, now. The door isn’t locked.
Here.
A murky little room.
An overhead light throws a yellow glare upon a horseshoe of coloured picture-cards. The cards are encircled by a small henge of different crystals: their glittering stones reflecting fire; a jagged coral reef of serrated edges – each tiny spike sharp as a tooth.
A plump woman, long hair, clever eyes, half lost in a swirl of incense.
This is Dymphna Lowell. She talks to the dead. Sometimes, she gets a reply.
Opposite, a man in a sodden overcoat, dark trousers, boots leaving muddy prints upon the carpet: a triangle of ankle peeking out from between the unlaced tongues and the sodden hems. Upon the skin at his heelbone, an ugly ridge of scar tissue, as if burned by hot iron. In his dark coat, he’s a bundle of kindling: a corn dolly, burned black.
Dymphna is thinking of the money. Telling herself that the smell of him, and the sight of him, and the muddy prints on the floor, are worth enduring for the inch of crisp notes he had placed in her hand. She’s never been the sort to turn somebody away. Would never deny her gifts to those in need. And money’s money. She’s been inconvenienced. Had to deal with a knock on the door on a wet afternoon. Here, at the end of the road, where a person could be forgiven for expecting peace and quiet. Only right she gets what she deserves.
‘It is important not to take these things at face value,’ she says, with an encouraging smile. ‘The widower card, well, it doesn’t mean you’ve necessarily lost somebody, or are about to. It’s about loss. About a sense of bereavement, yes, but that doesn’t mean a life. The other cards inform it, you see.’
A quick glance at his left hand, starfished flat on the wooden table. A gold ring, on the third of his big, pink fingers. It’s a little loose. There’s clear space between gold and the flesh. She hadn’t noticed it at first, having been focused instead on his fingertips. He has no nails. The nails have been bitten down so far that there is virtually no cuticle: each tiny strip of nail a letterbox in a pinkly wrinkled door.
He used to be bigger, she tells herself. Suffered, this one. You can see it in his neck, too. That loose skin. The collar of his shirt’s a little frayed, as if it used to rub against stubble. Been through something. There’s so much pain in him it’s like he’s full. Like he’s been a sponge and now he’s saturated. Like pain is spilling out a tear at a time …
‘The militaria,’ she muses, examining the pretty, colourful card. ‘One of my favourites. Very encouraging. Not a soldier, by any means, but somebody with purpose. A mission. Perhaps a belligerence, a devotion to a duty. Am I getting warm? Stop me if I’m getting ahead of myself …’
She glances up at his face. He’s barely spoken since he arrived. Hasn’t responded to much of her chatter. She finds it a little rude, if she’s honest. She hasn’t got much enthusiasm for idle prattle, but most of her clients expect it, the same way they expect a little gossip at the hairdresser’s or some borderline racist invective during a cab ride. She counts it as part of the service. With this one, she may as well have said nothing at all. Just lit the candle, wafted the incense, and got right down to business. Not much of a one for foreplay, she decides. Probably hasn’t played the field. Married young, and for life.
She makes a theatrical display of examining the cards. She doesn’t need them. Can read this man just from the way he looks; the way he smells; the catch in his voice as he said he was desperate, that he would pay twice her normal rate. The money had been enough of an incentive to overlook her own protocols. She doesn’t like walk-ins. Likes to be suitably prepared. Some of the cynics suggest she only accepts advanced bookings so she’s got a chance to Google the shit out of each new client, acquainting herself with every aspect of their character. She doesn’t rise to such suggestions. She knows she’s the real deal. Always has. Can read a person like a pop-up book. The cards just give her something to look at while she’s letting an innate empathy draw a picture of whoever is sitting in the chair. The crystal ball; the palm, the tea leaves, they’re all mostly props. She could tell this man’s future just by looking at him, and none of it rings with promise.
‘Now that’s interesting,’ she says, peering at a colourful picture card, soft yellows and gleaming red. ‘This is a feeling card: a state of being, you might say. Amore, that’s love. And love means love. It doesn’t take much explaining. You feel it, or you’ve known it, or will again. That’s where this esperanza card comes in – a sense of hope. And I can see the power there, how you long for something. There’s a sadness in you, something beyond gloom. If I were to describe a kind of wistful, delicious melancholy, a nostalgia for something fondly remembered, would that mean something to you?’
He doesn’t reply. Blinks, once or twice. She watches the little pearl of saltwater build. Take shape. Bulge, reflecting tiny prisms of iridescence. She has to force herself not to pull a face as the tear finally spills over the lip of his drooping eye. He’s wept, one-sided, since he sat down, though there has been no accompanying sound. His eye, tugged down as if with an invisible finger, glistens pinkly. A steady drool of tears oozes from the lip of the lid, charting a course down yellowy, unhealthy-looking skin. He spends most of his time indoors, she thinks. Hasn’t known much sunlight. And that smell. Like something on the turn …
‘Ah, so this is one of my favourites,’ she says, cheerfully. Considers the cards. She’s pleased to be considering the images again: studying the Oracle with the same warm feeling as others might consider an old photo album. She is among friends, here. Knows each image like her own reflection.
‘Hmmm, that one facing towards me … that’s unusual …’
Glances up. She’s grateful for the smoke from the incense burner. It blurs his edges. Conceals the worst of the fungal, earthy aroma that seems to seep out of his skin. She feels an urge to stick her nose above the scalding surface of her herbal tea. There’s something about this man that makes her think of spores: of something rotten. Can imagine him coming apart into a million tiny points of flesh, billowing away like seed heads to be distributed by the breeze.
‘Who is that?’ he asks, his voice low, the words hard to discern. She wonders whether English is his first language. He’s staring at the card as if it were written in his blood.
‘Ah, well, that’s next, but if you’re eager, well …’
‘Who!’
She gathers herself. She’s no stranger to raised voices, heightened emotions. Telling the future, disentangling the present, providing guidance from the spirits: she can forgive outbursts of emotion.
‘An interesting card,’ she says, quietly. ‘You’ve chosen an unusual spread, as it happens. But, well … L’Amica is the Female Friend, but she can also represent friendship in a general sense – similar to the Dog in the Lenormand deck, though we’re getting fairly advanced territory there. L’Amica brings valuable aid, especially when she appears upside-down. She can be a safe harbour in a dark storm. She won’t make all of your problems disappear, but …’
‘I don’t know her,’ he says, and the sound is harsh, grating: a hiss through locked teeth.
‘Well, obviously, it’s not saying this is a specific friend, it’s implying somebody with that kind of relationship, that closeness …’
‘What do you mean “obviously”?’
She smiles, to show she hadn’t meant anything offensive. Does her best to look the way her clients want her to. Friendly, plump, a little Bohemian: an ethereal being emerging through the fog of incense carrying opaque messages from beyond the veil.
‘Perhaps there is somebody from your past – somebody who may be returning, to listen, to offer counsel …’
‘No.’
She glances at the item he had placed upon the table. It’s pretty. Well-made. Antique, if she’s any judge. She likes all of the charms, but it’s the horsehead that makes her smile. She can imagine herself wearing such a piece, though she would hang it on a chain.
‘The person who wore this … she’s in pain, yes? She needs help.’
Another tear spills over his ruined eyelid. He blinks, slowly. The damaged eye does not close all the way. She is left staring into the milky grey of his lower eyeball: a Cheshire cat smile beneath the puckered lid.
‘If you could select a card from this pile, please, perhaps we can get …’
He shakes his head. Opens his eyes. ‘You’re a liar,’ he says, candidly. ‘I thought for a moment you understood. But no. A charlatan.’
She bristles. ‘Hey, back off there, mate, not everybody likes what they hear but I’ve been doing this for twenty-odd years and—’
‘How much money have you made in that time?’ he asks, staring a hole into her. He’s not looking her in the eye – seems to focus his burning gaze on the very centre of her forehead.
‘I provide a service, mate. You don’t like it, I can sympathize, but you came to me, don’t forget. You’re in my kitchen, my house. You’ve known pain, I see that, but we’ve barely begun and you’re calling me a liar, and that’s one thing I’m not. My daddy taught me to always tell the truth …’
‘Another liar,’ he says, sadly, shaking his head.
She rises, furious, knocking the table. A curl of ash falls from the incense stick: cards slide across one another, the pattern and meaning lost. ‘How dare you! Don’t you ever think you can—’
He picks up a crystal from the circle surrounding the stones. It’s heavy and sharp: sparkling and brittle.
‘Liar,’ he says, again, and hits her in the side of the head with such force that the jagged edges of the twinkling rock embed themselves in bone. There is a grotesque slurping sound as he pulls the gory crystal from the wound. She slumps forward. He hits her again. Harder, right at the back of the neck. Takes a fistful of her rosaries, and pulls.
The chain snaps.
Beads fall like hail.
He lets go before she dies. Pushes her onto her back. She’s heavy, and there’s a thud as she topples back onto the floor. One of the cats, nosing near her feet, gives a hiss before it darts away.
He crouches over her. Opens her eyes and peers in.
There’s life in there, he tells himself. A consciousness. Something that can still feel.
‘Charlatan,’ he says, leaning down so his lips are by her ear. ‘Deceiver.’
He considers the pupils in her dulling eyes. Changes his angle until he sees his own barely-there reflection in the glassy surface of the eyeball. Peers in as if searching for something. For someone.