Tales from the Gateway Read online

  Also by E.E. Holmes

  THE WORLD OF THE GATEWAY

  The Gateway Trilogy (Series 1)

  Spirit Legacy

  Spirit Prophecy

  Spirit Ascendancy

  The Gateway Trackers (Series 2)

  Whispers of the Walker

  Plague of the Shattered

  Awakening of the Seer

  Portraits of the Forsaken

  Heart of the Rebellion

  Soul of the Sentinel

  Gift of the Darkness

  Tales from the Gateway

  THE RIFTMAGIC SAGA

  What the Lady’s Maid Knew

  Tales from the Gateway

  A Companion Novel to the World of the Gateway

  E.E. Holmes

  Lily Faire Publishing

  Lily Faire Publishing

  Townsend, MA

  Copyright © 2020 by E.E. Holmes

  All rights reserved

  www.lilyfairepublishing.com

  www.eeholmes.com

  ISBN 978-1-7339352-7-2 (Print edition)

  ISBN 978-1-7339352-6-5 (Digital edition)

  Publisher’s note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Cover design by James T. Egan of Bookfly Design LLC

  Author photography by Cydney Scott Photography

  If these characters have become like friends to you, and these pages like home, then this one, dear reader, is for you.

  Contents

  Also by E.E. Holmes

  Dedication

  1. Savannah’s Story

  2. Annabelle’s Story

  3. Carrick’s Story

  4. Karen's Story

  5. Milo's Story

  6. Finn's Story

  7. Hannah's Story

  About the Author

  1

  Savannah’s Story

  I’VE GOT NO BLOODY IDEA why anyone would give a tinker’s fart about what I’ve got to say, if I’m honest, but here it goes just the same, and good luck to you.

  I saw my first ghost when I was four. Well, I reckon I’d been seeing them for a while before that, but I just thought they were people like everyone else, right? That first one certainly looked normal—just your regular, wrinkled old pensioner with spectacles like magnifying glasses and a face like a piece of fruit that someone left on a windowsill too long. She was sitting in my dad’s favorite chair by the telly, which was what made me stop and stare at her, seeing as how no one was allowed to sit in that chair but my dad unless they wanted to get knocked around good and proper.

  “Hello, you dear wee thing,” the woman said, looking at me with a friendly smile.

  I kept my trap shut because I was still so surprised to see her sitting there.

  “You’re a very pretty little girl, aren’t you?” the woman asked.

  I figured there was no harm in nodding, seeing as I agreed with her on that score.

  “Would you like to come sit on your Nanny’s lap, my love?” she asked, patting her knee with one of her shriveled old mitts.

  I shook my head because I wasn’t a bloody fool. No way was I about to climb up into some old stranger’s lap, no matter how pretty she told me I was. I may have only been four, but I had sense enough to know that much.

  “Ah, well, no matter. You’ll warm up to me yet,” the woman said, shrugging her shoulders.

  I opened my mouth to tell her that it wasn’t bloody likely when my dad walked into the room with a beer and she just vanished on the spot. Poof. One moment she was there, the next, my old dad was cramming his useless arse into that chair and shouting about who the bollocks went and messed about with the remote control.

  “Daddy, who was that lady?” I asked.

  He blinked at me, looking, as he usually did, surprised at my existence. “What lady?”

  “The lady who was sitting in your chair. Who is she?”

  He squinted, like I was out of focus—which was likely, given the number of times he’d visited the fridge for another beer. “What’s this nonsense, then? What are you on about?”

  “There was an old lady and she was sitting in your chair just now. Who was she?” I repeated.

  “Have you gone mad? There ain’t no one but your ma home, and she knows better than to sit in this chair.”

  “She said to call her Nanny. Who’s Nanny?” I asked.

  Now, mind you, I was only four, but I knew what fear looked like. I knew what that widening darkness in someone’s eyes meant. I watched the ruddy color drain from my father’s face with interest, like I had pulled a plug and was watching the water funnel down the drain. It was a wizard trick, I remember thinking, almost like magic.

  “What did you say?” my dad asked in a hoarse whisper.

  As a little nipper who was usually ignored, this was all the invitation I needed. I launched into a long-winded explanation of Nanny—what she looked like and what she’d been wearing and what she’d said to me. By the time I was done, my dad’s hands were shaking and his face was the color of porridge. He stumbled up from his chair, staggered into the loo, and spewed up all over the bloody place. Like any normal kid, I stood in the doorway and watched him, absolutely fascinated. I’d never seen my dad look like anything other than a great hulking brute, after all, and here he was, cowering and gasping on the floor in front of the bog. It was jolly good fun, I don’t mind telling you.

  Finally, after a few failed attempts, he managed to get himself up off the linoleum. He splashed some water on his face, dragged a threadbare towel across his mouth, and turned to glare at me.

  “I don’t know what you’re playing at, girl, but I don’t never want to hear a lie like that out of your trap again.”

  “But I’m not lying! I saw her!” I insisted, backing away and starting to cry with frustration that he was being so thick.

  He pointed his fat sausage of a finger right in my face, so that I leapt back from him and whacked my head on the wall behind me. “You ain’t seen nothing of the sort, you hear me? Now, sod off before I give you a thumping you won’t soon forget!” he shouted. Then, he stalked back to his chair, popped the top on his beer, and settled into his usual pastime of pretending I didn’t exist.

  Naturally, I scarpered, seeing as I wasn’t a fool, even at four years old. When my dad went off like that, you made yourself scarce, if you could manage it.

  And then I found Nanny sitting right on my bed.

  I opened my mouth to shout for my dad, but Nanny put a finger to her mouth to hush me.

  “Don’t push him, love. Some people just never understand. He’s been that way since he was a lad, bless ‘im.”

  “You knew my dad when he was a lad?” I asked.

  “Oh yes, of course I did. Knew ‘im better than anyone else, didn’t I? I’m his mum.”

  My mouth fell open. I did a bit of mental calculation. “So that makes you my… my…”

  “Grandmother, poppet. Yes,” the woman said, and she beamed at me.

  “But my grandmother’s dead,” I said, repeating what I’d been told.

  “Dead but not gone, luvvie. Not gone at all,” she replied, and winked at me.

  “But my dad can’t see you,” I said.

  “No, that he can’t. Most people can’t. But you can, can’t you, you clever little thing?”

  I grinned. I’m not sure I’d ever been called clever, but I enjoyed it, I can tell you.

  At that moment, my mum opened the door to my room and Nanny just vanished from where she sat, leaving me staring at an empty bed.

  “What are you playing at, upsetting your father like that?” my mum whispered in that whisper all mums have, the one that’s mos
tly hissing and sounds worse than yelling.

  “I wasn’t trying to—”

  “Don’t get smart with me! You leave him be. He’s had a hard day,” she declared, then shut my door again.

  My dad was always having a hard day, according to my mum. I supposed he didn’t know how to have any other kind of day but a hard one, and that was why he was such a grumpy bugger all the damn time.

  Nanny reappeared, just like that.

  “How did you do that?” I asked her, eagerly.

  “Do what, poppet?”

  “Just disappear like that? It was a jolly good trick!”

  Nanny smiled at me. “It’s my own special magic. Most grown-up people don’t believe in magic, do they? That’s their loss, isn’t it?”

  I nodded wisely. As far as four-year-old Sav was concerned, this woman knew exactly what she was talking about.

  “I don’t want to upset your father, love, so don’t mention me to him again, all right? It can be our little secret.”

  “All right then,” I said, eager as you please. No one ever asked me to keep secrets—in fact, it always felt like they were keeping them from me. The world was one big secret, a place I had to live in while keeping my nose out of it. That’s your lot in life when you’re a measly four years old—just hoping someone somewhere will notice you and let you in on something instead of telling you you’re in the way.

  Armed with the power of a secret of my very own, I learned to keep my mouth shut after that, and when Nanny stopped by, as she did most nearly every day, I ignored her unless we were alone. She seemed to realize I was in a bit of a tight spot, being the only one who could see her, so she just vanished whenever anyone else came around. I think she knew it made things easier for me. I longed to be able to come and go as she did—to just disappear whenever I chose—and so I made a study of it. Consequently, by the time I was ten, I was a proper magician when it came to vanishing, just like that old woman. Poof.

  Poof. “Where’s Savvy? I turned around in the church pew and she was gone.”

  Poof. “Savannah Todd is absent from maths again. Has anyone checked the loo?”

  Poof. “Is Savvy at your flat? I popped in to say goodnight and her bed’s empty.”

  Honestly, it’s a miracle I’m anything more than a puff of smoke at this point. It suited me, though. After all, the ghosts around me could come and go as they pleased, so why couldn’t I do the same? In fact, I was in one of my transient states, neither here nor there, when my old dad walked out. I came home a good three hours later than I was meant to be home and found my Mum there, just sobbing with her head down on the kitchen table. When I asked her what was wrong, she didn’t answer, just pointed to the bedroom. Drawers empty. Suitcase gone. Empty beer cans and a filthy ashtray still smoking on the bedside table.

  Poof.

  Sometimes I would feel right guilty after that, any time I disappeared for a bit. I mean, I lived in council flats for fuck’s sake, not the cheeriest of neighborhoods. My mum probably thought I was lying dead in a gutter somewhere half the bleeding time. But then, I’d remind myself, I wasn’t like him—my dad, I mean. I always came back, didn’t I? Savannah Todd, the Amazing Disappearing, Reappearing Girl.

  It was Nanny, really, who explained what I could do. See, she knew she was dead, not like some of these ghosts you get wandering around all confused, wondering why the bloody hell they can walk through walls all of a sudden. In fact, not only did she know she was dead, but she was right jolly about it.

  “No bills to pay, no responsibilities, no aches and pains,” she used to say, her voice all bright and cheery. “I comes and goes as I please, Savvy-girl!”

  Nanny taught me how to tell the dead ones apart from the live ones. She helped me spot the way the light didn’t seem to touch ’em, the way their movements were just a little too easy, like gravity had no hold on ‘em. She also helped me learn which places and spirits to avoid—the troublemakers, so to speak. Some spirits will just nod at you and be on their merry way, after all. But then there are others—most of ‘em were no good in real life, so they ain’t about to start being any good once they’re dead, see? And once they realize you can see and hear ‘em, it can take a long time to shake ‘em off.

  Eventually, my mum figured it out—guess I wasn’t quite as sly as I thought I was. She heard me, chattering away in my bedroom, and eventually she cottoned on that it wasn’t just the idle, pretend chatter of a kid and her imaginary friend. I’ll never forget, when I was twelve, she finally asked me about it. I suppose she wanted to sort it all out before me stepdad moved in, the blighter. Anyway, she sat down on the edge of my bed, which was no easy feat, seeing as she was pregnant with my twin sisters at the time, but once she finally managed it, she sighed, like she was steeling herself.

  “Savvy, we need to talk,” she said.

  I caught sight of her face and panicked. “Look, mum, if you’re about to give me a sex talk, you can just sod off right now. I’ve had it already at school, and the conversations in the girls’ lav filled in the gaps, all right?”

  My mum turned bright red, putting her hand on her belly as though she only just realized that I knew exactly how those two little buggers got in there in the first place. She recovered quick, though. “No, it’s not about that. It’s about you. I hear you… well… talking in here a lot.”

  I felt my heart flutter a bit but I played it cool. “Oh, yeah, well, you know me, mum. I’m always talking to meself out loud.”

  “Savvy, give me just a little bit of credit. I’m not completely clueless, love. I’ve… I’ve seen the programmes—they’re all over the telly, you know, about haunted houses and psychics and that sort of thing. And I just… is that what you’re doing, love? Cross my heart, you can trust me. I’ll believe you. Are you a… a psychic medium?”

  She said the last two words in such a slow, deliberate way, all serious, and twitching her fingers up in the air, making air-quotes and all, and I just… I busted out laughing. I couldn’t help it. Then she had to sit there, looking all offended and confused while I tried to get a hold of myself again, which admittedly took a long time.

  “Mum, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to laugh at you, honest I didn’t,” I said when I finally managed to snort myself into silence. “But this with the fingers…” I imitated the air quotes, “I mean, do you even know what a bloody psychic medium is?”

  My mum looked all offended, of course—if there’s one thing she can’t stand, it’s being laughed at, which is probably why I do it so often. “Don’t you get smart with me. I know enough to know that there’s folks out there what can see… can see ghosts.”

  I felt the grin slide off my face, and suddenly I couldn’t seem to remember what was so funny. “Yeah. Yeah, I know that.”

  “Come on now, love. You can tell me. I won’t laugh. I’ll believe you, I promise. I just want the truth, and to know if… if I can help you.”

  Bugger all, she was starting to cry! And that meant that I was probably going to start blubbering all over myself like a bloody great prat. “Mum, it’s alright. Pull yourself together, will you? I’ll talk to you, but you have to keep it under your hat, yeah? No blabbing to the girls down the pub. I’ll tell you the truth, just… just stop leaking like some great bulbous hosepipe, all right?”

  So, Mum pulled herself together and swore herself to secrecy and I told her everything, right from the beginning. And that was when I realized just how great my mum really was. I mean, her decision-making skills and taste in men were absolute rubbish, but she was alright, really, my mum. She believed everything I told her—asked me all kinds of questions, but not like she was doubting me. Just like, she wanted to understand—so that she knew me better.

  After that, we were a damn sight closer, even if she did drive me absolutely mad at first, constantly whispering things like, “What about here? Are there any ghosts here? What was that? You just made a funny face. Did you see another one? Is it near me? It’s near me, isn’t it?” B
ut she calmed down eventually, and things even felt… well, maybe not normal, but as normal as they were likely to get. We managed to keep a lid on my abilities around my sisters and that absolute wanker she insisted on marrying. Everything was all right, really, until the Durupinen turned up.

  I was on my way to work when it happened. I’d just gotten hired at the local chip shop, which wasn’t exactly what I had in mind, careerwise, but seeing as I’d failed most of my exams, there was no way I was going to sixth form, so my options were, as they say, limited. The pay was crap but it had its advantages—namely, free chips. I was running late, which my employers would later come to find as one of my less endearing tendencies, so I was turning the corner at a jog when a spirit stopped right in my path.

  Unable to stop myself in time, I ran right through the bugger. “Blast it!” I shouted, shivering violently from head to toe before continuing on my way.

  “Hey, come back here! I need to speak with you!” I heard the spirit call out from behind me, and a second later he was floating along next to me.

  “No offense, mate, but I’m late and I don’t have time for a chat,” I muttered out of the corner of my mouth.

  “But this is important!” the spirit insisted.

  I stole a glance at him. He was young and nervous-looking, twisting a cap in his hands.

  “It’s always something important with you lot,” I murmured. “Well, you want to know what I think is important? Not getting sacked before I even start my first shift, all right, mate? Good luck to ya.”

  “I have a message for you, Savannah Todd!”

  I stopped and turned. The ghost, who was really just a kid now that I looked at him properly, was looking straight at me with wide, terrified eyes.

  Glancing around and seeing far too many people milling about, I jerked my head in the direction of a deserted alleyway to our left, and the spirit followed me into it.