Previews Dangerous Echoes by Mai Griffin | Page 18

Dangerous Echoes
on the supernatural, recognisable to Bertha more than
most people! In choosing this distant village as her new
home, she had yearned for a new start – freed from the
finger-pointing and gossip of families that had known
hers and handed on, from one generation to another,
scandalous tales of the past.
It was not her fault that her ancestors had delved into
the black arts. In spite of all their attempts to indoctrinate
her as a child, her two Grandmothers, who were twins,
had failed. The family had intermarried for generations.
Themselves the offspring of cousins, they had both
prudently married outside the family but the sisters
refused to be parted. Their husbands moved into the big
house and when their boy and girl babies were born in
the same month it was inevitable that one day they would
marry.
Bertha was born a year later and as her mother nearly
died in labour she was an only child. Her parents
disapproved of their own mothers taking charge and
keeping her so close to them but were powerless to
intervene, so until Bertha was eight-years-old she knew
no other children. Her only happy moments were spent
with the old books in her grandfather’s study, and dusty
volumes about ’The Old Religion’ given to her by her
grandmothers.
Only when the authorities insisted that she must attend
the local school did the child escape their clutches. In
many ways, especially reading, she was well in advance
of her new schoolmates which only alienated her from
them, increasing their immediate distrust. As well as being
unhappy at school she was not very robust and hated the
miles she had to walk to and from the dreaded place.
The other children, sensing she was ‘different’,
excluded her from their play and even tormented her
cruelly, just to impress each other. In her fierce
resentment, little Bertha stared up at the dark sky one
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