Death Of A Devil

by Derek Farrell

  I frowned, puzzled as to where I’d seen the movement previously, and it was a moment before I realised he was clearly channelling Tina Turner doing Proud Mary, but by that stage he’d straightened up, opened his eyes and was staring sightlessly into the middle of the room.

  “Lumme,” he said in a voice several octaves higher than he’d previously used, “looks like George is a goner.”

  “He’s channelling the spirits,” Cheryl explained to me in a whisper which still earned her a vexed stare from Anna.

  I looked at Caz, who rolled her eyes and swigged from the hip flask, before realising it was empty and shooting daggers at Horace.

  “It’s the typhoid what did it, I suppose. Though it might have been the sulphur at the match factory or the pneumonia what he had last year.”

  I kept staring, expecting the huge figure in the middle of the room to burst into a chorus of As long as ‘e needs me, mash it up with a medley of Oom pa pa, a couple of lines from Waiting at the church and perhaps a reading from the death of little Nell, but no; despite the fact that this was clearly a load of old rope, he kept on wittering on about George, who – from the list of ailments being wheeled out – sounded like a medical marvel.

  At length, and completely unprompted, the spirit Horace was channelling suddenly announced: “My name is Victoria Clarke and I live in this pub with my husband George. I don’t know what I shall do when George is gorne. I suppose I shall ‘ave to go live with my son Edward in Worthing.”

  Caz poked me in the ribs, and I turned to look at her. Her face was set in an angry stare. “That’s word for word the first Google entry for the history of this place,” she hissed. “He’s not channelling a dead landlady, he’s channelling the bloody internet.”

  This, to be honest, was hardly news to me; the entire performance had been so obvious as to make me wonder at the sanity of the other three, who stood rapt, listening, noting, sound recording and photographing the event.

  And then, as quickly as it had started, Horace repeated the Proud Mary dance, opened his eyes and looked at us. “Was… was that okay?” he asked, and I wanted to lamp the fat fraud.

  “Wonderful, Horace, absolutely wonderful.” Tavistock was in raptures. “Is there anything else in this room?”

  Horace shook his head. “I think that’s it for here,” he said, overlooking the fact that a victim of a violent crime had not bothered popping in for a chat, or to recite her Wikipedia entry.

  “Where should we try next?” Cheryl asked, her eyes shining with excitement.

  “She really needs to get out more,” Caz whispered in my ear before, a glint of mischief in her own eyes, calling out, “what about the cellar?”

  “The cellar?” Anna Jones frowned. “Why the cellar?”

  “Well,” Caz said, “it’s a dark place, lots of history. I bet people died down there all the time, back in the day.”

  Horace looked unconvinced, but Caz sealed the deal by saying, “And it’s where we keep the stock, so there’ll be brandy if – you know – we need to revive old Horace here.”

  “The cellar,” Horace suddenly announced, one hand held out to the ether, the other on his ear, as though he were listening to a running commentary from the beyond via a cheap, badly-fitting hearing aid. “Sounds promising. I’m getting some vibrations that suggest the lower part of the building might be fruitful.”

  And so we left the room, trooped along the landing and down the stairs to the ground floor, where Caz swiftly killed off Tavistock’s suggestion that we might, perhaps, examine the rooms on this floor first by pointing out that the noise from the packed house, much of which was coming from roaring drunks, singing along to a selection of four to the floor 80s dance tunes and stomping their costumed arses all over the place, might put Horace off his stroke.

  “I don’t think Horace has a stroke, per se,” Tavistock responded, blinking at her in a way that suggested he was trying to decide whether she was taking the piss or not.

  “Well I’m sure he’ll find it easier to contact the other side in the quiet and dark of the cellar. Won’t you, Mr – um – Horace?” she countered, but the old lush, lured by the suggestion that there might be unprotected bottles of brandy below, was already forging ahead towards the doorway to the cellar.

  FIVE

  We stopped at the top of the stairs and Tavistock peered dubiously down into the darkness below.

  “It’s a bit dark,” he said.

  “Well it’s a cellar,” Caz answered, unhooking the industrial torch that we always kept on a hook just inside the door, “they’re not usually lit up like Oxford Street.”

  To be honest, Tavistock was sort of right: The electrics in The Marq weren’t up to much, and the single dim bulb in the cellar provided not much more than a pool of thin illumination around the bottom of the stairs.

  Another light on the apex of the L-shaped space provided another pool of light but, beyond the two circles, the space was pretty much in darkness.

  A third light used to sit between the two, and a fourth around the corner in the short leg of the L; but the fourth light hadn’t worked as long as I’d been at The Marq, and the third hadn’t worked since someone had attempted to burn the pub down the previous summer.

  Caz and Ali, after each replacing the bulb, had decided that the fire brigade – who, despite the fire being out by the time they’d arrived, had doused the hallway with several gallons of water ‘just to be safe’ – had probably flooded and shorted the electrics.

  “You’re lucky the bloody ceiling hasn’t caved in,” Ali had said. “I mean, this place is made out of bloody cardboard. Water damage? They could ‘ave washed the bloody pub away. You should sue.”

  “Ali,” I’d pointed out, “they were trying to save the pub. I don’t think you get to sue the fire brigade cos they put a fire out.”

  She’d shaken her head at me, as though I were some tragically backward child she’d been lumbered with. “Where there’s blame, Danny, there’s a claim.”

  And, that pronouncement made, she’d handed me a bag of batteries. “You better get another torch, mate. Cos the water damage down there,” she sucked her teeth and shook her head, “takes months to show, but you’ll flick that switch one night and either short half of London or fry yourself like the Boston Strangler.”

  I didn’t think the Boston Strangler was electrocuted but I’d run out of energy to argue with Ali.

  And right now, I was running out of the energy to deal with Tavistock and the Ghostbusters, who had started bickering about roles and responsibilities.

  “Well I should hold the torch,” Cheryl Baker was insisting, “because I’ll be in front.”

  “Why will you be in front?” Anna Jones demanded, looking at Tavistock to reinforce her umbrage.

  “Because I’ve got the recording devices,” Cheryl answered, a touch of the smartarse schoolgirl evident in her response. “Therefore I’ll go in front, otherwise all I’ll record are your big feet stomping all over the place.”

  “Well how,” Anna snapped back triumphantly, “are you going to hold both?”

  “Because I can clip this,” Cheryl brandished the wand, “to my lapel,” and clipped the wand to her lapel as though to prove the fact.

  “Ladies,” Tavistock said, “I think it makes little difference. Anna, why don’t you come with me? Miss Baker can go in front with the torch and Horace, as Horace will then be able to pick up vibrations first, then you and I can take up the rear, as it were.”

  Anna looked somewhat pleased with the suggestion, while Baker, who had fought to be up front with the torch, suddenly looked as though she’d been set up and was not remotely happy about the fact.

  “What about us?” Caz piped up, and Tavistock and Anna turned frowns on us.

  “Oh,” Tavistock said, “I suppose that means you’re coming downstairs with us?”

  “Wouldn’t miss it for the world,” Caz answered, smiling.

  Tavistock squinted suspiciously, and Ann
a shot daggers at us. “Very well, Miss—”

  “Lady,” Caz corrected him. “I’m Lady Holloway,” and she smiled again as the two continued to shoot filthy looks at her.

  Tavistock bowed, “Your ladyship,” he murmured. “Well if you’re coming, then I must, once again, insist that you are silent and courteous at all times.”

  Caz favoured him with the look she normally kept for shop assistants who queried why she was returning something from last year’s collections without a receipt, and said simply, “Mr Bird and I shall be the silent embodiment of courtesy. Shan’t we, Daniel.”

  “Absolutely,” I murmured, peering somewhat dubiously into the darkness below as, in the distance, the DJ put on Dead or Alive’s You spin me round and the house went mental.

  “Shall we proceed?” Horace asked.

  We lined up as arranged, Cheryl flicked the switch on the torch and we slowly, with a worrying degree of creaking – most of it coming from the stairs as they strained under Horace’s bulk, but some of it definitely coming from Horace himself – made our way down into the cellar.

  Caz had, of course, lied: There were no cases of vintage brandy down here. The Marq ran on bare minimum stock levels and, apart from the beer barrels stacked against the wall behind the stairs, the space was basically filled with junk that had made its way down here over the years.

  Cheryl came to the bottom of the stairs, and stopped, the torch shining ahead into the darkness until Horace, unable to stop his bulk which was barrelling forward, slammed into her back, jolting her forward and making the torch beam jiggle upwards to the ceiling, then down to the concrete floor, before Cheryl managed to steady it and step forward, allowing the rest of us to gather in a semi-circle just outside the circle of light cast by the overhead bulb at the end of the stairs.

  Above us, I could actually hear the floorboards creaking, as the weight and noise of two hundred people stomping to a disco beat and yelling song lyrics, drinks orders and chat-up lines, reverberated along the joists.

  Cheryl shone the torch around, showing the brick walls, with recessed alcoves dotted at regular instances along them.

  Beer barrels were stacked in two of these.

  The third contained a life-sized cardboard cut-out of Bruce Forsythe, which had put the shits up me when I’d first stumbled upon it one day whilst accepting a delivery of the hooky lager which my nephews had set me up with. Tonight, however, and considering the spook patrol were supposedly here to be shocked and disturbed by unexpected events, not one of them blinked. It was as though they were used to having their torch cross the dead-eyed perma-grinning face of Bruce Forsythe on an almost tedious basis.

  “What do we do now?” Anna asked, snuggling a little too close to Tavistock for them to maintain the ‘we’re only friends’ façade.

  Horace stepped forward to the edge of the circle of light, closed his eyes, and began breathing deeply in through his nostrils and out again via his mouth.

  This meant that the constant wheeze we’d experienced on his arrival was now replaced by a thin, high-pitched whistle followed by a long, laborious wheeze.

  “He keeps doing that,” I whispered in Caz’s ear, “he’ll attract dogs before he attracts ghosts.”

  Horace walked forward, out of the circle, his slowly shuffling gait and deep breathing managing – despite the din from above – to echo around the space. He vanished into the darkness and I began, once again, to hear the low moaning sound that he’d been using to suggest he was going into a trance.

  This continued for several seconds, until it was abruptly cancelled out by an almighty crash, a shriek of, “Shittin’ hell,” from Horace and a cry from Tavistock, who rushed forward.

  Cheryl, a stream of orders being barked at her by Anna Jones, swivelled the torch wildly as Horace continued to issue oaths and epithets that I thought unlikely to have come from the ghost of Victoria Clarke, late of this parish.

  It wasn’t until he growled, “What cocksucker left that there,” that I stiffened and, as Caz mused aloud, whether, perhaps, anyone thought he might be suffering satanic possession, Cheryl found Horace sprawled on top of a partially dismantled petrol lawn mower.

  “Oh, my ‘ead,” he moaned as Cheryl struggled to haul his unfeasibly large bulk upright. “I nearly lost me prospects.”

  The cross-bar on the handle of the lawn mower had rusted away and as a result a couple of rusty spikes were all that remained, pointing upwards at an odd angle. One of these had somehow ended up, as he tripped and – one assumes – flew through the air, shoved up Horace’s right trouser leg, stopping just short of skewering his crotch.

  Tavistock and I rushed around him – me apologising profusely about the random bit of garden kit lying around in my cellar – and managed, with Cheryl mopping his brow and shushing him like a worried mother, to pull Horace to his feet.

  “Bird!” Tavistock turned furiously on me. “What the hell is that doing here?”

  “I’m so sorry,” I attempted to explain. “It was dumped in the lane outside and I didn’t want to leave it there. It was a trip hazard,” I finished lamely.

  “We are, for once,” Tavistock stated coldly, “in agreement on something. Are you okay Horace? Should we call this a night?”

  Horace looked around at us. “A night? But you haven’t had your full session yet. We agreed a full hour.”

  “Well,” Tavistock sounded doubtful, “after a fall like that, perhaps you might want to rest.”

  “Nonsense,” Horace hauled himself upright, winced, looked around for Caz and asked, “Lady Caroline, you wouldn’t happen to have any more of that Armagnac, would you? Medicinally, of course.”

  And Caz, from somewhere about her person, produced another hip flask and, wordlessly, handed it over.

  “How many of those,” I asked, “are you carrying? And where the hell are they?”

  “Daniel,” she looked at me and smirked, “I’m shocked that you’d even ask. A lady is always prepared for all eventualities. And a gentleman never asks her where she keeps her stash.”

  “Firstly,” I answered, “that’s not a lady; it’s a boy scout.”

  “And secondly?”

  “And secondly, what gave you the idea that I was a gentleman?” I wiggled my eyebrows like Groucho Marx and only a gentle cough from Horace as he downed the contents of the second hip flask brought my attention back to the now rather bedraggled group.

  Horace, having handed back the empty, went into his routine and we all slowly – and, this time, carefully – made our way along the length of the cellar, stopping at various spots for Horace to ‘feel the veil,’ and moan a bit before picking up various signals then losing them again.

  “Honestly,” Caz muttered as we turned the corner into the short leg of the L-shaped cellar, “he’s not so much a medium as a faulty transistor radio.”

  “Perhaps he only picks up medium wave,” I joked back as Horace suddenly stopped dead in the middle of the pitch-dark space and went into his Proud Mary again.

  Cheryl shone the torch on him, and his hands waved in front of his face as his eyes watered in the glare.

  “Not in his face,” Tavistock chastised her, swiping the torch off to the right so that it illuminated a stretch of plastered wall, a large dark crack snaking from the ceiling down through it.

  Horace opened his mouth and, before he could speak, the room above was filled with the opening bars of Michael Jackson’s Thriller and the crowd, once again, roared its approval and began jumping up and down, sending small showers of dust and plaster onto the now only partially-lit medium.

  “Death is here,” he whispered. “Horrible death. Its smell lingers.”

  “That might just be the drains,” Caz said, “I’m fairly sure they run under here.”

  “Out!” Tavistock barked, pointing back the way we’d come.

  “Sorry,” Caz mouthed, but made no attempt to leave.

  Tavistock glared at her, as we all moved to stand in a semi-circle around th
e by now profusely sweating Horace. I wasn’t sure about the smell of death, but I could definitely detect the scent of Armagnac as it seeped out of the man’s pores.

  “Death,” he whispered, and the rocking back and forth began in earnest.

  Within seconds I realised we were all mirroring his movements, as he continued to moan.

  “We are on burial grounds,” he hissed. “A sea of death. A wall of souls.”

  I glanced at Caz, whose face showed the same level of interest I felt; this was different. He wasn’t summoning up anyone specific, just generalities about death and so on, but it felt a little more disturbing for that.

  He cocked his head to one side. “Who’s that?” he asked as, from above, Vincent Price advised him that the midnight hour was almost here.

  “You!” Horace suddenly boomed out, his arm flying up and his right index finger pointing directly at me, “I see you, and a hammer.”

  I shook my head. Poor Horace had been on Google again.

  Caz, annoyed now at how easily she, herself, had fallen for the pantomime we’d just watched, sighed deeply, exclaimed, “Oh really!” and was silenced only by a sudden loud cracking noise.

  “That doesn’t look right,” said Cheryl, as she turned towards the wall, her torch beam showing the crack she’d highlighted earlier widening as we watched, and spreading out and downwards at an alarming rate.

  And as we watched, whilst from above us Michael Jackson sang, accompanied by a cast of pissed up tuneless party-goers, something from within the wall began to push forward, to press the wall itself outwards, a shape appearing through the crack as it widened.

  And, like a thing from Lovecraft, it wasn’t until the shape materialised itself into a skull, desiccated skin stretched tightly across the cheekbones, the teeth grinning the rictus smile of death, that anyone said, or did, anything, and by that stage, it was too late.

  The body lurched forward, Cheryl began to scream hysterically, the crowd upstairs – at the song’s end – burst into crazed applause and stamping, the torch was dropped, plunging us all into darkness, and, above Cheryl’s howls, I distinctly heard the mono-titled Horace exclaim, “Fuck me, I never saw that coming.”