by Phil Rickman
When the porch door slammed, it wasn’t Nat but Matthew, the Harry Potter clone, carrying a laptop in a leather case. Just for the sake of it, Jane brought up the Sony 150 and shot him by the side of the Christmas tree in front of the reception desk.
Matthew half turned and stuck his tongue out. Behind him, the white lights on the tree were unevenly spread, and it looked spindly and skeletal, like a frosted pylon. Ben had brought the tree in himself last weekend, probably nicked it out of the forestry. Jane didn’t approve of young trees hacked off above the roots and brought indoors to die slowly, so that by Twelfth Night – Happy New Year – you had a stiffened corpse. She lowered the camera, nodding at the laptop.
‘You get e-mails from the Other Side on that?’
Matthew inspected her through his black-framed glasses. ‘I realize you’re much too cool to be mixed up with spiritists and channellers, and I suppose I was much the same at your age.’
‘What changed?’ To Jane, adulthood seemed an arid place tonight.
‘You don’t want to know. Stick to your filming.’
‘No, I do,’ Jane said.
Matthew stared into her eyes, and she stared back and realized he could be as old as Mum. Glasses with big frames sometimes made people look a lot younger, like with beards and double chins.
‘For what it’s worth,’ he said, ‘what changed me was losing a mate. Beth’s husband, Steve Pollen, who was my boss at Powys Council. In the Archive department. Steve died very unexpectedly.’
‘Oh. I’m sorry.’
‘Only, it didn’t stop him coming into work. You’d find something interesting – say, some missing estate records – and you’d say automatically, “Here, look at this, Steve,” and then you’d think, Hang on, he’s dead, and then you’d realize you’d just caught a glimpse of him at the files. People who die without some degree of foreknowledge often don’t realize they’ve passed.’
Two of the lights on the tree had gone out. Jane thought of Ledwardine, remembered the dead branches she’d collected in the orchard and brought into the vicarage to be sprayed silver and gold for Christmas, she and Mum planning to decorate them this weekend. She felt a stab of loneliness.
‘Actually, I think I saw a woman once. Like, when she was dead? I didn’t know she was dead until later, so it wasn’t scary. I mean I was pretty sure I saw her, but... you know?’
Matthew nodded. ‘Most of the spirits we see are complete strangers, so we don’t realize they’re not there. It’s only when we spot someone in a situation where nobody could possibly be at a particular time, like in a deserted theatre or a church that’s been locked up, that we think, Uh-oh...’
Jane frowned; this conversation was getting too pally.
‘Don’t get me wrong, I still think spiritualism’s naff. It’s a big issue, life after death, but you see these mediums working an audience, and all they ever get is like, “Remember your dad’s blue suit in the wardrobe – well, it’s OK to send it to the Oxfam shop.” ’
Matthew looked exasperated at last. ‘People who are bereaved don’t want a lecture on metaphysics, they just want some evidence of survival – some small thing that sounds trivial and naff to an intellectual like you, but is conclusive proof that someone they thought had gone for ever is still around.’
So now she was just young and heartless.
‘Does he... still come into the office?’
‘Steve? No, he’s gone on now. We decided, Beth and I, that we ought to try and help him. Which is how we got into the network. You help them to accept their state. They hang around people they used to know and get confused. But if it’s explained to them, they’ll just turn around and see the light – literally. And they’ll see people – usually their relatives who’ve already passed – waiting to welcome them. Which is wonderful. And you’ve got that look again.’
The guy was clearly sincere. ‘Just seems too easy.’
‘It’s not easy, but it’s normal. What was interesting in this case, however, on a more basic level, was that when Steve died he was putting together a file of newly discovered records relating to Hergest and Stanner, and I was able to finish the work for him, with Beth. Which was how I learned about the Windlesham group and the White Company. Sometimes you’re led to things.’
Jane said, ‘You found out about Walter Chancery and everything – from these records?’
‘It connected up.’
The phone on reception started to ring.
‘So what did they do the night Conan Doyle came here?’
‘Hadn’t you better get that?’ Matthew said.
‘Look, I know all about Hattie Chancery...’
Matthew smiled, shaking his head, and walked off. Jane snatched up the phone.
‘Stanner Hall.’
‘Where’s your mobile?’
‘Irene!’
‘You wanna talk, talk,’ Eirion said.
‘Jane...’ Amber came round the corner from the kitchen steps. ‘Oh, sorry...’
Jane held up two fingers, appealing for a couple of minutes, and fished the Brigid Document from her jeans.
‘You do realize we leave in the morning,’ Eirion said when she’d finished reading it out. ‘I kind of thought you were ringing to wish me bon voyage.’
‘Oh hell, I’d forgotten.’
‘Thanks.’
‘I didn’t mean—’
‘We’re leaving early because of the snow.’
‘Oh well, never mind this, then, I’ll—’
‘I’ll give it half an hour, OK?’
‘You’re awfully obliging, for a Welshman.’
‘Make that fifteen minutes,’ Eirion said.
Amber was nowhere in sight when Jane came off the phone, but Matthew was halfway up the stairs, in conversation with Alistair Hardy.
These guys – it was all so cosy. Forced-cosy, like a nursing home. Did death reduce the intellect to mush? Going to work, wondering why nobody would talk to you, till one day someone like Hardy turned you round, and there were all your dead relatives lined up like for some awful retirement party. Surprise, surprise: all your dead relatives in paper hats, with vacant, dead smiles and party poppers.
‘Jane!’ Amber was standing by the eerie tree, wearing her vinyl apron. Her voice was too light and thin for this place; in Stanner, unless you projected, your words were carried off like dust. ‘Come and help me, would you?’
‘OK.’
But as soon as they reached the kitchen steps, it was, ‘Jane, did you tell your mother what’s happening here?’
‘Well, no, I told you what she’d say.’
‘I said you wouldn’t tell her,’ Amber said with resignation. ‘Ben thought you would, but then he—’
‘Ben? Ben knows you rang my mum?’
‘It was actually Ben’s idea, Jane.’ This time Amber’s words resounded like a smoke alarm. ‘It was Ben who suggested I rang her.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘You’d better come down to the kitchen.’ Amber looked over her shoulder and then back at Jane and down at the camera in her hands. ‘Deception’s not my forte, Jane, I’m just a cook.’
The back-porch door was unlocked. Normal enough. Danny went through, with his lambing lamp switched on. The usual stuff in here: shovels, rubber leggings on a peg, hard hat and face guard for the chainsaw.
He banged on the back door. ‘Jeremy!’
The howling stopped. Danny rattled the handle; it turned and the door opened. Not normal, not at night. Danny shone the lamp into the kitchen: old-fashioned, green-painted kitchenette, exposed sink, old brown Rayburn.
‘Jeremy?’
The Rayburn chunnered to itself. A tap dripped. No one here. He went through into the living room, where the lambing lamp found Jesus half in shadow, his face tinted by the olive light of the Garden of Gethsemane. Below the mantelpiece, behind a fireguard, little orange flames were curling quietly out of a tamped-down mix of woodblocks and coal-slack in the range.
Below that, the dog sat on the brown and green rag rug. The dog wasn’t howling no more, only panting slightly, his flanks heaving, his stare on Danny but not moving from the rug that had been here all his life and all Jeremy’s life. This was a good dog, Border Collie crossed with something else. Something that howled.
‘Where’s the boss, Flag?’
The dog didn’t come to him, didn’t howl, didn’t growl, didn’t whimper, just sat. Danny shone the light around, over the pink-flowered wallpaper that Jeremy’s mam had pasted up long, long ago. Over the dresser was a picture plate of what might have been Hereford Cathedral, with a crack through the tower.
On the top of the drawer section of the dresser was a small white envelope.
On the envelope, it said Mr Danny Thomas.
Danny said, ‘Oh God. Oh Jesus Christ.’
The envelope wasn’t sealed. Danny took out the single sheet of folded paper inside and held it under the lambing light.
Danny, I’ve never been one for formality. You been a good friend to me, always. Please take the dog, he knows you. Please deal with the sale of my stock, and see they go to the right kind of place or keep everything yourself for nothing. Natalie will
Danny let the paper fall. Something like a sob came out of him. When he looked up, the face of Jesus had gone into full shadow.
He ran out, through the kitchen, through the porch and into the white yard. Opposite him, the big barn door was shut. The little door in the bottom right-hand corner was not quite closed.
Danny saw a glimmering of light in there.
He stopped outside the door, very afraid. Behind him, the dog was howling again, making the coldest, loneliest sound in all the bloody world. The snow was coming down harder, but he couldn’t feel it. It didn’t feel cold no more; its flakes might have been rose petals.
29
Twist
YOU FORGOT HOW isolating snow could be. At the highest point of the village, the church and the vicarage had become an island of ancient stones and crooked timbers rising out of an arctic sea into a falling sky. Merrily and Lol made a brief exploratory foray into the upholstered softness: no vehicles moving on the square, the little market hall squatting like a white-capped mushroom, lighted windows in the Black Swan reduced to shining slits by high sills of snow. The Swan was a local pub again, its car trade in retreat.
Merrily and Lol came back in, and she shut the front door and stood eye to eye with the lamp-bearing Christ, lord of weary acceptance.
‘Wouldn’t even get to the main road, would we?’
She brushed down Jane’s fleece, kicked off her wellingtons, sending shards of snow skating across the mat and the flagstones. Lol followed her through to the scullery, where Ethel the cat dozed in front of the electric fire. He sat down in front of the computer, snow melting into his hair.
‘There you go.’
She leaned against him. ‘What?’
Thank you for your inquiry. To be conversant with the Stanner Project, it is clear you must have contacts in the Psychic World, although I have not heard of you. Accordingly, I attach our fact sheet.
The involvement of Sir Arthur himself in the events of 1899, combined with the subsequent history makes this, for us, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and we very much hope to go ahead this weekend. However, the state of the weather means that we may be fewer in number than was originally anticipated and so, if you are a genuine person residing sufficiently close to Stanner Hall as to be able to journey here, we would be interested to hear more from you. We make no secret of our work, but it is essential that only sympathetic and like-minded people are involved as I am sure you appreciate. Please e-mail me again if you are interested. I shall be communicating with several other individuals throughout the evening and therefore shall be available should you wish to know more.
All good wishes,
Matthew
Lol looked up at her through his brass-rimmed glasses.
‘Confirmation.’ Merrily moved to the window, looked out at the ghosts of apple trees. ‘It looks like they’re there already. I... I’m just... Well, I’m not well disposed towards my daughter.’ Turning and throwing up her hands in frustration. ‘The Stanner Project? Project! How long’s that been going on? “We make no secret of our work”. How long’s the bloody kid known about all this?’
The electric fire put a blush on the white wall under the window – a poor defence, Merrily thought, against the winged spirits of the night, the cwn annwn chasing souls. While electricity had helped to kill off superstition, everyone in the countryside knew it was most prone to failure when you most needed it.
‘Might as well find out the rest.’ Lol clicked on the attachment.
THE STANNER PROJECT
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle seemed, in his later years, to be in a permanent state of excitement and anticipation, always believing that his field of study would eventually change everyone’s life, removing all fear and uncertainty about the nature of death, dispelling centuries of superstition and removing the residual control still exercised over the less-sophisticated by the Church.
The White Company has come to believe that ACD’s own certainty stemmed, in part, from an experience that occurred at the end of the nineteenth century, when he was already a successful author and a wealthy man, at a time when he was re-evaluating his life and searching for a new purpose. A ‘mid-life crisis’, if you like.
We believe that his initial baptism – a ‘baptism of fire’ – occurred at Stanner Hall, on the border of Herefordshire, England, and Powys, Wales, when he took part in what had originally been devised as little more than a party game for his amusement but which turned into something profoundly disturbing – so disturbing, in fact, that ACD, with his, at the time, limited knowledge was only able to deal with it by fictionalizing it in a way that would eliminate all paranormal implications.
We suspect it was many years before he was able to understand the true psychic and psychological implications of the Stanner experience, if indeed he reached a full understanding prior to his passing in 1930.
The Stanner Project, involving Mr Alistair Hardy and others, will attempt to re-examine the Experience in the light of more recent developments in psychical and psychological thinking and perhaps point the way to the breakthrough anticipated by ACD. The implications of this are quite awesome and any information, particularly with regard to the anomaly, which might further our inquiries even at this late stage would be gratefully received.
‘Certainly explains why Jane kept it to herself.’ Merrily gave the document to the printer. ‘ “Something profoundly disturbing”. That’s comforting, isn’t it? I’ll be able to sleep now.’
‘And the breakthrough... would be what?’
‘Always the same one with these people: final, undeniable proof of life after death. Kept Conan Doyle in transatlantic lecture tours for over twenty years.’
‘Matthew implies that the real reason the Church is opposed to spiritualism is not, as you might say, because people might let in something dangerous, but because it would undermine your power base. I mean... don’t you ever wonder?’
She stood there with Jane’s fleece hanging open and her pectoral cross swinging free. Of course she wondered.
Lol said, ‘Like, if these people were, suddenly, out of the blue to happen upon absolute, undeniable evidence of an afterlife?’
‘The atheists and the physicists would still deny it.’
‘What about the Christians?’
‘Ah well, even if we had to accept it as fact, it would still only be the beginning for us. However far it went, it would be the beginning. But look, they won’t, will they? They won’t find it. Because apart from anything, I don’t believe truth is ever going to come out of terror. Portents of death, the Hounds of Annwn?’
Bang, bang, bang. Front door. Ethel springing up on the desk.
Merrily flinched. ‘If this turns out to be Dexter and Alice again, I don’t think I can face it.’
Lo
l stood up. ‘I’ll get it.’
‘No, best if—’
She watched his face fall. Another test failed. Dammit, they had to get over this stupid concealment of the obvious.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘If you would.’
The kitchen was empty, every surface clean, as if the house was being vacated for a while. Amber stood next to the stove, which was something French and steely grey. The smell of rich chocolate seemed inappropriate tonight. The lights in here made Amber look ill.
‘As soon as they found out what your mother actually did, they thought it would be a good... friction point.’ The size and the emptiness of the kitchen made her voice sound forced and full of fissures, like a student teacher on day one.
Jane still wasn’t getting it. ‘Friction?’
‘If the Diocesan Exorcist jumped in with some dire warning about the risks of messing with spirits, they thought that would be a nice touch. Then they’d try and get her to express decent Christian reservations on video. And even if she wouldn’t play, it would still be a nice twist. Friction, you see, Jane. Friction’s sexy.’
‘Amber, I’m not— They?’
‘Ben. And Antony.’
If it’s sexy, shoot it.
‘They wanted to—’
‘Ben knew I wasn’t happy about the spiritualism angle from the start. He suggested I give your mother a ring and ask her advice. Pretend I was doing it behind his back. And if she reacted badly and tried to stop you coming here as a result, that would make another good twist. Twists are important. Conflict and friction and twists.’
Jane sagged. ‘They’d have used us... as a twist?’
‘Jane, love, don’t get this wrong – they never think of it as any kind of betrayal. It’s just television. It’s feeding the monster. TV’s this awful, voracious predator; if you get too near, you inevitably get eaten. I’m not saying I totally didn’t want to ring your mother – it would’ve been nice to get some objective advice from someone with expertise. And if she managed to step in and stop you coming, well, I suppose that was something else I didn’t have to worry about. Ben’s going, “Oh, don’t worry, Jane will have told her by now, we can expect another visit.” ’
