Then she came to a box of his books and, grunting with the weight of it, lugged it over to the table by the window. At first she took each book out to check through it, shaking it by the spine to see if anything had been hidden in the pages. Finding absolutely nothing and growing weary of the process, she began to take the remaining books from the box and stack them on the table without looking inside them. Near the bottom of the box was what purported to be a Geological Guide to the British Isles — a book dating back to the sixties or seventies, from the outdated design of its cover. Mrs. Burrows didn’t pay it any particular attention, but as she glanced at the book that had been below it in the box, she frowned. This book had no jacket, but in faded gilt letters on its clothbound cover was the title, Geological Guide to the British Isles.
“Two copies of the same book?” she said to herself as she picked up the one with the dust jacket again. She opened it. The pages weren’t printed — instead there was handwriting on them. “Hello,” she said, knowing immediately whose it was. Her husband’s. Dr. Burrows’s. She removed the jacket to see what was really underneath: a notebook with a marbled purple and brown cover, and stuck to the front was a label with Ex Libris in ornate writing and a drawing of a wise-looking owl wearing circular glasses. On this label was scrawled Journal. She recognized her husband’s messy handwriting again.
“So this is it. I’m finally going to find out what really happened,” she announced to the many piles of boxes in the room. And she didn’t once leave the table as she read the book from cover to cover, turning the pages, which more often than not had muddy fingerprints on them. “Will,” she said, smiling affectionately, because she knew they would have been his.
As she progressed through the journal, she became breathless with excitement. She was at last finding out what Will and Chester had learned before they went missing. Although she knew nothing of the tunnel that the boys had re-excavated beneath her former home on Broadlands Avenue or if indeed there was any link between their disappearance and her husband’s observations, she still felt she was making progress. Mrs. Burrows avidly read her husband’s thoughts about the strange people he’d identified in Highfield, the luminescent orb that had turned up at Mrs. Tantrumi’s house, and a local well-to-do businessman from the eighteenth century called Sir Gabriel Martineau. As she came to the section on the buildings this man had put up in Highfield old town, including the square that bore his name, she stopped to stare out the window for a few moments before diving into the journal again. Then she came to the final entries, noticing the date of one of them.
“That was the night … the night Roger left,” she said, her voice tense. Her eyes settled on the words, I have to go down there. Reading to the end of the entry, the last in the journal, she came back to these words again.
“What did he mean, down there? Down where?”
She checked through the blank pages at the very end of the journal, making sure she hadn’t missed anything. On the inside of the back cover she spotted a name and telephone number in pencil. Mr. Ashmi—Parish Archives, she read.
Will and Chester spent the night in the main room — Will on a pile of carpets that Martha had spread out on the floor by the map chests, and Chester on a piece of furniture she referred to as the “chaise longue.” Chester’s eyes had lit up when she’d first mentioned it, imagining he would be sleeping on something approximating a real bed. He was to be sorely disappointed. Once the chaise longue had been cleared, he found that it was so short his feet hung off the end, and also that its old upholstery was as hard as nails. Despite this, the soothing sound of the fire, and their fatigue, insured that both he and Will fell asleep within seconds.
They were aroused from their slumbers by Martha rattling the kettle on the hearth.
“Good morning!” she trilled in a jolly voice as both boys heaved their aching bodies to the table.
“Tea,” she said as she handed cups of it to them. Then she placed a chopping board on the table, on which was a bunch of gray plant stems and a selection of white roots of different sizes and shapes. “How about some breakfast? I’ll bet you’re both starving,” she said, as she set about slicing up the stems and roots.
Chester eyed the unappetizing mass of vegetable matter as she worked on it. “Um, really, no thanks, Martha,” he moaned. “I feel a bit sick, actually.”
“Me, too,” Will said.
Martha frowned. “It might be because you’re new to this place,” she suggested. “It takes a while to adjust.” As she was chopping, the knife slipped from her hand and flew into the air, where it performed a couple of revolutions. “Bother!” she said as she caught it again, and finished the job. “I remember Nathaniel and I went through the same thing.”
“Low gravity,” Will said. He’d watched what had happened with the knife and was nodding to himself. “Yes! Martha’s right. It could be the low gravity that’s making us feel like this. S’pose we just need to get used to it.”
“Well, you’re both going to eat, whether you like it or not. You’ve got to keep up your strength,” Martha said, sliding from her chair and returning to the hearth, where she scraped the diced vegetables into a pan of boiling water. “A bowl of my soup is what you need,” she said firmly.
“What about Elliott?” Will asked suddenly. “How is she?”
“Don’t you worry,” Martha said. “I checked on her during the night and she’s still out for the count this morning.”
“Can you do something about her arm?” Chester ventured.
“First item on my list today,” Martha said, picking energetically at a rear molar with the nail of her pinkie finger. After examining whatever she’d scraped off her tooth, she sucked it back into her mouth and chewed on it with a pensive expression. Chester, who’d been observing her do this, pushed his tea away from him. If he’d looked pale before, he now turned green. He gulped loudly. “Really, no soup … nothing for me, Martha.”
“You probably should have some,” Will advised. “We haven’t eaten properly for ages, and besides …” He glanced down at his stomach. “It might get everything working again.”
“That’s just a little more information than I need,” Chester said.
An hour later, they all went to Elliott’s room. Will and Chester hovered on the threshold as Martha gave the girl a thorough examination.
“So why is she still unconscious?” Chester asked.
Martha ran her hands over the girl’s scalp and the nape of her neck, then used her thumb to lift an eyelid so she could check the pupil. “She’s concussed. She’s had a bad knock to the head. Anyway, better for her to be out while I set her arm. Come and help me, will you?”
The boys sidled up to Martha. She placed a pair of splints at the ready on either side of Elliott’s arm. “Take these,” she said to Chester, passing him a couple of rolls of linen bandages from her apron pocket. “Right. Will, go around the other side of the bed. I need you to hold her steady.”
Will did as she directed. Martha then gripped Elliott’s wrist and pulled several times. The boys heard clicking as the broken bones grated against each other.
“Ohh,” Chester said. “Awful …”
From behind Will there was a dull thud.
“What was that?” Will asked, still gripping Elliott by the shoulders.
“Your friend has just passed out. Leave him there — I need you to keep the girl steady,” Martha said to Will. “I’ve got to get this right.” She pulled on Elliott’s arm again, applying tension as she manipulated it. Beads of sweat formed on her forehead and she mumbled to herself all the while she worked.
“That looks better,” Will said.
Martha nodded. “It’s so swollen it’s difficult to tell, but I think the bones are back in place now,” she said. She spent a few more minutes checking the arm, then appeared to be satisfied. She carefully put the splints on either side of the arm and bound them with the linen strips, tying off each roll.
Martha straightened up and
sighed, as Will also got up from the bed. He turned to see Chester, in a heap on the floor.
“We’d better get him next door,” Martha chuckled.
“The Highfield Bugle, 19th June 1895,” Mrs. Burrows observed as she leaned over the old newspaper spread open before her on the table. “So, Mr. Ashmi, what exactly am I looking for?” she called out.
Mrs. Burrows was in the Highfield historical records office, where documents dating as far back as the tenth century were kept. As no answer appeared to be forthcoming from Mr. Ashmi, she scanned the newspaper, noticing the title in faded print halfway down the page. “‘The Ghosts of the Earth.’ Now there’s a headline guaranteed to grab your attention!”
“Certainly is, and that’s the report you should read,” came the muffled response from the far end of the basement, past umpteen tiers of freestanding shelves on which were a mind-boggling number of document bundles and boxes. Mr. Ashmi, the borough archivist, stopped delving in the box before him and stuck his head around the edge of the rack to look at Mrs. Burrows. His horn-rimmed glasses caught the sickly yellow illumination of the strip lights overhead as he spoke. “It’s typical of the incidents.”
“OK,” Mrs. Burrows agreed. “But I hope you’re going to tell me why I need to read it when I’ve finished.” She turned again to the newspaper and began:
“‘Work on a tunnel for the new Highfield & Crossly North station was abandoned after an incident in the early hours of the morning Wednesday last. The Harris brothers, the celebrated tunneling engineers from Canada, assisted by a four-man work gang, had drilled and set explosives in a deposit of sandstone. The warning Klaxon was sounded, and the area cleared.!’”
“The next bit gets to the nub of it,” Mr. Ashmi grunted as he heaved a box of papers from a shelf and pushed it into the central aisle, then beetled off to another part of the basement.
Mrs. Burrows cleared her throat and continued:
“‘After the detonations had been performed, the Harris brothers and the work gang, now accompanied by Mr. Wallace, the Northern & Counties Railways assistant surveyor, re-entered the excavations. As they waited for the dust to settle in order to make an assessment of the workface, they heard grating noises under their feet. They at once suspected it to be subsidence and began to withdraw from the tunnel. However, the grating noises became even louder, portending a terrible scene as strong lights suddenly shone into the tunnel from out of the very ground itself. All those present said they beheld trapdoors opening in the bedrock, from which an army of phantomlike apparitions marched out.’”
Mrs. Burrows stopped reading. “Is this for real?” she asked.
“The Times took it seriously enough to run it the next day,” Mr. Ashmi replied from behind a rack. “Keep going.”
“If you say so,” Mrs. Burrows said with a shrug, then read on:
“‘Mr. Wallace stated that the figures sported dark fustian or gabardine coats, and that they wore white collars around their necks. In their hands they held spheres from which issued bolts of green light. As the menacing figures began to advance, he and the work team were afeared and fled for their lives. According to Mr. Wallace, the Harris brothers did not run, courageously holding their ground. Thomas Harris armed himself with a ten-foot iron ramrod, while his younger brother, Joshua, wielded a pickax handle.’”
“And guess what became of the Harris brothers?” Mr. Ashmi called to Mrs. Burrows, sounding as if he was closer now.
“They were never seen again?” Mrs. Burrows said, peering at the shelves nearest to her.
“Got it in one!” Mr. Ashmi congratulated her.
Mrs. Burrows gave up trying to locate the elusive Mr. Ashmi, and went back to the article:
“‘Police officers from the Highfield constabulary were summoned, and shortly afterward they escorted Mr. Wallace back into the tunnel. The roof above the workface had caved in, and they beheld no sign of the Harris brothers, nor the army of phantoms. Despite further excavations, the bodies of the brothers have not been located.’”
“And they never were,” Mr. Ashmi put in. “Strange, don’t you think?”
“Yes, very strange,” Mrs. Burrows agreed.
“Well, try this. It’s also from the Highfield Bugle, after a raid by the German Luftwaffe in the summer of 1943.” Mr. Ashmi breezed by the table, depositing yet another old newspaper in front of Mrs. Burrows.
“Why?” she said to his retreating back.
“Just look at the last paragraphs,” he replied, waving a hand in the air as he went.
Mrs. Burrows sighed. “‘Report on Yesterday’s Raid,’“ she read, then scanned down the article. “‘Incendiaries fell on Vincent Square … roof of St. Joseph’s church blown off”. … Ah, think I’ve found it…. ‘At noon, a land mine was dropped on the Lyon’s Corner House, killing ten; the millinery works, killing three; and also completely destroying the private residence at No. 46, in which Mr. and Mrs. Smith and their two children, of ages four and seven, perished.
“‘However, when the bodies of the Smith family were retrieved from the rubble, the corpses of five unidentified men were also discovered. The men had evidently been in the cellar, and were described as being remarkably similar in appearance, with pale faces and thickset builds. They were dressed in civilian apparel which did not seem to be British in origin, immediately raising suspicions that they might be Nazi spies. The Military Police were called to investigate and the five corpses removed to the St. Pancras Mortuary for further examination, but they were apparently mislaid en route. The Smith family’s maid, Daisy Heir, had been fortunate not to have been in the scullery at the time of the raid because she was collecting the family’s weekly meat rations at the butcher’s in Disraeli Street. When questioned by the Military Police, Miss Heir said that there had been no guests staying at the house, and that she had no knowledge whatsoever of the five men and how they came to be there. She could only suggest that they had been looters, who had somehow gained access into the house and secreted themselves down in the cellar during the raid.’”
Mrs. Burrows looked up from the newspaper to find Mr. Ashmi standing there. “All this is gripping stuff,” she said. “But can you tell me why my husband wrote your name and number in his journal?”
“These reports are why,” Mr. Ashmi replied, easing himself into a chair across the table from her. “Since the early eighteen hundreds, there have been accounts of these odd-looking squat men and also the taller ‘phantoms’ wearing black habits with white collars. These aren’t just isolated incidents — they’ve occurred with surprising regularity through the past two centuries and up until the current day.”
“So?” Mrs. Burrows said.
Mr. Ashmi slid some typewritten pages in front of her. “In the months before he went missing, your husband, Roger, researched these incidents with me. It took many days of work, but he compiled this list.”
Mrs. Burrows turned through the pages; she had to agree that the sheer number of reports was quite extraordinary.
“Funny thing …,” Mr. Ashmi began, leaning forward as if he was worried that he might be overheard.
“What?” Mrs. Burrows asked, also leaning forward, but not entirely convinced she was dealing with a person in possession of all his marbles.
“I had one of these lists under lock and key in my office,” he said. He drew his hands through the air as if he was about to do a magic trick. “But it vanished.” He leaned even farther forward and lowered his voice. “And quite a number of the records themselves have ‘gone walkabout’ from my shelves in here, too. If it wasn’t that I use my own rather idiosyncratic archive system — which no one else knows — I expect more of them would have disappeared.”
“Oh,” Mrs. Burrows replied, not sure what else she could say. As she turned her attention back to the typewritten list, she saw that there were notes jotted next to some of the reports, not in her husband’s handwriting. “Is this you?” she inquired, pointing at the writing.
“No, th
at’s Ben Wilbrahams, the American. He’s also investigating these incidents, for a film or something. In fact, you should really have a word with him — he’s always upstairs.” Mr. Ashmi pointed a finger at the ceiling, indicating the town library on the floor above.
“Yes, right, I will,” Mrs. Burrows said, not intending to do anything of the sort.
Clutching the photocopies of the newspaper articles Mr. Ashmi had insisted she take, Mrs. Burrows was glad to leave the dusty archives. She could very easily picture her husband down there, eagerly poring over the obscure newspaper reports. It brought back too many memories of the old days and her chronic unhappiness at the way things had been. All her husband had seemed to want to do was hide away in some fuddy-duddy self-fabricated world where he could pretend to himself that he was a serious academic doing something meaningful. As she mounted the steps to the ground floor, she growled with frustration. Frustration because she knew her husband had been capable of so much more than his job as the curator of the local museum, but he just didn’t have the get-up-and-go to find something better, something — most crucially to her — with a reasonable salary.
She folded the photocopied papers and shoved them into her bag. Despite Mr. Ashmi’s obvious conviction that there had been strange goings-on in Highfield, it was all too fanciful for her to take seriously. She wondered if her husband had been drawn in by Mr. Ashmi’s infectious enthusiasm, and whether that had led him to make the wild statements she’d read in his journal.
In order to leave the building she had to pass through the library, and there she thought she spotted the man that Mr. Ashmi had referred to: the American. Although he had a neatly trimmed beard, his hair — black and quite long — made him look as if he’d just rolled out of bed. Sitting alone with several books open before him on the reading desk, he was deftly spinning a pen with one hand, rotating it round and round in endless circles. He glanced up and, narrowing his eyes through his wire-rimmed spectacles, gave Mrs. Burrows a broad smile. As she realized she had been caught staring at him, she immediately averted her gaze and hastened toward the main door.
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