The Lovecraft Squad

by John Llewellyn Probert

  Some may have been lost for words at this point but not Peter Chesney, who let rip with the full indignation of someone who has been disappointed to the point of considering violence. Of course, such individuals rarely act on their desires, and Mr. Chesney was no exception. With a grumpy expression and the gait of a defeated man, he took a seat near the back.

  The auditorium was almost full when the next unexpected thing happened.

  Chesney felt a tap on the shoulder and turned to his left to see a young woman wearing glasses, carrying a clipboard, and bearing an apologetic expression.

  “Dr. Chesney?”

  “It’s Mr. Chesney,” he said, correcting her for what would turn out to be the first and only time, “and if you’re here to apologize for the mix-up don’t bother, Miss . . .” he peered at her name badge, “. . . Sandra Bellingham. I’ll stay for the first half but then I should probably be going.”

  Sandra Bellingham looked even more worried. “Oh, we couldn’t have you leaving us, Dr. Chesney, not halfway through the program, and certainly not if you could see your way to doing us a small favor.”

  He had heard about questions being planted in the audience of programs like these. Well, if she wanted him to do the program’s dirty work and ask something that made him look stupid he had another cascade of vituperative bile ready just for her.

  “What sort of favor?”

  “Well, first of all I have to admit this is a little embarrassing.” Sandra actually did look uneasy, but it was probably an act. “But I was the one who asked you to come here.”

  He recognized her voice now. It no longer endeared her to him.

  “I’m really sorry about the mix-up, about you thinking you were going to be on the panel and everything.”

  “That’s all right,” he said. It wasn’t, not at all, but he was saving his rage for what he imagined she was going to ask him next.

  “No, it really isn’t all right, and if you turn me down now, I shall quite understand.”

  Turn her down? Was she going to ask him out? The slip of a girl had to be half his age if she was a day! No, that couldn’t be it.

  She took his silence as permission to proceed. “It’s just that one of our experts hasn’t turned up. It’s possible it’s because of someone else who is here, but anyway,” she took a deep breath, “the fact is we’re a panel member short.”

  “Well, what do you want me to do about it?” Suggest someone else? Give her their phone number?

  “We were wondering if you would be kind enough to fill the missing place. I appreciate it’s short notice and, well,” the girl gave a little gasp of embarrassment that was suddenly most becoming, “we’ve messed you around so much, but you really would be doing us a tremendous favor.”

  Chesney remained silent, temporarily speechless, unable to believe his luck.

  This time Miss Bellingham mistook his silence for reticence. “We will of course pay your expenses and, as a panel member, you will be entitled to a night’s stay at the Royal Hotel in the middle of the city.”

  Chesney was still processing the information.

  “There are a couple of well-known people on the panel—including author Ramsey Campbell, who, as well as writing all those terrifying horror stories, has actually written an article about certain psychic research activities himself. There are also a couple of people for the skeptics’ side, but we could really do with another expert on the paranormal.” She looked at him with eyes trained to melt men’s hearts. “Would you? Please.”

  Chesney managed a nod and was immediately offered a hand to help him to his feet.

  “Thank you so much, Dr. Chesney, you have no idea how much you’re helping us out.”

  Actually he did, but he still hadn’t found his voice to tell her that, or indeed to correct her as to his title. He had another reason for remaining silent now, one that he hadn’t counted on when he had arrived at the studio.

  Complete and utter stage fright.

  What were they going to ask him? What was he going to say? He had seen at least one of the experts speak before. He had even read a couple of that Campbell chap’s novels, and if he was anything like his books the man was unlikely to be sympathetic to a parapsychologist who couldn’t hold his own in a discussion.

  So he would just have to, wouldn’t he? His mind raced back to all the conferences he had attended, all the people he had met or tried to meet, all the books he had read and the one he had actually written. It was no good. He couldn’t do this. Even as he was being introduced to the other panel members he knew he couldn’t do it.

  No, Mr. Peter Chesney couldn’t.

  But Dr. Peter Chesney could.

  In that moment, that split-second when he had to decide between telling Miss Bellingham it just wasn’t possible and running for the exit, and taking his seat on the couch next to the experts, something happened. A new persona was born, full-formed and ready to take on the world. It was not Peter Chesney, ex-manager of a failing Our Price record store, that took his seat on the couch between a famous vampire-hunter and a famous horror writer. It was the soon-to-be just as famous Dr. Peter Chesney, parapsychologist and investigator into the paranormal.

  Which was just how they introduced him.

  After that it was easy. Chesney had learned much just by watching those whom he now understood he had idolized. Not just for what they knew, but for how they handled difficult questions, how they prevented themselves from being forced to give answers on controversial topics and, most importantly, how they turned their personal experiences into stories that held the audience enraptured.

  All in all, by the time the program came to an end he was quite proud of himself. Afterward he ignored the other “experts,” who had been difficult all night, and told Ramsey Campbell how much he had enjoyed The Doll Who Ate His Mother (the horror author had turned out to be extremely amicable after all, and just as fond of a glass or two of wine as the “newly qualified” Dr. Chesney was). He then proceeded to drink more than he should, safe in the knowledge that a Central TV taxi was waiting to take him to the Royal Hotel in the middle of the city.

  The next morning, his pounding hangover was worsened by the ringing of his telephone. It was Sandra, sounding none too bright herself.

  “The show was a success! The ratings were fantastic!”

  “That’s good to hear,” Chesney mumbled from beneath the sheets.

  “My producer has asked me to call you this morning to see if you’d be interested in appearing in a new show, one about paranormal investigation around the country. He’s kind of into it himself and has wanted to get something like this off the ground for months. The problem has always been that there’s never been anyone reliable enough to front it.”

  Most of that passed in a blur, but he did manage to catch the last sentence. “Who is going to front it, then?”

  A pause. “We’ve got a couple of great celebrity choices we’re considering. But what we really need is an expert to come on each week and give advice, some background, all that sort of stuff. If you’d be willing.”

  Chesney didn’t exactly sober up immediately, but he made a very good attempt. “Would this be for a series?”

  “Yes.” She still sounded apologetic. Perhaps that was just her normal tone? “For six episodes to begin with. We’d see how those went before thinking about renewing it. Are you interested?”

  Of course he was, and he told her so.

  “Great. They wanted me to catch you before you left the hotel in case you were off on some sort of long-term ghost-hunting thing. Would you be able to come in on Monday to discuss contracts?”

  Chesney said yes and wrote down her phone number, very carefully and in large numbers so he couldn’t possibly get it wrong. After she had gone and he had managed to make himself presentable, he was doubly glad of that slip of paper because otherwise he would have been convinced he had dreamed it.

  Thus had been born Dr. Peter Chesney, parapsychologist and investigator into
all things paranormal. Nobody at Central TV had asked him for proof of qualifications and besides, he had never claimed to possess any. It was everyone else who was eager to believe he was an expert, and he wasn’t going to argue with them if it got him access to places denied him as a plain old “Mr.”

  And now he was here, in All Hallows Church. One of the newspapers had called it “the Mount Everest of haunted buildings,” and if the stories were to be believed, it had certainly earned that reputation. After its closure in 1972 there had been two concerted efforts to investigate it, both illegal in that no permission was given for the site to be trespassed upon, and both ending in disaster. The injuries, deaths, and cases of incurable insanity that had followed those episodes had not cowed Dr. Chesney, however. They had both been expeditions that had been poorly planned and executed—groups of amateurs who had little idea what they might be getting into. True, there had been parapsychologists and mediums involved, and even a physicist in the second case, but no provision had been made for medical aid nor the aid of a higher power should it become necessary.

  Chesney’s eyes darted over from his equipment to Professor Chambers, seated at the back of the church. The fellow was a pathologist, but they all had to go through basic medical training, didn’t they? The man had instantly riled him by asking where he had been trained. Chesney had successfully dodged that for now, and despite the fact that they had started off on the wrong foot he was pleased that there was a medical man here to help the injured, so Chesney wouldn’t be called upon to. He was similarly relieved by Father Traynor’s presence, even though the man seemed a little distant and, curiously for a Catholic priest, was yet to give any blessing to the group, or even offer up a prayer for their protection. Perhaps that was what he was doing right now, tucked away in his vestry.

  The reporter girl Chesney could have done without, but it was difficult to feel too much animosity toward her when she, and her newspaper, were the reason they were all there. Dr. Cruttenden could be nothing but an asset—a lady of letters who would be able to translate any obscure writings they might come across. Chesney had already been impressed by her observations concerning the church architecture. He had been intending to bring that up himself, but she had beaten him to it.

  Finally, there were those competition winners. He could almost hear his internal voice sneering at the words. The woman obviously had connections to the world of the paranormal. He had seen the Tarot deck among her possessions and she had mentioned Glastonbury—one of the most powerful and significant places of psychic power in the country. She might be of some use to the group. Right now she was staring at the wall of the north aisle, tilting her head back and forth. Perhaps there was something there no one else could see. He made a mental note to check the area for psychic energy once she had gotten out of the way. Then hopefully he could make a formal announcement about it before she said anything and claim the discovery for himself.

  He turned his attention back to his machine. He had insisted on a number of items of equipment being supplied for his use. Most of them were far too expensive for him to own and he had relished the opportunity of being able to use them. The device before him was, as the woman Ronnie had intimated, a seismograph, but one that had been designed to detect psychic disturbances rather than physical ones. He wasn’t exactly sure how it worked (he wasn’t entirely sure how any of the equipment worked even though he had done his best to read up on the relevant papers in the parapsychology journals beforehand) but the principle was that any release of abnormal energy would be registered by the needles on the graph paper. Something minor like a ghostly breath, or slight movement of furniture—any of the commonly accepted attempts to communicate from the Beyond—would register at the low end of the scale, never any higher than a three. A spectral apparition would rate halfway up the scale at a five or a six. A full-blown demon from the gates of Hell would rack the needle up to ten. While the prospect of such an occurrence filled Chesney with terror, there was also a small part of him that knew he would be made for life if he survived to tell the tale. And there were plenty of people here who could be encouraged to get in its way while he made good his escape.

  Of course he also had more protection than they did, he thought, as he eyed the half-constructed framework of aluminum tubes in the corner. It was based on the design of the electric pentacle used by the occult detective Thomas Carnacki in the stories of William Hope Hodgson. The author, who had spent a considerable amount of time at sea, had discovered something akin to it on his travels and had “updated” it by adding the use of electricity in his books. Chesney’s device didn’t need power, but had been developed such that, when they were assembled, the aluminum tubes formed a three dimensional pentacle large enough to contain a man. Each of the tubes was filled with holy water. Chesney had wanted the tubes to be made from silver, but the budget hadn’t been able to stretch. He hoped that the water and the pattern of the pentacle itself would be enough to protect him from supernatural horrors should the need arise. As for the others, well, they would just have to take care of themselves, wouldn’t they?

  As he worked, he kept his eye on them. Chambers and Karen at the back, Ronnie mooning over that wall, that Hale chap carrying stuff around and helping to set up the cots as if he thought he was being useful. Father Traynor had cleared off to the vestry, presumably to try and make it livable. On reconsideration, Chesney wouldn’t have minded sharing the transept with the priest, who certainly might come in useful if the pentacle needed urgent blessing. Plus, demons often tended to have a preference for priests, or so he’d read—something about the challenge and the crushing embarrassment they imagined would have to be endured by God if they won.

  Which meant there was only one person whose whereabouts were unaccounted for, Chesney thought as he made a final adjustment to the middle needle and prepared for a test run.

  What was Dr. Cruttenden up to?

  TWELVE

  Thursday, December 22, 1994. 12:21 P.M.

  DR. ROSALIE CRUTTENDEN HAD been busy.

  The fifty-eight-year-old Oxford lecturer had initially been trepidant about agreeing to come on this expedition, as she preferred to think of it. Not an expedition into foreign lands, but one into history. All Hallows, and the ground on which it had been built, had an awful lot of that, much of it from the last couple of hundred years poorly documented because it was difficult to distinguish facts from hearsay. Oddly, All Hallows as well as the area of Blackheath that surrounded it, was one of those rare instances where as one went further back into the past, the historical records became more detailed, almost as if, as the centuries had gone by, attempts had been made to conceal what had happened here.

  And what, for all she knew, might still be happening.

  She still found it difficult to accept the concept of the supernatural as something that actually existed, but over the last few weeks she had been witness to enough evidence to suggest otherwise. The episode in her Oxford study where she, the reporter girl, and that nice professor had been subjected to a hailstorm of wriggling horror had only been the beginning. Since then her dreams had been plagued by visions of this place. She hadn’t been sure until she had arrived, but one look at the building had confirmed it. A tiny part of her had wanted to run in the other direction, as fast and as far away as possible and screaming as she went.

  But Dr. Cruttenden was made of sterner stuff than that, and besides, this was probably going to be the last big project that she would work on before retirement. Oh, she knew colleagues who just couldn’t leave Oxford, or their life’s work alone, who returned in unpaid emeritus positions and carried on as before. But it wouldn’t be the same. No students, no exams, no formal lectures. Some found this a blessed relief, but the youth, vitality, and enthusiasm of her students were among the main things that caused her to delight in her job.

  She was already in the process of composing the first part of the lecture she would deliver on her experiences in here. Perhaps, at the end of th
e day, she was just a bit of a show-off. If she was, she was too old to start caring about it now. In two years she would retire, and that would be an end to it. It would be lovely to go out with a bang, she thought, and getting rid of those bothersome nightmares would be most acceptable too.

  So here she was, in an allegedly haunted church built on land with connections going right back to the time when Geoffrey Chaucer was appointed Clerk of the King’s Works in 1389, and possibly even before that.

  The apsidal was quite snug. Her cot fit close to the curve of the far wall, under a narrow window that admitted a slip of gray light. To the left and right were two low tables, piled high with the books she had spent the last half an hour carting in. There were even more volumes underneath, which was just as well, as the stained wooden surfaces were on the point of collapsing from the weight and in dire need of being propped up.

  The cot was currently home to several notepads. She could have brought a Dictaphone, but she preferred to work in longhand. As well as being more pleasingly tangible, it also made it easier for her to refer back to items of importance.

  A small wooden stool completed the furniture in the cubicle and she was sitting on it right now, sorting volumes into alphabetical order, with works dealing with pre–seventeenth century history beneath the tables and more modern works on top. The light from the tiny window was minimal. In the right-hand corner, next to the head of the cot (a small pillow signified that), an upright lamp cast a harsh glow upon that side of the room. Rosalie sat in shadow. For some reason she felt more comfortable there than in the light, perhaps because there was less chance of something finding her.

  Sitting here, in this tiny, poorly lit chilly room, with only a few rude pieces of furniture for rough comfort, she was struck by sudden feelings of sympathy for the many nuns who must have survived in conditions either similar to, or worse than, this. Of course they had the inner comfort of the promise of Heaven, she thought, something an atheist like herself had attempted to entertain many times during her youth (and with the aid of her overly religious parents), but somehow the Message had never sunk in. After a horrendous failed relationship when she was only seventeen, she had given herself up to the religion that was academic study, isolated herself from society within the sort of confines only an institution like an Oxford college can truly offer, and devoted her life to seeking more secrets from the past while trying hard to conceal her own from herself. And on the whole she had succeeded, feeling safe behind the walls of ivory towers, only venturing out now and again in the name of research. It had not been a bad life, even if it had been a somewhat uneventful one.