by Will Harker
While Webster went to nose around in the undergrowth, I slipped my hand back into Harry’s. It felt ice cold as I threaded our fingers together.
“People make their own ghosts,” I said. “This world is dark enough without the spirits of the dead troubling anyone.”
“Perhaps.” I saw his jaw set tight. “But you’re not a total pragmatist, Scott. I know you’re not. I mean, why do you read books and write stories if this is all there is? Words, books, poetry, they move you in a way you can’t explain. It’s the same with me and music. So I suppose you’ll say that it’s all just neurons firing in the brain. Dopamine hits to help make this whole sad spectacle of life seem bearable so that we can keep the human race turning on its hamster wheel. But I know you sense it, just like I do. Some kind of essence we can’t explain.”
“I don’t deny people feel that way,” I said. “And yes, spirituality has inspired incredible art and music and literature. You could even say our entire culture is based on it. The search for something bigger than ourselves. But do I think it has any substance in reality?” I shook my head. “You’re wrong, Haz. I am a pragmatist. Show me evidence and I’ll believe there’s something more than those little firing neurons. Until then, it’s all just wishful thinking.”
He nodded. “So anything you can’t touch and observe and evaluate is a lie?”
“Not a lie. There’s no deliberate deception.”
“Even love,” he said quietly, his gaze flicking across the confused tumble of the rectory.
“Look, I think we’re wandering from the point,” I said. “I promise you, I haven’t said a word to anyone about what happened with your father. I would never—”
“But you did,” he countered. “You told him.”
I took a deep breath. “Is that what this is about? Harry, do you want to talk about Garris?” I felt my stomach knot. “About what happened in Bradbury End?”
“You don’t understand,” he said. “You just—”
He had started to turn away when, reaching out, I caught the strap of the music bag he still carried over his shoulder. The clasp snapped and the bag fell to the ground. I went to pick it up and at once felt the utter weightlessness of it. Unable to resist, I pulled back the front flap and glanced inside. Nothing. No sheet music, no notebook stuffed with his compositions, not even the old-fashioned tuning fork he always carried because he mistrusted the digital kind. Only the stub of a pencil at the very bottom. For some reason, I dug this out before he snatched the bag away from me.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “Haz, wait!”
I snatched at the sleeve of his cagoule but the material slipped through my fingers and in the next instant he was running, Webster lolloping at his heels. I stood there, frozen, looking down at the fragment of pencil in my palm. And then I felt something else—a smooth, pliable softness at my fingertips. Some substance that had come loose from Harry’s sleeve as I’d tugged at it. Lifting my hand to the light of the fair, I saw a spot of white wax adhering to my fingernail.
And suddenly, I was picturing myself back in Aunt Tilda’s tent, the faceless wax doll in my hand, the scrap of paper pinned to its leg. “EX 22:18.”
A biblical scrawl done in pencil.
CHAPTER TEN
Did I really believe that this gentle, empathetic man who’d relieved his father’s suffering, who had comforted Aunt Tilda in her distress, who’d shown me more tenderness than anyone I had ever known, had crafted that sick effigy in order to frighten an old woman out of her wits? Of course not. And yet, in the passing horror of the moment, had I pictured him moulding its soft white flesh? All I’ll say is that the mind often paints images that it would shame us to admit.
And after all, there was the fact of the empty bag. If that had merely been a prop used to sustain the alibi of choir practice, then where had Harry been spending his time these past few weeks? Returning to the fair, I ran over those absences in my head. Always a Tuesday and Thursday evening, a couple of hours each time. He had returned flushed and exhilarated, re-energised and somehow more youthful, as if the years of care he’d endured since Oxford had been lifted from him. Since we’d reconnected, he’d never been that way with me.
My thoughts strayed to the inevitable conclusion, and angrily I thrust it away. The idea of Haz cheating was almost as absurd as him sitting in some secret room, carving wax poppets. Still, something was badly wrong between us, and as I returned to the carousel, I could see that Sal thought so too.
“What have you done, you bloody dinlo?” she snapped at me. A few punters cast her looks and she rolled her eyes and spat back. “You don’t even know what a dinlo is, so jog on.”
“Where is he?” I asked.
“Taken Webster back to your dad’s. Then he says he’s going into Aumbry to find a hotel for the night. I tried to talk him out of it, but he said he needed some space. Scott, don’t.”
She grabbed my shoulder—that spot again where Nick had landed his jab. “I know you’re worried.” Her voice took on an uncharacteristically gentle tone. “I know, but tearing after him tonight will only push him further away. He’ll be up the trailer now packing an overnight bag. Stay here with me and Jodes and work the juvenile. It’ll take your mind off things.”
Jodie had been waiting out of earshot, her fingers twining together just like Haz’s when he was worried. I called her over, told her everything was fine, and the munchkin wrapped her arms around my waist.
“You don’t hate Uncle Haz, do you?”
That caught me like a punch to the gut. “Course not, sweet pea.”
Just an hour ago I would never have believed that anything could drive Aunt Tilda out of my thoughts. Now, while I took their cash and gave every customer the cheery showman’s spiel I’d learned at my father’s knee, I went over those last moments with Haz again and again. What had I done? What had I said? What hadn’t I seen?
It was almost midnight by the time we shut up shop. Chaps were wrangling the last stragglers out of the gate while Sal and I fixed the weatherproofing around the carousel. One of the aunts had come by hours ago and taken Jodie away to bed. Before she left, she’d made me promise that Haz would come home soon.
Ten minutes after shutdown, I was locking the trailer door behind me. Exhausted, I took off my coat and went and crashed on the locker settee, slipping my phone out of my pocket just as a text came through. My hopes that Haz had replied to one of the half-dozen I’d already sent were dashed. It was from Sal, telling me to turn on the TV to some late-night discussion programme I’d never heard of. I hunted out the remote from the sofa cushions and absently flicked the switch.
While the show droned on in the background, I let my gaze play around the trailer. Structurally, it was the same creaky tin box it had always been, but Haz had worked his magic and transformed the interior into something resembling a home. Colourful throws, scented candles, his vintage Garrard turntable and record collection, my mum’s books neatly stacked on a cinderblock bookcase by the bed. It was small and cramped, but it was ours.
Or it had been.
Finally, I drifted back to the TV. An interviewer with a plummy Etonian drawl was introducing a tall, narrow-shouldered man in a well-cut suit. He was aged about fifty and what my mum would have called “well-preserved,” no slackening at the jawline and just a trace of grey around the temples. The only marked lines in his face were those bracketing a somewhat humourless mouth. He wore stylish tortoiseshell glasses and had a habit of almost constantly adjusting his cuffs in a fussy, preening sort of gesture.
“It’s my pleasure this evening to have as my guest a noted figure from the world of popular science. Dr Joe Gilles—”
“Joseph,” the doctor said, that dour mouth puckering. “Only my mother and my partner call me Joe.”
“Dr Joseph Gillespie,” the interviewer appeased. “Tonight, Dr Gillespie is here to discuss his new investigative documentary, Ghost Scammers, in which he aims to debunk all claims of the supernatural and especially those of mediums a
nd clairvoyants. The programme will air on Halloween night, at exactly the same time as renowned—” Gillespie actually blanched at the word, “—celebrity medium Darrel Everwood and his team of ‘Ghost Seekers’ broadcast their live séance from Purley Rectory. Reputedly the most haunted house in England. Dr Gillespie, bearing in mind the long-running success of Darrel Everwood’s show, is ‘Ghost Scammers’ a deliberately provocative title on your part?”
“Yes,” Gillespie deadpanned. “Next question.”
The interviewer’s smile broadened. I imagined he could see his obscure little show trending on social media.
“You are by training a physicist, Dr Gillespie,” he went on. “A serious scientist. And yet in recent years, you’ve waged what can only be described as a crusade against believers in the supernatural. Some might ask, why do you waste your time on such nonsense?”
Gillespie raised his eyebrows. “Because it is dangerous nonsense. Humanity spent its infancy terrified of sprites and demons, but if we are ever to grow into maturity as a species we must abandon the terrors of the cradle. The supernatural not only diverts the ingenuity of the human mind away from the really important questions of existence, but it can also be immensely harmful. People throw away their hard-earned money on these psychic conmen and do damage to themselves in the process. Psychiatry has shown us that grieving is a natural process. It is healthy to let go. Mediums, with their bogus claims of an afterlife, keep the griever stuck in the moment.”
I sat forward. For all his arrogance, I couldn’t help agreeing with Gillespie.
“But you seem particularly fixated on Darrel Everwood,” the interviewer observed.
“He is the most obnoxious of a bad lot, yes.”
I suddenly thought of Miss Rowell and her marked antagonism towards Everwood, then of the public backlash he’d recently suffered. I wondered if there were many people like Nick Holloway who still had sympathy for him.
“And of course his ex-fiancée has recently played into your hands,” the interviewer said. “The videos she’s released in which she claims he’s a fraud.”
“Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned,” Gillespie said drily. “But then hell doesn’t exist. Mr Everwood’s duplicity does.”
“But this isn’t just personal to Darrel Everwood. This is a crusade. I want to play the viewers an audio clip from a podcast you recently took part in.” The interviewer turned to the camera. “I should explain, Dr Gillespie was invited to challenge the skills of a once-famous spiritualist, Miss Genevieve Bell. Miss Bell and Dr Gillespie were tasked with ‘psychically’ reading the same subject in separate sessions. Here the podcaster reveals the results.”
The camera trained itself on an impassive Gillespie as the audio started to play.
“Miss Bell, in your reading you claimed that the subject’s late mother made contact with you. That from the spirit world, she had provided ten facts about her son. Of those facts, four were verified by the subject and our research team as correct, two were so general as to be statistically insignificant, and four were incorrect. Dr Gillespie, you approached the subject by a method of cold reading: analysing his age, sex, dress, manner of speech, body language, and facial expressions in response to your statements. Of the ten facts you provided, nine were verified as correct, with the subject himself remarking that you were clearly the more gifted medium.”
Dr Gillespie’s voice broke into the audio. “And of course, the truth is that I am not a medium. Nor are there any spirits whispering in poor Miss Bell’s ear. Her entire life has been constructed on a lie so transparent that even she cannot now fail to see it.”
A weak, plaintive voice responded, “But they do speak to me. They always have. Ever since I was a little girl.”
“Oh yes, I’ve heard your silly life story,” Gillespie scoffed. “But it’s results that matter. I won, you lost. Accept it, my dear. Learn from it.”
The clip came to an end and the interviewer turned back to the doctor.
“Poor woman.” Gillespie sighed. “I sat with her afterwards and explained how she does her tricks. Eliciting cooperation from her subjects, picking up physical clues from them, shot-gunning them—as we sceptics call it—with a huge quantity of general information before refining her guesses and then presenting those guesses as facts. The pitiful thing is, I think Miss Bell actually believed she was psychic, unlike Everwood who is fully aware of his chicanery.”
The interviewer shifted in his chair. “But isn’t there an element of cruelty in what you do, Doctor?”
A photograph appeared on a large screen behind the two men. It showed a child of about eight or nine years old, sitting hunched in a wicker chair, knees drawn up her chin, forearms clasped around her shins. She appeared to be very thin, big dark eyes bright in their hollows. Although the photo looked to be from the eighties or early nineties, the little girl had a striking Edwardian quality to her, an impression reinforced by the slightly oversized black lace gloves she wore.
“Genevieve Bell was notoriously reclusive,” the interviewer said. “This photo from her childhood was one of the few we could source. You are aware, Dr Gillespie, that Miss Bell died quite recently? Not long after your podcast with her, in fact. Do you harbour any regrets for how you treated her?”
Gillespie tutted as if the question was beneath him. “Of course I’m sorry she died so tragically, but let’s not sentimentalise the woman’s legacy. In life, she victimised others. Preyed upon their grief and credulity, although as I have said, perhaps unwittingly.”
“Very well, then shall we return to your upcoming documentary?”
“Willingly,” Gillespie said with relish. “In advance of transmission, I shall be going down to Purley Rectory tomorrow to protest this Ghost Seekers nonsense. I would encourage any rational citizen to join me there and help combat Everwood’s pantomime. This kind of thing should be stopped. Must be stopped.”
He turned that stern and uncompromising gaze upon the camera.
“I hope you and the viewers take me seriously when I say this: there is nothing I will not do to rid humanity of the stain of superstition. Nothing.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
I woke screaming, sheets twisted around my body, every muscle tensed. Somewhere out in the dark, an unsecured piece of tarpaulin cracked in the wind, and in the riptide of my dream, I imagined it as the snap of burning wood. It took a few breathless seconds for the images to lose their power and for my heart to settle.
In the nightmare, I had stood before the same witch’s pyre I’d pictured while walking with Haz. Around me, the baying of an unseen mob, eager for the flames to do their holy work. Their fury was directed at a writhing figure staked at the heart of the bonfire. No agony she endured seemed to satisfy their hatred. Close by, warming his gloved hands above the flames, stood a man in a long black cloak and a tall Puritan hat. All at once, the mob fell silent, stunned perhaps that the still-burning woman appeared to have freed herself from the stake.
She came at me fast, lurching out of the inferno on the charcoal sticks of her legs, the wind tearing at her flesh and dispersing it like black snow across the clearing. It was then that I saw the great jumbled mass of Purley Rectory grow up behind her, red fire reflected in its windows. I tried to step back, to turn and run, but the dream held me in place. Inside the raging cowl that flickered about her head, I saw the witch’s skin, white and melting, like a wax doll thrown into a furnace. It was Aunt Tilda’s face. It was Harry’s. The two bubbling and mixing together as they slipped away from the skull.
“Thou shalt not suffer, Scotty!” they shrieked at me in their weird hybrid voice. “Thou shalt not!”
I tried to look away but again the dream wouldn’t let me. I was forced to watch them fall, to explode into dust at my feet, and for that dust to reform into the shattered body of Lenny Kerrigan. Flowers immediately began to grow around him, marigolds the colour of consuming fire.
“You wanted a puzzle, my boy. The world has given you one. Take it.�
��
I looked up into the face of the man in the Puritan hat.
The face of the dormant monster, Peter Garris. He laughed that oh-so-rare laugh of his, dry as the corpse-dust at my feet.
Now, the nightmare over, I tugged the damp sheets from my body and went to the sink. I poured a bowl of cold water and washed myself down with a flannel, scrubbing the dark bristle of my jaw, my chest, the hair under my arms, feverishly cleansing myself of the dream. Afterwards, I just stood there, wet and shivering, looking out through the little window above the sink.
I had fallen asleep breathing in the scent of Harry’s pillow, my phone in my hand. The last text I’d received had been from Sal following the interview with Dr Gillespie, Could cause us trouble? I’d replied, saying that the doctor’s planned demonstration against the Ghost Seekers event probably wouldn’t amount to much. Anyway, despite his arrogance, I had found myself agreeing with virtually everything the man had said. Everwood was a fraud and our association with him cheapened the reputation of Jericho Fairs.
Beyond the window, a grey dawn was silvering the mist that blanketed the wood. In the distance, I could make out faint wisps stealing in and then retreating from the door of Purley Rectory. I don’t know why, but I half-expected to see Haz there, draped in the shadow of that old house. I stayed at the window, watching and shivering until the cold forced me back to bed.
After another hour of staring at my phone, I dug out the remote control and switched on the TV. More time passed, mindlessly flicking between breakfast shows until the face from the billboard snapped me out of my daydreaming.
Darrel Everwood was sprawled in a flamboyantly relaxed attitude across the studio sofa while, perched opposite, the breakfast hosts grinned as if this was the most outrageous thing they had ever seen. That trademark cocky smile was firmly in place, although perhaps a little strained, like a high-tension wire about to snap. Still, Everwood played to the camera brilliantly, mascara-rimmed eyes twinkling with mischief.
