by Dean Cole
‘I’m so sorry,’ Mrs Brown blubbered, pulling a handkerchief from her apron and blotting her tears. A sound like air being let out of a balloon followed as she blew her nose. ‘It’s just … oh, it’s awful.’
I touched her shoulder. ‘What’s awful?’
‘Poor Stan. I was hoping it was just my worry. But I can’t deny it anymore, not after these last few days.’ She burst into anguished sobs once again.
I gave her a second to calm down before I asked, ‘What is it, Mrs Brown? What’s wrong with Stan?’
‘It’s Alzheimer’s,’ she sniffed. ‘My late husband, Roy, suffered the same. Even if it was his bad heart that took him in the end. I know what it looks like when someone’s mind is failing them. It’s the worst fate. For those suffering from it and those who have to watch.’ She stroked the wedding band on her finger mournfully.
Dementia? That’s what had turned Mr Crouch into a cane-wielding grouch who crept around the manor in the middle of the night? ‘Are you sure?’ I asked.
Mrs Brown nodded vehemently. ‘At first we noticed he was acting a bit odd — that’s me and the lads and lasses that make up the cleaning and catering staff. He was keeping to himself more, refusing to join us for dinner, preferring to eat in his cottage alone. Then he started getting angry, snapping at people for no apparent reason. Like the day a couple of the lads from the kitchen wanted a game of football in the garden. They weren’t out there five minutes before he came out shaking his fist and calling them names I could never repeat. He’s never done anything like that before. And he knows they’d never do anything to ruin the garden, decent lads they are. They know that garden is his pride and joy. Way he hollered at them, though, you’d think they’d done it to be spiteful. When he started snapping at me I knew something was really wrong. We’ve always got on well Stan and me. We’re friends. Well, we were …’
This time when Mrs Brown burst into tears, I sat and contemplated her theory. A mental disorder did make sense the more I thought about it. Stan looked almost as old as Hilderley Manor itself, and I was certain most people exhibited some form of memory loss, personality change and impaired reasoning beyond a certain age. Not to mention his odd behaviour was more than consistent with someone losing control of their faculties. But there is always an exception to the rule. And there are many other things that make people antisocial and angry. Stress. Financial trouble. A bad case of the haemorrhoids …
‘Couldn’t Mr Crouch, in his own kind of way, be asking to be left alone in his final years?’ I offered.
‘No.’ Mrs Brown was adamant. ‘I cared for the elderly before coming to work for Mr Blackford at the manor. Even the most obnoxious, the ones with sore, creaky bones, who’ve had enough of life and take out the fact nature won’t take its course sooner on everyone else want someone to be there for them in the end. Loneliness does more damage to people than any illness, Mr Strange. Believe me, I’ve seen it take the best of them.’
Yeah, wasn’t I fast starting to realise that, I thought but didn’t say.
‘And I’ve been close to Stan for years now,’ Mrs Brown went on. ‘He might not be the friendliest of blokes, he has had a lonely life without a wife and children after all, but he’s always been happy enough looking after the garden, joining in good-natured banter with the rest of the staff. Nothing like the man he’s become.’
Mrs Brown dabbed at her face and wiped her nose. I stared with sympathy at a woman who was compassionate enough to be concerned over a fellow worker, a man whom she clearly considered a valued friend.
‘Oh, just look at me. I’m a wreck,’ she said, as if noticing for the first time that she’d been crying. ‘But it keeps bringing up memories of Roy. It killed me watching him lose himself, lose every memory we’d ever shared. It comes on fast, and as it progresses they don’t remember anything, not even the important things. That’s how I knew for certain it was the Alzheimer’s. Stan forgot about the anniversary. He never forgets that, talks about it for weeks beforehand.’
‘The anniversary?’
Less tearful now, the little Scotswoman was stroking the loose strands of hair escaping her bun and adjusting the strings of her apron. ‘The day the young lad left and never came back.’
‘What young lad?’
‘Joe, his name was. Joe Maguire. He was a young man Stan looked after decades ago, a sort of apprentice. Used to help him out with odd jobs around the garden. Stan’s never said exactly how they met. He wasn’t all there, this lad. What people used to call backward years ago. You know, retarded. Had a funny walk that people used to pick on him for. I think Stan took pity on him, took him under his wing as if he was his own son. From what he’s told me, the lad didn’t have any family. A family that cared enough to look after him, anyway.
‘But one day he just left, never said where he was going or why. It broke Stan’s heart it did. It was on the lad’s birthday, too. Stan wondered if he’d got into the wrong crowd, what with him being easily led. There was a rotten character who lived here back then, young man named Billy. Actually related to the Blackfords, he was. Distantly, though, I think. Had a different surname. The Blackfords are the family who have owned Hilderley Manor for the last few decades. One of the richest lot in the country they are. Billy felt he had special privileges, used to use it to his advantage to intimidate some of the other workers. There was a spot of trouble between him and Joe before the disappearance. But Stan never told me what it was about.
‘Joe did return about a year after the disappearance, so nothing awful happened to him. A young lass saw him in the garden looking for Stan one day, but Stan was visiting a friend that weekend. If you ask me, I think the family had something to do with it. Wouldn’t be the first time rich folk have paid someone to vanish when there’s a spot of bother involving one of their own that could make them look bad. I think Stan knows that deep down. There’s a bitterness in him that runs bone deep, and it’s mainly directed at that lot, no matter how generous they’ve been keeping him on as caretaker all these decades. He’s the sentimental sort underneath is Stan. He’s celebrated the anniversary Joe left every year since. See the weeping cherry out there?’
Mrs Brown nodded at the window. I looked out and saw, midway down the garden, the tree I had seen the morning before. The one that stood where those pugnacious crows Will scared away had been causing a ruckus.
‘Stan planted it as a shrine to the lad,’ said Mrs Brown. ‘Some have said it’s a little over-sentimental, especially the name of it, but I suppose to Stan losing Joe was like losing a son. He’s out there every autumn leading up to the anniversary, tending to it, sitting by it, loving the thing as if it were the lad himself. That’s why I know Stan’s not right upstairs. It’s the anniversary today and he hasn’t been near that tree in weeks.’
I stared thoughtfully at the drooping tree moving in the wind. The hazy mental image of Mr Crouch sitting by it, longing for his friend to return, dissolved almost as quickly as it had formed. Mrs Brown’s voice started me out of my reverie when she spoke again.
‘Oh, how awful of me. Stan’s not the sort to go around talking about his personal life. He confided in me because he trusts me. And I’ve just gone and broken that trust.’ Her brow wrinkled ruefully. ‘Then again, I suppose it won’t matter soon, not when he … when he loses his mind for—’
And Mrs Brown was off again. I placed my palm over her tiny wedding ring adorned hand to comfort her. But my eyes were still directed at the window, looking at the caretaker’s cottage now. And my mind was ticking away just like it had done last night when I was staring down at the garden from the upstairs window. Shouting at the caterers for playing football in the garden. Trying to scare me away from the house. Firing a shotgun in the middle of the night. You’d have thought there was something Stan was trying to protect.
‘Mrs Brown, did you know Stan owns a shotgun?’
Mrs Brown stopped crying at once. She glanced up at me, the pale brow furrowed with worry lines. ‘A sh
otgun? No, I didn’t.’ The concerned expression on her face relaxed a little. ‘I suppose it’s not that surprising. Landowners around here have shotguns to protect their land or shoot game. Why shouldn’t Stan? And it’s like a junk shop in that cottage of his, easy to guess he’d have something like that in there.’ She caught the thoughtful look in my eye. ‘Wh — you’re not saying you think Stan could hurt someone, are you?’
I remembered Stan’s threat. Remembered him hitting me with the cane. ‘If it’s true he isn’t capable of reason anymore—’
‘No.’ Mrs Brown shook her head. ‘Stan’s cantankerous, he’s a bit antisocial, but he’d never hurt someone. He took a vulnerable lad under his wing at a time when few others would. The rodents around the manor and the odd fowl are the only things he’d harm.’ But as she said it the Scotswoman didn’t look so certain anymore.
‘Mrs Brown, if you ever feel Stan poses a danger to anyone at any time while I’m still here, promise you’ll come and let me know?’
She looked conflicted as she tried to read my thoughts, but then accepted my request with a nod. I wish I could have told her that she could trust me, that I knew exactly how to relieve her anguish. But inside I felt as futile as the Scotswoman herself. I did the next best thing instead. I gave her hand a gentle squeeze of reassurance. At the same time that I was looking out of the window and feeling very suspicious.
* * * * *
I was still agonising over the conversation after leaving the sitting room and coming out into the hallway, which was carrying a draft as a handful of incoming guests hauled luggage out of the cold. I heard Mrs Brown’s friendly Scottish trill as she rushed out of the corridor, still wiping her face to appear more presentable after the crying fit, jumping back into housekeeper mode. The sky now dry, I squeezed past the cluster of people blocking the door and made my way around the building to take those exterior shots Kat had requested.
But as I weaved through the rows of trimmed hedges, gravel crunching underfoot, the smell of decaying leaves drifting up my nose, my mind just wouldn’t focus. The things Mrs Brown had told me about Stan Crouch niggled at my brain like a rodent trying to gnaw its way out of a cavity wall. Was the curmudgeon really suffering from a memory stealing illness as the tormented Scotswoman feared? Did it explain his odd behaviour?
Pausing near the fountain, I peered at the bottom of the garden where the caretaker’s cottage stood half hidden by thick foliage that seemed intent on swallowing it up. Perhaps Stan was in there now, spying on me from the shadows. The thought gave me a chill as I recalled his face at the kitchen window, and later, outside the cottage holding the shotgun. Surely not the behaviour of a sane human being …
The weeping cherry swelled in the breeze. I thought about what the tree meant for the old man. ‘Some have said it’s a little over-sentimental,’ Mrs Brown had said. I imagined once again Stan sitting by it, mourning, perhaps waiting for Joe Maguire’s return. There was nothing insane about that. I knew the pain of losing someone I cared about, had spent years longing for their return. It isn’t the pain that’s abnormal. It’s the way people expect you not to feel it, as if you have the choice. And some of us need to be sad. It’s the only way we can get others to see just how much pain we’re in.
Refocusing on the job in hand, I turned around to appraise Hilderley Manor, debating how the huge building would best fit into a wide angled shot. The old house had a sanatorium feel to it in the bleak midmorning light. Its frontage displayed signs of neglect — creeping mildew, uncleaned windows, the decorative plants in the pots beneath them dry and lifeless — a far cry from how it’s presented in the marketing leaflet, an exterior shot of it lit up at night through a blue filter to give it that haunted look. And the neglect was a stark contrast to the tended hedges and clean pathways of the garden. It was clear where Mr Crouch’s priorities had lain in recent weeks.
I peered through the camera’s viewfinder, switched to the wide angle setting to frame the perfect shot, lowered it again and was wiping a speck of rain off the lens … when I spotted something that made my heart skip a beat. I continued to stare ahead, squinting at it through my specs. It was a mist, rising up from the leaf scattered ground at the top of the steps. And not an amorphous mist. It had a clearly defined shape. The shape of a human figure, standing there as if it were about to descend the steps. If it had done that my heart wouldn’t have just skipped a beat, it would have jumped right out of my chest. But the misty figure didn’t descend the steps. It stayed there, unmoving, shining with a soft, slightly wavering light. I blinked. It didn’t disappear.
Still as a statue, I lifted the camera to my face, expecting the mist to still be there in the camera’s viewfinder. But to my astonishment it had vanished, nowhere to be seen in the field of view behind the crosshair. I lowered the camera and discovered, to my surprise, that the misty figure was very much there again, standing, watching, wavering.
I lifted my specs, a crazy thought that they might be the cause of this unnerving manifestation. But the apparition remained as visible to my naked eye as it had done through my prescription lenses, albeit more blurred. A very unsettling feeling crept through my flesh and bones. My skin prickled as the hairs stood on end. For an indefinite time the space around me became intensely quiet and still, just the light patter of straggling drops of rain hitting the leaves, the rustle of surrounding trees.
Take a photo. The thought leapt into my head unbidden. So I did. With shaky hands, I took repeated snaps of the spot where the misty figure was visible one moment, invisible the next. And when I’d taken the final shot I looked up again to discover it had vanished. Unseen to my eyes as it had been to the camera.
Spooked, I glanced over my shoulder at the garden, expecting to find it lurking there. But only the trickling fountain stood there in the damp midday air. Steeling myself, I walked up the steps. I stopped at the top and waved my hand in the exact spot where the mist had stood, snatching it back when I felt the temperature was icy cold.
A frisson ran through me. As unnerving as this strange phenomena was, I was gripped by a hunger to know more about it. I began back towards the entrance of the house, intent on finding Kat, who I knew would be more than keen to hear about what I’d just seen, see what the camera might have captured. But I’d stepped only a few metres when a movement to my side made me halt. I looked down. There was a semicircular window near the ground, iron bars visible on the other side. I was looking at a cellar window. And as I continued to stare, another flash of movement came from behind the grimy glass.
Adrenaline coursed through me, both from excitement and fear. And there was another sensation. As if a magnet was pulling me, enticing me to investigate further. I had to go down there.
Back inside the manor, I crossed the hallway, now deserted, the DSLR swinging across my chest with each purposeful step, Ethereal tucked inside my blazer, the uneaten apple in my pocket. My stomach grumbled in protest, but I was too driven by the magnetic pull to stop and eat. The new arrivals must have been upstairs settling into their room; the only sound other than the tread of my feet was the steady tick of the grandfather clock and kindling crackling in the lounge’s hearth.
I had no idea where the entrance to the cellar was, but as if I was being guided by a sixth sense I quickly spotted the barely visible outline of a door built into the side of the bifurcated staircase. I reached for the knocker-style handle, then hesitated, glancing back at the hallway ambivalently. Only people who had a death wish did such crazy things as venturing alone into the cellar of a haunted house. But the pull was stronger now than the urge to back out. I opened the door, stooped to avoid hitting my head on the low lintel and entered.
The space was dank and dark with a strong earthy smell rising up from the gloomy depths below. The stone steps that led to the bottom were a deathtrap, almost invisible in the poor light and slippery with damp. It’s a miracle I didn’t slip and crack my skull descending them as my eyes roved around failing to find a light swit
ch. When I reached the bottom my eyes had adjusted just enough for me to make out the large, cluttered space before me. Beams of light from the semicircular window offered more visibility to see the grimness of it: the floor a carpet of dust, the brick walls glistening with damp, mummified insects hanging from cobwebs in the corners of the ceiling. My eyes scanned the clutter: dust-sheet draped picture frames, stacked wooden boxes, a furnace rusted from years of disuse standing against one wall.
I took a tentative step forward and whispered into the shadows. ‘Hello?’
Silence. Or maybe there was some sign of life: a skittering noise was coming from the wall. Was it mice? Rats?
My eyes drifted back up the stairway. The door had blown almost closed from the hallway’s draught, leaving a thin strip of light spilling through the crack. I felt alone and vulnerable down here in the dank and dark, no sound coming from the floor above. But a resolve to find out what had drawn me down here held firm against the urge to leave. An idea appeared.
I lifted my camera, the way a police officer retrieves his gun in uncertain territory. My camera wasn’t a weapon, but it offered some security between me and whatever might be lurking in the shadows waiting to jump out. I switched it on and scrolled through the options on the screen until I found the night vision mode. I peered through the viewfinder and saw the cellar tinted by night vision’s famous eerie green glow. And, to my amazement, there was something else.
Lambent orbs moved through the air in varying directions. And they didn’t just move in straight lines; they paused, changed direction and sped up as if they possessed an intelligence all of their own. Some shot up and skimmed the ceiling, then swooped down to mingle with the others, all the while twinkling in the beams of window light like dancing fireflies. One floated up to the camera lens, appeared to take interest in what it was observing before shooting off again. This was energy. And it was everywhere.
