Black Light

by Bedford, K. A.

  I hung up the telephone.

  Rutherford appeared, bearing a fresh coffee. I took it from him and downed a great gulp of it at once.

  “Ma’am?”

  For long minutes I stood there, gasping, eyes wide, feeling the scald boiling the delicate tissues of my mouth and throat. Rutherford quickly returned with a jug of cold water and a glass. I took the jug from him and guzzled, in a very undignified fashion, as much of the water as I could manage. At length the initial pain died away, but my palate and tongue still felt sore and delicate. “That will serve me right for acting without thinking, won’t it, Rutherford?”

  “It did seem ill-advised, ma’am,” he said quietly.

  Looking at him, I said, “Prepare the car.”

  “Right you are, ma’am.”

  The main gate at Gordon’s property was locked — for the first time I could remember.

  I instructed Rutherford to wait with the car, while I climbed out and down, and walked over to the gate. It was not a high gate — only perhaps waist-height — and it would be easy enough to climb over it, but instead I stood there, hesitating.

  For the first time in a very long while, I heard no dogs barking. No dogs swarmed up to the gate to jump and yap at me. All I could hear was the car’s engine ticking, some nearby magpies carolling, and a few insects chittering.

  “Damn it!” I muttered, and vaulted the gate.

  Walking down the gravel driveway, past the heaps of rusting metal parts, it occurred to me that Gordon, if he really was this angry with me, might have gone to the trouble of installing elaborate machines to prevent me reaching his house. Fortunately, this seemed not to have been the case, and I reached the porch in one piece.

  As my boots clumped on the bare grey boards, I heard two dogs barking. They sounded like small dogs, and they sounded frightened. Shivering from head to toe now, and feeling terrible dread worse than I had felt even last night, I pulled the brass lever next to the door, to activate the bell mechanism.

  Soon, over the yapping of the dogs, I heard heavy footsteps.

  “I’ve got nothing to say to you, Ruth,” Gordon called from behind the solid door. “Get off with you!” This latter he did not say angrily; he said it with firmness, but with a certain heavy sadness, too, that was worse to hear.

  I stared at the door, then turned to look back up the driveway to the gate, and the waiting Bentley.

  Gordon opened the door a crack. “Go on, get off my property.”

  His face was worse than angry; it was cold and blank.

  “What have you done, Gordon? What did you do to — ?”

  “It’s none of your concern. Now kindly leave my property.”

  His two dogs howled and yelped behind him somewhere. I assumed he’d trapped them in a room.

  “Gordon — you could have taken my arm! I offered it in good faith!”

  He paused a moment, and allowed himself to meet my eyes. He looked sad, and shook his head. “Just go. Please.” His voice was small and weak. He pushed the door closed.

  I wanted to talk to him. His footsteps retreated. The two dogs howled.

  Back at home, feeling my whole world coming apart, I decided it was time to contact my lawyers up in Perth. It was a quarter to four o’clock in the afternoon. Rutherford was working on the cars in the garage; Murray and Ryan were in town shopping; Vicky and Sally were doing the week’s laundry. The house felt too big, cold and empty. There was a cold draught through the drawing room.

  I tried the telephone, but kept dropping the earpiece. When June asked me what number I wanted, I stood there, unable to think of anything to say, and felt like I would burst into tears at any moment. I hung up. I would need to apologise to June.

  At length I returned to the telephone, feeling a little restored. I apologised to June, who said, “No worries, love. What can I do you for?”

  She put me through to the law firm of Pembroke and Associates. And, of course, there was no-one there. Of course. Fortunately, I had my solicitor’s private telephone number, so I asked June to try that — and there was no answer, until a little girl answered. She told me I had reached the residence of the Campbell family, and recited the telephone number in a very polite quavery voice. I asked if I might speak to her father. She said, “May I ask who’s calling, please?” and I told her I was a client of her father’s, Mrs Black. There was a heavy clunk, and distantly I heard, “Daaaaaad!” Then Campbell came to phone, and I briefly explained my business, and apologised for telephoning him at home on the weekend.

  He said, “I’m tied up somewhat at the moment, but I will ring you tomorrow morning, and we can talk things over then. Would that be all right, Mrs Black?”

  “That would be splendid,” I said, playing it much cooler than I felt.

  After dinner that night I took to bed earlier than usual. My head throbbed with dull aching pain and I could feel it threatening to spread down my shoulders and down my back. Sally prepared me an analgesic draught of salts and urged me to call her at any time during the night if I should have need of anything. Before she left me she said, by the door, “Ma’am, I just wanted you to know, if you’ll pardon me saying so, that is, that we’re all really sorry about Miss Templesmith? If we’d had any idea, any notion … If we’d just known … He just got in and out so silent … ” She tried to hold back tears.

  “There was nothing at all any of you could have done, Sally. Not a damned thing. Please try not to worry.”

  “It’s just … ” She looked desperate and frustrated.

  “Good night, Sally. Thank you.”

  She left, and I heard her take a great sniff as she padded down the hall outside.

  The salts carried me off to sleep faster than I would have thought possible, considering how I felt after this awful day. Sleep was very welcome indeed.

  So it was most surprising when I woke up, with the sensation that it was only moments later, and that I had not been asleep at all, to find Rutherford wrapping a thick woollen blanket around me — and that I was sitting at my desk, in my study. I stared. “What …?”

  He said, “I heard you writing, ma’am, and thought you might need — ”

  I glanced up at him. “You heard me writing?”

  He indicated the big Imperial typewriter.

  A sheet of paper had been rolled in; it was not quite straight. There was no backing sheet.

  Someone had indeed been writing.

  RUTH RUTH RUTH RUT6H RUTH

  It went on like this, my name over and over, line after line. The typing was not elegant. Overstrikes and mistakes abounded. It did not look like something I had typed; the text was uneven — some letters were dark and heavy, while others hardly registered. It looked like something a child might do whilst playing with a typewriter. But there was more.

  HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO !!

  Again, line after line of this, badly typed. Then:

  ITS ME ITS ME ITSME

  JULIA JULIS JULIA JULIA

  HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO??

  HEAR ME HEAR ME HEAR ME!!

  “Good God … ” I said, hardly breathing. “What on Earth is this?”

  IVE FOUND HIM IVE F0UND HIM

  THE PRIEST THE PREIST THE PRIEST THE PRIEST!!

  HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO!

  LISTEN LISTEN LISTEN LISTEN!

  IVE FOUND THE SWINE THE SWINE THE SWINE THE SWINE

  IVE GOT HIM FOR YOU!

  WE CAN TALKK TALLKKKTTTALLAALLLLKKKKXXXB

  RUUUUTRRRUUUUUTTHHRRRRRRUUUUU UUUUTTTTTTTTTTTHHHHHHHHHHH HHHHHHH!!!!!!

  29

  I stared at the page. When I pulled it free from the typewriter, the paper did not exhibit the curvature it would have had it been sitting in the machine for a prolonged period; it looked very much as if someone (me?) had just typed it. I sniffed the page. It had occurred to me that, despite what the policemen had told me, my phantom note-sender might still be at large. There was no unearthly waft about it. It looked and smelled exactly like something I
had just typed — though I had no recollection of having sat there and produced it.

  I looked up at Rutherford, who stood next to me, doing his best to maintain composure. “You said you heard me writing?”

  “Yes, ma’am. It rather sounded like you were having a bad time of it.”

  “In what way?”

  “Hitting the keys very hard, ma’am. Not like your usual manner — if you’ll pardon the observation.”

  “What on Earth is the time, anyway?”

  “Five minutes after three o’clock in the morning, ma’am.”

  My head still throbbed with pain. Holding my head with one hand, and the mysterious note with the other, I asked Rutherford, “Didn’t you think it was rather odd that someone should be in here using my typewriter at this peculiar hour — particularly in light of what happened last night?”

  “You have been known to work through the night. It would not have been unusual, particularly given your looming deadline.”

  I stared at the message.

  JULIA JULIS JULIA JULIA

  Rutherford was correct regarding my occasional fits of late-night writing. It had been known to happen, particularly on hot summer nights, when the temperatures and humidity were unbearable. It was better, on such nights, to get up and do some work than lie in the soggy bed, tossing and turning.

  This was not one of those nights. This was the beginning of winter: cold, wind lashing the ghost gums and jacarandas and the sheoaks, with the threat of rain to come perhaps tomorrow — later today. This was the weather for staying tucked in bed reading good books, or catching up on one’s correspondence.

  I had seen some odd things lately. Julia herself had told me of many such odd things, things which, to her, were part of her ordinary experience of life, as uncontroversial as bumblebees and bluebirds.

  Her body was still with the coroner’s office. I had not yet even begun to think about funeral arrangements, nor had I contacted the family back in England to arrange the shipment of her body.

  Her body …

  I was not ready to start thinking of her up to no good in some other realm of existence when I was still in shock from learning of her murder in this one.

  And yet, if there were truth in this, if it really had somehow been Julia operating my hands at the typewriter tonight, she would not understand how I felt. To her it would simply be another day. To her, she would have gone on another jaunt to some other country, just as she had come out here, in her desperate bid to warn me about my impending demise — when it had been her own demise in my house that she had seen in her visions.

  My mind was not constructed in such a way as to calmly accept such things. I could not accept that Julia was, on one hand, lying cold under a sheet in the Rockingham mortuary, and, on the other hand, rather enjoying herself in the deadworld. And, more than simply enjoying the sights, actually working on my case for me, tracking down the late Father William! He, a devout believer in Christian teaching, would have expected — exactly what kind of afterlife? Surely not free access to the Heaven in which he had believed for most of his life. Given his recent, filthy dabbling in demonology — and only God knew what else — it seemed reasonable that he expected to spend his eternity in Hell. He might even have thought that a fair enough result, all things considered. So what would he make of the deadworld? Julia had told me that it was the one true afterlife, the final destination for everyone, regardless of Earthbound faith. Whereas Julia would take to her new surroundings with verve, I could imagine Father William, braced for an eternity of suffering, being extremely confused indeed.

  It defied sense.

  And yet here was what purported to be the truth. I could not believe any of my staff would have gone to such elaborate lengths to fool me — even to the extent of carrying me into my study. After the business of the night before last, it was tempting to think that somehow another enemy was using shadow glamours to get up to tasteless mischief in my house.

  But that seemed even more insane than the idea that Julia had used me like a puppet. She had told me of the phenomenon of “automatic writing”, just as she had told me about mysterious somnambular movements of which the person concerned could not recall anything afterwards.

  “Will you be requiring anything further tonight, ma’am?”

  I had forgotten that Rutherford was still standing there. Looking up at him, I saw him doing his best to stifle yawns. “Oh, I say … ” I said. “Yes. No. That is all. Go back to bed. I’ll be fine, thank you.”

  He nodded, essayed a modest but surprisingly crisp bow, and left.

  I was left alone in the night with what amounted to a telegram from the land of the dead.

  Believing it was what it claimed to be was the simplest — and yet also the most insane — course. Even allowing for Julia’s bizarre beliefs, it was hard to accept. And yet, she was the person who had told me how, while in her coma, she had travelled about, a disembodied spirit, trying to find out the truth about the demon’s summoner.

  “Julia? Is this really you?”

  I wanted to believe it was true. To believe it would be to cancel out my grief, at least to some extent. I would have lost her, but only to another place, rather than an absolute loss from the entirety of existence. It would almost be bearable, to think she was still somehow herself — somewhere.

  It also raised the old bugaboos, though: if this was evidence that Julia still lived, in the land of the dead, and that she had also encountered the shade of Father William, then that would imply that if she looked hard enough she might also find other long lost people.

  She might find Father.

  She might find Antony.

  She might find that Antony was not there, and never had been.

  I was still sitting there, wrapped in the blanket, staring at this note, as dawn arrived, bringing the morning chorus of crows with it. A lot had passed through my thumping head in those few hours. Sometimes I wanted to believe it was all true, and at other times I refused to believe it, that it made no empirical sense. Where, for example, was this deadworld? It was the same sorts of things I had always wanted to know about Heaven, and in which I had never quite believed. It seemed too improbable, and disappointingly vague. No clergyman I had ever met could tell me anything about the details of Heaven, or, if they were well read, they might refer me to Dante and his meticulously detailed vision of the afterlife. But what did it really look like? Was there a sense of time? Did everyone really sport haloes and angel wings and just float about?

  So where was the deadworld? From another perspective, I believed in the exciting though confounding reality of the quantum world over which physicists everywhere seemed at war. Quantum mechanics suggested that, when a thing could take a number of different paths to a destination, it actually took all possible paths. I had drawn on a lot of this still largely unproven research for some of my own novels. It was exciting and strange and defied expectation. It went with the recent findings regarding Special and General Relativity, which told us that space and time were two aspects of the same thing, space-time, and that this combined space-time was “curved” in ways that were hard to grasp, due to the effects of mass, conveying the sense of gravity. Yet, even without experimental findings to support all this exotic theory, I was prepared to accept it and make use of it. I was prepared to accept it because it was the word of Science, and I had the kind of faith in Science that Father William once had in God, and in which Julia had in her “other bits” of reality. One day in the future, I expect, there will be scientific verification of the truth of quantum reality, as bizarre as that prospect now seems to me. Julia, by contrast, already knew the truth of her faith. She had pointed out to me, years ago, that the truths of science change all the time. Whole bodies of thought come and go over time as new findings emerge, and scientists quarrel with each other over whether the old is still true or whether the new findings are merely aberrations. Scientific truths only gain wide acceptance when the old scientists die off; Julia’s
truths, she said, “are simply there, dear!”

  Julia had always carried that air of the know-it-all, the smug attitude that she knew what was really going on in the world, and that it wasn’t what the newspapers reported each day. Now, vindicated, she would be insufferable. Thinking this, and missing Julia to the point of physical pain, I smiled. Good for you, Julia.

  She said, in her note,

  IVE FOUND HIM IVE F0UND HIM

  THE PRIEST THE PREIST THE PRIEST THE PRIEST!!

  HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO!

  LISTEN LISTEN LISTEN LISTEN!

  IVE FOUND THE SWINE THE SWINE THE SWINE THE SWINE

  IVE GOT HIM FOR YOU!

  All right, I thought, let’s take this at face value. She and Father William are in the deadworld together. She can get him to talk about what he did to me — and why. That was all well and good, I thought, even if Julia somehow managed to extract a signed confession from him —

  I stopped at that point, cold and shivery again.

  The thought of signed confessions from people in the deadworld made me think of Father William’s last little note to me, the one in which he said he had a confession from my father about his activities prior to his own untimely but not completely surprising death.

  Leaving aside the horrible nature of what Father William had done to my father, the question arose: how did he do it? If he only died the night before last — how had he made contact with Father? One could not quite see my Father, consumed with earthly guilt as he roamed the mysterious landscapes of the deadworld, turning to a “visiting” priest from somewhere on the other side of his world — or would he? Was he so encumbered with guilt and sorrow that he would confide in someone like Father William?

  My best guess was that he had not known. I suspected he was experimenting with some means of making contact with the deadworld, and he had chanced to come across the guilty shade of my father, and recognised him. Even so, Father William would not necessarily realise that Sir Gustav Templesmith was the father of Mrs Ruth Black, widow of that known coward and duty-shirker, Antony Black. From the priest’s point of view, my father would be a guilt-ridden old man who might have betrayed his country. I could imagine him talking and talking, for hours. All the things he’d done wrong in his life.