The Lingering

by SJI Holliday

  What just happened outside has rattled her. Those men have rattled her, taunting her like that – calling her a madwoman. A bitch … and what was that about witches? She wishes now that she let Angela tell her some of her stories. She’s starting to wonder if there might be something in them after all.

  She shakes her head. Stop it. You need to stop this. Is she heading for some sort of breakdown? Is she going to end up like Jack?

  After tonight’s little episode, his manic rage, throwing all those things on the bed, she’d had no choice but to give him something to make him sleep. All those things that he shouldn’t still have. Ali rubs her face; this is a nightmare. How could she have thought it would be OK? The stuff in the box is an issue. Their car is an issue. Angela is now an issue, too.

  She has to get rid of all of it. Jack will have to get rid of all of it.

  She walks through to the bathroom, picks up a glass and fills it with icy cold water from the tap. Then comes back through to the bedroom and stares down at Jack; he is still breathing deeply, completely out of it. She hesitates. And then she makes up her mind. Flicks the glass and splashes the cold water in his face.

  He sits up fast, something between a shout and scream comes out of him, and he flails around on the bed, not quite sure what happened, not sure where he is. He rubs water off his face, blinks, then he sees her. Realises what has happened.

  ‘What the hell are you doing?’ His voice is slightly slurred, groggy. As if he has been drinking, but she knows he hasn’t. She emptied one of the capsules into the glass of water beside his bed earlier, watched him drink it. He’d screwed up his face a little, then continued to drink. The water tastes funny here anyway, she’s still getting used to it herself after a lifetime of filtered water in the city. He’s been asleep since. She had forgotten what he looked like when he was out cold.

  ‘I can’t believe you slept through all that. Those men outside, they would have attacked me, you know. It was self-defence.’

  ‘What was self-defence? What’ve you done?’ He is wide awake now, his voice almost back to normal, but he still has that slightly confused look on his face. Like he’s not sure why he was asleep. And he has absolutely no idea what’s going on.

  ‘Those men in the truck, shining lamps, shooting foxes. I don’t know what they were doing driving up the way they did, but they were up to no good, I’m sure of it. They tried to tell me that Smeaton said it was fine for them to do this, but I don’t get it, the lamp thing. They wouldn’t explain, so it was clearly dodgy.’

  ‘You really haven’t spent any time in the country have you, Ali,’ Jack says. ‘Lamping is a pretty normal thing to do around here, Ford told me. They shine the light at the animal to stun it, so it gets kind of mesmerised. Then they can get close, and shoot it. That’s what they were doing. Did they have dogs? Or just guns?’

  ‘For Christ’s sake! I don’t know,’ Ali is annoyed now and feels slightly stupid. She wonders if they actually weren’t doing anything wrong, and now she’s the bad one here. She attacked one of them with a cricket bat. She wonders what they’ll do about it, if they’ll come back. If they’ll tell Smeaton. She can explain it away, surely? A vulnerable woman out here, a bunch of rowdy men. Middle of the night. She was wound up tight after what happened with Jack earlier. It’s not her fault if she overreacted. They were taunting her, calling her names … there was more than a hint of menace in their voices. She comes from a place where late-night visits from strangers are never a good situation.

  ‘Well anyway, it’s not just that. I realised I was being watched. Angela…’

  Jack sighs and climbs out of bed. His T-shirt is soaked. He pulls it off over his head, and she notices that his muscles are more defined than before, all the hard work paying off. ‘Angela again. What’s she done now?’

  ‘I just told you, she was watching me. From the window above this. I don’t know what she was doing in that room, I don’t think it’s her bedroom. I thought we were the only ones with a bedroom facing the front? She said something to me before about that room, about some of her ghost-hunting equipment. Have you ever heard the like? The girl’s head is in the clouds. But I’m still worried. What was she watching me for? What’s she up to? I told you already, Jack, I think she knows something – just a bit. And I think she’s going to keep pushing until she works out the rest.’

  ‘She can’t know anything, Ali. No one can. Only us. Right?’

  ‘You need to do something about her. Talk to her. Get her off our case. Please?’

  Jack doesn’t reply. He climbs back into bed, and Ali unlocks the bedroom door.

  ‘Where’re you going now?’ he asks. She ignores him.

  She’ll never manage to sleep now. No point even trying. Not while he’s awake, tossing and turning, muttering in his sleep. She can’t give him any more drugs tonight, not without him realising. Not without risking an overdose. She locks the door behind her. She always locks him in.

  She walks downstairs and along draughty corridors. The dark is heavy, like velvet. Just the occasional chink of moonlight through a window making the place bright enough to navigate. She could switch on lights but she knows that half of them don’t work, and the other half buzz and flicker. Besides, she doesn’t want to risk anyone else waking up. Not now. She walks out through the kitchen, knowing that the door won’t be locked, knowing that she can get back in. Out in the garden, moonlight shines on the new lawn, but the trees at the bottom are in darkness, standing straight and still, watching her. She walks across to the woodshed, the doors are locked; no one is around. It’s too late.

  She has to try hard to hear any sounds at all. Without the moon, she would be blind. These flat, bleak fields – so different to where she has come from, so difficult to adapt to. The darkness smothers the land like a thick blanket. She concentrates hard, hoping to isolate sounds. Maybe an animal rustling around somewhere, the leaves of the trees. An owl’s hoot. But there is nothing, not even a breeze. It is a sad, eerie place.

  But she needs the air, and she sucks in great lungfuls of it, trying to calm herself down. The house is smothering her, her own thoughts are trying to bring her down, convince her of things that aren’t real. Could Angela have been right? Have they brought something to this house? Awakened something that’s lain dormant here for all this time?

  She knows she should go back inside, get back into bed and try to sleep. But her mind is racing now, worrying. About Angela. About Jack. About everything. No one knows anything. Rationally, she knows that they can’t. If they did, why wouldn’t they come to her? Or go to the police? If anyone knew the truth, they wouldn’t be able to keep it to themselves. Not for long anyway. She walks carefully along the edge of the lawn towards the pond. The pond that they have had so much trouble keeping full of water until now, since Ford fixed the waterproofing once and for all. ‘Fully filled and fully foolproof,’ he said at dinner, laughing. ‘No way that thing is draining away again unless someone comes and empties it with a bucket while I’m asleep’. She crouched by it earlier that day, marvelling, for a brief moment, at the picture-perfect reflection of the house on the water. The water as smooth as glass; the house with its harsh lines and strange lurching shadows … until she freaked herself out getting her hand trapped in the reeds. She’s wary of it now. Doesn’t want to get too close, and yet it seems to summon her, somehow, and she finds herself walking towards it once more.

  She is halfway between the kitchen and the edge of the water before she realises that there is something very wrong.

  She lurches forwards, reaches the edge of where the water should be. But there is nothing. The water has gone; the pond is empty. Her heart flutters in her chest. No … it can’t be. It’s only been hours since she was here. Ford was adamant that it couldn’t drain away again. She turns back, runs to the building, yanks open the door and closes it tight behind her. It doesn’t make sense. Why is it empty? She hurries through the kitchen, and then she sees it. On the floor, something that
wasn’t there before. Definitely wasn’t there on her way out. She would have remembered. It would have stopped her in her tracks, just like it has now.

  Small wet footprints.

  Her eyes trace their path. They’re coming in from outside, into the kitchen, heading off into the main house. She is cold, suddenly. Freezing. She hugs her arms around herself. Her jaw set, trying to stop her teeth from chattering. She stares at them, transfixed, as they slowly disappear.

  Slowly, slowly. One by one. Until they are gone … and she blinks. Wonders if she even saw them at all.

  Dr Henry Baldock’s Journal – 29th May 1955

  The saddest of days, and although there will be a full, official report to be sent to the authorities, I feel I must also document it here for completeness – and in some way as a therapy for myself to try to understand what has happened today.

  The idea I had for a hospital fête was well received, and plans quickly put in place. I had hoped for this kind of response, and was in fact far more positive than I had dared imagine. The staff were immediately buoyed by this new task – they had a sense of purpose for something more than their daily tasks – those repetitive, laborious, often stressful duties, and trying to cope with all that might be thrown at them, both mentally and physically. The patients, too, were excited. It was as if everyone here had felt that same black cloud hanging over the place as I had, and they were just happy that someone had recognised it and come up with a solution.

  It’s incredible how quickly things can be put together when people set their minds to it.

  After witnessing Jessie Samuel’s mistreatment, I was wary of having her in reach of the nurses who had seen fit to administer the barbaric cold-bathing treatment that was one of the things I was sent here to report back on. But with the prospect of seeing her husband and son again – the pair having been too distressed to visit when Jessie had been all but catatonic for the last few weeks – she had perked up. This, of course, supports my theory that the treatments offered to women suffering her sorts of condition have been woefully inadequate. I believe she had been struggling with a delayed depression that was the result of giving birth to her son; she had been coping but not coping, until she could no longer fight it and her GP suggested she come here for a short stay. But isolation and shock treatments were not what she needed. What she needed was love and hope; but it seems that here I can’t say such things out loud for fear of being called a quack.

  For the fête she had helped bake cakes and scones and had assisted with the decoration of the tables out on the lawn. I saw her, when her boy ran up to her – that beaming smile on her face. I was hopeful then that she was curable, as long as she was looked after, and no other stresses were placed on her. I was talking to her husband about it all, and he seemed to grow younger in front of me as we discussed the good news of Jessie’s recovery.

  None of us realised that the boy had run off, until it was far, far too late.

  Oh, how I wish that there had been time to dredge the duck pond before the party. To remove the reeds that were clustered under the surface like thousands of soft, winding shackles. Perhaps then, he mightn’t have been trapped beneath the surface. It haunts me, still – why it was that no one heard his cries for help.

  Or if they did, why they didn’t do anything to help him.

  24

  Angela

  I think I have enough now to go to Smeaton. He’s a rational man, despite his spiritual beliefs – in fact, maybe because of them. He doesn’t believe in God and Heaven and Hell, but I know he believes that there is something bigger at play in this world, and that we are here to shape it. For years I felt like I didn’t fit in with the world I’d been placed in, but coming here changed that. Some people might be afraid to embrace the light, to hope for the goodness of the life to come if we choose to make it so. But it felt to me like a light, the light, had been switched on. Of course, I had always believed there was a dark. A true dark that manifests itself in the simplest of ways.

  I am getting closer to finding out the truth.

  Ali tried to palm me off with some stories about Jack’s old job. I know he was a detective. I know he dealt with horrific crimes … that they plagued him, made him ill – forced him to take early retirement from his job.

  But what bothers me is that I’ve only heard this second hand.

  And now, the stuff that I found in that box – the news clippings, the scribbled notes underneath. I know it’s only part of the story. None of this is enough for me to convince Smeaton to question the pair of them further, though. Besides, what am I actually accusing them of? Am I being ridiculous? Is my imagination running away with me?

  Julie told me last week that Ali was talking to her about hearing strange scratching sounds outside her door, that she’d seen wet footprints seemingly vanishing before her eyes. She says she has felt as if someone has tried to drown her in the bath. There are so many stories about this place. I haven’t even told Ali them, but she might’ve heard them elsewhere. She knows that I am desperate to prove the existence of ghosts. Is she playing me? But if so, why?

  I’m in my room, putting on my shoes when I spot the envelope poking out from beneath the door. My chest flutters. I unseal it carefully and pull out the single sheet of paper inside.

  I know you have questions. Meet me by the tyre swing at noon.

  I peer at the writing. It slopes slightly to the right, not that I have any idea what this might mean about the person who might have written it. I look at its looping script and rounded lettering and try to decide if they were male or female. But I can’t tell. I’ve no idea who’s put this envelope under my door. Ali or Jack, maybe? Or maybe it’s someone else – someone else knows what they are hiding and they want to tell me on my own, so we can join forces, decide what to do. Could it be Julie? Ali seems to have confided in her. I’m not sure I have ever seen her handwriting before. It could even be Rose. She’s been acting weirder than usual lately and I’ve no idea why. I know I should go straight to Smeaton. He will know what to do. But I fear, as usual, that my curiosity is going to get the better of me.

  It’s always been my downfall.

  I take my shoes off again and pull on my winter boots instead, because I know that the ground is still mulchy after last night’s rain. The fields of the fenlands don’t ever fully drain.

  I pick up my bag. Then decide against it. I want to be able to walk across the fields unencumbered. Besides, what do I need? I’m only going for a chat in the woods. I’ll find out who invited me soon enough. It’s actually quite exciting. I walk briskly down the corridor, glance up into the corner at my new motion-detecting camera. The one that Smeaton told me I wasn’t allowed to put there. He doesn’t understand; it’s not just about getting a clear photograph of something. It’s about capturing changes in the air, like mists auras and orbs. All those sorts of things. They might show up in the pictures, mightn’t they? This corridor seems to be the most active one in the building – well, in this wing, anyway. I try to keep away from the north wing, with its locked doors and crumbling floors. Even I don’t want to hang around that place. I did try, initially, with some of the basics, but I got no sense that there was anything around. Whatever happened in this place, it has left its imprint in this wing. The nicest wing. The one where we’re living.

  I’m almost at the staircase when I hear a noise behind me. A faint creak, perhaps a door being pulled shut.

  ‘Hello?’ I call out, ‘who’s there?’

  But there is no answer, and although I stand there, unmoving, for what seems like an age, I don’t hear another sound. I sniff the air, hoping I might sense someone that way, but there is nothing except the usual smells of stale air and peeling paint. Deciding that my mind is playing tricks on me, I hurry down the stairs.

  I don’t pass anyone on the way out. I can’t remember if there is something happening right now, something that maybe I’m supposed to be at. Perhaps everyone has gathered for something, something imp
ortant. I think Smeaton is trying to encourage people to attend more of the communal activities. People seemed to have drifted into their own lives a bit too much recently. Maybe that’s because the others have also started to think that something isn’t right here. Maybe they are listening to me after all. But I doubt it. Maybe I’m just getting a bit desperate to find my purpose here.

  Outside, the grounds are quiet and there is barely the hint of a breeze. I inhale a long breath through my nose and find that there is nothing unusual in the air. I’m safe then, I think. Nothing to suggest otherwise. There’s no olfactory warning. I glance back at the house once, twice, as I head off down the driveway. Still no one around, but I glance back once more before I cut through the hedge and into the fields towards the woods. Most people here like to walk in the woods, but I don’t think any of them come to the swing. I don’t know who it was who strung the tyre on a rope and tied it to a tree – but it has been here for at least as long as I have, and I love to swing on it, with my eyes closed, listening to the creak of the rope against the branch and letting myself drift away.

  I wish I hadn’t brought Ali here. I thought it would be nice, something to bond us, but now all I feel is that she has soiled the one special place that I had for myself. Maybe I will talk to Ford, ask him to move the swing for me. Into a new part of the woods, where no one else goes.

  A strong feeling of unease washes over me as I hike across the sodden field, everything is silent, nothing moves. My watch says it’s five to twelve. Whoever is meeting me must be there already, or else they will be late. Unless they are coming the other way – along the road. Someone coming from the village, maybe? Someone who knows I’ve been talking to Mary about the newcomers? I pause for a moment. Turn around, and take in the house that is now far off in the distance. I turn the other way, towards the road up ahead. There is no one around, and no one knows where I am. I think about what I’m doing and suddenly I am scared. Who is scaring me? Or what? I don’t even know. I realise that I don’t want to be here, in this field; I’m too exposed. The lampers like this field – well, they used to. I imagine Ali has scared them off now, after her behaviour the other night. Of course, they will come back eventually. But maybe not for a while.