The Lingering

by SJI Holliday

  ‘It’s been a couple of days since I’ve seen her,’ she says. ‘Someone else must have seen her since then? She’s probably in the village. Has anyone actually checked?’

  Everyone starts to speak at once, arms gesturing, voices rising. Eventually Smeaton claps his hands, and everyone is silent again. As if a telepathic message has been passed to them all at once, they silently form a circle and everyone looks down at the floor, holds their hands to their sides, grasping for each other.

  Ali takes the two hands offered to her, Ford on her left, Julie on her right. She feels them squeeze, and stares down at the floor, and after a moment of silence and nothing, she glances up, wondering what’s going on. Rose is staring directly at her. Before she can react in any way, Smeaton makes a small sound in his throat, and then she feels the squeeze again, and this time she squeezes back. They all release their hands, letting the invisible cloud of worry pass into the air, as is their way here. She tries not to sigh, tries to stay focused.

  Smeaton is talking now, but she is not taking it all in. She’s worrying now about Rose, about why she was staring. Wondering why it is that Rose seems to have been on her case right from the start. She hasn’t taken her for a friend of Angela’s. She seems like someone who finds fault with everyone and has to try very hard to keep her thoughts to herself. Ali silently chides herself for not making more of an effort with Rose, for not trying to find out what it is that makes her tick.

  ‘Have you got that, Ali? You know where you’re going, yes?’ She blinks and realises that Smeaton has been talking to her, but she has no idea what he said. ‘You’re to go with Rose and check the rooms in the south wing. Rose knows the places Angela might’ve been, or might be. Although, if she is still in this house, I’d be surprised. She’d hardly ignore the gong.’ He claps his hands again. Chattering ceases.

  ‘I’ll be on my own,’ he says. ‘Everyone knows where they’re going, yes? See you all back here in one hour. We’ll regroup and decide what to do next.’

  Ali holds back. Stays in the room until only she and Rose remain. ‘I hope she’s OK,’ Ali says.

  ‘As if you care,’ Rose huffs. ‘I think Smeaton wants me to be with you so that I can keep an eye on you. You know that, right? Everyone’s been talking about you, Ali. Jack too. His up-and-down moods … and after a few weeks of work with Ford, he’s taken to bed, you say?’ She barks out a dry, humourless laugh. ‘There’s something you two aren’t telling us, isn’t there? I had a feeling about you as soon as I met you. You can tell a lot about a person by observing how they wash dishes, you know.’

  Ali feels herself start to sag. She follows Rose, who is still wittering on about dish-washing, out of the room and waits until she has carried on down the long corridor, then she darts down one of the corridors to the side. Fast. Praying that the door that she needs to be open is open today. She hears Rose calling her, hears her swearing under her breath. Hears her saying that she will carry on by herself, and don’t worry, she’ll be telling Smeaton about this.

  Ali doesn’t care anymore. She slips into the room and closes and locks the door behind her. She didn’t expect to find anyone in here, so it’s no surprise to find it cold and empty. It’s not a room that’s used very often. She walks over to the desk and sits down. Pulls open the drawer beneath the desk, takes out a piece of paper and feeds it into the typewriter.

  She starts to type, just a few lines. Just enough. When she’s done, she sits back in the chair. Closes her eyes. Breathes out long and slow.

  This is all fixable. She knows it. She has dealt with far worse before.

  A rattling noise makes her jump, and she opens her eyes. Someone is turning the door handle, back and forth, trying to get inside … but she knows that she has locked the door. Her heart starts to beat just a little bit faster. She holds her breath, keeps still. She doesn’t want anyone to come in and find her here, sitting at the desk. She hears a voice outside. Rose?

  ‘I’m sure this room is meant to be left open, isn’t it?’ A sigh, and then the rattling stops. Ali waits a moment longer before catching her breath. She stands, making sure that the chair hasn’t been moved, making sure that everything looks just as it should; then a cold prickle sweeps across the back of her neck and she turns, looks over her shoulder.

  It’s him again. The small boy with wet hair plastered to his face. He is dripping small puddles on the floor. It’s the same boy, the one she saw in the kitchen.

  He’s not real; she knows that he is not real. He is a waking dream. It’s a psychological reaction to stress, that’s all. Just her mind playing tricks on her, in this unfamiliar room. She screws her eyes shut tight. Go away. Go away, she thinks, willing it to happen. For the vision to fade away and leave her alone.

  There’s a click, as if someone has unlocked the door. She opens her eyes, draws in a breath, expecting to find someone standing in front of her, someone real, not some ghostly figment of her imagination. But there is no one there. Relieved, she hurries towards the door, and slips out into the corridor.

  ‘I locked this door. I know I did,’ she says to herself, quietly. Then she lets herself out the fire door at the side and doesn’t dare glance back, for fear of seeing those footprints again.

  32

  Smeaton

  There is a faint breeze blowing around the corner. Smeaton heads towards the library, and notices that the fire exit at the end of the corridor has been left ajar, but only slightly, as if someone has thrown it closed from the outside and not pushed hard enough. He assumes this means that someone has already been down here, although he had explicitly told Rose that he would investigate this room himself.

  This is not a room that is used regularly, and he prefers to keep it as a more private space. Although he knows the people do often find a way in now and again, and he says nothing as he has made it common knowledge that Rosalind House is everyone’s house, and there are no secrets in here. Even if that is not strictly true, it’s nice to have a framework for his beliefs.

  He can tell straightaway that something is different. He can feel something in the air, as if it has recently been disturbed. That fizzing of energy, when someone has just left the room. He’s thinking like Angela now, he realises – with his senses attuned to electromagnetic activity. Poppycock. The voice in his head laughs at him. But is it?

  He sits down at the desk and sees the paper sticking out of the typewriter. Only one person uses the typewriter, and that’s on very rare occasions. This room is supposed to be full of memories, like a museum. It contains books and notes and records that are not for others’ eyes. He doesn’t want to scare the residents by telling them about some of the things he’s found in here. He wants to believe that this was a good hospital, and that the staff here were good people; but he knows that might not be the case. The asylums didn’t always achieve what they’d set out to do, and were the scenes of many horror stories. There’s no point in upsetting the Family with all this stuff, is there? That’s what he’d decided when he took the place over from the local authority – who were extremely glad to be rid of it. Paying security to keep out those urban explorers and scavengers wasn’t something they wanted to budget for. The locals had tried to convince him to burn the place down, but he wasn’t going to do that. Not when it was such a perfect place to set up his community. And as for all the other stuff – the stories about the house that was here before they built the asylum – he decided right at the start that no one needed to know anything about that. It’s unfortunate that Angela found out for herself – from Mary and the other villagers. He always hoped that Angela wouldn’t spread all that talk among other members of the Family – about suspected witches being held here before their trial, but he suspects that she has.

  He turns the wheel and rolls the sheet of paper out. He starts to read, and when he realises what it is, he lays it flat on the table and rests his chin on his hands. His shoulders slump, and he sighs.

  Dear Everyone,

  I know t
hat you will find it strange and unlike me, that I have not said goodbye. But things have been different here for a while, and I no longer feel like Rosalind House is the right place for me. As you know, I have been to many places before I came here. I had thought that this place would be my final destination, but now I’m not so sure. I knew that if I told anyone I wanted to leave, that they would try to stop me, and I didn’t want that as I knew I would be easily persuaded. I’m taking some time away to travel, to seek new places and new things. Perhaps I will be back, bearing gifts from around the world. Perhaps I won’t.

  To my Dearest Smeaton … thank you for everything. For understanding me. For believing in me. Please can you tell Mary not to worry, because I’m fine. I am looking for something else, more than she can give. More than anyone can.

  With all my love, and all my light,

  Yours always,

  Angela x

  Damn. He wasn’t expecting this. He always thought that she would tell him if she wanted to leave, and he never really believed that she would want to go anywhere other than here.

  He scratches his chin. Maybe there is something else … she’s had a fight with someone, and hasn’t confided in him. Things weren’t going according to plan with Ali. Or perhaps it’s Mary, or someone else in the village. He needs to go there, talk to them. Maybe she’s said something to them that she hasn’t said here. She has seemed a little on edge lately. Thinking about it, he’s not sure that Angela has been fully herself for some time. And it surprises him somewhat, that she has left him a note like this. Not folded, not signed. Not left on his desk. But then again, perhaps she knew that it could only be him who would find it in here, adding an extra layer of authenticity, in case there was ever any doubt that she had typed it.

  Of course she typed it. It was exactly in her style, and as far as he’s aware, she was the only one who ever used the typewriter. He remembers the childlike thrill on her face when he told her she could use it occasionally, as long as she looked after it well – it is an antique, after all. He really will miss her.

  A thought strikes him, then, and a rush of panic almost chokes him. Was it Angela who just left? Did she leave the fire escape open? He jumps up and hurries across to the window. He cups his hands to the glass, stares outside. But it’s already getting dark, and there is no sign of anyone out there.

  Besides, Ford and Richard are walking around the front grounds at the moment. They’d hardly miss her if she is out there. And if she has just left, where has she been up until now? What has she been doing? She must have heard the gong – she must’ve known they were all frantically looking for her.

  No, it can’t have been her.

  He turns back to the desk. The note bothers him a little, but in many ways it does make sense. It is very Angela, he concedes. He knows he must tell Mary now, ask her more about their last visit, if anything odd happened.

  But there’s something else he wants to check first. Something that’s been bothering him for a few days now. He’d thought about it after something that Ali had said, when they’d chatted in his office. And he’d forgotten the details and needs to know them now, just for his own curiosity more than anything else, while he’s here.

  He walks back to the door and finds that it’s slightly open. He pushes it shut, locks it. He’s sure he closed and locked it when he came in. He shakes his head, worries that he might be going a little bit mad himself. The door is definitely closed now, and locked. He pulls the curtains closed, just in case any of the men outside happen to come to the window and see him in there. He’d rather not let anyone else know what he’s doing right now. It doesn’t concern them and it has no impact on anything here, so why share it and cause worry?

  No one knows anything about it, and there’s no need for that to change.

  He heads to the bookcase behind the desk, to the middle shelf, where a stack of books with faded blue fabric covers lie flat, flanked on either side by three thick, green fabric-covered books standing spine out. He slides the flat stack of books off the shelf and places them carefully on the desk, and a puff of dust makes him sneeze. He pushes his hand to the back of the shelf, to the small gap in the middle. He has to feel along with his fingers to find the button.

  He presses it, and takes a step back, letting the bookcase swing away from him, into the short corridor behind, revealing the hidden door. He takes a small Yale key from his key ring, and steps in to open the door. He walks inside, leaving the door open, because no one can come into the library with the main door locked, so he knows he’s safe. Besides, there are no windows in the small room at the back, and it is a claustrophobic space. He would hate to be locked in there by accident.

  A quick glance is enough to know that Angela isn’t hiding in here. Not that she would be, but he wouldn’t be surprised if she had found the room and stolen his key. He knows she’s taken his key to the north wing before, and made her own copy.

  The room is not so much a room as a large cupboard. The walls are lined with shelves containing box-files. The patient records, from all the years that the hospital kept them. It’s a metal-lined, fireproof safe room, which was locked when he first came here. He felt it was best it should stay that way. The authorities hadn’t wanted the records back, it seemed. From the moment the place was closed, it was abandoned, and no one wanted any more to do with it.

  He’s spent many hours perusing these files, and some of them don’t make for very nice reading. Especially the small journal that he keeps locked in another drawer, in the cabinet in the corner. It’s the diary of Dr Henry Baldock, who came to investigate this place in the 1950s, after the authorities heard reports of patient mistreatment. His visit sparked a series of catastrophic events, and he recommended the place be shut down. He published an academic paper, later – about the use of coercion and control in a psychiatric setting. It was a chilling read – about how patients who had come in with one ailment, or in fact, no ailment at all, had been manipulated and moulded into someone else altogether. He remembers the phrase, coercion and control, from that meeting with Ali. From her talk about her thesis. Ali’s theories on the creation of evil were something that he had wanted to learn a bit more about. There had been some familiarity there, as if she knew this theory well – Dr Henry Baldock’s theory … Could she have come here on purpose, to try to find out more? It wouldn’t be the first time. The Palmerstons had come here with a similar agenda.

  He shakes his head. Surely not. She isn’t continuing her research, is she? She came here with Jack to start afresh. His imagination is running away with itself, and he stops what he is doing, tries to breathe in a few long, slow breaths, trying to get himself back under control.

  He lays the journal down and reaches into the drawer for the other thing he keeps in there. The old cardboard file that he’d found hidden with the journal. He opens it, flicking through the photocopied pages. He’d never found out who’d brought this here, but at some point, someone had wanted to tell Dr Henry Baldock something more about this place.

  He flicks to the court transcript: April 1593 – the trial of the witches accused of bewitching the Throckmorton girls and murdering Lady Susan Cromwell – and the chilling statement from Alice Samuel that was to seal her fate: ‘Madam, why do you use me thus? I never did you any harm as yet.’

  As yet.

  He’s always tried to dismiss Angela’s superstitions and foibles as nonsense, but he can’t deny that something has unsettled the house over these last few weeks. Perhaps Angela, being so sensitive to all this – believing it as she does – couldn’t cope with what she perceived to be … an awakening?

  33

  Angela

  The dull clang of the gong resonates across the fields. I’ve never heard it from so far away before; but it gets used so little that I wonder if the sound really has carried this far, or if perhaps it is only me who can hear it. It seems that I can still hear as acutely as before, all that is lacking is my sense of smell.

  I rush
back to the house, but I don’t feel that I am hurrying at all; it’s as if I am barely moving my feet yet moving faster than I ever have before.

  I suppose there have to be some advantages to my situation.

  I wait outside the window, knowing that everyone will be gathering in the living room, listening to Smeaton’s instructions. They will all be sent looking for me … but will they find me?

  My body is not where I left it.

  I couldn’t go with it, when they took it away. I tried, but it was as if an invisible force prevented me from following. I watched them drive off in the car, my body wrapped in a blanket in the boot. Despite my unfortunate demise, they took care of the removal quite well. I just wish I knew where they went.

  I’m not sure why I couldn’t follow them. I think that maybe now that the essence of me is no longer part of my body, I cannot stay with it. Incredibly, after all the years of research and interest into this whole area, nothing is quite as I expected. But then again, I wasn’t expecting to be proving my theory quite like this, and not having any way to tell the others that I was right.

  I wait until they have all left the room. I see that Rose is keeping an eye on Ali, and I hope that maybe someone else will see what I have seen, hear what I have heard. Someone else will work out what to do about Ali and Jack.

  I follow Smeaton. I think that he must be going to the north wing, although why he thinks I’d be in that awful place, I have no idea. I keep a good distance behind him as he walks along the corridors. He does not glance back, and I realise that my footsteps do not make any sound. So much to learn.

  When we get to the door of the north wing, he rummages in his pockets, then I hear him swear. He doesn’t swear often. ‘Damn it, those keys,’ he mutters to himself. ‘Why did I take them off the main ring? Stupid.’ He whirls around and he is face-to-face with me. I’m less than a metre away from him. Looking straight at his face, and he is looking straight at mine.