The Lingering

by SJI Holliday

  She sneers. ‘You looked up my thesis, didn’t you? That was just the start of it. What got me interested. I was exploring the psychological effects of coercion and control. I was trying to prove that evil wasn’t inherent, that it could be manufactured. Then I took things to the next level. Jack was a good subject.’ She glances across at the bed where he is still strapped in, draped in a sheet. ‘But he was spent. It was over. The original experiment fell apart when I decided to go down my own route. I couldn’t ever publish the new findings under my own name, not after the things that he had done. Besides, the drugs weren’t controlling him anymore, all they were doing was knocking him out – and they weren’t going to last forever, so I brought him here and I made him go cold turkey. But then Angela started poking her nose in, and I had to start drugging him again to keep him calm. What was I going to do when they ran out? All he wanted to do was sleep. Getting rid of Angela broke him, and he was ready to confess to the whole thing. He couldn’t see the damage that would cause. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life in prison. Although I’m sure I’d be able to find plenty of new playmates in there…’

  Smeaton has heard enough. He slaps her across the face.

  Her only reaction is a smirk.

  47

  Ali

  Ali lands in a heap on the floor. Ford had not cared about being too harsh with her, dragging her out of the treatment room, manhandling her along the corridors, throwing her into her bedroom like a discarded rag doll. She sits up, rubs at her arm from where it has slapped hard on the wood. There is a sharp pain and a strange kind of buzzing on her skin and she wonders if she has broken her arm, or dislocated something. She holds her forearm, pressing tentatively. The pain doesn’t ease.

  ‘Bastard,’ she shouts. ‘You’re not going to get away with this.’

  She’s not sure what she can do about it, now that she is sitting here on the floor, locked in the room, but she’s not quite ready to give up yet. All this fuss for poor little Jack … oh, and poor little Angela, too. That fairy really has flown away for good. She hopes they realise that.

  ‘She’s not coming back, you know,’ she shouts towards the locked door. ‘Interfering little cow got what was coming to her.’ She thinks back to Angela’s shocked face when she confronted her in the woods. She was so confused. Didn’t see it coming when Jack came up behind her and cracked her over her stupid little head.

  Ali stands up and walks towards the bed. She feels tired, all of a sudden. Like a thick blanket has been dropped over her from a height, trapping her beneath. She lies down on the bed.

  ‘Just a minute,’ she mutters, ‘then I’ll sort everything out. OK, Jack? I’m sorry. Things all got a bit out of control. Just let me rest for a bit, then I’ll pack and we’ll be out of here. We’ll do what you said. We’ll go away – properly away. Abroad. Where no one will find us.’

  The bedsprings creak as she turns over.

  ‘Jack? Where’ve you gone? You can’t leave me here on my own in this place. We’re in this together, remember? Jack? Jack! Where the fuck are you?’

  She jumps out of bed, starts to pace around the room. Her arm is throbbing now. It’s definitely broken. Damn it. Damn it all. She crouches down and pulls out the box from her bedside cabinet. She has bandages in there, maybe even a sling. She pulls it out and everything spills on the floor and her arm sings with pain. She closes her eyes, falls back against the bed.

  When she opens her eyes, there is someone sitting on the floor opposite her.

  She stares at the girl. Ratty blonde hair, ring through her nose. Blue eyes like the sky. She’ll never forget those eyes. The girl’s face is expressionless. She’s holding her hands together, fingers entwined, like a small cradle. She lifts the cradle forwards and Ali leans in, to see what she is holding in her hands … and as she leans, the girl’s face changes … A dark-haired man with peacock-green eyes and soft, red lips smiles at her, and when he opens his mouth into a grin, a stream of writhing black insects falls from his mouth and into Ali’s outstretched hand and she pulls away, screams. Closes her eyes. ‘You’re not real. You’re not real,’ she keeps saying it, keeps rocking back and forwards. When she opens her eyes, she is alone again. The swirling image of the dead hitchhikers is gone. She breathes out a long, slow sigh. Her arm starts to throb again, and with her good arm, she scrabbles around the floor, tossing things aside, bandages, dressings, cotton wool – until she finds the bag. Why did she hide the bag? Was it from Jack, or from herself? She opens it and takes out a handful of the small white pills. Stares down at them.

  Hears Jack’s voice, ‘You might as well join me, Ali … there’s nothing for you here.’

  ‘Of course there is,’ she says, angrily. How dare he say that? What does he know? ‘Shut up, Jack. You were never going to see this through to the end, were you? You’re weak … useless … you’re…’

  She stops talking. Jack is sitting in front of her, cross-legged. He’s wearing a Kings of Leon T-shirt, and his hair is gelled into a quiff. It’s how he looked the night they met.

  She reaches for him. ‘What are you—?’

  ‘I’m dead, Ali. You killed me, remember?’ He tilts his head to one side, then the other, and there are scorch marks at his temples. ‘You fried my brain, didn’t you? You bitch.’

  She shuffles back, crushing herself against the bed. ‘No … you. You killed all those people … You’re the bad one, Jack. You did it all. You.’

  The pills are still in her hand. She closes her eyes, tosses them back. Swallows them dry. When she opens her eyes, she is alone again. But there is a scent in the air – a smoky, sandalwood scent. Jack’s aftershave. She remembers inhaling that smell, that first night, when they kissed. It was just a game then, wasn’t it? She never really thought it would work. It was never supposed to end like this. She thinks back to all those years ago, her mother and her father, in and out of hospitals – trying to fix their defective brains. She wanted to fix them. She wanted to fix everyone – that’s why she trained as a nurse. She thought by dealing with it head on, it would never come to affect her. That her dodgy genes wouldn’t give her away. But it didn’t work out like that. Somewhere inside her head, she knows that something has broken. Snapped, like the filament on a spent lightbulb.

  Using her good arm for balance, she twists over, rolls onto her knees and stands up. The brief moment of clarity has passed. Her head starts to feel fuzzy, and she can’t quite remember what it was she was going to do.

  ‘Jack?’ she says, glancing around again. But there’s no one there. The room swims in and out of focus. She stumbles forwards. Lurches towards the bathroom. She remembers. The bath. She aches. She stinks. She’s so, so tired.

  She needs to get into the bath.

  48

  Angela

  First there was Smeaton’s voice, calm, but full of fear – and then Ford’s – I could hear the anger in his. I heard the rumbling tones of him berating Smeaton as they locked the door and left Ali inside. ‘You shouldn’t have let them come here. This is all your fault.’

  I don’t think it is Smeaton’s fault.

  He was being kind, letting them come here. Giving them a chance.

  I can hear them, still – in the corridor outside. ‘What she’s done to Jack, it’s nothing short of barbaric.’ Ford’s voice.

  ‘The voltage was high. I don’t think he would’ve felt anything.’ Smeaton, now. ‘I’m calling the police. Let them deal with it.’

  What did you do, Ali? What else did you do?

  I sit by the window, waiting.

  Eventually, the door opens and Ali staggers into the bathroom. She is smiling, but her eyes are unfocused. There is no sign of the tears that I had imagined from the sounds that she was making only a few moments earlier. Yelling at the men outside the door. Telling them what she thought of them. Yelling at someone else – as if people were in the room with her. I wanted to go and look, but I was scared of what I might see. I don’t need any more trauma.
Ali is carrying enough for us all.

  I can see it in her eyes now, quite clearly. She is deranged. She has lost her mind.

  Perhaps this was how it was all along? If I am right, then she is the one who made Jack kill those hitchhikers. An experiment – can good people be forced to do bad things? Disproving the theory of inherent evil.

  But she has done the opposite. For she is evil. She is incurable. She is sick and twisted and vile and awful, but that is the way she was made … and who knows what she did before she started her experiments on Jack – her puppet. Her plaything, to be moulded into whatever she wished.

  I wish now I had spoken to him after I found the newspaper clippings. Maybe, with Smeaton’s and my help, we could’ve stopped this – the rest of this. Maybe I wouldn’t be here now, sitting on the window ledge in her bathroom, waiting for her to see me.

  The bath is full of water. She must’ve filled it before and then forgotten about it. She dips a hand, tentatively, into the water. She frowns, then reaches down to pull out the plug. She is humming a tune, quietly, but I can still hear it clearly. I know what it is. It’s ‘De Noche’, one of the Taizé chants. One of my favourite songs. It is beautiful, soothing. I don’t like her having it. I don’t want her to have it. Half of the water has drained away now. She stops humming. Glances around.

  ‘Hello?’ she says. She looks scared. I want to scream. I want to scare her. I open my mouth, but no sound comes out. She turns on the taps, and the water judders and spurts. Hot steam slowly fills the room. She smiles, starts humming again. She seems at peace with herself, and for a moment, I am fooled.

  But then I wonder … what is she doing? She talked before of being afraid here, in this room. Is she trying to take the easy way out? If she is gone, then no one can find out the truth.

  The truth of what she is.

  She pours in lavender bath salts and they meld in to the steam, and I am sad that I can’t smell them. I always loved the smell of lavender. She tests the water, dipping in a hand. Turns off the taps. Her expression changes and I realise something else: she is in pain – she is cradling one arm with the other. She winces. Glances around again.

  Has she sensed me, after all?

  She struggles to undress, the bad arm difficult to manoeuvre, She leaves her clothes in a pile on the floor, steps carefully into the bath, lets herself slide into its depths. She goes under, stays there for just a moment too long. I imagine myself feeling panic – fluttering in my chest – imagining it is a poor substitute for the real thing, but of all the senses I have lost, it’s still the sense of smell that I miss most.

  She resurfaces, and she is still smiling. She is humming that tune, still.

  No, I think. You don’t get to have this serenity.

  I concentrate hard, willing it to happen. Not sure if I can do it, or if it will happen anyway, as is inevitable.

  And then…

  Her expression changes. The humming stops. She slides herself backward, as if trying to push her way out through the back of the tub. The water swirls in front of her, and it becomes cloudy, discoloured. Tinged with something dark, green. Slimy.

  A small hand appears, breaking the surface.

  Then another.

  The small hands grip on to the sides of the tub, and Ali pushes herself back as hard as she can, tries to stand. She’s struggling. It’s too slippery. Too many bath salts have turned the bottom of the bath to slime. She places a hand on the side of the bath, tries to put weight on it and forgets it’s her bad arm, in the panic. It gives way, her hand slips, and she slides awkwardly, crashes down and falls face first into the water, her back seems to have bent at an unnatural angle. Her legs poke out, kicking uselessly into the steamy air.

  The boy’s head appears through the dank green murk. He is clothed, his hair plastered to his small, pale face. He starts off transparent, becomes opaque, before he takes on an almost solid form. Although I know that he’s not, of course. Like me, he is no longer real. He sees me, and he smiles. A small shy, smile. I think I am his first sighting, as he is mine.

  Ali has not resurfaced. Her body thrashes, her head almost breaking the surface more than once. But then I see them – lots of hands, women’s hands, pushing her, pulling her under.

  The boy stands.

  The green murk swirls, the fronds of pondweed and algae disintegrate. Now all that floats is Ali’s hair, spread around her like feathers. She is still face down, only her pale legs stick out at odd angles over the edges of the tub.

  The boy climbs out of the bath, and I know who he is. He’s George Samuel – he drowned in the pond over sixty years ago, and he is here, now.

  He walks towards me, and as he does, his sodden clothes start to change colour – the water draining away, until he reaches me – and he is bone dry. His hair fresh and clean, neatly parted and combed to one side, revealing a strangely beautiful scarlet birthmark on his forehead. He is wearing smart grey shorts and a lemon-yellow T-shirt with a collar. His face is white, his lips tinged with blue. He gazes up at me, and I smile back at him.

  I take his hand, and I can almost feel it, as if he is real, as if I am real, and we are together – and he is saved. And I was right, all along, about the existence of ghosts – but I was wrong about one thing. It’s not only the bad who can see them. The good can, too. But only when they are a ghost themselves. And only if they have love to give to those who most need it.

  We both need it.

  I pull him up onto the window ledge beside me and we turn, facing outwards. Out at the fields beneath, out into the beyond, out to wherever we want to be.

  Now, I think. Concentrate. Do it. Push through. Together. Let’s fly into the wind.

  I squeeze his hand, and feel him squeeze back. Nothing happens. We aren’t going anywhere. We can’t leave. Not yet. But we are together now. We … whatever we are, we are real. But we are not free. Maybe one day we will be.

  Until then, we will stand here – staring out into the thick, dark night; and although there is no reflection in the glass for us to see ourselves – if you were to look upwards now, from the grounds of this sad, crumbling place, you will see us. Standing quiet and still. Holding hands.

  Smiling.

  Dr Henry Baldock’s Journal – 10th September 1955

  It is with a heavy heart that I must write my final report and present my findings to the board. The details that I will include on the official document will be quite different to the ones that I must record here.

  My recommendations are simple. There must be an urgent, independent review of all cases. All patients. All diagnoses, treatments, prognoses. I know that there are people here who should not be here. I know that there are staff here who have failed to move with the times, still favouring superstition and barbaric treatment methods over the new recommendations that the board seeks to bring. This is not something that can be dealt with quickly, but I would wish to see that the chronically ill and seemingly untreatable be taken to alternative hospitals straightaway; and that those with more minor conditions be reviewed in a non-psychiatric setting, where possible.

  It is time for change. Time for reform. I wish to be part of it.

  But despite what I have said, what I have recommended to the board – what my rational, medical mind knows to be true – there is more to it than simply this.

  If it were possible immediately, then I would want it to be so: this hospital – Rosalind House – carries a darkness within its walls. I am concerned that my presence here has unsettled it. There is something unearthly here. Something paraphysical, that I am no expert to explain or rationalise. If it were possible, I would desire more than anything that this place be closed down. Razed to the ground. The land returned to the farmers, to the villagers, who have far more understanding of it that any outsiders such as I will ever know.

  For I believe there to be entities within these walls. Sad, unsettled beings: Alice Samuels and her family, unfairly tried and unjustly hung as witches; Lady Susan Crom
well, their accuser, who died shielding her own guilt. Then Jessie Samuels and her family, victims of rumours and bullying and unnecessary tragedy; and the nurses who contributed to their deaths through their own ignorance and fear. They all want their voices to be heard. Some of them want justice, some retribution, and until they get it they remain here, waiting – silent and calm. Lurking in the shadows, shielding themselves from the light.

  Lingering.

  Until something, or someone, comes and awakens them once more.

  Acknowledgements

  This story developed from a combination of several ideas: my real-life ghost story, the Holliday fenland history, my real-life job in clinical trials, my mum’s old job as a psychiatric nurse, and a visit to an exhibition at the V&A on counterculture, which led to my interest in communes (thanks for the ticket, Ash!)

  As far as research goes, a huge thank-you to Julia for the Warboys and Baldock history (and for telling us where to buy the witch stickers!), to the Findhorn Foundation (who didn’t know I was there researching this book), to Will Shaw for Spying in Guru Land, and to Abz for telling me how child protection works. Thanks to my mum (aka Ali Gardiner) and dad – the former, for telling me all about her (often grim) time at Rosslynlee and other psychiatric hospitals where she trained in the 1970s, and the latter for almost being brave enough to scale the inner fence. Our urbexing skills need a bit of work… Thanks also to the Ghost of Arthur’s Bridge Road – I hope you’re happy now.

  Big thanks to my nephew and niece, Cody and Aimee, who named several of the characters, including Smeaton Dunsmore and Fairy Angela.

  Thanks to Ford Swanson – a colleague of my dad’s from many years ago, who had no idea that his name would always be lodged in my mind and would eventually make it into a book.