A Spookies Compendium

by David Robinson

  “You never worry when you annoy me and Pete,” Kevin pointed out and bent to fasten the camcorder onto its tripod.

  “It’s not that I think the Reverend Emmet would hurt us, Kevin…” Sceptre began.

  As if to dispute her words, a ROOSH of wind swirled past them, and a thunderous ‘BOOM’ burst through the air, shattering the overhead bulbs, plunging them into a darkness penetrated only by the spotlight of Kevin’s camera. The door at the top of the steps slammed shut, and the building shook. Kevin stumbled. A yell from Sceptre brought him back to his feet.

  Flashes of electric blue lit the crypt. On the casket, the pocket watch and tankard jerked across the top, Sceptre moved to prevent them falling and in doing so, knocked Kevin to the ground and fell onto him. With an ‘ouch’, she dropped the florin and scrabbled in the dust to retrieve it.

  *****

  Fishwick recovered and as Emmet threw himself at Sceptre, he intervened, knocking Emmet to one side. Sparks flew from their collision. Emmet came back, aiming straight for Fishwick, who sideslipped. It looked as if Emmet would careen into The Light, but at the last moment, he regained control, swooped up, looped over and dived. Fishwick stood in the way. They collided again. Their forms melded, the angry red of James Emmet and the cooler blue of Albert Fishwick, coalescing into a mauve blaze, rolling, grappling, tussling, and slamming once more into the wall.

  *****

  Pinned down by Sceptre, Kevin shouted, “Give him his bloody money back.”

  “I’ve lost it,” Sceptre cried, rolling from him and scrabbling to her knees.

  She shone her light along the floor. The building shook again, knocking her from his knees and she dropped the torch again.

  As Kevin half rose, her lamp, shining at floor level, picked out the coin. He grabbed it.

  *****

  A room full of men and women. The sound of cheerful song. A piano tinkled, glasses chinked. An English pub on a Saturday night. Pleasure overload.

  *****

  Sceptre rolled to one side and got groggily to her feet. She saw Kevin’s glazed eyes and snatched the coin from him. She tried to stand. For a third time, the building shook and she fell to the floor again. Coming to his senses, Kevin grabbed her light.

  “Shine it on the coffin,” shouted Sceptre.

  Supporting himself against the wall, Kevin aimed the torch. Sceptre scrabbled to her knees and put the coin on the slab. All activity ceased. After the chaos of the last few minutes, the silence was deafening.

  *****

  Emmet calmed down the moment he saw his money replaced. Fishwick maintained his position between Emmet and Sceptre.

  “You’re a tough nut, Fishwick,” said Emmet. “I’ll give you that, but tell her to leave my beer money alone.”

  “As long as you don’t bother her and her pals.”

  With a hearty laugh, James Emmet flew off. “I won’t be far away. You’ll see.”

  Fishwick followed until he realised where the former vicar was going, then, on hearing the mistress’ call, he returned to the crypt.

  *****

  “Fishwick, are you still there?”

  Silence greeted Sceptre’s query.

  “Can you hear me, Fishwick?”

  “Right here, Madam.”

  “And the Reverend Emmet?” Sceptre asked.

  “Once you put the coin back he was satisfied. He’s gone off to some pub to watch a darts match I’ll bet.”

  “Very good, Fishwick. Thank you.” Recovering her poise, Sceptre dusted herself off. She focused on Kevin. Even in the narrowed beam of her lamp, his face had paled. She took his hand. “What happened, Kevin? When you grabbed the florin, it was almost as if you went into a trance.”

  “I saw things. Scenes.” His mouth worked agitatedly as he spoke. “It was a pub. No jukebox. Everybody was singing to a piano.” He scratched his head and dust fell from his hair. “What does it mean, Sceptre?”

  “The main thing is that you’re all right.” She squeezed his hand tighter. “It’ll be interesting to see the video.”

  Chapter Five

  The rounds of the building took Pete considerably less than five minutes. One swipe on the upper floor, one on the bottom left corner, the one opposite the chapel, and a third at the front entrance. But for the swipe at the main gates, he took his car.

  Parked by the gates, he looked out onto Ashdalean Road. The grand, detached and modern houses lining the road away from the school were in near darkness, only the odd light showing to indicate they were inhabited. Further along, where the main Ashdale-Rochdale road ran across the junction, the occasional car passed by. It was the quiet time. Just over two weeks to Christmas, people were saving their money for the day they finished work and the party season could officially begin.

  He looked to his left and the headmaster’s lodge. Here again, light shone from only one window, but Pete noticed that as well as a faded and ageing Ford Mondeo in the drive, there was a black BMW parked on the roadside. It reminded him of his meeting with Ranji earlier in the day, and the need to get in touch with the police.

  He swiped the card through the reader, and checked his watch. 9:30. Next round due at 11:30. Climbing back into his car, he started the engine and looked towards the school. That too was in near darkness. The thin, interior lights showed dimly through the windows, and there were occasional flashes of electric blue.

  “Everything norm …”

  Flashes of electric blue?

  Pete cursed and jammed the car into gear. For all the messing about he did with electrics, Kevin was not a qualified sparks, and Pete had a horrible vision of him lying on the floor electrocuted. He had an even worse vision of Sceptre, naively grabbing hold of him to pull him away from the electrical source and the charge running through her too.

  “You’re going nowhere until you’ve had the pleasure of me, dolly,” he said to the night as he raced the car down the drive towards the building.

  *****

  “Tell me about this Brennan,” the High Master insisted.

  Along with Trent and Danny, the other three members of the VDL had arrived for the meeting. Alec Minton sat in one corner of the settee, Frank Anders, proprietor of Ashdale Autowreckers in the other, while Ginger Green hovered in the background.

  Danny held out his slender left arm and highlighted a slight bulge on the outside of his wrist. “See that? When he was on the force, Brennan nicked me for aggravated assault. A bit of a scrap outside a bar. I took a poke at him and he twisted my arm up my back so hard that he broke my wrist. He got hauled over the coals for it and I got some compo off the filth.”

  “But you didn’t get it until you came out the nick,” Minton pointed out. “Master, Brennan is a nothing. He was fired from the law and he works as a private eye. That means muscling folk for bad debts and getting the goods on hooky insurance claims or women dropping their knickers where they shouldn’t. When he has nothing better to do, he works with the fat mate of his, Kevin Keeley, and they chase up ghosts in their spare time with some tart who lives with them.”

  “Concepta Rand-Epping is not some tart,” Trent said and all eyes focussed on him. “She is a titled lady. The Countess of Marston if memory serves correctly.” He gave them a bleak smile. “When one is the headmaster of a school such as the Ashdalean, one has a duty to be au fait with the aristocracy, no matter how minor.”

  “Is she a threat to us?” the High Master asked.

  “I would say not,” Trent said after a moment’s consideration. “I think, perhaps, Mr Brennan’s inquiries may prove troublesome, but Ms Rand is a ghost hunter, as we’re all aware, and while she may investigate the crypt, there is no reason why she should make any untoward discoveries down there.” His smile this time was even bleaker. “I had no say in this matter. The Lane sisters overrode any objections I could make.”

  Minton took out a cigarette and lit it. Slotting his lighter back into his pocket, he said, “They’re just a nuisance, Master, not a danger.”
<
br />   “They topped Ronnie Wilcox.”

  All eyes in the room turned to the uncommunicative Ginger Green. Renowned more for his violence than intelligence, he rarely said anything at meetings.

  “What are you on about, Ginger?” the High Master asked.

  “He’s talking about the owner of Flutter-Bys, a night club in Ashdale,” Frank Anders explained. “There was some hassle at Melmerby Manor about a month ago. Brennan, Keeley and the bird they live with were involved. Dunno what the bottom line was, but the story goes that Ronnie Wilcox topped Bilko, er, Steven Bilks, a local lag, Brennan cottoned onto it and Wilcox was out at Melmerby Manor to outface Brennan when he got killed. They reckon a shed load of steel racking fell on him. Dunno how much of this is pukka and how much is street yak, but his missus, two of his goons Johnny and Nicky Tate are all on remand for attempted murder and accessory to murder, and Brennan is one of the chief witnesses.”

  The High Master’s eyes lit. “So he can be dangerous?”

  “I did say so,” Trent pointed out.

  “What you gonna do, Master?” Danny asked.

  The High Master drew on a cigar and let the smoke out in a perfect ring which curled its way to the ceiling. “For now, nothing. By Friday, our ambitions will have taken another step forward. If Brennan and his friends begin to get close, we’ll deal with them, but now is not the time to draw attention to ourselves. Alec, you have your contact keeping an eye on things here?”

  Minton nodded. “He makes enough to keep me updated.”

  The High Master stood. “Then make use of him. Gentlemen, we carry on as planned and keep our ear to the ground on Brennan’s activities.”

  *****

  By the time he brought his car to a slurring halt alongside Kevin’s van, the blue flashes from within the building had stopped, which only made Pete all the more anxious. The electricity had earthed and shorted out through their bodies. He knew it.

  He hurried into the school without even pausing to think about why the lights were still on, ran to the dining room, only to find it empty.

  “Obviously empty,” he said to himself. “They were setting up.”

  But where? He hurried back out of the dining hall into the corridor, looked left, right and left again when he spotted the chapel doors open. He scooted along the corridor, and into the chapel only to find himself surrounded by an eerie normality. Stained glass windows gleamed dully in the low wattage lighting, one of their cameras turned as he cut through its PIR beam; other than that, he was surrounded by silence … but not quite. From somewhere came the mutter of voices. Pete trained his hearing and homed in on the crypt door.

  For all that he accompanied Kevin and Sceptre on their ghost hunts, he did not accept the paranormal as proven. True, there were those things that happened on their all-night vigils which he found hard to explain, but that did not outlaw logical, rational explanations. When, therefore, he heard voices from the crypt, he did not automatically assume he was hearing the ghost of Kevin or Sceptre, but human voices.

  “But whose?” he asked himself.

  He tried to string it all together into a coherent theory. Don’t assume, deduce. The words of the senior instructor on his CID training course. What could he deduce from the sight of blue flashes and the sound of voices in the crypt? That someone had broken in and harmed Sceptre and Kevin? Or that his best friend really had shorted out a few electrical circuits but luckily developed nothing more than a free afro hairdo?

  He knew instinctively which was the likelier, and he relaxed. Striding to the crypt door, he called out, “Sceptre, Kev? You okay down there?”

  To his relief, Sceptre’s voice floated back up to him. “We just had a visit from the Reverend Emmet but we’re fine.”

  Pete ignored the substance of her words. “I’ll go lock the front doors and be right with you.”

  Less than five minutes later, he descended the stone steps into the crypt and found them making final adjustments to the camera. Sceptre was beside herself with excitement, Kevin’s hands shook as he connected the various cables to the camera.

  “You should have been here, Pete,” Sceptre enthused. “It was so thrilling. The whole building shook when Emmet and Fishwick were fighting.”

  “Did it?” His indulgent smile telegraphed his scepticism.

  “You must have felt it,” Sceptre said.

  Pete shook his head and wandered off along the alcoves. “I was out by the gates. I saw the lights flash and thought you were in trouble, but I didn’t hear or see anything else.”

  “Kevin picked up a coin and got visions from it,” Sceptre insisted.

  “Kevin has been having visions as long as I’ve known him. When he was at school it was the occasional acid trip, and since he turned sixteen it’s been longer trips on Ashdale Brewery’s Regal lager.” Pete ambled off again.

  *****

  Sceptre quelled her irritation. While Kevin continued to fiddle with the camera wiring, she kept her eye on Pete and noticed instantly that he had no reservations about being down here. He wandered about the crypt studying the various caskets and their inscriptions, as if he were in a department store.

  She strode after him. “You’re not afraid, are you?”

  “Bones can’t hurt you,” he said and read the inscription above the casket next to the Reverend Emmet’s. “Michael Andersen. Died a couple of years ago.”

  “Probably the headmaster before Trent,” Sceptre said.

  Pete shook his head. “According to the dates, he was nearly ninety. Well past retirement age.” He moved on. “Macabre. Burying old headmasters at the school where they taught.”

  Sceptre joined him alongside Reverend Emmet’s casket. “It’s their right,” she explained.

  “It’s still ghoulish.”

  With a glance at Kevin, still concentrating on his camera and unwilling to look around, Sceptre kept her voice low. “Pete, we know what we experienced,” she said softly.

  “You mean you think you know.”

  Signalling with her eyes, she urged him to look in Kevin’s direction. “He’s scared, Pete. He daren’t look anywhere other than at the camera.”

  “Stressed out is what he is, Sceptre,” Pete retorted. “He’s spent half a lifetime watching horror movies and now you’ve dragged him into a cellar full of coffins. His mind is frightening him, not some mystical trip with a two bob piece.”

  “Oh you do talk some bloody nonsense.” Sceptre strode back to Kevin, and took his hand. “It won’t happen again, Kevin.”

  “What?” he asked without looking up.

  “Your vision with the coin,” Sceptre reminded him. “It was probably a result of stress.”

  “And I’m not stressed out now?” Still he did not look anywhere but at the camera.

  “When I said that,” Pete said to Sceptre, “you told me I was talking crap.”

  “I meant his stress kicked his psychic powers in,” Sceptre said. “It’s a well-documented phenomenon, Pete.”

  “Will you two shut up?” Kevin grumbled. “You’re giving me the willies.” He straightened up and kept his eyes on the camera. “There. We’re done. If you’re ready we can get out of here and rig it all into the mains.”

  Sceptre checked the angle of the camera and found it aimed at a blank wall. “That’s no use, Kevin. Aim it at the Reverend Emmet’s casket and the objects on it.”

  He tutted. “As if it makes any difference. The camera does move, you know. I said so upstairs? Remember?” Switching on the camera, he checked the viewfinder focussed it on the three objects and put it on standby again. “There you go, missus,” he said with a mock salute. “All done and dusted.”

  Once the camera and PIR had been tested and found working Kevin plugged in the mains and auxiliary leads, and with Sceptre leading, Pete following playing out cable from the drum, they made their way back to the chapel.

  The crypt systems were hooked into the multiple switchboard, and then more cable played out of the chapel, back
into the corridor, where Pete plugged it into a wall socket, while Kevin, using many junction boxes, ran 10-metre sections of AVA cables back to the dining room.

  “These are the weak link,” he said, when he finally reached the tables they had designated as their base. “All these junctions.” He joined together the two final lengths of AVA lead. “If any one of them goes, the system fails, and then you have to find out which one is blown.”

  He hooked everything into a console attached to his laptop. “That’s it, Sceptre. We’re up and running.”

  “Not yet,” she disagreed. “I want two more cameras, both on the next floor. I want one at the top of the landing, the second inside the door of the library.”

  Kevin groaned. “Why?”

  “We need to watch the corridor for manifestations,” she explained, “and the library has been the site of poltergeist activity. Sherlock told us so this morning. And if I remember rightly, you were the one who pointed out that we would need to monitor both the corridor and the library. Remember?”

  He groaned again. “But it’s upstairs.”

  “Do you good,” said Pete, picking up another two cable drums. “Get some of that lard off.”

  They made their way up and into the library.

  “They’ve had the glass in the door replaced,” Sceptre commented, leading them in.

  While Kevin and Pete set up the equipment, she checked the books. The rich variety of titles were precisely what she expected of a private school and called to mind her days at an expensive ladies academy. When it came to reading, nothing was off limits, and this library included the more non-Establishment works of D. H. Lawrence and James Joyce. It even boasted a copy of Das Kapital.

  “Probably demonstrating the principles of anathema to the wealthier classes,” Sceptre muttered.

  Along with a broad spectrum of fiction, the non-fiction sections covered everything from astronomy to zoology at advanced levels. The boys of the Ashdalean would be well prepared for entry to any of the great universities.