The Feast of All Souls

by Simon Bestwick

  Sixsmythe settled back in her chair and lit up a fresh Sobranie. “Of course, I could be reading far too much into it. Perhaps Thorne was simply drawn to the otherwise unspoilt hilltop and its rather commanding view of the area? Perhaps. Perhaps. Perhaps he just liked being the monarch of all he surveyed.”

  “But you don’t think so,” said John.

  Sixsmythe tapped the box-file. “You’ll find a good deal more in here. He died childless, leaving Springcross House to a Mrs Wynne-Jones. She almost immediately sold it to the city corporation, on condition Springcross House be pulled down in its entirety and the site used for building new homes. As it was. Among them, Miss Collier, yours.”

  Alice wondered just how far her house was from the spring’s source.

  “Much of what I’ve told you,” said Sixsmythe, “comes from the Church’s own records. Some is from other sources, freely available elsewhere. But there were certain papers in Mrs Wynne-Jones’ possession at her death. Her family wanted nothing to do with them, and so they eventually came to the Diocese of Salford, as the hill was under their jurisdiction – and thence into the safe-keeping of one of my illustrious predecessors.”

  Sixsmythe settled back in her chair, puffing contentedly on her cigarette. “So...” began John.

  “So?” She eyed him benignly over the top of her spectacles.

  “So what happens now?”

  “Now?” Sixsmythe chuckled. “Now, I suggest you acquaint yourself with the material in this file. But as I’ve already said, I suggest you do it somewhere other than 378 Collarmill Road.”

  “You think it’s dangerous?” said John.

  Sixsmythe sighed. “What do you think?”

  Alice looked at the box-file, then at Sixsmythe. “This isn’t the first time, is it?” she said. “Something like this has happened before.”

  “Of course it has, woman!” Sixsmythe snapped. “Do you seriously think a place with that sort of history would just stay quiet until you came along?” She sighed, closed her eyes and breathed out. “I’m sorry.” When she lifted her cigarette to her mouth again, Alice saw her hand shook a little. “There’ve been occasional reports from other houses on Collarmill Road. The Red Man is commonest, and the children.”

  “The children.” Alice leant forward. “Who are they?”

  “Alice,” began John, but she waved him to silence.

  “I think we need to know, John, don’t you? Who are they supposed to be, Reverend? What do they want? Why are they trying to kill me?”

  God, that sounded insane when she came out and said it, but Sixsmythe sighed again and nodded. “I can’t give you an exact answer, I’m afraid, Miss Collier. But we can make educated guesses.”

  “Thorne,” said Alice. “That’s it, isn’t it? He was some sort of child-killer.”

  Sixsmythe shook her head. “There was far more to Arodias Thorne than appeared at first glance. It’s all here.” She pushed the box-file towards Alice; it almost tipped off the edge of the desk and she had to catch it before it hit the floor. “What I will say is this: there were minor incidents and reports from other houses and locales around number 378, but nothing on the scale of what we’ve heard from that place over the years, Miss Collier.”

  “You mean – other people?” Alice saw John half-rising from the corner of her eye, heard her voice rise too, but couldn’t seem to stop it. “Those things tried to kill someone else and nobody said anything to me?”

  “Sit down.” There was a real whipcrack of authority in the Rector’s voice and both Alice and John sank back in their chairs. All of a sudden, it wasn’t remotely hard to imagine Galatea Sixsmythe preaching to her congregation about the torments of Hell. Her hands were clenched on the desk, brows bent in a frown, the grey eyes cold. “You came to me for help, Miss Collier. Don’t forget that.”

  “I seem to remember John saying you were downright eager to see me.”

  Sixsmythe breathed out. “True. True.” She lit a fresh cigarette. “Don’t tell Dora,” she said absently. “I’m only supposed to smoke five a day and this takes me over my limit.”

  “Dora’s gone home, Reverend,” Alice said.

  “Oh, yes, of course she has.” Sixsmythe puffed on her cigarette. “The answer to your question is yes and no, Miss Collier. There’d been reports of activity at 378 Collarmill Road for some time, but it’s varied from occupant to occupant. People have heard children’s voices at night when there weren’t any children in the house. Some have even glimpsed them. From time to time there’s been... well, I suppose the only term for it is poltergeist activity. Objects breaking suddenly, being flung through the air – bursts of loud, angry, inchoate energy that come and go, vanish as quickly as they appear.”

  She tapped ash from her cigarette. “The thing is that no two residents have had quite the same experience. Some have lived there and never seen – or at least, never reported – anything remotely out of the ordinary. Others get the sounds, or the sights, or the poltergeist activity, but all three at once, that’s rare.”

  “And no-one’s actually had the children try to kill them?”

  “No. Or reported the experiences you’ve had outside the house – the cavemen and the chap with the spear. But there’s usually something. Did the estate agent not tell you that 378 was unoccupied for a good five years before you moved in?”

  “I think she may have mentioned something. But aren’t they supposed to tell you if a house you’re buying has that kind of reputation?”

  “So I’m told,” Sixsmythe said. “Sounds to me as if someone at the estate agents was a bit naughty. I know – an estate agent, lying in order to clinch a sale? Surely not. It’s like expecting a BMW driver to behave like an arrogant moron compensating for his erectile dysfunction.” She coughed. “Anyway, it was rented out for a number of years, up until about ’98, ’99, I think. After that there’s been a succession of owners. Some, as I said, complained of... incidents. Others didn’t. But no-one actually stayed long. It might have been as little as a feeling that they weren’t quite welcome there. But time and time again, it’s gone back on the market.”

  “And no buyers in five years?”

  “The last owner was a quite elderly lady, as I recall. Very independent soul. She fell ill – cancer of some kind – and died in the Christie hospice, in Manchester. She never reported any problems while there. Her family were scattered up and down the country. Some of her possessions they kept, the rest they sold, and the house was on the market ever since. And interestingly, while Higher Crawbeck isn’t the back end of hell, it’s hardly a crime-free paradise either. The premiums for buildings insurance on an uninhabited property are pretty damned high. In spite of which, the house wasn’t broken into, or even vandalised, while it was on the market. And then you came.”

  “And woke the place up with a vengeance,” Alice muttered.

  “It certainly looks that way,” Sixsmythe agreed. “If I’m honest, Miss Collier, I had a feeling I’d be hearing from whoever moved in there sooner rather than later, but the worst injury any civilian’s suffered up until now has been a cut cheek from some broken glass. Whatever’s there would seem to have a distinct interest in you, Miss Collier, which is why I suggest that if you are going to probe its mysteries, you do so at a safe distance.”

  “But... I mean, can’t you do anything about it?”

  “Such as?”

  “What about an exorcism?” Alice felt a little dizzy saying the words; two weeks earlier she’d have said that only a superstitious fool would suggest it or think it could do any good.

  “An exorcism?” Galatea Sixsmythe smiled at her, but it was a grim, mournful one. “My dear Miss Collier, whatever makes you think that hasn’t been tried?”

  “When..?”

  “1989,” said Sixsmythe. “A quarter of a century ago, while the Berlin Wall was falling down, two priests attempted to carry out an exorcism of 378 Collarmill Road. It didn’t go very well.”

  “What happened?” asked
John.

  “One of the priests suffered a massive stroke. He never walked or spoke again for the remaining seven or eight years of his life.”

  “What about the other priest?”

  “The other priest?” Sixsmythe winced as she stood. “The other priest,” she said, picking up her cane, “still needs this to get around.”

  That revelation bought a moment’s silence, which Alice finally broke. “I thought you said the worst injury anyone had suffered was a cut cheek?”

  “No,” said Sixsmythe. “I said that was the worst injury to a civilian. There’s a marked difference between living under a wasps’ nest and trying to smoke the wasps out, burn the nest or beat it flat with a shovel. Which is essentially what an exorcism boils down to. Take my advice – get out of there and read the file. Then take steps to sell the house, or rent it out – whichever you prefer. My advice, for whatever it’s worth, is to sell it. Sever every possible connection to the place.”

  “That’s it?” said Alice. She’d risen to her feet too, and was moving automatically towards the door.

  “That’s all the advice I can give. If what I’ve said hasn’t convinced you, perhaps what’s in here might.” She’d picked up the box-file and held it out to Alice.

  Alice took it. “Okay,” she said. “Thanks, Reverend.”

  “Reverend,” John said.

  Sixsmythe shook hands with him. “Look after her, Mr Revell. God be with you both.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Smoke Without Fire

  31st October 2016

  OUTSIDE, THEY WALKED to John’s car but didn’t get in, not yet. The autumn air was cool and fresh after the smoky warmth of the Rector’s study. Alice rested against the side of the car and breathed deep, looking at the streetlights in among the park’s trees.

  “You okay?” said John.

  “Yeah,” she said. “Just needed to clear my head.”

  “Not used to all that smoke, huh? Me neither. Even though I was this close to asking her for one.”

  Alice looked back at him and grinned. “Christ.”

  “Language!”

  “Ha ha. I’d forgotten you used to smoke. You were on twenty a day when I knew you.”

  “Yep.” John leant on his side of the car, chin resting on folded arms. “Got sent outside whenever I needed one when we lived together, even if it was pissing down or ninety below.”

  “It was never ninety below, John. We were living in Salford, not Helsinki.”

  “I’m exaggerating a little.”

  “A lot.”

  “Anyway, you could cope with living with a smoker better than you could a ghost hunter, right?”

  “Ouch.”

  “Ain’t digging. Just the truth.”

  She sighed. “I guess.” She looked towards the park. “We used to live not far from here, didn’t we?”

  “Not far. Nice park, from what I remember.”

  “Really nice,” she said. “Beautiful in autumn. I remember this one pathway, had huge trees on either side of it. Walking along that this time of year, with the leaves falling all around you...”

  “I remember us doing that,” he smiled. “Then inside for a bowl of soup.”

  “Or coffee.”

  John grinned. “Or something.”

  Alice laughed. “Don’t get carried away, Revell.”

  Then she stopped laughing. There was a tree across the road, a fairly young one. The leaves... Alice crossed the road, reaching in her pocket.

  “Alice?” said John.

  She stopped beside the tree and looked. Yes, she’d been right – she could see the berries clustered under the blade-like leaves. She took out the Swiss Army knife, folded out a serrated blade and sawed at one of the twigs.

  “Alice!” John crossed over. “What the hell are you doing?”

  “It’s a rowan tree,” she said. “A cross of rowan wood, bound with hair.”

  “What?”

  “I’ll tell you later.” She cut four twigs free in all and pocketed them. “Come on.”

  Alice opened the passenger door and got inside, resting the box-file on her knees. John climbed in beside her; they buckled up and he started the engine. Glancing upward, Alice saw a curtain fall back into place in a lit first-floor window in the Rectory.

  “SO WHAT’S THE plan?” she asked as they drove back along Bolton Road.

  John drummed his fingers on the wheel. “I don’t know yet. What you looking for?”

  Alice rummaged through the glove box. “Sellotape?”

  “Should be a roll in there.”

  “Yeah. Here it is.”

  “Okay,” John said. “What do you think to this for an idea: we go back, grab what we need for an overnight stay, head back to a hotel and check out this stuff there?”

  Alice pinched a few of her longer strands of hair, clipped them off and wrapped them around two crossed twigs. “What about all your ghost-hunting gear?”

  “I can leave it overnight. Any weird shit happens, it’ll catch it.”

  “That’s one option,” she said. She bit off a piece of tape and secured the twigs into a cross.

  “You got another? You heard the Rev,” said John. “Whatever the hell that is back there has a personal interest in you, baby.”

  “So you believe there’s something there?”

  John scowled. “Shit, I don’t know. She talks about spirits and exorcism the way most people talk about a blocked sink. You know?”

  “Yeah.” Again, even a few weeks ago, Alice would have taken such talk as proof of religion’s innate daftness. Now, though, the matter-of-factness and familiarity with which Sixsmythe had spoken invested her with the authority of someone talking about a subject they knew and understood very well.

  “But if she’s on the level, there’s been all kinds of shit happening there.”

  “Except there’s no proof any of this is supernatural, John. You know that as well as I do.”

  John turned onto the Broad Street roundabout at Pendleton; St Thomas’ Church loomed up to the left, then fell away as they went down Broughton Road. “Yeah, okay. I know. That’s why you’re busy making that.” He nodded at the cross.

  Alice pushed it into her pocket. John sighed. “We got a load of old-time neighbourhood ghost stories and a bunch of weird shit that’s allegedly happened to you.” Alice had to smile at the way he emphasised allegedly. John was sounding more convinced than he had been a couple of hours before. “I know. Ain’t nothing you couldn’t have faked or hallucinated –”

  “Except the spear.”

  “Except that. Which you could have got anywhere.”

  “Who are you trying to convince, John?”

  “I don’t know.” John cleared his throat. “Okay – officially, I’m still sceptical. Unofficially? I think a night away from that place is looking like a better and better idea all the time. ’Specially if we can watch from a distance. But it’s up to you.”

  “Better make my mind up, then.” Alice tried a laugh while she said it, but it sounded brittle and false. They drove in silence for a little while; the Volvo crossed another roundabout onto Great Cheetham Street. Then he turned left and they were on Collarmill Road. Collarmill. Colle miles rubeus. The hill of the red knight.

  “What about the house?” asked John.

  Across the road, Alice could see a group of children in their Halloween costumes, plodding wearily along – homeward, she hoped – with laden carrier bags. She thought they were the group she’d seen before; one certainly wore the bright-red Devil costume that had caught her eye. “What about it?” she said.

  “I mean, if it comes to what she said – selling up? Last time it went up for sale, it took five years.”

  “Yeah, I know.” She sighed. “I’ve still got money in the bank,” she said. “Enough to live on for a while. Maybe not enough to buy a new place outright, but I can put down a deposit. I need to find a new job, but –”

  “With your qualifications, that
shouldn’t be too hard.”

  “No. Might need a place to stay in the meantime” – did his eyes flick over to her when she said that; did his lips part as if to speak? She hurried on quickly – “but I can sort that out. The bottom line is, I can handle it.”

  John nodded, cleared his throat again. “Okay,” he said. “Here we are.” He looked across at her. “You know what you want to do yet?

  She took a deep breath, then chose. “Yeah. Let’s get a hotel.”

  “Great.” The Volvo pulled up in front of the house. “In and out,” John said. “Grab whatever you need. If you need to go in. We can always pick up a change of clothes in town.”

  That reminded Alice of the clothes she’d bought before the meal at the Koreana – another overnight stay planned spontaneously. That, in turn, reminded her what had happened that night. “I’ll pick up a couple of things,” she said.

  John sighed. “Okay.”

  She unlocked the door; he pushed past, darting into the front room. She went into the kitchen, opening the drawers until she found what she was looking for.

  It was only then she realised she was still clutching the box-file. She put it on the kitchen table, pocketed what she’d taken from the drawer, then went upstairs and threw together a quick change of clothes and a make-up bag, stuffing them and her laptop into the backpack she’d bought from the charity shop.

  Downstairs, she found him stuffing his laptop into his backpack. “John?” she said.

  “Yo,” he said, not turning around.

  She took a deep breath. “There’s something I should have told you. And Sixsmythe. I had another episode the other night. After the meal. That night or early in the morning. Not quite sure which.”

  John looked at her, frowning. “What happened?”

  She told him.

  “A dream,” he said afterwards.

  “A dream that told me about the rowan cross? I mean, that saved my arse when the children came after me again. You remember that little pyrotechnic show you caught on video? That cross caused it. There was no way I could have known.”