by Neil Spring
‘Open it, please.’
He looked pained. ‘That’s going to involve removing the burial lid. Another hour, probably.’
‘Do it.’
Edwards gave an acquiescent nod and got back to work. The poor man. I helped where I could, and so did the other soldiers, especially with the rope that needed to be attached to the lid of the burial vault and pulled.
Then I waited, and as I waited I felt the hot, quick rush of blood in my veins, faster and faster. The nerves like nettles in my stomach.
*
Sometimes, knowing the answer to a question is worse than not knowing. That was how it was for me between that macabre Tuesday afternoon and lunchtime the following day.
After our grim expedition to the churchyard and the discovery we made there, the commander was absent. He seemed to be avoiding me. Even Gregory Edwards was unreachable for a time. He was taken off for a debriefing. Then he said he needed time to recuperate, to recover from the shock.
I suppose I needed recuperation time as well, but time was the one thing we didn’t have. My mind was storming with questions.
At lunchtime the next day, Wednesday, I found the commander in his office, sitting behind his desk with a thick file of papers before him.
‘You’ve been avoiding me,’ I said, closing the door. ‘I need to talk to you urgently.’
‘We are in the middle of something here.’
Turning, I saw that he wasn’t alone in his office. The stone-faced warden was standing behind the door, his eyes riveted suspiciously on me. Whatever they had been discussing before I barged in, the atmosphere was uncomfortably strained.
‘What is it?’ I asked. ‘What’s happened?’
The commander hesitated.
‘Please, I would like to help, if you would permit me.’
Rubbing the fatigue from his eyes, the commander picked up a letter from his desk and read from it: ‘“Notice to quit. We the people hereby serve notice on the War Office to vacate and deliver up to the county of Wiltshire the parish of Imber.”’ He raised his eyes to me glumly. ‘It’s the Imber Will Live campaign. They’re no longer content with meagre protests. They’re arranging a mass rally in the village.’
‘When?’
‘Tomorrow.’
‘How many expected?’
‘Five hundred, perhaps.’
‘Quite a show of unity.’
‘It’ll never happen,’ Sidewinder broke in. ‘You think they’d risk open conflict with the military?’
‘After what happened to Marie Hartwell?’ I said. ‘Yes, I think they would. I don’t want to sound rude, Commander, but many of them will think you robbed an entire community of their homes, that you had this coming.’
‘We need to prepare,’ said the commander, stroking his moustache. I could see the need for reassurance in his face, and that worried me. People who needed reassurance were always more easily manipulated, and right then I wouldn’t have trusted Warden Sidewinder if my life depended on it.
‘We could apply for an injunction to keep them away,’ the warden suggested.
The commander shook his head adamantly. ‘We’re in an extremely precarious position. We need to foster an atmosphere of good-natured cooperation.’
Sidewinder’s eyes rolled. ‘Sir, they are serving us with a formal notice to quit! Threatening to occupy the buildings.’
‘Well, that is out of the question,’ said the commander. ‘Half those buildings could collapse at any time. But we should allow them to come to Imber. It’ll look heavy handed if we don’t.’
‘You want to placate these irresponsible people?’
Commander Williams raised his voice. ‘Our marshals will manage the roads and prevent people accessing any of the buildings. Understood? I want radio controls at every point. See to it.’
Sidewinder nodded. He stalked to the door and departed.
Once we were alone, I pulled up a chair and sat before the commander’s desk. His eyes narrowed. ‘My men have already told me . . .’
‘Pierre Hartwell’s grave is empty.’
He nodded grimly.
‘How can you explain it?’ I asked.
‘I can’t. I suppose Hartwell may be able to shed some light.’
‘Then let’s ask him.’
He shook his head strenuously. ‘And compromise ourselves? Out of the question. We exhumed that grave without proper authority.’
‘We must ask Hartwell!’ I protested. ‘Besides, he has a right to know. This is his son, for pity’s sake! And now we have good reason to suspect the boy is alive.’
There was a long, long pause. ‘Not necessarily.’
‘What do you mean?’
The commander looked down again at the file on his desk. ‘I’m afraid there were more.’
‘More?’
‘Disturbed graves.’
‘Oh Lord. How do you—’
‘When you left the churchyard, I asked my men to check the other graves. Most of the Hartwell family graves showed signs of disturbance, of having been dug up recently.’
‘Were they empty?’
‘We haven’t yet exhumed them,’ he said grimly.
It occurred to me very forcibly at that moment that I had missed this clue on my first visit to the churchyard. But the memory was clear: hadn’t I almost tripped on the uneven ground that seemed to be collapsing around the graves?
‘Who would disturb the graves? Why should they? When?’
‘I have no idea,’ he muttered, ‘but I’m thinking of asking the warden to lead a full investigation.’
‘No, sir. I’m not sure that’s wise. He’s far too closely involved in events.’
The commander’s face tightened. ‘I’ll decide who I do and do not trust, Miss Grey. Right now, you’re treading a fine line on that boundary yourself.’
I tried my best to sound reasonable and respectful. ‘Commander, we both know Warden Sidewinder has had privileged access to the Imber range; and he has lied before. Don’t forget that it was he who led the séances at the mill. Now we know that Pierre Hartwell doesn’t lie in his grave, Commander . . . well, I don’t think the boy ever died. I think someone’s got him and has been using him to deceive your men – perhaps to scare the army away, perhaps for other motives. The warden could be involved.’
‘But how – and why?’ His face showed how ridiculous he thought the suggestion. ‘No. Sidewinder lives here on camp. This job is his life. Why jeopardise his own interests? And besides, there’s no conceivable way he could have kept a seven-year-old boy here, not without us noticing.’
‘Perhaps he keeps the boy somewhere else.’
‘Where?’
‘I don’t know, but remember, he does control who accesses the range. He could smuggle the boy in any time he wanted to.’
Slowly, the commander nodded, but his tone was still sceptical. ‘Let’s say you’re right, that Pierre Hartwell is alive. Whoever’s behind this scam would have needed outside assistance.’
‘Yes, I would think so.’
‘From whom?’
I found my mind turning to the evening after Marie Hartwell’s suicide, Sidewinder telling us how he had acquired an interest in the occult and supernatural matters.
‘What about Sidewinder’s son?’ I said. ‘Didn’t he tell us his son could manifest the apparitions of the dead and the absent? He had a name for him. What was it?’
‘The ghost maker,’ said the commander, his mouth twisting unpleasantly.
But I was beyond that name now. There was something else. Something to do with Sidewinder’s son. I closed my eyes tightly. Concentrated. And the warden’s words came back to me: ‘His séances became wildly out of hand. He was using all sorts of drugs, and he began to hear voices and act irrationally . . . He created illusions. Began to believe
they were real. I think he was losing his mind. He was putting my job in the army in jeopardy, so I told him he had to stop.’
My eyes snapped open. ‘Where did his son go?’
‘I’m not sure I remember—’
‘Sir, please, do try!’
The commander was out of his depth now, and he needed help. It was in his interests to work with me, and he knew it.
‘Wait. Yes, I recall.’
I nodded urgently, leaning closer.
‘Sidewinder’s son suffered badly with facial disfigurement. A war injury.’ This we already knew, but its significance hadn’t yet dawned on me. ‘He said he found it difficult being with people, that he needed to work alone. In the dark.’
A jolt passed through me, fizzing down every nerve.
Work alone, in the dark?
‘Miss Grey? What is it? You’ve gone terribly pale.’
‘The warden’s son.’ A tremble in my voice. ‘What was his name?’
He screwed his face up, thinking.
‘Please, try to remember. A child’s life could be at stake.’
A light in the commander’s eyes. A name on his lips.
‘Albert.’
Oh God . . . Oh God.
‘That’s right,’ he said with mounting confidence. ‘Albert. He went to London, to work in one of those picture palaces . . . became a projectionist.’
PART THREE
PHANTASMAGORIA
I am only satisfied if my spectators, shivering and shuddering, raise their hands or cover their eyes, out of fear of ghosts and devils dashing towards them.
ÉTIENNE-GASPARD ROBERT
– 27 –
BENEATH THE STAGE
In the bleakest moments of my life, I have relived the fateful journey I made then. I was frantic as I demanded the commander drive me to the railway station. Every detail remains unpleasantly vivid for me. The look he gave me, as though I had gone mad. Pacing the platform for the train. Rain pouring down as the train snaked back to London, and then as the taxi ferried me from Waterloo to the picture house in Brixton.
I tried to tell myself I was overreacting, that this was a tenuous connection at best, but I knew better. You thought Warden Sidewinder looked familiar, of course you did. He reminded you of Albert, his son!
It was getting on for seven o’clock when I found myself knocking on the double-door entrance of the picture house. The last time I was here, I’d met the night watchman, and the same man looked at me now, warily, with the same wine-soaked eyes, as I insisted on knowing the whereabouts of the projectionist.
‘Albert? Now what you be wantin’ him for?’
‘Is he here?’
‘Closed, closed, still closed,’ the guard said. ‘Something the matter with Albert?’
I recalled the projectionist’s troubled eyes, the dent in the left side of his face.
‘One night . . . beneath the stage . . . I saw the figure of a young woman. I called out to her . . . Seconds later, she was just . . . gone.’
I thought, yes, there was something very much the matter with Albert.
‘Sir, can you please let me into the auditorium? I have reason to believe I’ll find Albert in there. I want to look beneath the stage.’
The guard shook his head. ‘I never go down beneath the stage, miss,’ he said gruffly. ‘No one does.’
I was sure there was a good chance I would find Albert below the stage, though I no longer believed the ghost stories he had spun for me. Perhaps I had believed, before I knew anything of Albert’s history, his drug taking, his connection with Imber, his séances, which his unnerving father had told us drove men to madness. Now, what I suspected, very strongly, was that the projectionist was a dangerous man.
I suspected something else too. Just before falling from the stage, a noise had made me turn round. I had wondered whether that noise was the voice of a child, calling for help, and now I worried that I was right.
*
As I entered the deserted auditorium, the same sense of dread that had overwhelmed me on my first visit here returned, but it was stronger and more oppressive. As I paused to look about, memories caught me: falling from the stage, injuring my ankle, the light of the projectionist’s torch bouncing off the gilded banister rails as he hunted me down.
On my journey to London that afternoon, I had carefully gone over in my mind the circumstances that had first drawn me to the picture house – the inexplicable certainty that I was connected to it, personally and deeply. I’ve never believed in fate, but I felt the same sense of certainty, even stronger now, the troubling inner conviction that everything that had happened in Imber had happened for a reason. I was meant to find something, or someone.
The night watchman – who had sobered up somewhat in the face of my urgency and agreed to let me in – led me to a small wooden door to the left of the stage. It creaked open when he pushed it, revealing thick darkness beyond. ‘Leads down to the cellars, miss. You’ll need a light.’
I reached into my coat pocket for my handheld torch. I think that was when the watchman realised that I meant to go on with this venture, because he set his suspicion aside then and said, in a tone of doubtful concern, ‘Miss, I really should come down with you.’
‘I want to go alone.’
‘Sure?’
Wait, I thought. Someone else needs to know you’re down here.
I fished in my pocket for a pen and paper. Scrawled a number and gave it to him. ‘Telephone this man, please – ask him to come here immediately.’
‘What should—’
‘Tell him Sarah worked it out. Tell him the warden and his son were responsible. Tell him I think Hartwell’s boy is alive. And tell him, for God’s sake, to come quickly.’ I saw the night watchman’s bewildered expression and added, ‘He’ll know what it means. Please, just hurry and do it!’
‘All right,’ he said begrudgingly. ‘But shout out if you need me.’
Nodding, I told him I would. Then, with blood thumping in my ears, I clicked on my torch and confronted the darkness below.
*
‘Albert, are you down here?’ My question echoed back at me. ‘Albert, it’s Sarah Grey. Listen, I know about your father, Warden Sidewinder. I know about his deceptions in Imber.’
Silence.
‘Albert? Where is Pierre Hartwell?’
No sound came back to me through the shifting, slanting shadows.
Carefully, I edged down the steep stone staircase and emerged in a wide chamber. Sweeping my torchlight over the damp walls and floor, I saw a rusty knife, a goat skull replica, even a Victorian pram. Discarded stage props or the collection of a man gone insane?
There was something else down there, something that looked very much like a blacksmith’s hammer. The mere sight of it was enough for me to suffer another shock because I didn’t think finding that hammer down here was a coincidence. I didn’t think it was a coincidence at all.
My footsteps echoed as I passed into another chamber. This one was smaller, with a low vaulted ceiling, and here a foul smell pervaded the air; not the damp, stale smell one would normally associate with a cellar, but a familiar chemical, toxic odour.
Something on the ground caught the light from my torch. Crouching, I saw it was an industrial-looking padlock that had been left next to a trapdoor, which was flung back.
‘Hello?’ I called. ‘Anyone there?’
I peered down into the yawning darkness and saw, far below, a soft yellow luminescence, not unlike the glowing light that had materialised during our séance at the Imber mill.
Under the ledge of the hatch was an iron ladder that seemed to be securely fastened to the wall. It plunged about fifteen or twenty feet into the gloom, maybe more. I looked all about, listened, but could detect no signs of activity below.
Carefully, I lowe
red myself through the trapdoor, gripped tight to the ladder and began to descend.
One, two, three . . .
Each rung was accompanied by the echoing clang of my shoes on iron.
A rustling, scurrying noise came from somewhere below me.
Then—
Dammit!
The torch slipped from my fingers and clattered downwards, and when it hit the stone floor its light was extinguished. As much as I wished otherwise, it wasn’t the rustling noise that had jolted me into letting go of the torch. I thought I had felt something in the darkness below, something cold, touching my leg.
No, you imagined it, I told myself, and in a moment of resolve that now seems foolishly naive, I told myself there was too much at stake here to hesitate, that I must carry on down.
With fearful expectation, I allowed my foot once again to come off the ladder, into the black space . . .
And then I froze, as if my whole body had, in that instant, turned to ice.
A hand had seized my ankle.
A stone-cold hand.
I gasped, tried to pull my leg up and away, but the icy grip tightened. Fingernails dug into my flesh, trying to pull me down.
My chest began to burn with ragged, panicky breaths. I tried desperately to clear my head, to think.
What should I do?
If I let go of the ladder, wasn’t there a chance, a strong chance, I’d land on whoever had hold of me?
It’s a hell of a risk, Sarah.
But I had no choice. I couldn’t just remain there, frozen halfway down a ladder, in the clammy grip of God knows what. I was terrified, but I had to do something.
With a horrified grimace, I prepared to let go.
– 28 –
STILLNESS AND FLICKER
But before I could let go, the bony fingers uncurled and suddenly my ankle was free.
Stay in control.
Now I thought the better thing to do, possibly, was climb back up. If I was quick, I could get back to the upper cellar and call to the night watchman for help.
But I did none of these things, because it occurred to me that whoever was down there in the darkness might not want to hurt me; perhaps what they wanted was my help.
