“But I thought the Raggedy Men were just in your dreams, poppet?” says Charlotte.
Emily shakes her head emphatically.
“No, Mummy saw them last night as well, and they frightened her. A lot. She had to take me and Bradshaw to bed so they'd stay away from me.”
The interior of the car suddenly feels colder to Charlotte. She suppresses a shudder.
“Do the Raggedy Men try to hurt you, Emily?”
Again, the girl shakes her head.
“No, they keep saying they don't want to. I think that's what scares Mummy.”
The woman is about to ask another question, but is interrupted by the sound of a hand-bell being rung. Children are hurrying past, some running.
“Well, young lady,” says Charlotte, “you'll be late if you don't get a wiggle on! I'll pick you up at the usual time, and don't go wandering off if I'm stuck in traffic! You stay where the teachers can see you!”
“I will!” says Emily, jumping out of the car and running after her schoolmates. Soon, she and her friends vanish behind the high, red-brick walls of the school.
Charlotte sits at the wheel for a few moments before coming to a sudden resolution. She starts the car and drives away, not heading in her usual direction. She works part-time hours and doesn't start until ten, but she will still be late this morning.
Maybe very late, she thinks. But he needs to know about this. It wasn't expected. Or at least, not by me.
***
“Well, I can’t see anything out of the ordinary,” says Officer Warner. “But then, I've no idea what I'm supposed to be looking for.”
“Just keep walking, Jack,” says Grimsdale. “So we're well out of everyone's earshot.”
Warner glances back along the tracks to where the Robson boy is standing by the signal box. He refused to come any further, even in the light of morning.
“Look, Arthur, I'll do a favor for a mate,” says Warner, “but if it's that important why not call in the British Rail Police? This is their jurisdiction, not mine, strictly speaking.”
The officer gestures at the sloping sides of the cutting.
“I know, but doing that would make it official,” replies Grimsdale. “And that would, in turn, mean an entry on the boy's work record. A black mark next to his name, a false report, absurd claims. And all when he's just starting out in life. Can't have that! Everyone deserves a fair crack of the whip, Jack. Even if they are a bit simple.”
“You've gone soft in your old age!” exclaims Warner, genuinely amused. “I remember when you and my dad worked on the air raid patrols, you were a lot less patient with this kind of spooky bullshit then.”
“You sure it's a load of bull, Jack?” asks Grimsdale. “I've heard your lot have had your fair share of strange incidents, lately. Especially round here, Whitechapel. Rumor has it that there's more than one old-time villain on the loose. Men who are dead, but won't stay dead?”
Warner doesn't reply, and they walk on in silence until they reach the mouth of the tunnel.
“So,” says the officer, “this lad Graeme claims he saw a ghost train pop out of here in broad daylight, which nobody else noticed. And then last night, he says he was threatened by the Main Line Slasher, a man who was strung up in 1899, and conveniently still bears the rope burn from the hangman's noose. Right.”
Grimsdale takes out a pipe and an ancient-looking leather tobacco pouch.
“I admit it sounds like a tabloid news story, especially the ghost train bit,” he says, stuffing tobacco into the bowl of his pipe. “But there have been too many stories. Not one official report, mind you, just stories. We've been warned from high up not to talk to the press, by the way. That's suggestive, don't you think.”
“Maybe. You’ve seen anything yourself?” asks Warner, turning to look his dad's old friend in the eye.
“No,” admits the railway man, “but this whole area feels a bit strange. Not right, somehow. Like something's been added, or taken away. Something important.”
“Well, that's helpful,” grunts Warner, walking back along the tracks more slowly, bent over and scrutinizing the ground.
“Looking for clues?” asks Grimsdale.
“I've got to look as if I'm doing something, haven't I?” retorts Warner. “You wanted me to reassure the young twit, I'm doing my best. I'm not Sherlock bloody Holmes!”
“That's clear enough,” grumbles Grimsdale, lighting his pipe.
Warner straightens up.
“All right, what am I really here for?” he demands. “I've done the fake detective work, obviously there's no crime scene in the conventional sense. This stuff is all in the mind. It has to be!”
“That's what I would have said,” replies Grimsdale. “Until I walked this stretch first thing and found this.”
He reaches into a pocket, pulls out a small object, and hands it to the police officer.
“A brass button. So what?” asks Warner.
Grimsdale takes the button back, pockets it.
“A brass button off young Robson's uniform, right sleeve. Didn't just come off, as you'd see if you looked at the thread still attached. It was cut off, neatly. By something very sharp.”
“Oh, come on!” scoffs Warner. “How could a ghost do that?”
But even as he speaks, he thinks of the way his baton met a slight but real resistance when he struck at the killer in the cloak.
Like there was something not quite there, but almost. And that was months ago. Could they be getting more substantial, somehow?
“Anything you'd like to share, Jack?” asks Grimsdale, raising an eyebrow.
Warner looks along the tracks towards the mouth of the Hammersmith Tunnel. Gray curls of morning mist linger in the shadowed archway.
“A train, you say?” he says, half to himself. “So it's not just bad people, or suffering people. It's things as well. Events, perhaps. All coming back to haunt us.”
***
“Here,” says a junior colleague. “This is right up your street. Spooks galore!”
He dumps a small heap of clippings on Rachel's desk. Normally, she would heave a sigh and they would have a bit of banter, but today she picks up the clippings and starts looking through them.
“You're welcome, think nothing of it,” says the young man, walking off.
Rachel looks up.
“Hey, thanks!” she shouts after him, making sure he can hear above the racket of typewriters and teleprinters. Then she turns back to the assortment of news items.
All are from London local papers, not one from the big national titles. It is not surprising, as the local press tends to be the first recourse for anyone with a ghost story. Rachel spends a few minutes checking with colleagues, and finds not one has seen a ghost story in any of the national tabloids.
“Isn't that weird?” she asks her news editor. “It's standard tabloid fare, especially this stuff about Jack the Ripper. But it's not making the nationals at all. Why is that?”
“All I know is that we're supposed to ease up on the weird stuff, at least for now,” replies the editor. “That's the word from New York. I hear the other agencies have been told the same; stop the silly season stuff and focus on Stalin, atomic bombs, spies, traitors. Far be it from me to risk my meager pension by disagreeing, understood? Same goes for you. More serious news, politics, business, plus some showbiz stuff, that's the brief now.”
Rachel starts to protest, but the editor holds up a warning hand.
“I don't make the rules, sweetheart!” he declares. “And neither do you. We're little people, we just have to stick to 'em. No point in kicking over the traces.”
Before she can start one of their arguments, Rachel is called to the phone. It's Tom Kneale, with an invitation to come to the next live broadcast by The Ghost Man.
“He's very keen to meet you, as I said,” says Kneale. “And I think you'll find him fascinating.”
“That's great,” she replies, “How are things with you, Tom? Any more strange expe
riences?”
“Strange?” he says, with a puzzled tone. “Well, no, that sort of thing is best confined to the realms of fiction, don't you think?”
He doesn't remember, she thinks. Or at least he's shoved the memory down out of sight. How many other people might be doing the same thing?
***
Charlotte pulls her car up outside a house in a run-down street near London's East End docks. The area was heavily bombed and post-war reconstruction is a distant rumor for most residents. It's a place of transitory dwellers anyway, mostly sailors, casual workers linked to the docks and shipyards, and the unlawfully employed. This morning the fog from the river is retreating slowly.
As if it's unwilling to give up its grip on the city, she thinks.
When Charlotte gets out, she's careful to lock her car. She keeps her head down while crossing the sidewalk, not responding to wolf-whistles from a group of youths hanging around on the other side of the street. As a statuesque blonde who dressed well, she's used to it, but she knows better than to respond in any way.
Charlotte enters the house with a pass key, clatters up bare wooden stairs to the first floor. She knocks carefully on an unnumbered door with peeling green paint. Two knocks, a pause, then a third. She waits a few moments, then hears a bolt being drawn. The door opens an inch, closes after a second, a chain is released and the door opens again, two inches this time.
Charlotte pushes the door open and steps into a bed-sitting room with closed curtains. There's an iron-framed single bed, a wash basin with a shaving kit, a squat wardrobe, two rickety-looking chairs, and a small dressing table bearing a half-empty bottle of whiskey. The room smells of sweat and tobacco. She closes the door and turns to the man who is always standing behind it whenever she arrives.
“I'm sorry,” she says, “I know I should have come at the usual time, but I think things are changing too quickly.”
“You're here now, anyway,” says Bryce, “So, sit down and tell me what's bothering you. Drink?”
“No, not this early,” she says, taking a seat on the bed.
“Is it Rachel? Is she seeing something significant? Prophetic dreams?” he asks, pulling a chair up to sit close, facing her.
“Not exactly. It's the little girl, Emily,” say Charlotte. “She's seeing what I think are the Sentinels. I mean, I wasn't there, but from what you and Rachel have told me, they fit the bill.”
Bryce fingers his scar. His one involuntary gesture, thinks Charlotte. Proof he can't control everything.
“Is there anything else? What about the medium?”
“She has a name,” retorts Charlotte.
She takes out Maria's drawing, gives it to him, and describes the disjointed conversation at the hospital. Bryce unfolds it, studies the bizarre images.
“This looks like the work of a lunatic all right, but otherwise I fail to see its significance,” he says. “We must be careful not to read too much into every random occurrence. Yes, heralds and warnings of the Eschaton can appear anywhere, everywhere. But no, we are not so privileged that they'll be handed to us on a plate.”
Charlotte takes the drawing back, then holds it up so it's facing him.
“You don't find the symbol in the middle familiar?” she asks.
Bryce looks at her, then at the drawing, and back at her.
“I've seen it before, or something like it,” she says, shaking her head in frustration.
Why can't I remember? Perhaps I only saw it once, glimpsed it briefly.
“So, Maria saw it, put it in a drawing because it looks interesting. Or her subconscious mind did,” he says. “Not proof of anything. And the star, all that other stuff, hardly surprising, given what put her in that madhouse in the first place.”
Charlotte lets her hands fall to her lap. Bryce stands and goes to the dresser.
“Drink?” he asks, uncorking the whiskey and taking a slug from the bottle.
“No,” she replies, standing up and starting to undress. “Better make it a quickie. I've got to go to work after this.”
As usual when they make love, she can't look him in the face.
Chapter 5: Omens
Halfway through history class, Emily puts up her hand.
“Yes, Emily?” says Miss Newsome, pausing in front of the chalkboard where she is listing the Kings and Queen of England.
“Miss, I need to go to the restroom, Miss.”
The teacher sighs, says, “Very well, but make it quick. No loitering, you have ten minutes.”
Emily jumps up and starts to run out of the classroom.
“Walk, Emily Beaumont!” shouts Miss Newsome as the girl vanishes out the door.
“Yes, miss!” Emily calls back, running along the corridor. No teachers are in sight.
The bathrooms at Coal Hill are outside in a separate block divided into Girls and Boys. The stink from the Boys' section always hits Emily like a nasty surprise, no matter how often she passes the doorway. She runs into the Girls’ section and slows to a walking pace, wary of lurking teachers checking on children skipping class or other wrong-doers. Her footsteps echo from the white-tiled walls. She looks at the row of stalls. All the doors are open.
Nobody here, she thinks. It's empty. Everyone's in class.
Emily goes into the first stall, closes the door, and prepares to urinate. It won't come.
I've only got ten minutes! Or nine, now. Maybe less.
She knows worrying will just make things worse, but can't help it. She starts staring at the graffiti scored into the door in front of her to distract herself from all the problems that are making her so tense. Some of the words and phrases are hard to read, others are baffling. She knows some are bad words put there by older girls.
One thing draws Emily's eyes, a pattern that looks like a star inside a circle. It's pretty, in a way, but somehow it seems upside down. Shouldn't there be a point right at the top? she thinks. Stars are usually that way up.
She stares harder, her field of vision narrowing until the whole world is the upside-down star. It begins to glow, black lines turning red, orange, yellow, and then a blazing white. A voice starts to talk in Emily's head, a voice made up of many voices, all chanting together a word she can't understand.
“Ess Ka Ton ... Ess Ka Ton ... Ess Ka Ton ... Ess Ka Ton ...”
Now, people are screaming in her head, screaming the way Mummy screamed last night, frightened and hurt. She sees what seem like ants running around inside the star-circle, frantic, trying to escape. But none of them can get outside the circle, and one by one, they slow down, twitch a little, and then stop moving.
All of sudden Emily has no problem urinating. The sense of release frees her from the spell of the blazing star, and she finishes quickly and rushes out of the stall. But she can't get out of the bathroom because someone is blocking her way. No, three people, thin and ragged, fragments of gray-brown garments or skin hanging from yellowed bones. Faces with hollow eyes and skull-grins look down at her. Voices whisper more words she can't understand. Emily tries to retreat but a hand with long, sharp nails fastens itself on her shoulder and she screams.
“Leave me alone! I've done nothing, I'm a good girl, leave me alone!”
She slips, hits her head, and falls into blackness.
***
“I say, Beaumont? Could I have a quick word?”
Tony gets up and follows his superior out into the corridor.
“Walk with me a little way, back to my office,” says Lord Burnside. “I'd like to get your opinion on a rather delicate matter.”
“I hope my work is still up to scratch, your lordship?” asks Tony.
God, he thinks, I've been so distracted lately. Have they finally noticed I'm just going through the motions?
“Oh, nothing to worry about there, old chap!” replies Burnside. “First-rate job you're doing, don't let anyone tell you different. And don't undermine yourself, for that matter. Saw far too much of that in the war, you know. Chaps like yourself, otherwise e
xcellent officers, too full of self-doubt to make crucial decisions. You must never think, 'Who am I to decide for others?' Tony. Always bad, and fatal in the heat of battle. A man in a position of responsibility always decides for others. One reason Adolf and his gang of thugs nearly beat us. His lot had total confidence in him and in themselves, right to the very end.”
Tony makes vaguely positive noises as his boss goes on. They turn off the main corridor into a side-passage, then Burnside stops and opens an office door, gestures Tony inside.
“No, nothing about work as such,” he goes on, closing the door behind them. “But more of a personal matter.”
Tony has never been in Burnside's office before. It is surprisingly Spartan, with good, but worn furniture, and just one picture on the wall. It depicts a cavalry charge at Waterloo.
“You expected luxury, hmm?” asks Burnside. “Dear me, no, can't have that with food rationing still in place! That sort of behavior, guaranteed to damage the public's morale. Take a seat, Tony. You don't mind if I call you ‘Tony?’”
“Not at all, sir.”
Of course I don't mind, it's just bloody weird, thinks Tony. You've just been my boss for a month, and you're already making friends?
“Cards on the table, Tony,” says Burnside, settling into his own chair. “I feel I really need to get to know the chaps under my command. It's not easy for an old war-horse like me to take a job in civilian life. I'm sure you found that, when you left the Engineers to become a humble bureaucrat?”
“Yes, of course, sir,” says Tony, “It was a difficult period of adjustment. For me and my new colleagues.”
“Precisely! Imagine how much more difficult it is for the chap in charge! Lonely at the top, and all that. Cigar?”
Burnside pushes a japanned box across the table.
“No, thank you, sir, I'm trying to give it up.”
“Ah, on a health kick, eh?” Burnside opens the box, takes out a Havana cigar, and starts patting his pockets. “I wouldn't worry about all this scientific nonsense about smoking. The Nazis thought it was bad for your health. And look what happened to them, eh? But I won't force you!”
The Smog (The Sentinels Series Book 3) Page 6
