Aftersight

by Brian Mercer

  We waited in the dark. The unexplained noises had silenced but we felt the barest sense of creaking joints and sagging wood. There was also a presence, a feeling that something overhead had taken notice of us and was listening as intently as we were.

  I think I noticed it first, shadows moving all around us, flitting from right to left in the doorway ahead, darting back and forth, from the back and to the side. It was as if something in the old manor house was waking the way insects that are used to the dark will squirm when their hiding place is kicked over and exposed. I felt psychic fingers around us probing and prodding the shadows, groping blindly, closing in.

  Becky found Nicole's hand; I found Sara's. Together we moved back through the doorway and back the way we came. Though no one said it, we all seemed to understand how important it was not to panic.

  For as many turns and twists our original path had taken, I led us to our starting point as if I'd known a secret way. Nicole and I pushed Becky up through the crack in the foundation and she turned around and helped up Sara and Nicole. I was the last to leave, using my flashlight to take a final few glances around.

  I was about to turn back toward the exit when the oval of my flashlight settled on something white moving in the room's back corner...

  A face. An ugly, pale, grimacing face, scowling in the midst of a thousand fleshy wrinkles.

  The by-now familiar face of the old man in black.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Becky

  Old Manor House Ruins, Waltham Estate

  A Few Minutes Later

  My insides melted at the sound of Cali's shriek. I sprang up, colliding with the house's stone wall before getting my bearings and sprinting through the tent of overhanging vines. I vaguely heard the patter and drum in the leaves overhead but only when I tore out from the shelter did I realize that it was raining. Water poured all around me in a steady stream, splattering my hair and clothing. The sound of footsteps beside me sent me into a second panic, but then a familiar voice called out.

  "Becky, it's me. It's Sara. Stop! We have to stop and go back!"

  "No, the horses!" I yelled over the rain and the wind. I tugged at Sara's lapel, urging her to follow me. At first she resisted, but then she stumbled into a run alongside me.

  Our boots slapped through muddy puddles toward the patch of grass where we'd left our horses. Cali's helmet still hung upturned on the branch where she'd left it, its insides collecting water. The fallen branch where we'd tied our reins had been dragged a dozen yards toward the trail, ending in a muddy confusion of hoofprints. The horses were gone.

  "Oh-no-oh-no-oh-no," I repeated, pressing my hands into my forehead and walking randomly back and forth across the scene.

  "Pipe down," Sara called back. "Just let me think." She squatted in the mud at the base of the tree, closing her eyes and leaning back against the thick trunk. "All right, I can feel them now, the horses. They're fleeing into the woods. Jasper and Yorick are together, I think, but Pepper and Maestro are off on their own. Whatever happened, they've been given quite a scare."

  "But how could they have..." I looked at Sara, trying to make sense of it. "Someone would have had to untie them."

  "Yes, but who?" Sara asked. "There's nobody here but us."

  "That's not exactly true," Cali said, trudging up from the house with Nicole at her side. "I saw him. I saw the old man."

  "The horses are gone!" I cried, marching up to Cali with the intention of slapping her. "This is all your fault. I told you we should go back!"

  "Didn't you hear what I said?" Cali replied. "I saw the old man."

  "Of course you saw the old man!" I screamed, anger welling up inside me. I shoved Cali hard, but it only succeeded in knocking me back off my own feet. I fell with a splat on my butt in the mud.

  "Y'all done now?" asked Nicole. "We've gotta stop fightin'. That's what it wants. That's what it's tryin' to do. Don't you see? It's trying to split us up. That's what it's been tryin' to do from the beginnin'." Nicole held out her hand for me and helped me to stand. "It knows we're strongest when we're together. It can't get to us when we're together."

  I looked into Nicole's soothing green eyes. She was right, of course, but that didn't mean I had to like it. If they'd just listened to me in the beginning, none of this would have happened. "'We're not spending the night, just taking a look!'" I yelled mockingly. "Now what?"

  "The stable master knows where we've gone," Sara said hopefully. "They know where to look."

  "I don't believe Maestro left me," Cali said deflatedly.

  "Is there a road that leads up here?" I asked.

  "No," Sara said sheepishly, "not as such. There was until recently, but a bridge washed out during a storm last November. But they can follow on horses."

  Daylight was dwindling. Sunset wasn't for another couple of hours, but the thick cloud cover made it seem much later.

  "What do we do?" Sara asked. "Go back to the ruins?"

  "I'm not going near that house," I said. "No way."

  Cali looked calmly at Nicole. "What does Charlie say?"

  Nicole gazed at the ground and took a deep breath that was more sigh than exhale. "Going back to the house isn't such a good idea."

  "Okay," Cali said, "we'll flippin' walk back. Are you happy? Sara, do you know the way?"

  "I believe so," she answered.

  "Well, no one's stopping you."

  We trudged on through the woods in the deepening twilight in roughly the same order we'd ridden out that day. Sara led us down what she considered to be the right path but, as she liked to point out, the trail looked much different from nine feet up than it did at five. Nicole and I kept right behind her, trusting that she could find the way home without our help. Cali seemed to keep purposefully back from the rest of us, walking sulkily, the hood of her pink sweatshirt thrown up around her head as if to hide her face as much as keep her head dry.

  The rain fell without a break. The sound of falling water added a sense of depth to the darkness. I was wet, cold, and uncomfortable. I could see my breath mist out in front of me whenever there was enough light. I'd been trembling for the past half-hour and my teeth knocked against each other so hard that they made a clicking noise that was noticeable even above our footsteps.

  We took shelter for a few minutes under an old weeping beech tree whose branches grew down to the ground, forming a perfect canopy of leaves. Our tall black boots were still new and beautiful, since we'd only worn them while riding. If I'd known we were going to be breaking them in today, I'd have worn thicker socks.

  We stood in silence, listening to the water falling all around us. Although the rain had finally stopped, the leaves were saturated. Eventually, Nicole asked, "How much longer do you think?"

  "I'm not quite certain," Sara replied hesitantly. "It can't be much farther now, can it?"

  I sat on what felt like a low-lying branch, rocking back and forth and praying. If Sir Alex could project into Cali's out-of-body experiences, he must be able to find us in the dark on his family's own estate. I kept thinking of the blazing hearth back in our sitting room.

  "Guys, we gotta keep going," I said at last, trying as hard as I could to dam my rising flood of panic. "If we stay any longer, I think I'm gonna freeze to death."

  A break in the clouds allowed a beam of moonlight to brighten the terrain around us. The patch of grass beyond the weeping beech tree looked newly trimmed and tended, not like the wild growth in the woods that we'd just tramped through. The trees were now spaced more widely apart and in the distance we could see a gravel path wending through a grove of chestnut trees and a park bench huddled alone near a stand of old, gnarled ash.

  "We're back!" Sara said triumphantly, loping and then skipping ahead. "It's this way. It won't be long now."

  I grinned at Nicole, thoroughly relieved. I turned to offer Cali a similar smile, as if to say, "No hard feelings," but what I saw froze me where I stood.

  This was the first time I'd seen Cal
i in the moonlight. In the half-darkness, Cali's pink sweatshirt appeared grey. And with her hood hiked up over her head like that, it gave the black tufts of hair on either side of her face a sinister look. But it was Cali's eyes that terrified me most, because in the dark, with her thick, black mascara, they looked shadowy and vacant, as if her insides had rotted away.

  From the moment we'd met, I thought Cali looked familiar, but only now did I realize from where. I was sure now that our first encounter hadn't been at Waltham but on the foggy stretch of road on the way home from Gwen's house.

  Cali had been the hooded girl that I'd driven past in Brewster, New York; the very same girl who, a half-hour later, had appeared in my parents' driveway in Danbury, Connecticut, standing beside the family car.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Tyson

  London's East End

  April 26

  I followed Tommy up three flights of stairs to his place overlooking a dilapidated warehouse. The nearby red brick building was outlined in rust: rusty barbed wire and rusty window frames with panes of glass either jagged and broken or fogged-over with greasy dust. The view wasn't pretty, but it was quiet and that's just what we needed.

  Brooks, who had been reading the paper, called out, "They're back!" and the rest of Tommy's team, who was gathered around a TV watching a soccer match, snapped off the set and gathered around the table. There was Archie, Tommy's tech man, with fuzzy sideburns and crooked front teeth; Leland, the team's field engineer, busily prodding a gizmo with a screwdriver; and Paul, their research specialist, a graduate student with a receding hairline and chunky glasses that made it look as if a little man was peering out from inside his head.

  "We've got it," Tommy announced, holding up my digital recorder and passing it to Archie. "Lord Humphreys wouldn't let us take notes, so I want to get started straight away, before we forget anything."

  Archie connected the recorder to his notebook computer and began downloading the file.

  "We held the interview in Emily's bedroom," Tommy said, taking the seat at the head of the table. "I'd asked if we could talk in the room where the disturbances first took place and that was one request Lord Humphreys did grant. He wasn't at home during the interview but Emily's mum was. Emily asked that her mother not be present when we conducted the interview — you'll understand why soon enough — and after some initial resistance, her mum relented."

  "While we was there, we got a chance to check out the layout of the place," I added, hanging my hat on the wall and pulling up a chair. "It's not huge, but there's a lotta space to cover if it's just gonna be me and Tommy."

  "Downstairs there's a foyer, kitchen, family room, dining room, and study," Tommy said, reading from a notepad. "There's a cellar used for storage, to keep a washer, a dryer, and cleaning supplies. Upstairs there're two bathrooms, the parents' bedroom, Emily's room, a sort of library, and two guest rooms. There's a large attic space with six dormer windows, three either side. Right now it's mostly empty. There's just a few boxes and old pieces of furniture that the Humphreys haven't found a place for in the house. We didn't get a chance to get a baseline EMF reading, but judging from the wiring I saw when I took a look at their electric box, they're still running off the old stuff."

  "Emily's room's upstairs," I cut in. "Her parents tried movin' her to each of the guest rooms, hopin' for a quick fix. The disturbances would quiet for a spell then start up again in a night or two. Now she's back in her old room."

  "Her bedroom is large enough to hold a single bed, nightstand, bookcase, desk, wardrobe, and chest of drawers. During the interview, Emily sat on her bed, Tyson sat in her desk chair, and I was on a folding chair her mother provided. Conveniently, her mother thought to serve tea on a portable table that sat between Emily and us."

  I pulled out my lighter and box of cigarillos from the inside pocket of my black leather jacket, flicked the lighter on and off three times before setting them down. "I put these on the table between us. The recorder was hidden in the box of tobacca. I can control it remotely from a switch in my pocket."

  Brooks picked up the cigarillo box and took a look. "Brilliant."

  "Recordin' conditions were excellent," I added. "Neighborhood's quiet and her room's near soundproof."

  "Tell us about the girl," Paul, the research specialist, requested. "What's she like?"

  "She's twelve," Tommy answered. "Brown hair, slight build. She's pretty without being beautiful. It's an awkward age, isn't it?

  "She keeps her room tidy," he went on, "but there were just enough things out of place to tell that she didn't clean up on our account. She had a herd of stuffed animals on her bed, like it was the ark waiting for the second flood. Posters on her wall were all kittens and rainbows; no rock stars or anything like that. I'd say she may be a little immature for her age. She didn't have much on her bookshelves — said whatever she put up there had the habit of getting knocked on the floor — but I did see a few books stacked under her nightstand that looked like they were recently read. There was Beatrix Potter and Winnie the Pooh and the like. I'm thinking maybe she's regressed a bit under the strain."

  "Paul, what did ya find out about the house?" I asked.

  Paul pointed at me, his face expressionless. "I was hoping you'd ask. The neighborhood and the surrounding region were the site of the Battle of Barnet, a key fight in the Wars of the Roses, 1455 to 1485, between the house of York and the house of Lancaster that concluded with the ascension of King Henry VII to the throne. At the time there wasn't anything in the area but woods. Peaceful little community, didn't you think? Would you be surprised to learn that it was one of the most active paranormal spots in London?

  "It's got a high water table and a fair concentration of limestone. Go figure. A great many spectral sightings take place in Oak Hill Park, not far from the Humphreys' residence. The local newspaper, the Barnet Press, dubbed the area 'The Ghosts' Promenade.' Sightings there include the ghost of a medieval knight riding a horse and phantoms floating through the trees. Also — get this — headless dogs."

  "The growling they've been hearin' in the girl's room?" I suggested.

  "Hmm, maybe," Paul replied.

  "How do headless dogs bark?" Archie asked.

  "There's a small stream that runs through Oak Hill Park, a tributary of which passes only a few yards from the Humphreys' back garden. A connection?"

  "Maybe." I shrugged. Paranormal activity often took place at conjunctions of waterways and underground streams. "What about the house itself?"

  "No history of deaths there. Not recently, anyway. Constables paid the place a little visit a few years back to check up on a domestic violence dispute involving the previous owners, but I couldn't dig up much more than that without asking around and calling attention to myself."

  Tommy gestured to Archie, who started up the recording. The boys opened their notebooks and began writing. The interview started with small talk. Emily's mother had just served tea and she was still hanging out in the doorway, asking if we needed anything, when Emily shooed her away.

  Emily: "She means well, I know, but I do like to get a bit of privacy once in a while."

  "Ah, I can see a little teenager coming on," Paul observed from his notetaking.

  Tommy: "Emily, why don't you start from the beginning, when the disturbances first began."

  Emily: "They began shortly after we moved in last summer."

  Tommy: "Your father told us they began last February, during an overnight sleepover."

  Emily: "Yes, that's when all the trouble started, but that's not when the disturbances really began. I haven't exactly told my parents everything."

  Tommy: "Why not?"

  Emily: "Mr. Banks, when your dad is an MP and always making a big fuss and getting written up in the press, you have to be very careful about what gets out. After a while, you learn to keep yourself to yourself, if you get me. If I'd started telling my mum and dad what I'd been seeing, why, they'd want to get my head examined stra
ight away."

  Tyson: "Why not tell 'em now, after they know somethin's up?"

  There was a pause. "You can't see it," Tommy explained, "but she just shrugged."

  Tommy: "Why don't you tell us when this started and what you experienced."

  Emily: "It was last August. We had only just returned from holiday in Austria, and our things had just arrived from our old house. I was standing in the kitchen, drinking some juice, when I saw what I thought at the time was my dad walk past and go down into the cellar. I didn't look at him directly; only saw him out of the corner of my eye. I had been looking for a box of my old books that had been thrown in with some of my dad's ledgers, and I'd called to him to see if he'd seen anything of them. When he didn't answer me, I'd gone down looking for him, but no one was down there."

  Tyson: "There another way in or out of that cellar?"

  Emily: "There is, but the door locks with a padlock from the inside. It was locked when I found it, meaning if someone had left from that way, there was no way he could have locked it again once he was on the other side of the door. Besides, I'd checked a few minutes later with Mum. She said that Dad had gone out for the afternoon and wouldn't be home for dinner."

  Tyson: "And you didn't tell her what you saw?"

  Emily: "I wasn't altogether sure I saw anything."

  Tommy: "All right, why don't you tell us what happened next."

  Emily: "It's difficult to say for sure what happened next. It's not like there's an easy order to these things. A lot of times I wasn't sure if things were really happening or if it was just my imaginings."

  Tommy: "Can you give us an example?"

  Emily: "Well, this here, for example."

  "Please pause the recording," Tommy cut in. "She's pointing to a little carpet that sits on the floor beside her bed. It can't be much larger than a meter square. It's a child's carpet with a little frog design on one side and a sticky sort of rubber coating on the other. It sits on the bare wood floor next to her bed. I did some testing after the interview and it doesn't slide around very easily.