A Gathering of Ghosts

by David Haynes

  “I am coming for you soon, Robert Barker,” John growled. “I shall strip the flesh from your bones and feed it to my hounds. The darkness is creeping closer, ever closer.”

  The scream which issued from his father forced him take the tube away from his ear.

  “Why do you torment me so? I have done nothing,” his father wailed. “I am a good man and have always been so. I cared for the b...”

  “Silence,” John hissed. “I... am... coming.”

  *

  “Did you sleep well, father?” he placed the tray of bacon and eggs on the bed before him.

  “What?”

  “I asked if you slept well. You look a little tired.”

  “Slept? I do not believe I did, John, for I feel weary. Yet for the life of me I know not why.”

  John almost felt sorry for there was a fatigue to his father’s voice which he had not heard before.

  “Perhaps a nightmare?”

  “Perhaps. Now where is your mother?”

  “She will be along presently. I am sure of it.” John did not remember his mother at all. She had died giving birth to him.

  “Good, I have much to tell her. Now run along. I am quite sure it must be time for school.”

  John turned and picked up the speaking tube. He placed it on the cradle and smiled. “You must remember to replace the cone or I shall...”

  “You ignorant creature, leave me!” his father roared and at once any feelings of sorrow disappeared in a flash.

  John busied himself downstairs. He could not recall a time when his father had exhibited even the slightest sign of affection toward him. He could not remember feeling he was anything other than an annoyance to the man. At school, the boys had talked of their fathers with reverence and respect but also with sentiment and devotion. John felt none of those things for his father; not one. He pulled the meat from the ham bone. It had started to smell a little and around the edges the meat had a greenish tinge. He dusted it with arsenic and placed it between two slices of yesterday’s bread.

  Why did he remain if it was so bad? He felt like a servant rather than a son but he would accept his lot for now, because someday soon he would inherit the house and whatever sum of money was hidden in the boards beneath his father’s bed.

  Would things have been different between them if mother had lived? Was his father’s bitterness and coldness toward him a result of his birth and the consequences to mother? He had dwelled on it for many years and attempted to raise the matter with his father on numerous occasions. He had never got very far and had always been waved away with a dismissive hand.

  He had no other siblings and knew of no uncles or aunts who he could make enquiries to regarding his mother. He never knew her and possessed no memories, either his own or anybody else’s, with which to form a picture. It was as if he had never had a mother at all and now his father was too addled he probably never would.

  He looked at the speaking tube and picked it up. He wanted to scream down it as loud as he could. He wanted to run up the stairs and throttle the man until his face was blue. Instead, he replaced it slowly. It was not in his nature to be quite so explicit, instead he would continue with his little dose of poison and his tricks. It was snide and spiteful and that suited him to his core.

  If he had a higher voice or was an actor, he could pretend to be his mother. Perhaps that would scare the old man into his grave? He smiled. His deep voice would sound comedic rather than threatening and that was not what he was aiming for. But...

  He threw on his overcoat and rushed from the house. It had been a while since he had frequented the Limehouse district and sought the company of dolly mops and harlots, yet he was sure little would have changed in the intervening years. He did not need her to be pretty or young or even attractive, he needed her to be sober and to be able to follow simple instruction.

  The Hansom dropped him off near the dock. Where there were sailors there were inevitably prostitutes and lowly ones at that. He walked quickly along the streets until he found himself in a narrow alleyway running between two larger thoroughfares. These were the places he had first come as an adolescent, when he had lost his virginity to a toothless, drunken old madam who had left him with an itching groin and an enormous smile. John walked slowly and inhaled deeply. There was nothing quite like the smell of stale ale and meat pies to arouse the senses. He laughed to himself. When he was rich he would be able to afford to pay the finest ladies for their company if he so chose.

  “Hello, love,” a female voice called from behind.

  John turned quickly. “Good day to you, madam.”

  The lady remained in the shadows. “What is it you’ve come looking for, sir?”

  John removed his hat and stepped closer. “I come searching for a lady.”

  “Ain’t none of them round here. Reckon I’ll do for you?”

  She stepped into the light and John winced. She was almost as old as his father and he turned and started to walk away. But would his mother not be of similar age?

  He turned around. “I think you will do just fine. And what is your name?”

  “What would you like it to be?” she answered quickly.

  John thought for a moment before replying, “Nancy.”

  She stepped toward him and linked her arm through his. He could detect only the faintest aroma of gin on her breath.

  “It’s a pretty name.”

  John led her by the arm back to the dock where the cab was waiting. “Yes, it was my mother’s.”

  *

  John sat the harlot at a chair beside the speaking tube. “Now you must say exactly what I told you to say, nothing more and nothing less. Is that clear?”

  The woman smiled but it was not the pleasant and easy expression of someone who was entirely comfortable. “I shall do my very best, sir.”

  “Good. Now wait while I blow the whistle.”

  John had not felt quite so excited since his first experiment with the speaking tube. He put the whistle to his lips and blew it as hard as he could. A few moments later his father’s voice spoke.

  “Is that you, John?”

  John immediately handed the cone to the prostitute and nodded.

  “Hello, Robert, it is me, Nancy. You have not forgotten me have you?”

  Her voice was a little too common to be entirely convincing but it was fine for the purpose. John put his head closer to the cone. She smelled of cheap perfume and tobacco.

  “Nancy? Is that really you?”

  “Yes. I have come back to tell you something. It is something which weighs heavy on my mind.”

  “What, my love? Whatever can it be?”

  “I never loved you and I was not pure when we wed. There were others before you and more after you.”

  It was perfect, simple yet with a huge and hopefully devastating impact.

  John waited for the inevitable scream but there was only silence from the other end. He nudged the woman.

  “Did you hear me, Robert?”

  His father’s voice came back clearly. “When we married I knew this to be true, yet I loved you still. There were always others yet still I love you now.” His voice trembled.

  John snatched the cone from the woman and slammed it back into the cradle. How could this be? What was meant as cruel and devastating had turned out to be the truth. His mother was a harlot?

  He gasped and stumbled to the sink. His mother, about whom he knew nothing, was nothing more than a slattern. And yet his father not only knew about it, he accepted it.

  “Looks like that little trick’s come back on you, mister. Your old mum was a bit of a one.”

  John turned quickly. A rage was building in his stomach; a vile and desperate rage which needed to escape. “What? What did you say?”

  The woman clearly sensed his anger for she stood and edged around the table. “I didn’t mean anything by it, just that...”

  John sprang at her with his hands raised and took her by the throat. “You know not
hing, whore!”

  He could feel the brittle bones in her neck beneath his fingers. Her eyes bulged as she gasped for air. He had intended to torment his father but instead it had been turned on its head and he was the victim of his own mischief. He was angry, but not at this woman who he was choking the very last breath from, but at his father, at himself and mostly at a mother he had never met.

  He felt her body sag against his as her last pathetic flail fell hopelessly short of his face. He dropped her to the floor like a doll and stepped over her corpse to the sandwich he had prepared several hours before. He wiped his hands on his shirt and picked up the plate. The old man must be getting hungry by now.

  *

  At a quarter past eleven, John climbed into bed. He had spent all evening in the kitchen staring at the dead prostitute. Would anyone miss her, he wondered? Did anyone even know she had gone with him? Only once did he touch her and that was to close her eyes. It was not out of any affection or remorse but out of revulsion for the way she continued to stare at him.

  He dozed intermittently throughout the early part of the night. His half-sleep was saturated with visions of the harlot, who had become his mother, in vulnerable positions with a variety of strange men. Each one made his stomach churn with fresh nausea yet they kept coming, one after the other until he could stand it no longer.

  He opened his eyes and stared into the black abyss above his head. What had he done? Had he become one of the fiends from the newspaper articles? He sat up and pressed his back against the cold wall. It made him shiver unpleasantly. He was sure his crime would never be found out. After all, who on earth would miss or care for a woman like that? A woman of no virtue, a woman just like... just like his mother.

  He turned his head toward the door. Was that his father laughing? He cleared his mind of the dark and noisy thoughts and listened. There it was again. It was little more than a thin snigger but it was most definitely laughter and it was coming from the room across the landing. The old man must be having a dream or a waking delusion. It was not unheard of for him to shout in his sleep. What must he dream of?

  John turned on his side and closed his eyes again. Immediately a vision of the dead woman swam across his eyes, forcing them open again.

  More laughter echoed across the landing but this time it was stronger and more convincing. Damn that miserable old beggar, he thought, even in sleep he will not let me be. A vicious rage started bubbling away in the pit of his stomach and it threatened to erupt at any moment.

  He swung his feet off the bed and stepped across the creaking floorboards. He would shake him until he woke up and then push a pillow over his face and be done with it. He had killed one person today and he intended to kill another. The tricks and the poison had yielded little but a fleeting moment of entertainment. It was time he started living his own life. It was time the old man was dead.

  John walked quickly across the landing, scarcely feeling the icy boards beneath his feet or noticing the steaming vapours issuing from his mouth. He pushed open the door.

  “What are you laughing at?” he shouted.

  The room was in darkness save for the small amber glow coming from the dying fire. The dark shadow of his father’s mass lay still in the bed.

  He stepped closer to the bed. “I said what are you laughing about, you miserable old fool?”

  Still there was no movement from the bed but he did not need a response. He stepped closer until he loomed over the sleeping man. “I shall enjoy this,” he whispered and climbed onto the bed.

  He put his hand on his father’s shoulder and shook him. The whole bed moved violently with the force, yet still the old man did not wake.

  “Wake up!” he yelled directly into his ear.

  “What? What is it? Nancy, is it you?” His father opened his eyes and blinked rapidly. “John?”

  “Yes father, it is me. What were you laughing at?” he hissed.

  “Laughing? I have been sleeping and would still be that way had you not awoken me. What is it?”

  “You liar,” he spat the words out.

  “What are you talking...”

  “Liar!” John thrust his hands down and clamped them around the flabby throat. The man was a liar. He had lied about his mother, he had lied about laughing and God alone knew what else. He deserved to die. The old man had been a brute in life but as he lay there being throttled to death, he simply accepted it and offered not the slightest fight. The sound of his rasping last breath was the only sign the man was not a rag doll.

  John fell away from his dead father and lay for a moment beside him. It was perhaps too soon to gauge his feelings but even now he felt no grief, only relief. He smiled into the darkness.

  “Good riddance, father,” he whispered.

  *

  Two hours later, he had managed to drag both bodies into the damp and dismal cellar. He propped them up against the cold wall, but both their necks were crushed and their heads lolled against each other like marionette lovers. He would decide what to do with them later, but for now their decomposition would be slow enough in the chill environment to give him time to think. He closed the door and stepped into the kitchen. Never again would he have to pick up the tube and listen to his father’s cruel jokes or his pathetic screams. Now he would make of his life what he chose without the bulging burden of a vindictive lunatic. Perhaps he would stoke the fire in the old man’s room and rest there until dawn. He bounded upstairs; he was already enjoying this newfound freedom.

  He pushed more coals into the grate and watched them catch. Although the cellar had been cold, much colder than the rest of the house, he hadn’t felt the slightest chill. But now as he watched the flames devour the fuel, he shivered and hugged his arms about him. The woman had been as light as a feather and easy to move but shifting his father had been a huge task. The man had barely moved for the last few months and his eating habits had remained the same for the last few years. It did not take a scientist to understand why the man was utterly obese.

  John looked over at the bed and yawned. He should return to his own bed yet his father’s bed looked so soft and comfortable; so warm. He walked over and sat on the edge. The mattress was an expensive luxury, but his father had insisted on it, demanding only the very finest on which to lay his gluttonous gut. He gazed about the room until his eyes settled on the speaking tube beside the bed. How many times had he told the old man to hang it back in its cradle?

  He picked it up and looked at it. How many times had his father sat there half-scared out of his wits, imagining he was conversing with the devil? Too many to count and each one darker than the last. The old man was stronger than he looked, and what poison and shock could never achieve, physical assault finally had.

  He lifted the cone to his lips and whispered, “I’m going to sleep in your bed now, father.”

  He laughed and put the cone to his ear. “Nothing to say to that, have you?”

  A faint sound drifted back up the tube and tickled the hairs in his ear. It sounded very much like someone trying not to laugh. John felt the hairs on the back of his neck bristle. He held the cone away from his face and stared down it. There was nothing there at all and why should there be? It was just a trick of the draughty old house, that was all.

  He replaced the cone and fell back on the bed. The smell of sweat and – as he had seen while dragging the man down the stairs – festering and weeping flesh billowed around him. It was almost enough to send him back to his cold room, almost but not quite.

  No, as the master of the house and chief of his own destiny, he would sleep in this bed tonight. Perhaps tomorrow he would wash the sheets and blankets. He deserved to sleep in a clean bed, at least until he’d found the money and purchased a house and bed of his own. He pulled the blankets up to his chin and closed his eyes. Tomorrow was full of hope and expectation and they were two things which had been missing from his life up until now.

  *

  John climbed out of bed and stretched. Da
ylight tumbled into the room and fell on his face. It felt good to wake after the sun had risen for a change. He could scarce remember a time when he had been allowed to sleep until his body decided it was time to rise.

  He dropped to his knees and stared under the bed. A square had been cut into the floorboards and was fitted with a brass handle so it could be lifted out. He’d never been allowed to look inside the safe before. But it was where his father kept his wealth and now there was nobody to stop him, he intended to take it all.

  He wriggled under the bed sending dusty clouds of dried skin and detritus into his nostrils. He sneezed rapidly several times but it was not enough to deter him. The brass loop was cold to the touch and creaked as he pulled it, but the square lifted easily. John peered into the dark hole before plunging his hands into it.