by Ken Webster
And so on. Familiar enough to any domestic scene, some would say, with the exception of chalk marks on the wall. It wasn’t until the next day, a calmer quieter day, that I looked very closely.
Lukas had left his name.
And so we spent more and more time at East Green. We slept there every night. It was not so much that the poltergeist activity freaked us at the cottage but it was the sudden and quite dreadful ‘atmosphere’ that could descend. It almost froze our thoughts, it brought on tense, unforgiving headaches, angry exchanges or even tears. If ever one of those clouds settled it was best to leave.
11
By 27 March and the Easter holidays I was absolutely shattered. The computer would be at the cottage continually for the following two weeks. I must have been mad.
The first message was received that night while Debbie was asleep downstairs. It appeared that we didn’t have to go out at all. Debbie was worried that if she didn’t go out people would think it was her. I told her not to be so childish, and another row followed. To get out of the way I took the message to Peter for his views on it. Peter was just so enthusiastic that at times it was embarrassing.
Next day I did some recording on a borrowed eight-track recorder. It came out badly, and I wrote in my diary: ‘It is this Lukas business and the plans for the next building work. I can’t concentrate. Maybe I’m bored with music. The New Musical Express still arrives at the shop every week but I only skip through it. My life feels that it’s off course. I should be whacking round the country in a van with a band playing at village halls and the pubs, not messing with houses and cars, a mortgage and some poltergeist.’
Both Deb and I were tired all the time; just being in the cottage was tiring. Maybe it was because the house wasn’t mine with Lukas there. (Like having lodgers, you can never relax.)
I was so tired that evening that I crashed out for a few hours downstairs. Debbie had gone to East Green before after I nodded off, and Lukas wrote while I was asleep. It was a reply to Peter’s long piece about books and words and Oxford colleges … oh well. In it was a great deal of reminiscing and this interesting section:
PREYE YEVE ME SOM REMEMBAUNCE WOT WERT THY WORDES OF WYSDME ABOVEN MYNE FYR WHOIS POTREYING BE ON THY WALLE … WE ARN ABOUTE THY SAME TYME O DAYE ARN WE NAT PREY …
Please give me an idea of what were the words of wisdom above the fire, whose picture is on the wall … we are the same age, aren’t we?
Lukas Wainman had evidently seen Peter at the cottage. Peter was about fifty years old, Lukas too, it would seem. There was one difference about this message compared with other recent ones: the file name was a little odd. I had used PTR as a name but it had been changed to TRP during my sleep. Funny I didn’t hear anything. In moving from one file to another the disk drive makes a whirring noise: changing the file name would mean using the disk drive. And the computer makes a ‘beep’ noise if one makes a mistake in moving items about.
Peter decided to go to Oxford to read the inscription above the Brasenose College fireplace, as requested by Lukas. He would also try and trace the early members of the college, looking for Wainman.
Debbie and I were a lot more confident that we were not being hoaxed for the simple reason that we could be in the house or out of it, asleep or awake and we could leave the computer for very limited periods of time and still this stuff kept coming. The only thing we could not do was be in the kitchen. Watching the screen did no good, though we spent some hours in an attempt. I wrote in my diary, ‘If this a hoax we are now the only suspects.’
Apparent historical anomalies in the messages had declined markedly, and as for the language, Peter maintained that he would not be able to produce such high quality work. He said he might get a simple piece done if given days to pore over it but, he reminded us, Lukas was writing at length and usually replied within a day or even a few hours to what we wrote; sometimes the question would only be there for him a half hour before he answered. Peter just could not see that anyone was capable of such scholarship, and certainly we weren’t. I wrote in my diary, ‘But then again it can’t be us, not bright enough.’
These issues were coming more to the fore now that the Society for Psychical Research had no doubt received the letter I wrote to them on the 25 March. It had been a hard letter to write. I was so shy about it, that I gave my parents’ address rather than my own.
There was something of a lull in communications between late Thursday and Sunday 31 March. We took a trip to Aberystwyth for a day and we were busy at East Green for a time. I didn’t leave the computer at the cottage when we weren’t there for more than half a day in case of theft. Even so Lukas had had opportunity to write but nothing came. I wrote another greeting and told him that Peter was going to Oxford. The computer was left in position late evening; Deb offered to wait in with it.
Debbie was still troubled about her future prospects, or rather the lack of them, so she was not in the most cooperative of moods. When I came back home after visiting Dave Lovell, Deb was rather troubled for a different reason; she’d had one of those ‘funny dreams’ about seeing Lukas. She was very worried that she might be subconsciously making up his character, that she was ‘suggesting’ him. The dream was very clear. She wrote it down.
‘It’s a bit like glancing into a magnesium flame. For a while just white light, then incandescent green turning to purple, eventually shadows form around shapes, still unrecognizable, then becoming darker and darker, bringing dimensions to the eye and clarity to the mind.
‘I blinked and blinked again. There was something different, very different. Yes, I saw the room was unusual but that posed no problem as I was obviously dreaming; I bit on my bottom lip. There! There it was again, a feeling of being utterly insane, and how strange too that I should be questioning my own sanity, this I have never done whilst dreaming. And again, yet another question arose, even stranger than the last. Had I spoken aloud to myself or had I just thought “aloud”? I felt myself frowning; how very odd. Why was I standing in an overspread fireplace? Another intrusive idea squeezed itself into my confusion and took possession of my thoughts: a picture of Alice in Wonderland trying very hard to reach the bottle from a giant table way above her head.
‘As I took a step forwards out of the fireplace a movement to the right of me caught my attention. It was a man. A poorly dressed man, whose presence was unpredicted. “How odd this dream!” I reproached myself for not being able to think of any words to describe my feelings other than “odd”.
“’Tis strange indeed, maid.”
‘The man spoke with a thick accent and a look of complete surprise in his eyes. He placed some kind of hammer down on the large, primitive table then stood up in obvious bewilderment.
‘Had he heard me think or did I speak? Why had I never had this problem in dreams before? I usually get a choice as to whether I’m heard or not. An unusual fear overcame me. I was not in control. Why was I so sure I was dreaming when I was dreaming?
‘I knew that the man was trying desperately to hold a conversation. Was he listening to my thoughts again and responding? No, he seemed to be talking about Lukas, but why? What on earth did he have to do with the experiences at the cottage? Even for a dream this was an unlikely conversation to undertake with a stranger. I had realized that I was using the word “dream” every so many moments; why was this? Time appeared only to exist in my thinking of it. Why did I feel so insecure to the point of being suffocated by my own fear? What was this fear? Maybe, I thought, I’d died; it was a fear of no return. I withdrew into the fireplace in the hope that I could retrace my steps.
‘The bright light returned and phased everything into the white. Then blackness hit me like an instant blindness. With a shaking hand I slid my index finger and thumb from the outer corners of my eyes inwards to meet on the middle of my nose. A feeling of relief flooded into me and out with a sigh – I had been asleep.’
Later that evening Lukas wrote:
IT NERE NAT DAYE A
ND MYNE WASSAYL LYTE BE TO WANE
AND MYNE EYENS BE SOE WAYKE THAT THEM WERE LOOTH TO KISSE THE MORWENYNG SONNE FOR WAN IT CAME
SOE ME DIDST PUT AWAYE MYNE CAS TO MAKE TO MYNE BEDDE WHAN ME DIDST SEE A FAYR MAYDE WHO DIDST PASS IT DIDST SOE AFEREN MYNESELVE TO SEE HER ANOON APPERE
SHE DIDST CACCHE MYNE SIGHT FOR A WYNK AND DIDST CASTE AN EYE OF CARE WHAT BE YOWR WANT SHE DIDST QUOD BUT MYNE LIPPES WER STILLE FOR HER FAIRNESS DIDST BETAKE MYNE BREETH AND THEN SHE DIDST LEEVE MYNE PRESENCE
ALLONE IN THE DIM LYTE ME WILL NAT FORYETE HER SIGHT
AND ME DOST PREYE SHE BE KEEPES IT CLOSE AND TELLE NONN
AFROM THAT SHORTEST NIGHT
LUKAS
We didn’t understand it all, yet it needed no translation. A love poem to a beautiful girl, a girl who appeared suddenly to Lukas one fateful night. A night like the night of Debbie’s dream, perhaps.
Peter had the misfortune to choose 1 April to open conversation with a stranger in Oxford about communications on a word processor from the 16th century. The stranger took it as an excellent wind-up. Fortunately Peter had a great deal more luck with the assistant librarian at Brasenose, Robin Peedell. Peter introduced himself with more circumspection this time.
There was certainly no Lukas Wainman or anything near in the records of Brasenose. This was not necessarily a problem as the records are incomplete. Even so Robin could find nothing similar until over a century later, and to make matters worse the inscription Lukas had mentioned was above the stairs rather than over the fireplace.
Peter was much taken with the poem Lukas had left. I did not mention Debbie’s dream, which, she said, would only cause unnecessary problems. It was, she repeated, ‘only a dream’.
12
4 April
Lukas announced that he was to go to Stopford. This was, as we guessed at the time, Stockport. It seemed to us quite a journey.
He left a very long message to Peter the same day. It was in reply to Peter’s discoveries at Oxford and his request to know more of the men at the college at around the time Lukas said he was there. Peter was trying to test Lukas’s knowledge. He carefully pointed out the lack of an inscription above the fireplace in Brasenose but he did not disclose where in fact the inscription was nor what it said. I don’t think he even told us. He hoped Lukas would offer the information. And he did:
ME MUSTE SAUF MYNE SHAME ME DIDST MAKE WRONGE THY WORDES PLACD ABOVEN FYR TIS POORE RECORD ON MYNE PAN THYN WORDES BE ON THY FYRST STEEP ANNO CHRISTI SOM DAYE ET REGIS HENRICI OCTAVI PRIMO NOMINE DIVINO LINCOLN PRESUL QUOQUE SUTTON HANC POSU ERE PETRAM REGIS AD IMPERIUM PRIMO DIE LUNII …
DOST YOW KNOWE ANY OF THISE MEN ROLAND MESSENGIR A RICHARD SHERWOODE A JON SMYTH A JON FORNBY A MAFEW SMYTH A RALF BOSTOCK A ROBERT HOLMES A TOM WIGHT AND TOM TIPPYNG
I must cover my shame, I made a mistake about the words above the fireplace, it is my poor memory, the words are above the first stairs ANNO CHRISTI – some date – ET REGIS HENRICI OCTAVI PRIMO NOMINE DIVINO LINCOLN PRESUL QUOQUE SUTTON HANC POSU ERE PETRAM REGIS AD IMPERIUM PRIMO DEI LUNII …
Do you know any of these men: Roland Messengir, Richard Sherwoode, Jon Smyth, Jon Fornby, Mafew Smyth, Ralf Bostock, Robert Holmes, Tom Wight and Tom Tippyng?
Lukas had coped very well with the inscription and in pulling out the right names for his fellow students. Peter was delighted.
Lukas was as good as his word about leaving for a time and despite the computer being available he only returned to it later in the week, on 10 April. We had a name now for this waiting around: ‘ghostbusting’. It was jokey and deliberately so. ‘Ghostbusting’ was becoming the central evening activity, messages weren’t ‘discovered’ anymore, they were allowed for, sometimes expected, so calling it ‘ghostbusting’ helped us keep the whole thing in perspective. I didn’t believe in ghosts. If Lukas wasn’t a sophisticated hoax then he was real, a man out of time.
Deb’s Morris Minor bounced along the very uneven road between Pentre and Saltney Ferry. Alongside the airfield ran Manor Lane. On the corner loomed an emplacement, a pill box from the last war, which guarded the junction of Manor Lane and the straight upon which we found ourselves. As the car turned up the lane I looked up and saw broken white clouds mottled with grey. I felt as if I hadn’t seen the sky for days, so busy had we been. The light was penetrating, and a cold front had engulfed the west coast. Up on the wooded skyline the keep of Hawarden Castle showed clearly. There were no houses in view. The castle was on the ridge which carried the old road towards England. It was the ‘way’ Lukas would follow. We were in the marshland of Lukas’s time. Deep drainage ditches run along Manor Lane at the Sandycroft end, deeper than any near Dodleston. If Lukas ever came to these places I wondered if the view included these woods and the round keep of the castle. Perhaps it was a little more intact in those days, before Cromwell’s soldiers stole a stone or two. My thoughts drifted ahead to the cottage. I reread the print-out in my hand as best I could. It was slightly worrying.
GO ME DIDST SEE MYNE LEARNED FREEND ABOUTE YOWR TYME HE DIDST HATH MANYE A WORDE TO SEY AL BE IT HE THENKS ME BE SYK HE DIDST CONSELLE MYNESELVE WELL HE SEID THAT ME MUSTE NOT TELLE A CREETURE O THYS UNWIST WORLDE AN OF YOWR PEPLE ELLES TBE NON LESS THN CAPITAL BY MYNE CROWNE ANON ME AFFERME THAT YOW BE GOODLY BUT THAT IT SOMTYMES FORGES DREAD TO A WIGHT AS MYNE LINK MAN ALS HE AXE ME NAT TO WRYTE TIL HE DOST COME AND SEE MYNE COMUTER SOE ME SHAL SPEKE WITH YOW BY MYNE V DAYE
YOWR GOODLY FREEND LUKAS
I saw my learned friend concerning your time. He had many a word to say although he thinks that I am sick. He advised me well. He said that I must not tell a soul about this unknown world and about your people, else it is nothing less than a capital offence, according to the Crown. I immediately swore that you are honest but that it sometimes makes some people fearful, such as my servant. Also he asks me not to write until he comes and sees the computer, so I shall speak with you five days from now.
Your good friend Lukas
Lukas needed reassurance. We had our friends with whom to chew over the latest turn of events. Lukas had not. Lukas had sought out an old friend in Stopford. Yet even he had counselled against Lukas writing more of this ‘unwist world’. But this friend was to come to see for himself! Our fame was spreading. Five days. We should expect his friend around 14 April.
By 13 April work had been started on the cottage again. Outside the kitchen a whole lot of digging was in progress. A bulldozer, courtesy of a local farmer, a couple of very likely lads and a tractor and trailer had recently removed something in the order of forty tons of earth, broken bricks, tarmac and cobblestones. Mud was creeping in on boots and shoes, cement bags were piled up in a corner of the kitchen. The computer was switched on. It was often on despite the risk of dust damage. Inside the cottage it felt like a transport café, all teapots and plates and newspapers on the floor.
Debbie was looking at a cheap edition of a history of Chester. One incident caught her attention. This was a criminal case which was punished by ‘pressing’. In a ‘press’ yard a prisoner would be made to lie down and a wide wooden plank or door placed over him. It would be slowly loaded with large stone weights until the victim expired. His only consolation was the right to pass on his land to an heir rather than having it confiscated by the Crown. I had come across it before in school and was the only one in the cottage who knew its other name – ‘peyne forte et dure’. Apart, that is, from Lukas. The door to the kitchen had been open throughout our conversation. The screen had been blank yet now it read:
ME DIDST HEER YOW SPEKE OF MYNE UNFAVOURABLE PEYNE FORTE ET DURE WY BE THYS DOE YOW MEENST TO TELLE MYNE CROWNE
I heard you speak of the awful ‘peyne forte et dure’. Why is this? Do you mean to tell the Crown?
Oh, Lukas! This was a strange lack of confidence on his part. He must have been fed a cautionary tale by the man from Stopford. This short message had two significant aspects. Deb offered the obvious: ‘This means he can listen to our conversations.’
&n
bsp; It seemed so. There had been no message from us to him, no hint or premonition of the events we were about to discuss. Secondly, Dave Lovell was with us both; none of us could have physically written that message unnoticed by the others. Deb also came up with the other idea: my/our thoughts had carried.
I left Lukas a message of reassurance. It was on the lines of, ‘Please write to us, we can be trusted whatever happens; and so on. Dave and I went back to work. Deb remained indoors but left the kitchen door slightly ajar.
Nearly an hour later I went in and glanced at the screen on my way to the sink for some water. There was a message, but because my clothes were dirty and dusty I kept my distance and didn’t take it in. It was a poem. It was good to see but for now back to work.
Outside, Dave was driving the great hulk of the Jaguar backwards and forwards on the soil, trying it for size in the newly cleared area around the damson tree. He didn’t stop the car but called out from under his moustache: ‘Anything?’
‘Yes, a poem … looks a goodie. Do you want to see it?’
‘I’ll look at it later.’
We were getting very matter of fact.
The noise and the practical implications of manoeuvring a large car in a small space prevented us from noticing the light in the kitchen go out and the music from the tape recorder in the studio stop abruptly.
There was nothing to see when we next went in. A power cut. The poem was gone, my message to Lukas with it. Work stopped. I tried to blame Debbie for not saving the information to disk and thereby protecting it from just such an interruption.
The power came back on at tea time and the music took up where it had left off. There was nothing there. If the information is not saved to disk then it can only live in the BBC computer memory while there is power to the machine.
