by Phil Rickman
The planchette quivers.
‘Raincoat?’
Fitfully, the planchette spells out a message that makes none of them laugh.
ON
LY
A
SH
RO
UD
With impeccable timing, a candle sputters in the hoop, its flame reduced to a slender spiral of smoke.
‘Went darker then,’ Marcus says, ‘did you see?’
‘I’m not sure.’
Both of them watching the same picture on TV sets miles apart. This is a little crazy, Grayle’s thinking. Could be that nothing at all will happen bar a few more creepy messages. Equally, it could be that something will happen that won’t be obvious onscreen and maybe not until days afterwards.
‘You remember the brother and sister I talked to, ’bout four years ago? Messing with the ouija board, then both are troubled by persistent poltergeist phenomena in their separate homes.’
‘Yes I do. Proved nothing.’
The camera pulls back, the picture opening to an overview of the company around the table.
‘There, you see,’ Marcus says. ‘At least one candle’s gone out.’
‘What’s that mean? Some absorption of energy? Or someone left a door open.’
Grayle wondering what they might all be seeing if Jess Taylor was shooting through the wall now. Nothing, probably. That wasn’t how it worked.
‘This room,’ Marcus says. ‘Was this where the Ansell woman saw Parr in her coffin?’
‘I don’t know. Cindy thought that was a dream, anyway.’
Though she’s never forgotten the entry in the diary that Cindy showed her. She can close her eyes, recall most of the words.
… cold and there’s a blue light, a shaft of blue light bathing a low wooden bed. A truckle did they call it? Her eyes are closed, though her mouth is slightly open. And I know she’s dead.
‘And, anyway, in the dream it was a bed… a truckle.’
‘As she saw it. Perhaps she’d never seen the engraving in the Annals of Parr in her lead coffin. Not what we’d think of today as a coffin.’
Grayle watches Roger Herridge standing on a chair applying a match to the dead candle in the hoop.
‘You still think that when KP’s body was missing for a while, it was because Fishe had… borrowed her?’
‘Yes, I do, actually. It fits with what he is.’
Is? Is? Abel Fishe is more than two centuries dead.
The phone is damp in Grayle’s hand.
‘You can start to see things that aren’t there, Marcus. We all do that.’ Trying to hold her voice steady. ‘We don’t know anything about him. Nobody does. He’s a bogeyman. Anything you care to say about him goes.’
‘Is there still a cross-country path between Sudeley and Knap Hall?’
‘I don’t know. Never been much of a hiker. Why?’
‘He’d just load the coffin on to his cart, throw some straw over it, wheel it up there.’
His cart. His bier. No.
‘How was all this hidden, Marcus? Why isn’t Fishe in the history books?’
‘Underhill, he’s not important enough. He’s just a sex addict with a particular taste for women beyond his social class. “Abel’s Rent” – even has official dispensation for doing what he does. It’s just like… like the BBC employed Savile, and the NHS allowed him into its hospitals and he acquired an executive role at Broadmoor. Arguably the most prolific sex criminal in the country, doing what he does almost in full view of the nation. How was that hidden for the duration of the bastard’s lifetime?’
‘Yeah, I know, and dead women, too, allegedly, in the hospital morgues. Necrophilia. I see where you’re going.’
‘Not necessarily.’
‘Marcus, I can’t take this tonight, OK?’
‘“Entire and uncorrupted” are the words in the Annals. After 230 years. Naturally, I’ve been reading up on tales of uncanny preservation. People didn’t have access to scientific theories about delayed putrefaction. They simply thought there was supernatural or religious significance. Think of the body of St Cuthbert carried around the countryside intact and undecayed for years by the monks. Immense sacred power. Now Katherine Parr… a queen of England… survivor of the extraordinary Henry VIII. Lying there, “entire and uncorrupted” and…’
Please God, don’t let him use the word moist.
‘I’ll go no further down that road for the moment.’
‘Thank you,’ Grayle says.
‘But necrophilia may not be the right word.’
‘Oh that we should sully this man’s name…’
‘He has a fascination with death. Perhaps as a rite of passage. And he’s steeped in this countryside. He’s grown up with Belas Knap, a place where bodies were taken, but not a grave as we think of one. Also perhaps a place of rebirth. The so-called false entrance, shaped like a vagina. A very obvious entrance, but not one that a man can use.’
On the TV, Grayle watches Roger Herridge brushing himself down, taking his seat at the table, his back to the smouldering hearth. The camera lingers on the circlet of small flames, like a halo above the group. Seven candles alight.
‘So, OK, we have a sacred sexual orifice.’ Even after Ersula, Grayle’s happier with the prehistoric stuff. ‘Sealed against men, but open to the gods. Yeah, that makes sense, Marcus.’
‘Good.’
‘And I’m sure an illiterate redneck like Fishe would know all about it from his extensive private collection of antiquarian manuscripts.’
‘Underhill… no one’s saying he was an historian or even a magician. He was close to the land. He followed his instincts. Death, Underhill. And sex. That’s what this is about. All he’d understand. Sex and death. Something eternal about that combination, don’t you think?’
‘And Knap Hall?’
‘His place. His temple. Sanctum. Lair. No links with Sudeley. Katherine Parr was never there hosting dinners in a red silk dress. Never here in a bed. Never even there alive. Now do you see what Knap Hall is?’
58
Say goodbye
HELEN LETS BOTH hands fall below the table.
‘Someone’s doing this.’
‘But it’s a spirit, surely.’ Rhys Sebold from out of shot. A camera finds him still over by the fireplace. ‘Perhaps even Diana? Anything’s possible in a haunted house, Helen, you know that.’
Helen’s long dispensed with the wine glass, no longer looks at all tipsy and, when she turns to Rhys, her voice is cold.
‘Perhaps we should swap places.’
‘I’m enjoying myself too much here.’
‘No, come on…’ Helen pushes back her chair, stands up. ‘You know you want to.’
‘Then you know me better than I know myself, Ms Parrish.’
A blur and a small mic-crunch as Helen steps out, then her face is caught side on, angry, a pearl earring spinning.
‘You’re not giving value for money, Rhys. You’ll be remembered as rather peevish, and the BBC will never give you your radio programme back, and you’ll wind up on the graveyard shift at the jewellery channel. I’m sorry, but you’re going to do this.’
Ashley laughs.
‘Better do it, Rhys. Or, even worse, you’re going to look like a closet born-again Christian.’
Rhys Sebold puts on a grin – remembering he’s live on TV, Cindy thinks, as Rhys drops into the chair next to him.
‘Christians are, of course, entitled to their eccentric faith,’ he says.
‘Tactful of you to remember that, boy. Now let’s hope’ – Cindy’s finger has remained steadfast on the planchette, across from Roger Herridge’s – ‘that our friend has not deserted us.’
He looks across at the fire, and it isn’t there. The inglenook is dead. The walls are pale brown and roughened stone. There’s a lumpen chair and a table and hangings like scraps of rotting clothing on an old skeleton.
He blinks, stays calm as Ashley’s voice comes out of thick air
.
‘You ready, Cindy?’
‘I’m sorry… yes.’
Flaking red logs are back on the hearth. All is as it was. He steadies his breathing, waits as Ozzy and Ashley replace their fingers on the triangle, followed, flamboyantly, by Rhys. He thinks, female. He thinks of a woman in white, holds her at his centre.
‘Are you angry,’ he’s asking, ‘at the manner of your death?’
YES
So immediate that Ashley’s finger is left behind. And then, quickly, before he can lose her, he asks,
‘What’s your name? Can you tell us that?’
Grayle wonders why he’s taken so long to get around to this. In the live gallery, Leo Defford will be on the edge of his seat, waiting for the planchette to land on the letter T, from Trinity, or at least K, for—
A
Oh.
Helen’s writing it down on a cigarette packet.
A
The planchette returns, and there’s a pause.
N
The planchette returns more slowly. When it starts to move again, it seems to trundle like a miniature version of the woodman’s bier.
G
‘A N G?’ Herridge says, ‘Angela?’
And then it all goes crazy, the table tilting upwards, even Ashley Palk squealing, and then the table rocks back and the camera in the ceiling sees the planchette take off like a small bird as the ouija board goes sliding over the edge, hitting the stone flags with more force than you would imagine, and shocked faces go whipping past on Grayle’s screen.
The planchette clicks on the flags, chairs are pushed back.
Ashley Palk separates herself from the others, goes to stand by the Gothic door to the dining room, breathes hard for a few moments, tucks disarranged fair hair behind an ear.
Ashley says, ‘Thank you, Austin, but let’s leave it at that, shall we? You’ve done enough. Show’s over.’
You can almost see the anger like a dust storm in the room, but none of it’s coming from Ashley Palk. Ashley’s standing in a capsule of calm at its core.
Grayle points at the screen.
‘Look at her. She couldn’t be more happy.’
Grayle’s been summoned to the live gallery. The programme has just over a half-hour to run. Or more if they want it. Might turn out to be the last thing they do want but if Leo Defford knows for sure then Grayle figures he’s a major loss to TV drama.
He’s on his feet, the monitors around him like a map of the landscape of insanity.
‘Why?’ he says.
‘Because… I guess she came here with a purpose. Amply fulfilled, it looks like.’
‘Asked me if we could make a ouija board available,’ Defford says. ‘Said someone was playing games. Claimed she didn’t know who.’
‘Oh, she knew.’
‘Then why didn’t we?’ His fist smashes down on a curving desk. By we he means Grayle. ‘You’re giving me all this shit about the wrong ghost, while Palk’s stealing the fucking programme from under us?’
It’s true. He’s so wrong about everything, but this is still true. Grayle watches Roger Herridge coming into shot, addressing Palk.
‘Go back to the beginning, I think.’
This is a very different Herridge, hard-voiced, focused. Quizzing Ashley Palk like she’s been hauled up before some Parliamentary select committee he’s serving on.
‘I’m quite happy to do that,’ Ashley says. ‘Let’s start with the perfume. Ozzy’s had a bad night. Keeps thinking there’s a woman in his room. He identifies her perfume because it’s the one worn by his ex-wife when they first started going out together. Well, obviously it can’t be her. She’s very much alive and wouldn’t be seen – if you’ll excuse the term – dead in Ozzy’s room. And he’s given no indication of pining for her – certainly not in the divorce court.’
Defford turns to a director.
‘Ozzy… tight shot.’
Here he is, on his own by the chess table, the ouija board at his feet. No clear reaction on his face, but Grayle has the feeling that the habitual crooked little half-smile is no more than a twitch away.
‘Not fazed,’ Jo Shepherd says. ‘Not fazed at all.’
‘But more to the point,’ Ashley says, ‘when that first date was happening, Gucci’s Guilty wouldn’t be launched for another ten years at least.’
Jo says, ‘Bloody hell.’
‘I know that for a fact…’ Ashley’s sweating, very slightly. A glow. ‘Because a friend of mine had an early sample pack and I bought some for my wee sister’s birthday, the year before she got married. So Ozzy was either hallucinating or lying. I started to watch him very closely. I’m a trained, practical psychologist. This is what I do. Behavioural science.’
‘Whose idea was it to get Ashley into the house?’ Grayle asks.
Defford’s expressionless.
‘Mine. She took a while to agree.’
It’s like a lecture in there now.
‘… began to notice the discreet ways Ozzy would let his own experiences filter into other people’s stories – his hijacking of Helen’s Diana stuff is a prime example. All very clever. Giving the impression of a man secretly grappling with the worst personal crisis he’s ever faced. He’s convincing us this is the very last thing he wants to talk about. He’s shocked and embarrassed and deeply unhappy – an unbeliever, the very idea of something paranormal happening to him, of all people. And gradually he gets us all – and the viewers and the media – on his hook, believers and sceptics alike. He persuades us to prise the details out of him, clearly against his will. His friend Rhys thinking we’re bullying him.’
‘What’s the matter with him?’ Jo shaking her fists. ‘Ahmed. Why doesn’t he say something?’
‘If you’d asked me a few minutes ago,’ Defford says, ‘I’d have said they were in it together. Ashley, Ozzy and possibly Sebold, too. Wonderful publicity for The Disbeliever. A new direction for Ahmed’s genius. But the way he’s behaving now makes you wonder.’
He’s right, Grayle thinks. If Ozzy’s just done the greatest performance of his career, why’s he letting Ashley take all the credit?
Herridge says, ‘If you knew he was making it all up, why did you keep quiet for so long?’
‘Roger, I’m a psychologist, not a detective. I observe, I assess, and I test what I’m getting against my and others’ experiences. Sure, I’ve convinced m’self he’s lying, but I’m not going public with it until I can convince the world. I’m even thinking, OK, he’s created this ghost, he’s given her a white mac and a history of physical abuse… is it possible he’s the abuser?’
Defford’s nodding.
Helen Parrish says, ‘Is that likely?’
‘It was possible,’ Ashley says, ‘but I wanted to give him the chance to take it further. To bring this woman, as it were, to life.’
They keep jumping to Ozzy, but it’s like a still; he doesn’t seem to have moved.
‘Ouija,’ Defford says.
Still on the floor at Ozzy’s feet, the planchette on its back.
‘I may have lied about the ouija board,’ Ashley says. ‘If I gave the impression it was something I’d no experience of, that was my only untruth. I’ve worked with my fellow psychologist and ex-illusionist Richard Wiseman and others in exploring the paraphernalia of the seance room. Spent many an hour over a hot planchette until I could easily identify who – whether intentionally or subliminally – was manipulating it.’
‘And, ah’ – Cindy’s voice – ‘you’re in no doubt?’
‘No doubt at all.’
‘Who pushed the table over just as Ozzy’s guest was spelling out her name?’
‘You were there, Cindy, was it you?’
‘Angela?’ The shot widens to take in Roger Herridge, hair down over his face, his head inclining now to Ozzy’s and tilting to one side. ‘You prick.’
Then Rhys Sebold’s shouldering between them, but Herridge is already walking away, tossing back his mane.
Nobody needs an explanation. A liquid glint in Herridge’s eyes he passes under the candle spears which are themselves beginning to drown in molten wax.
‘One of Roger’s flower ladies,’ Grayle says dully. ‘I think her name’s Angela.’ She turns away. ‘Ahmed really screwed us all, didn’t he? Came in with the sole intention of screwing us.’
‘We’ve had at least ten calls or emails,’ Jo says, ‘from people putting names to the woman he keeps seeing.’
‘Let’s see how Sebold’s taking it,’ Defford says.
But Rhys’s thin, edgy face is hard to read. Street-cred at stake here. Grayle’s guessing Ahmed didn’t disclose his intentions to his self-styled friend, which is going to hurt. But is it better from Rhys’s point of view to conceal that? Let viewers think he’s part of the scam.
Ozzy doesn’t look at Rhys, or anybody. Only the ouija board by his feet. Bends slowly and picks it up, stands looking down at it between his hands, before dropping it on the flags and hacking the heel of his right shoe into its face until spidery cracks appear.
He kicks it away, faces the false wall.
‘Get me out, please.’
Jo looks at Defford.
‘Can he?’
‘Of course he can. We can hardly be seen to be keeping prisoners. Besides, they’re voting on the second eviction as we speak. Chances are it’ll be him.’
‘Doesn’t look like he’s prepared to wait, Leo. Clearly doesn’t want to get into explanations.’ Jo glances at the nearest screen, winces. ‘What’s that fool doing?’
Roger Herridge is looking down at the wounded ouija board, prodding it with a suede toe.
‘You didn’t say goodbye to it, Ozzy. Got to say goodbye or the spirit doesn’t go away. Eloise would be furious if she were here.’
‘El-o-ise,’ Ozzy says, his voice almost musical, ‘got kicked out for being a mental bitch. I, on the other hand, choose to go without assistance. Is anybody even listening to me? No?’ He looks around, retrieves a half-empty wine bottle. ‘This anybody’s?’
‘Helen’s, I expect,’ Sebold says. ‘Keeps Diana in there.’ He turns at a movement. ‘Haven’t you done enough for one night?’
Ashley stops, couple of paces from Ahmed. Between him and Rhys, she looks slight and unexpectedly vulnerable, like she’s realized she might have no friends left in here.
