by Robert Wilde
“No,” Dee said stepping forward, “we know of someone who could. We have seen it, we want to find others.”
The librarian considered Dee’s comment, looked at the group, seemed to focus on Joe, then nodded. “I see. Few people really can. Separating the truth from the fraud, that will take persistence, and intuition. But I think I can point you in some directions.”
The Spanos Library of Occult Investigation had three main advantages to a researcher. The first was that they could spend as long as they wanted in the building, with a seeming free reign, to look up whatever they wished. The second was that the librarian seemed to have read everything you picked up and could help comment on the material. And the third was an excellent coffee machine.
“Well that’s more up to date than your website,” Nazir noted as he got another round of drinks in.
“It does to keep the body and soul together.”
“Is that a joke?”
“Am I allowed one?”
“If it’s actually funny.”
The day had progressed with highs and lows. On the one hand, the librarian guided them through a vast literature on communicating with the dead to a few cases where people did, if the accounts really could be as trusted as historical deduction suggested, speak to the dead. On the other, these accounts were well in the past with no lead.
“A shame we can’t speak to that woman who solved murders,” Joe said, chewing his lip.
“Because you have a thing for tragic redheads, or because hanging her was a bastard thing to do?” Dee asked. She didn’t get an answer.
“I can’t help but note,” Pohl began, “that everyone in these accounts meets a, let’s just say sticky end.”
“It was rarely a good idea to antagonise the church, or your peers,” the librarian commented, “and the freedom Britain allows people over the occult today is truly remarkable.”
“Yeah Joe,” Nazir commented, “they could have burnt you twice over for the occult and the quantum physics once.”
“Quantum Physics?” The librarian asked.
“Yes,” Joe said, and decided to toot his horn. “I’m a fully qualified quantum biologist.”
“Good lord!”
“Yes, it is quite impress…”
“No, sorry, no, I meant good lord, there’s something you should see…” And the librarian scurried off to the other side of the cramped room, pulled a drawer open, and came back with a collection of loose leaf magazines.
“This was written in 1938, and is about the disappearance of Doctor Jeremiah Buckley. He was working at the very start of quantum theory, and exchanged letters with Planck among others. Fully Oxbridge educated, he taught at both early on in his career and then moved all his work to a country house he’d inherited, where he told his friends and colleagues he was working on a quantum communication device allowing instant exchanges from wherever you were in the globe, perhaps even the solar system. This much is agreed and can be found in the relevant research books. But this article is the only one which interviewed a certain colleague of Buckley’s, who revealed that the Doctor claimed he’d been able to speak to the dead using his machine. That was only a few weeks before he vanished, and all his work went with him.”
The librarian now came back to earth, looked at Joe, and planned to smile, but he realised the young scientist had gone completely white. “Mr le Tissier?”
“That’s…”
“Is that true?” Dee asked, looking at the magazine.
“Well, the report is there, whether such a thing is possible or not, I don’t know.”
“Someone might have done, someone might have…” and Joe shut up when Nazir stepped on his foot.
“Does this house survive?” Pohl asked.
“I do not know.”
“I’ll look it up,” Nazir said, and he rushed for his laptop, which had been used to type notes into.
“I hadn’t realised Doctor Buckley would arouse so much interest! I must say it’s wonderful to meet young people interested in the past.”
“Right, here we go,” Nazir said. “Not only does the house still exist, but when Buckley vanished his niece took over the property, and remained there until the Doctor was declared dead, the will read out, and the whole thing given to her. She stayed there, and still stays there, but has left it like a museum. Although this uses something less polite than that.”
“They think she’s a loony recluse in a dusty house and a wedding dress,” Dee suggested.
“Exactly.”
“Does it say how many cats she’s got?”
“I get the strongest sense of seven or eight.”
The librarian wasn’t sure they the group scowled at the mention of cats, surely someone couldn’t have had a bad experience with those noble killers?
“Are you planning a visit?”
They all looked at the librarian, then at each other. It did look like they’d agreed to go without saying anything. Then Joe did spoke. “I have a feeling, a real feeling, that we should look in this house. It’s been left, he vanished. Maybe knowing what we know we can find a clue. If he did it first, he deserves to be famous.”
“An excellent idea,” the librarian said, and very softly added “what do you know?”
“We…err…”
“No, no you don’t have to tell me. My fault for asking.”
Dee leaned over to Joe. “Sometimes you let information go in order to make a contact.”
“You think now?”
“Yes, I do.”
Joe smiled and turned to the librarian. “We have something to show you.”
The demonstration took twenty minutes, and that was mostly to give every ghost who haunted their favourite old library time to speak. The one advantage of telling a well-read occult archivist is they’re already able to process the existence of a machine which could speak to ghosts, and already have a file full of questions you want to ask. And it also meant that Joe and the group left with the librarian on a retainer, rather than the other way round.
“Where exactly are we going?” Nazir asked from the back seat.
“You know where we’re going, you booked the bed and breakfast,” Dee shot back from the driving seat.
“I know, but I’ve only seen white people for the last thirty minutes, are we driving into a reserve or something?”
“Good old rural England,” Dee smirked.
“Well let’s not tell anyone about the machine, they’d probably stick us in a Wicker Man.”
“Ducking stool for you Dee,” Joe added.
“Once we’ve quite finished torturing me, does somebody know whether it’s left or straight on at this roundabout?”
“What happened to the sat nav?”
“It stopped at the last turn, currently thinks I’m doing circles.”
“You see, we’ve travelled so far even the satellite’s fucked up.”
The village they now arrived in was so chocolate box you expected a golden rabbit to come racing down the road and cover you in brown deliciousness. It seriously looked like a film set, and the foursome in the car climbed out wondering if they’d gone back in time.
“Do they even have street lights?” Dee asked. They didn’t.
What they did have was a tearoom with ‘fresh scones’ on a sign in the window, and they were soon four scones and four teas lighter. After judgement was passed – very tasty, they’d come back again – the group checked in at their bed and breakfast, and found a lovely old lady who was polite, charming and completely unable to pronounce Nazir’s name, which had all four desperately trying to stop laughing.
Then it was to their rooms. Joe went in and began to unpack, when there was a knock.
“It’s me,” Dee said, “is yours super clean?”
“Oh yes, lovely.”
“Mine too. Immaculate. Makes me not want to take a shit.”
“Be sure to explode outside.”
“Seriously considering going back for more scones and some evac
uation.”
“Ah, the sound of a lady,” came Nazir’s voice from behind them.
“I’m a lady,” Dee protested.
“Half the men I’ve fucked have been more ladylike than you.”
“Oh great, now I’m being compared to your boy sluts.”
“Are you sure Maquire isn’t expecting to find a penis on you?” Nazir began to laugh, but Dee had suffered enough.
“No he did not find a penis,” she almost shouted.
Joe and Nazir caught on a second later. The former looked sad, the latter said “Oh wow, you’ve broken your drought.”
“That I have. And I received no complaints.”
“You have a vagina, that’s usually the start and end of a guy’s requirements.”
“Maquire has standards, and I more than met them. And most definitely the other way round.”
“Good, so what’s he like in bed?”
“I’m not telling you that!”
“Ah, something to hide?”
“A lady never talks!”
“That’s a gentleman, and I’m your gay best friend. So spill, how is he with fingers, tongue, appendage.”
Dee noticed Joe was looking sullen and blushing brightly. “If we’re going to have this talk, it won’t be in a corridor of a bed and breakfast. So everyone unpack, we have business.”
If you asked a six year old child to draw a country house, he’d have created what the quartet now stood in front of, only with straight lines and less dinosaurs.
“Maybe we should just send the Professor in, I don’t think the rest of us are classy enough,” Nazir mused stood in front of the beautiful but imposing façade.
“I’m classy,” Dee protested.
“That’s not what you told me.”
“Let’s move this on,” Joe said and walked up to the door. He rang, a curtain twitched, and then it opened. The lady in front of them was very smartly dressed and clearly very old, but she gave each of them a piercing look as Joe introduced them.
“Please, come in,” she said, and clearly didn’t mean to be polite.
They went through a small hallway and went into a large, high ceiled room where everything seemed to be older than any of them save Pohl, and even then…
“I will fetch us tea, I shall return soon. Please don’t sit on any cats.”
The group looked around, and there were quite a few of the fluffy animals staring at them.
“Is this immersion therapy?” Nazir asked.
“Just don’t look at them funny,” Joe said as he settled on a sofa that was thirty per cent his, seventy per cent Lord Flufflesome.
A few minutes later a tray filled with china and teapot arrived. “I only have Garibaldi’s, I hope that’s okay,” she said, again clearly not meaning it.
“Thank you, that’s lovely,” Dee said.
“You’ve come to ask me about my uncle, Jeremiah Buckley.”
“Yes.”
“People do still come you know, every now and again, but they all ask the same thing. I’m getting tired of it quite frankly, and you might be the last.”
Joe nodded. “I assure you, we won’t ask the same questions.”
“Oh really? You don’t want to know about his work, his disappearance, or even my failed attempts to turn this into a museum?”
She looked at him, bitter and fierce, and he knew she’d have thrown him out if the memory of her uncle wasn’t so important, if there wasn’t a tiny shred of hope that after all these years something would change.
“I believe your uncle invented a machine, using quantum biology, which allowed him to talk to the dead.”
“That story has been around for decades, and people always come and ask, always cheap journalists or writers on the paranormal.” She spat the words out.
“And you’d like a scientist to ask?” Pohl said.
“Yes, a scientist, just one, to take my uncle seriously.”
“I’m a scientist,” said Joe, “and I’ve also invented such a machine.”
“Then why are you here?”
“Because if he did it first he deserves to be known.”
“Show me.”
Joe produced the machine, put it on the desk, and switched it on.
“It doesn’t work,” she said. At which point they all heard a strange rustling sound, maybe even a distant cough.
The lady looked at the machine, looked back at Joe, and held out a hand. “I’m Emily, welcome to my house.”
She questioned him about the machine for ten minutes, and then asked “why are you here?”
“Because…”
“No, what do you hope to achieve? What do you hope to find?”
Dee decided to try tact. “You have kept the house as a museum, many rooms untouched. We hoped that, with our experience of making and using this machine, we might find something no one else ever did.”
Emily put a hand to her mouth, touched it for a brief moment, and looked at the machine. There was something going on in the back of her mind, and they couldn’t tell what.
“You’re welcome to look around. I live on the ground floor, my uncle used all the upper rooms and they are preserved. But you must tell me first if you find something.”
“Of course.”
The group finished their tea and climbed the stairs, looking round a hallway covered in a layer of dust.
“What do we do?” Pohl asked.
“Take a room each, work along.”
“And what are we looking for?”
“Anything even remotely useful.”
They spent the rest of the day searching, looking for anything about disappearances, machines, speaking to the dead, and found nothing. Emily kept them fuelled with tea and cakes, and soon there was very little of the house left. This was how Joe went up another flight of stairs and found himself opening a door into a small attic room. He had to bend down because the roof sloped in triangles above him, and he nearly coughed on the dust, which was even worse up here.
The room was largely empty, with just a wardrobe in one corner, a rickety looking table and a small chair. Joe went in, sat down, and tried to imagine Buckley in here, having made a major discovery and then… and then… what did he do with it? Did he piss someone off? Did he run away? Did he open a door into another world and go through? Was there a world of scientist snatching demons he’d been unaware of?
Joe looked across the room. No demons in here. He sighed, stood and turned to leave, but remembered he’d not searched inside the wardrobe. He considered not bothering, because they were out of luck, but turned and went out of the dedication which had produced a doctorate.
Opening the doors he was surprised to find clothes still in it, and he leafed through. Ladies clothing, which was what you’d expect in a cupboard, but a little odd as Buckley had lived alone. So was this Emily’s or… what was that?
Joe pushed the clothes to one side and peered in. One section of the wall was darker than the rest, and as he touched it he felt wood. Wood? What was he really seeing here?
Oh shit.
Emily forced herself up the attic steps and went into a room she’d ignored for decades. There a trio stood, as Pohl had been the one to fetch her and was following behind.
“What is it?” Emily said.
“There’s a door behind this wardrobe,” Joe explained. “It’s got no back, and it abuts the walls and a door. So if Nazir and I do this,” and the pair pulled the wardrobe across to the right. And lo, there was a door.
“Good lord,” Emily exclaimed, moving swiftly forward and putting a hand on it. There was no handle, but as she pushed hard the door swung open. Inside was dark, but the group had collected torches from their kit in the car, and they guided Emily inside.
What they saw was dust, at first, a white coating of mountains and valleys, but soon this landscape was understood: they were in a 1930s laboratory, with equipment and notes scattered everywhere, sealed away from the world since before a world war.
�
��You’ve found it,” Emily gasped, “you found Jeremiah’s work.”
“Oh yes,” Nazir grinned. “Chalk another one up for us losers.”
“We’re making a habit of getting things right,” Dee smiled.
“Success is a habit,” Emily confirmed, “but one that needs practicing.”
“Very zen.”
Pohl brushed dust off a pile of papers. “The ink has held, and he has such a marvellous style of writing. Puts me to shame.”
“What does it say?”
“This seems to be a log of experiments. Something for you to decipher Joe.” But he was occupied elsewhere.
“Joe?”
“I think this is the machine,” Joe said, looking at one part of the lab.
“The machine?”
“Yes, a device for talking to the dead.”
“Are you sure?” Emily asked.
“No. No I’m not. But it seems to have a speaker, and there’s an old battery attached to it, so it’s something that needs power, and the only object of this type in the room. So if you’ll permit me to hook up a new battery, we can see.” Joe ran out as Emily nodded, and soon he returned carrying one scavenged from his machine. It took moments for he and Nazir to hook it up, check, stand back and grin at each other. Then Joe flicked a lever.
“You are my heir then,” came a deep voice from out of a gramophone like speaker.
“Yes,” Joe whispered.
“I’ve haunted this house for many years, wondering if anyone would find my collection, terrified that whoever did would consider me a crank. But to have it found by someone who not only believes me, but who has done it themselves… astounding.”
“Why didn’t you speak downstairs?” Emily asked angrily.
“I was in shock. I never knew what to say when the situation needed alacrity.”
“But what happened to you uncle, where did you go?”
“Ah. Foul play. I was murdered by Fazackerly.”
“Who?” Dee asked.
“Doctor Ernest Fazackerly, the only other person I knew of developing quantum communication. He came here to talk, we argued over my success, and he killed me, dumped my body in a trunk, and hid my laboratory. I would have expected someone to realise, but no one ever did. Emily here didn’t exactly clear the old place out. In fact she hardly touched it.”
