by Robert Wilde
“Uncle, I… I… we must stop Fazackerly!”
“No need to do that, he was older than I, he’ll be long gone. But there’s something I never understood. Why isn’t he famous? Why aren’t Fazackerly machines allowing communication with the dead all over?”
“A good question,” Nazir said, and pulled out his phone.
“What is that?”
“I can access a world-wide collection of all human knowledge.”
“On that little box?”
“Yes.”
“He mostly uses it for pornography and cat pics,” Dee explained. Nazir ignored her.
“Don’t lean on that” the voice barked.
“Sorry, sorry,” Pohl said.
“Uncle, be polite, she’s more qualified than you.”
“Pardon?”
“Professor Pohl of Cambridge University.”
“Well, I… I… a pleasure to meet you. I regret I didn’t live long enough to acquire a chair.”
“With your discoveries you’d surely have been made a Lord.”
“That would have been an adventure. But what entry does that box have on Fazackerly?”
“Well here’s the interesting thing. There is very little on Doctor Ernest Fazackerly, very little indeed. No wiki page…”
“What does that mean?”
“It means he’s really fucking obscure…”
“There are ladies present.”
“…almost nothing.”
“Almost?”
“Well, his laboratory still survives. His descendants still own it, and they’ve turned it into a small museum.”
“I see.”
“Don’t get jealous, it’s a tiny museum, more a labour of love, they get about three visitors a month. It doesn’t say what happened to Fazackerly, just hints at a tragedy of some description.”
“I see…a tragedy. I’m not sure how I feel.”
“Well he killed you, you should hope he got raped to death by polar bears who ate his still shuddering corpse.”
“I see you’re no lady” the voice judged Dee.
“Don’t you fucking start or I’ll get an exorcist in.”
“Hmmmm….”
“That sounds ominous,” Pohl said.
“If there is some sort of museum, perhaps you could visit and find out exactly what happened to old Fazackerly.”
“I must say uncle, you seem remarkably well disposed considering you were murdered.”
“A lot of time has passed. I have… become used to it. I am more interested in what happened, and there is no chance of revenge.”
“We can visit,” Joe said, “it will be a pleasure.”
Pohl laughed and everyone looked at her. “I think I’ve the perfect excuse, and one which you will all like.”
“Good. But first I’m sure Joe would like a long discussion with me.”
“Oh yes!”
“Good. Emily, would you be so kind as to make everyone an evening meal, and Joe and I can talk while you others, err…”
“We can help Emily,” Dee suggested.
“It is feeding time for my children.” It took a while before they realised she meant the cats, and then they looked nervous. “What’s wrong with cats?”
“Oh Emily, have we got some stories to tell you.”
The group had grown to expect their data gathering to include a little light breaking and entering, so to ring up the Fazackerly family and invite themselves along for a little chat was a little unusual. Perhaps it shouldn’t be, but Pohl had a plan, and when she spoke to Susan Fazackerly and pitched her idea it all seemed to work. The Fazackerly house was in the same county, there was no need to change bed and breakfast, and they could make a day trip of it. Perfect, and Emily insisted on providing a full packed lunch for them.
With a hamper containing tongue sandwiches and no resolve to eat them, Dee drew her car up outside the Fazackerly residence. It was similar to Buckley's, if the former had suffered years of neglect because of a family’s parlous financial situation, and Pohl became rather sorry for them. It wasn’t their fault their grandfather had murdered a man and left them with a house they loved but couldn’t afford.
Pohl marched up to the door, knocked, and put on her best smile. The man who opened it looked like he hadn’t grinned in years.
“I’m Professor Pohl,” she said, “we spoke on the phone.”
“Oh yes, professor, so pleased to see you,” and he looked desperate. “And these are?”
Pohl turned, and offered “my research assistants.”
“Three of them? Is that normal?”
“I am thorough.”
“Of course, of course. Please, come in.”
They entered a hallway, and were taken into a lounge, and found everything of value had been sold apart from a small TV.
“Can I just check I have this right,” he said, not accusingly, but out of hope, “you want to write an article, a proper academic piece, about the rivalry between my grandfather Ernest Fazackerly, and a man called Jeremiah Buckley.”
“Yes,” and she said it honestly, because that’s exactly what she was going to do. Albeit with the murder toned down a lot. Possibly entirely. “I need to look at the papers in your archive to do so.”
“Of course, of course, I have removed my grandfather’s diaries for you to look at. But, err, do you, err… do you think it’ll be a hit?”
“A hit?”
“He means will people start visiting the museum?” Dee said, forgetting her role as smiling and sweet research assistant.
“Oh yes,” and Pohl was suddenly overwhelmed by the urge to make these two men scientific heroes involved in a battle and not a recluse murdered by a rival. She closed her eyes, regained her scholarly faculties, and said again “I can’t comment on the museum, or on what I’ll find.”
“Understood. I, err, better find you a bigger room, if all four of you want to go in.”
Dee resumed smiling. Nazir waved a notebook. Joe, with his earpiece in, couldn’t hear anything resembling a human ghost. Just a dog which wasn’t going to shut up until something that spoke dog explained just what the fuck was going on.
Mr Fazackerly swiftly arranged extra seating in the old library, which was old in the sense it had used to be a library before all the books had been sold off to pay for repairs and was now a series of sad shelves in search of a use. A round of tea was served, although the budget didn’t stretch to biscuits, not even digestives, and the group were given their target: a large cardboard box. Inside they found the diaries: ten of them, each one covering a year, hardback volumes filled with a tiny but neat handwriting.
“I just love touching items like these,” Pohl enthused, flicking through to take everything in.
“They are powerful,” Dee said, as looked at another one. But they had a job to do, and so the diaries were divvied up. Dee took the dairy for the year Buckley was murdered, Joe the year after, Nazir the year after that, and Pohl the final diary, the year Fazackerly, well, what did happen to him?
They were expecting a need to read between the lines as they sped read through each volume, but were surprised to see how candid and open the man had been. Dee observed that Fazackerly had been in a race with Buckley to create a quantum device for talking to the dead, even though the former hadn’t been trying to do that but found himself on the path by accident, and there was a growing unease in Fazackerly’s writing that his work was about to be wasted as Buckley would get there first. And an anger at the accident. When these hints turned into a rumour the rival had really made a breakthrough something seemed to snap in Fazackerly, and he went to confront Buckley. And there, written neatly in the book, Fazackerly explained how he’d lost his temper, strangled Buckley, and dumped the body, then covered up a lab he didn’t understand.
The rest of the diaries shared a common theme: a man who knew you could communicate with the dead because it had been done, but a man unable to find the breakthrough himself. As time passed and he fai
led and failed again he began to drink, get depressed, and the debts piled up around him. He devoted himself to one task, spirit communication, and failed utterly in achieving it even though it was possible. He wasn’t bringing money in, the house was draining him, the family were pushing him, and then it became too much.
The diaries now grew haunted by the idea of suicide, of giving up, of moving on, of taking poison and going to communicate with the spirits in the only way he could. This ideation grew across the final year of his life until his diary was filled with morbid thoughts and little of life got through. And then, on the final entry, Fazackerly wrote a suicide note and explained how he’d do it and, in a final sentence, he explained he’d taken the poison and was waiting for it to work.
“They found his body that evening, and he was buried within a few days. But there was no one to continue his work, and whenever someone did look the notes and machines over they concluded he was mad as well as suicidal and left it alone. Now it’s all on display at the Fazackerly house and no one comes to see.”
The quartet had made notes from the diaries, met back up with Mr. Fazackerly, and said they’d found much of what they needed, but arranged a time for Pohl to return and begin a more in depth search of the archive. She was determined to produce the article, but all felt returning to Jeremiah and informing him was more urgent.
This was how the quartet and Emily were sat in the attic, six cups of tea served and one cooling where Buckley couldn’t touch it. Emily had made a point of serving her uncle a meal and talking with him on the machine.
“So we were both wasted lives,” the ghost mused.
“I think I understand,” Pohl commented.
“I was cut short, killed by Fazackerly, but he was cut short too, killed by his own failure. Neither of us lived to tell of our machines, all our work is lost. It’s hard to feel any anger at him, fate punished him well enough.”
“A tragedy,” Emily added.
“A double tragedy,” the voice replied. “What will you do now?”
“I’ll write,” Pohl said, “I just have to decide how to handle the murder. And there is still the question of getting you buried.”
“I think I’m happy as I am for the moment. But what about you Joe?”
“Me?”
“Yes, what will you do? The fame that I never had is surely yours.”
“Fame?”
“Yes,” Dee smiled at him, “fame, fortune, an endless supply of plaint goth girls, all yours when you unveil the machine.”
“I…I don’t want any of that. I like our group, doing good things, I don’t want newspaper or television or…” he stopped, because the goth girls were certainly tempting.
“I’ve been informed that you’ve had brushes with death yourself, all of you, and have only really been saved from my fate by luck.”
Nazir raised an eyebrow. Luck was surely overstating it.
“But we have done so much good,” Joe defended.
“I understand, but my point… be careful, if you must risk your life don’t die without taking steps to ensure the machine lives on. Don’t let this knowledge be lost to the world once more. And for goodness sake, give the machine a name.”
Joe nodded. “It has to be the Scott Machine after the man who invented it.”
“My brother,” Pohl added proudly.
“Excellent, a start at least, the Scott Machine.”
“Doctor Buckley, my article will make sure you and Doctor Fazackerly live on.”
“I fear it is too late for my own fame. Tell my story, but allow Joe and Pohl’s sibling to claim the fame of invention. Now, Emily would like you to stay for tea.”
“I’ve cooked some special scones for you all.”
“We can be persuaded.”
Ten: Fell In Love With A Girl
“So, it turns out to Doe a Deer is to fuck it.”
Dee groaned at Nazir’s comment, and replied “have you been reading Urban Dictionary again or do we need to call the RSPCA?”
“Who are they?”
“They’re like the police, but for animals.”
“I once fucked a bloke so hairy he might have been a werewolf, would that count?”
“Eww, and no.”
Dee caught sight of Pohl’s face from the reflection on the windshield, and there was a definite raised eyebrow, so Dee pulled her phone out and composed a hurried text. She sat in the back of the car, next to Nazir, Joe was driving and Pohl was passenger.
Nazir’s phone beeped and he found a message… from Dee.
“I’m not sure joking about sex is going to cheer Joe up.”
Nazir texted back, and a silent conversation ensued. “No, it probably isn’t, unless you offer to suck him off.”
“I’d break the poor boy.”
“You and me both. But we’re trying to cheer him up here, surely a good bit of banter will help?”
“If us teasing each other could achieve that it would have worked by now.”
Nazir paused, looked over at Joe’s face in the wing mirror, and went back to his phone.
“You’re sure he’s getting depressed and isn’t just having a shit week?”
“Yes. He’s been miserable ever since he and I had a talk and I shut the door on him.” New message. “I’m worried, I really am, he seems to have sunk into a trough, and we need to bring him out of it.”
“I appreciate all that, but is going hunting for a missing schoolgirl really the most cheerful thing?”
“It’s a distraction.”
“A zoo is a distraction, we could have gone to see Pandas.”
“Mmm, good idea. But it’s a chance to do good, to remind him he has a role.”
“I think he just wants a roll with you.”
“Ha fucking ha.”
“Tell you what, if this doesn’t work, let’s take him out sharking.”
“I have a boyfriend thank you.”
“It’s officially boyfriend now?”
“Yes. He’s left some slippers at my flat.”
“How terribly middle class.”
“We can’t all be illegal immigrants.”
“What do you think the Anglo-Saxons were?”
“Err, red hair, Celtic!”
“Alright, but you don’t have to pull. We just need to give Joe some tips.”
“I want to cheer him up, not rebuild him.”
“We could hire a hooker.”
“I think my plan is more likely.”
“You do realise that if looking for a probably dead kid cheers Joe up it makes all of us really sick fucking people?”
“Excuse me while I rofl.”
“My spell check recognised fucking.”
“Well that figures.”
“Do you think everyone else is getting suspicious?”
“Probably thinks you’re talking to Maquire and me to a boy toy.”
“Perfect cover. Which reminds me, I do have to text him.”
“Let’s ask his opinion on this novel therapy shall we?”
“Go blow a goat.”
“On the plus side, it’s not raining,” Nazir said as they crested a hill.
“I’d take some rain about now,” Dee said, pulling her sun hat down further on her head and hoping the factor fifty she’d almost put on with a trowel was stopping her from burning.
The English countryside stretched out ahead of them, dropping then rising, with a road cutting across ahead of them and woodland behind. It would have been idyllic if it wasn’t for the structure to the right. Decaying bricks were covered by ivy, the fence was overgrown with weeds, wooden panels covered some windows but others were smashed apart. It was a stain on the landscape, and a perfect place for someone to hide or get injured.
“What is it?” Joe asked.
Dee looked at her phone. “An old asylum.”
“Spooooky” Nazir tried.
“Maybe at night,” Joe said as they turned to walk towards it. He had the machine in a rucksack, and the
earpiece in so he could leave it constantly open for ghosts, and every so often he’d quietly asked “have you see a girl pass this way?” So far things were going well, and two ghosts had pointed the group in the right direction. Hopes were high as they found a way into the asylum’s grounds.
In theory the lower windows and doors had been boarded up, but someone before them had wrenched the wood off a door and the group were able to get inside, using their torches to light the way. They found a building that loved long corridors, rooms with threatening locks on the outside, piles of rubbish, the remains of small fires and animals, and a basic mess. What they did not find as they went room to room was a blonde girl of five foot height.
Joe was the first up the steps to the second floor, and he heard a voice in his ear “who are you?” It was quiet;, full of intrigue and surprise.
“I’m Joe,” he said, “who are you?”
“I’m Polly. I…I suppose you know what I am.”
“A ghost.”
“Yes,” she sounded ever so sad, “a ghost. And you can talk to me? How?”
“I have a machine in this bag I helped invent.”
“Ah, clever!” The spirit seemed proud.
By now the other three had arrived. “Got one?” Nazir asked.
“A young lady. Were you kept here?”
“Yes and no,” Polly replied.
“How do you mean?”
“I was the warden’s daughter. So I wasn’t considered sick, but I was forced to live here.”
“But no one locked you away.”
“From the hands of the staff? Oh yes. Why are you here?”
“We’re looking for a missing girl. Five foot, blonde hair, possibly wearing uniform.”
“There was someone like that earlier today. Went out the main gate and left down the road.”
“Thank you!” Joe said.
“But you’ve got to promise me something?”
“Yes?”
“You’ll come back and speak to me. Just you, back here.”
“It’s an hour’s drive.”
“So?”
He smiled. “Okay, okay.”
