The Ghost Hunters

by Neil Spring

  ‘Trust me, please,’ he whispered.

  ‘No!’ I pulled away sharply.

  He blinked. ‘You think that I have come here to play a game with you. Is that it?’

  ‘I haven’t ruled it out!’

  ‘Tell me, Miss Grey, what is it you fear most? That I might deceive you, or that I am right?’ He was calm, serene – as if my answer didn’t matter, or he didn’t care. Or he already knew what I would say.

  The honest answer was probably ‘both’, for in agreeing to allow this man – the greatest medium in Europe – to attempt to summon my father’s spirit, I had broken my own rules. Instead of distancing myself from my emotions, the memory of my father, I had stepped forward willingly and embraced them. As much as I had struggled all these years not to think of him, I had come now to the final reckoning. Because the agony of not knowing was too much. I had to know. And I had to know, also, that I wasn’t about to be taken for a fool.

  ‘Mr Schneider,’ I exclaimed. ‘You might have convinced Harry of your talents, but you have yet to convince me.’

  ‘I’m not here to convince you, Miss Grey. I’m here to show you the truth; at your father’s command. And then, I assure you, you will believe.’

  ‘How dare you presume upon something so personal! It’s my opinion that matters the most. Not yours, not Harry’s – mine! Be under no illusions, Mr Schneider, if I find that you’re lying to us, attempting to trick either myself or my mother, then so help me I’ll make sure that you regret it!’

  ‘Are you threatening me?’ he asked in a low voice.

  ‘Consider it a warning,’ I said firmly. ‘And here’s something even Harry doesn’t know. Yesterday I had some representatives from a firm of building contractors inspect our seance room, just to triple-check there was no hidden apparatus inside that you could have planted to simulate your effects.’

  ‘You really don’t trust me, do you?’ He turned his head aside. His gaze latched on to a Ouija board discarded in the corner of the room and remained fixed on the item for some time as he drifted in contemplation. Finally, softly, he said, ‘Would you like to know something of what it’s actually like on the other side, Miss Grey? Of the nightmare the souls are forced to endure in the next world?’ To this I gave no answer, but he quickly filled the silence. ‘Forget heaven. The afterlife is a cold and dark place. The darkest. Imagine, if you can, the haziest dream you’ve ever had – that sense of personal solitude mixed with an ephemeral, half-tangible idea of who you are.’

  I tried to remember my most recent dream – or was it a nightmare? – and stopped immediately.

  Schneider continued, ‘In such a nebulous state, the fabric of life is before you, floating, falling, drifting, Miss Grey. In our dreams we are like lost souls. And on the other side, after this life, that is how it is.’ He looked up at me and I was alarmed to see that tears had formed in his eyes. ‘They are all so desperately sad, Miss Grey, so despairingly isolated – so many wandering souls only faintly aware of one another, joined by the faintest, most fragile connections of thought. Psychic energy, Miss Grey, and half-remembered states.’ He blinked. ‘That’s what we become, all of us. In the end.’

  ‘It sounds dreadful,’ I murmured.

  ‘Indeed.’ He nodded gravely. ‘It’s not life after death. It’s death after death.’

  *

  The clock struck ten, and as the last chime sounded I entered the seance room, where Price and the sitters were assembled. Mother was among them. She wore a new black dress with bunched sleeves, and her eyes were fixed in hope on the man who had promised to contact my father. I could only imagine how she must have felt: she had waited for this moment for more than thirteen years.

  I couldn’t help but feel that this was the stupidest, most reckless exercise I had ever embarked on. It’s going to be fine, I told myself, hearing my breathing deepen. But from the moment I saw Schneider’s form silhouetted in the doorway, I felt my pulse quicken. How had I allowed it to come to this?

  As the young Austrian entered the room, clad all in black, a suppressed whisper rippled through the audience. He saw me and I fixed him with a gaze of the strongest intensity I could summon, daring him to wrong me.

  ‘Come along, Mr Schneider,’ said Price. He took the medium’s right wrist in his iron grip and led him into the centre of the room.

  ‘What is this?’ asked Schneider. He had seen the transparent mesh net which I had that evening hung from the ceiling and pinned to the floor.

  ‘Just a small addition from Miss Grey,’ said Price. ‘The net prevents anyone in the audience from assisting you.’

  But Schneider seemed quite unperturbed by this addition. Indeed, as he passed me on his route to the seance chair, he caught my eye, smiled and whispered, ‘You have your father’s eyes, Miss Grey.’ The words ignited momentary hope in my heart, but it was easier for me to ignore them than to acknowledge them, so afraid was I that the seance would end in disappointment. I took my place at the back of the room, my hands trembling slightly, as Rudi planted himself on the chair and said to the room, ‘Fear not, ladies and gentlemen, I will try to show you some very good phenomena tonight.’

  With my heart in my mouth I watched carefully, taking meticulous notes, as Price placed a chair in front of Schneider and sat down facing him. On top of a four-legged wooden table, positioned just a few feet away from the two men, was a red lamp, already switched on, and next to this Father’s handkerchief, which I had brought with me. First the two men stared at one another silently and then Price said, ‘Very well, let us make a start. Rudi, I’m going to secure you now.’ He placed Schneider’s hands upon his thighs and firmly gripping his wrists so he could take his pulse, he clasped Schneider’s knees between his own.

  There were three cameras in position, all of which were set to trigger simultaneously in the event of any untoward movements.

  Price asked the room for total silence, and only after I checked that all the doors and windows were tightly shut did he ask me to turn the main lights down. I did so, head bowed and bursting with hope that Schneider, who was already putting himself into a trance-like state by chanting and rocking his body, would not fall short of our expectations. Everything counted on this.

  I caught Mother’s longing expression. She was studying everything to the last detail. I knew she was too weak to suffer any greater disappointment, and that knowledge made me determined that failure tonight simply wasn’t an option. ‘Schneider will come through for us,’ I told myself. ‘He must.’

  A swarming darkness enveloped us, leaving only the soft red glow of the lamp on the table.

  ‘Let the record show,’ Price announced to the room, ‘that our subject is going into a trance-like state that will enable him to better connect, mentally, with whatever – or whoever – wishes to communicate with us tonight.’

  Schneider’s breathing became laboured and spasmodic.

  ‘Is he all right?’ someone asked.

  ‘Silence, please!’ Price instructed through gritted teeth. ‘This is a crucial moment for the medium. No more disturbances.’

  So we waited, but there was no movement, no activity at all in fact, just the laboured breathing.

  When it came, the change was sudden.

  Schneider, whose breathing had been audible to us, became suddenly quiet. Then, quite abruptly, his body jerked backwards and he issued a penetrating gasp – one so deep it was as if he had just emerged from a lengthy spell underwater.

  ‘Rudi?’

  The medium was oblivious to Price, however, for he was gulping the air now, quicker than before, desperately. The change was alarming and clearly had an effect on Price, who was shaking his head in confusion. ‘I count perhaps between two hundred and three hundred respirations per minute,’ he said aloud. He didn’t need me to tell him that the ordinary breathing of anyone not engaged in active exercise is between fourteen and twenty-six to the minute.

  Schneider’s eyes flipped open. ‘I am … receiving a me
ssage,’ he spluttered.

  ‘Tell us!’ Mother cried, leaning forward in her chair. ‘My dear, I’m here! What is it you have to tell us?’

  ‘Aaghhh!’ And now Rudi’s body was writhing in the great wooden chair, as if a surge of energy was crackling through him. His head jerked back, his hand spasmed, and his back stiffened.

  ‘I’m struggling to hold him,’ Price shouted. ‘Sarah, help me!’

  ‘Quickly, grab his arm!’

  It was difficult to restrain him. Just like Velma Crawshaw, the first medium we had tested all those years ago, he seemed to have lost bodily control.

  From somewhere behind the net I heard Mother’s desperate voice: ‘Sarah, for God’s sake – be careful!’

  Schneider’s face seemed to be slackening and a fixating transformation was coming into his expression. I swear that his eyes actually changed colour. Price saw it too. ‘Good God!’ I exclaimed, ‘Harry – what is this?’

  The medium opened his mouth to speak, but the voice we heard next did not belong to Rudi Schneider. Nor was it the voice of my father.

  ‘Harry. Price.’ The speech sounded forced and came in short bursts. ‘You were wrong. On a most incomprehensible scale.’

  I saw Price’s face turn the colour of milk. ‘Oh God,’ he whispered. ‘I know that voice.’

  And I knew it too. ‘Harry, it sounds like …’

  He blinked and nodded once. ‘Arthur Conan Doyle.’

  Gasps from the audience. We stared at Schneider as a wave of amazement passed over us. After a pause, the voice continued, Doyle’s gruff tone unmistakable.

  ‘I … did … not … recognise the difficulty there would be in getting through this wall or the density which stands between us. I would like you to know my location: that I am… in a nebulous belt lying outside the world’s surface and having life and being because it is of the same structure and matter as the earth itself. I am in no doubt as to my geographical position.’

  ‘I am delighted that my old antagonist has returned,’ said Price carefully, though ‘delighted’ was not the word that I would have used to describe his reaction.

  ‘No reason why you should be,’ came the reply. ‘It was your fault that we disagreed.’

  ‘But we were working with the same object in view but in different ways. I am trying to arrive at the truth!’

  ‘I was always wondering what you were working for, to be perfectly candid. I always had my eye on you, and you used to watch me like a cat following a bird in a cage. It was I who kept Spiritualism going by my money.’

  ‘Well, Sir Arthur, I am as much out of pocket during the past five years as you were!’

  ‘Then, my dear sir’ – the voice was becoming faint now, fading away – ‘we may shake hands.’1

  And then Schneider was still once again.

  All Price and I could do was stare at one another.

  ‘Did that really just happen?’ I exclaimed.

  ‘Hold him,’ Price instructed. ‘It’s starting again!’

  Sure enough, Schneider’s body was becoming rigid, his breath quickening once more.

  ‘Mr Schneider, are you all right?’ I could tell that Price was trying to speak calmly, but he didn’t fool me for a moment.

  ‘His arms, Harry, they’re twitching!’

  ‘Hold him!’

  But that in itself was proving difficult, because now his body was shuddering, jerking, jolting.

  ‘Mr Schneider!’

  ‘Hold him, Sarah – don’t let go!’

  But I wanted to let go, because what was happening now was barely within my comprehension. ‘Harry,’ I cried, ‘his mouth – look at his mouth! Dear God.’

  A sort of foam, white and sticky, was bubbling out of the Austrian’s mouth, from his nose, too, and running down his chest to pool in his lap. It smelt dreadful, toxic almost. And then, remarkably – impossibly – this foam seemed to form shape, writhing as if it were itself a living organism.

  I had never seen real ectoplasm, only the regurgitated cheesecloth produced by a charlatan medium during the first day of my employment, and this was nothing like it.

  ‘Ouch!’ someone exclaimed. I turned to see that they were glaring at Mother. ‘You pinched me!’

  ‘I did not!’

  ‘Wait! Where’s my coat?’ someone asked. ‘It’s gone!’

  By now the black curtains covering the closed windows were billowing and a cool breeze could be felt blowing through the room.

  My heart was hammering. I worried that I might lose control and run from the room. Before I could seriously contemplate any such notion, however, I heard it: the purest, most unearthly melody. It seemed to seep in and out of the air, breaking through into this world as if from another, audible one moment then silent the next. I recognised it immediately.

  It was the sound of my father’s piano and the melody was a nursery rhyme from my childhood.

  I released my grip on Schneider. Stood up. Blinked my astonishment.

  ‘Look!’ Mother cried, pointing past me, behind me.

  From behind Schneider a mass of fog was issuing forth, swirling around and in on itself like a storm cloud, and within I saw what looked like hands reaching out.

  Somewhere in the room an automatic camera clicked and flashed.

  ‘But those are hands!’ I cried. ‘Hands! Belonging to … what?’

  The hands – if I can call them that – seemed to float towards us, out of the mist. Behind them, covered by the whirling fog, I thought I could just discern the form of a torso, the shape of a man, but the sight was fleeting. Was it him? ‘It’s me! Father, please, it’s me!’ I cried instinctively.

  Schneider’s mouth fell open to speak while his body remained in the great seance chair. ‘Sarah, please, get away. Please, for your own sake, get away.’ It was a different voice from before – younger, more even. Was it possible? Then came the words that would haunt me for the rest of my days: ‘Sarah, I love you. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.’

  ‘Wait, Harold!’

  The cry belonged to my mother, who was standing now, frozen like a statue, one arm outstretched, her features filled with longing as her gaze locked with the apparition behind the seated medium.

  Then an ethereal voice said firmly, but not loudly, ‘I love you, Frances. I do.’

  I couldn’t believe it. Schneider’s mouth hadn’t moved.

  ‘Wait!’ was Mother’s repeated cry.

  But the apparition seemed fainter suddenly, almost invisible, so much so that I had to wonder whether it had ever been there at all. Only the ghostly hands of the spectre remained now, fingers outstretched then fluttering as if conveying a final goodbye, but within seconds they seemed to have drifted away from Schneider and Price. We looked on with amazed silence as the hands took up the handkerchief that had been left on the seance table.

  ‘It’s him!’ my mother cried. She was staring incredulously at the handkerchief as it danced around the lamp like a moth around a candle ‘Oh, Sarah, it’s him!’

  Flashes of light ripped through the room as the phantom hands began to fade, receding into the smoke.

  ‘Wait,’ I cried. ‘Please, don’t go!’

  An icy wind pressed past me. Then was gone.

  I rushed to Mother’s side as Price sprang to his feet, switching on the main light. He flew across the room to one of his cameras, then to another. Finally, he stopped before the last with a look of astonishment on his face.

  My eyes met his. ‘Harry?’

  ‘We have it, Sarah!’ he cried triumphantly, holding up a photographic plate. ‘At last, we have it. Direct and undeniable proof of a world beyond!’

  *

  How relieved I was that Schneider hadn’t let us down. That night I slept peacefully for the first time in years. My thoughts were quiet and, to my relief, so was the darkness. No faint scuffling or tapping scratching sounds came from the wall in my bedroom. No disturbing dreams either. The visions of the Rectory at Borley and its spectral nun that ha
d plagued me had vanished, and the anxiety I had suffered for all the years I had worked at the Laboratory dispersed. We had taken a gamble and we had come through.

  As our success sank in, I felt some forgiveness towards Price. Our work did have purpose after all. And when he released the evidence from our seance to the world – as I knew he would – who could say where our work would lead us?

  But I was eager to find out more about the phenomena Schneider had produced. There were so many questions I had to ask him, and I wanted to see more; for although I had heard music I associated with Father, I had not seen his face or touched his hand. With this thought in mind, I arrived the next morning at the Laboratory determinded to ask Schneider to take part in one final seance, to be performed exclusively for Mother and me in the privacy of our home. I doubted Price would object to the idea, but thought it better to check with him anyway, just in case. And I would have done just that, but from the moment I entered his study and saw him hunched over his desk, his face grim and his brow heavy, I knew something was wrong.

  ‘Harry, what is it?’

  The saturnine figure who was my employer, friend, mentor and object of all my desires looked at me sadly from across the room. In his hand he held a magnifying glass, which he carefully laid down on the surface of his desk. ‘Ah, Sarah …’ he said awkwardly, ‘there you are.’

  I felt my heart tumble. ‘What … what’s wrong?’

  ‘I’m afraid,’ he said slowly, ‘that I have some upsetting news.’ He looked down at a series of photographs he had spread out over his desk. ‘Come and sit here, beside me.’

  I did so, hesitantly. His face was heavy with tiredness, his cologne too strong.

  ‘This morning I developed the plates automatically exposed last night during the seance.’

  ‘Yes …’

  ‘And I received something of a shock. One of the cameras in the electrical circuit failed to make instantaneous contact with one of its two Vaku-Blitz bulbs.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘This caused the bulbs to fire one after the other, in quick succession, thus taking two superimposed and consecutive photographs on the same plate.’