Curse of Weyrmouth

by David Longhorn

  “Good news, I'm guessing?” asked the barmaid, taking Erin’s card.

  “Oh yeah,” Erin said. “The job kind of found me, after all. God alone knows why.”

  “Everything happens for a reason,” said the girl, before turning to another customer.

  Yeah, thought Erin, taking a long gulp of cold beer. In this case, it might be some kind of embolism in Louise's brain. But hey, I'll take it.

  Half an hour later, she had to admit that she was lost. Erin was just drunk enough to be confused and miserable, just sober enough to feel the cold and damp. Finding her way back to the Premier Inn through the winding, poorly-lit streets of central Weyrmouth was trickier than she had expected. The drizzle had turned to a persistent, freezing rain just as she left the Seven Stars. She looked up at street signs for familiar names, but found none.

  Park Lane – Cedar Street – Kayll Road.

  Erin paused, did a double take. Had she found a variant spelling of her own surname? If so, what did it prove?

  Local roots? Just coincidence?

  The cold and damp drove speculation from her mind. She looked around for a cab, saw nothing but a few ordinary cars hissing by. There were no pedestrians around to ask for directions.

  Who would be out on a night like this? Ducks. Penguins. Walruses. Walri?

  Then she saw someone standing under a street lamp. From the hooded figure's attitude, it seemed to be staring across the street at her. It was not tall or bulky, and Erin reasoned that it might be a woman.

  But would a woman be out alone at night, just standing around?

  A trickle of freezing rain reached the small of her back, headed towards her butt.

  “Hey!” she called, half-sprinting towards the stranger. “Can you tell me how to get to the Premier Inn? I lost my way!”

  “We have all lost our way,” said the stranger. The voice was that of a young man.

  “Er, right,” she said, unsure of her position. “Can you tell me the way to the Premier Inn?”

  There was no reply, but Erin got the sense of being scrutinized intensely by the man inside the brown hood.

  Maybe he's got mental problems?

  “Well, if you don't know I guess I'll just–”

  A hand shot out and took her wrist. Erin, standing a good four inches taller than the stranger, jerked her arm out of his grasp. His fingers were cold and bony.

  “No you don't, pal!”

  “You must go!” he said, pleadingly. “If you stay it will only go badly for you.”

  He took a step forward, into the pool of light cast by the streetlamp. She could make out uneven teeth, a tapered jaw. The jaw seemed to be gleaming.

  From the damp, it must be. Can't be bone.

  Erin flinched, took a step back, and a car horn blared.

  “Hey, you'll get yourself killed!” said Abdul. Then anger gave way to concern. “You need a lift, lady? This is no time to be wandering around on your own.”

  Thanking him, Erin scampered around the Station Taxi to get into the front. During the few moments she had lost sight of the stranger, he had vanished into the gloom.

  “Sorry I startled you,” she said as she climbed in beside Abdul. “That guy was weird.”

  “What guy?” asked the cab driver, checking his mirrors. “Didn't see no guy. Gotta be careful round here, some funny people out and about. Buckle up. I assume we're going back to your hotel? Hey, how'd that interview go, anyways?”

  “Oh Christ, I need to find somewhere to live around here!” said Erin. “Got any suggestions?”

  Abdul smiled.

  “If you need somewhere cheap while you look around for a permanent place, yeah, I got a suggestion.”

  ***

  “I have arranged it,” said Louise Tarrant. “Though I find this meddling very objectionable.”

  She was holding her office phone a few inches away from her face as if fearing infection.

  “Your protest is noted, Louise,” replied Roker, with a hint of sarcasm. “I trust there will be no further complications?”

  “Why do you need her?” demanded Louise. “She was one of three possibilities, and by no means the strongest. Normally one promotes the internal candidate–”

  “That is not your concern,” barked Roker voice from the speaker. “She needs to be here for the time being. Make sure that you familiarize her with all the necessary information. Point her at the oldest material, the strangest – things that don't quite fit.”

  “What on earth do you mean by that?” said Louise.

  “You'll figure something out,” said Roker, and hung up before the museum director could get the last word.

  Louise slammed the receiver down and glared at the phone. She resented being given orders, but Roker was on the committee that regulated her funding. She could not afford to alienate any of its members. His interference was utterly unethical, of course. But it was not the first time this kind of thing had happened.

  Why are they so obsessed with controlling this town's history – or rather, the people's knowledge of it?

  Louise thought of Orwell's 1984, the endless falsification of records to suit the current party line. A quote sprang to mind. 'The object of power is power.'

  No, it's not that. Roker, Park and the others don't enjoy being in control. They're fire-fighting, scared that something will come to light.

  Shrugging in irritation, she put on her coat and checked her purse. Then she set about locking up the museum. Louise often worked late and had allowed the janitor to leave at nine. The man was jumpy after dark, anyway, always hanging around her office, silently willing her to go. It got on her nerves.

  Louise carried out her usual patrol, checking doors and windows, and ended up as usual on the upper floor. It was ill-lit and never seemed to be quite clean, despite the team's best efforts. The floor housed exhibits that did not really fit elsewhere – military uniforms, Stone Age tools, and a handful of model ships in glass cases. The latter were a legacy of Weyrmouth's long-dead shipbuilding industry. One case held not only a ship model, but also an elaborate diorama showing the vessel running aground just outside the harbor mouth. A lighthouse on the cliffs above the dramatic scene flickered, the small bulb inside refusing to pulse in rhythm.

  Must get someone to look at that, Louise thought wearily.

  It was one of a dozen jobs she kept putting off, knowing that the cost of every repair – however small – would count against her. There was old wiring, possible asbestos in the loft, rising damp, and much else besides. Louise did not appreciate the irony of a building dedicated to the past being so out of date.

  “Time to go to bed, history,” she said, turning off the tiny lighthouse. “Tomorrow is another day.”

  Someone laughed in the shadows behind her.

  Louise spun round, scanning the dark spaces between the tall display cases. No sign of movement.

  “Hello?”

  There was no response.

  Could be mice, she thought as she headed for the stairs. Just what we need, vermin nibbling the exhibits.

  But the explanation did not seem convincing.

  ***

  “If I might trouble you, madam?” said Park.

  If he had a hat to raise, he'd be raising it, thought Diane Maspero.

  “Mister Park,” she said. “As you can imagine I'm a bit upset at the moment, so …”

  “Your father's death came as a terrible shock to all his friends,” said Park.

  They were talking in the corridor outside the hospital morgue where Diane had just identified her father's body. Park had tracked down the academic's daughter easily enough, but now faced a much trickier task.

  “I didn't know you were friends, as such,” she said, sniffling and dabbing at her red nose with paper tissue. “I thought you just met at the society now and again.”

  “I admired your father's scholarship, it is true,” conceded Park, offering her a monogrammed silk handkerchief. “But I also liked him as a person. An am
iable scholar and a true gentleman.”

  “Thank you,” said Diane, and blew her nose loudly before handing Park's handkerchief back. “If there's a memorial service I'm sure you'd be welcome to say a few words. Now if you'll excuse me–”

  “I did wonder,” said Park, interposing himself between Diane and the only exit, “if I might help organize a little tribute to his scholarship. Perhaps by publishing a small booklet of his papers to the Antiquarian Society?”

  “Yes, fine, but this isn't really–”

  “I understand he was about to present a paper this evening, you see,” Park continued, still blocking her way. “That might be the ideal first item in the booklet. Assuming it is suitable, of course.”

  “A nice idea, I'm touched,” said Diane sharply, looking up at Park with red-rimmed eyes. “But you didn't have to come here to ask me. The society is quite welcome to all of dad's contributions. He was never selfish about his achievements, wanted knowledge to be shared.”

  Yes, thought Park, that was the problem.

  “If there is anything I can do, as Society President, to help with the arrangements,” he went on, “don't hesitate to contact me.”

  “Yes, thanks again, now if I can just–” Diane Maspero took a step closer to Park, emphatically entering his personal space. He felt slightly ashamed of trying to bully her.

  “Of course,” he said, letting her pass and falling into step beside her. “To be honest, I was a little worried about the direction his work had taken of late.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Diane, distractedly. “He loved local history, worked on it for free. It wasn't in his college remit at all.”

  “I know,” said Park soothingly, “but lately he had become a mite obsessed with the cathedral. Or rather, folklore related to it. Perhaps to the detriment of his reputation.”

  Diane stopped, looked up at him sharply.

  “You're saying he was going gaga?” she snapped. “He could be vague about everyday stuff but he was sharp as a tack on professional matters!”

  Park raised his hands in a placatory gesture.

  “I'm sure that's true,” he said, “but the title of the last piece he wrote suggests he was venturing into somewhat questionable territory. Of course, I haven't actually read the piece.”

  “So you want to read it? Is that what this palaver is about?” Diane demanded.

  Park, duly chastened, nodded.

  “Why?” she asked. “It's not dad's posthumous reputation you're worried about it, is it? It's something else?”

  Park shook his head but said nothing.

  “What do you and those others get up to at the Masonic Hall?” asked Diane. “Dad said you were harmless eccentrics, but now he's dead and you're fixated on his research. Why?”

  “Merely out of concern,” began Park, but before he could repeat his lie, Diane Maspero swung a chunky arm and slapped him hard across the face.

  “Sod you and your lies,” she said. “I'll send the paper to all the members of the society so that they can decide for themselves just how gaga my father was!”

  “Is everything all right?” said a woman's voice. “Should I call security?”

  Park looked round. A nurse was standing, unsure whether to intervene, a few yards away. Diane Maspero took advantage of the distraction to rush off and Park, after a moment's hesitation, decided not to follow her.

  “Nothing to worry about, my dear,” he told the nurse, trying to give her a winning smile. “She was just a little over-wrought. I'm sure she'll be fine.”

  ***

  Diane Maspero made it through the rain to her Peugeot before the real tears came, a great flood of grief that convulsed her for ten minutes or more. She took another quarter hour to recover and then drove home carefully through the late evening traffic. She cursed herself for being out of town when her father had had his accident.

  He wouldn't have cycled to work in the rain if I'd been there to drive him.

  “Daddy,” she said to the neon-lit city, “I'm sorry.”

  And yet according to the police officer – it had just been a freak accident. According to the officer, a postmortem might find evidence of a seizure or some other cause for her father's odd behavior. And yet, last month he had had a full medical for life insurance, and passed with flying colors.

  Diane tried not to think of the remains she had just identified. Instead, she focused on the father she still loved, and who she was convinced loved her.

  “Just leave it, poppet.”

  Diane almost drove through a red light, skidded to a halt on the rain-slick tarmac. The voice had been that of her father, whispering urgently. She twisted around to look into the back seat, half-expecting him to be there. For a moment, she saw his face, its expression sad and anxious. Then the glow from the windows of a passing bus washed away the face.

  Because it was never there, she told herself. Isn't there a word for seeing faces in natural patterns? Elvis in a muffin, Jesus is a cloud? Dad would know.

  Yet how could the voice have been an illusion?

  “Because I was thinking of you, daddy,” she said firmly, putting the Peugeot in gear as the lights changed.

  A few minutes later, Diane let herself into the apartment she had shared with her father since he had been widowed three years ago. All his books and journals were still scattered on every available surface. Now she could finally tidy up and the thought appalled her.

  The sight of a periodical dedicated to church history reminded her of Park's weird, annoying intervention at the hospital. She went into her father's study and turned on his laptop. Suddenly submitting her father's last ever paper to the Antiquarian Society had become a sacred duty, an act of closure. She knew his password, of course, and was soon searching folders for the file.

  “No! Leave it, poppet!”

  Glancing around in her father's chair, Diane saw his face for a brief moment before it once again vanished, replaced by an old movie poster.

  “Cracking up. Hysterical female, mad with grief,” she told herself, trying to laugh. “Right, you must be the one.”

  Diane opened the most recent file in a folder marked WeyrAntSoc. Unfamiliar words and phrases swam before her eyes. She had never really understood the finer points of her father's work, but had done her best when he wanted to talk about his findings. This paper seemed especially esoteric, with its talk of the 'mystical quincunx' and its relationship to the number seven.

  Diane frowned, re-read a paragraph. The quincunx was a symmetrical pattern of five points arranged in a cross. The example her father gave was the spots on a dice. So how could five relate to seven? And what had he meant by 'consideration of an extra dimension'? There seemed to be precious little about the cathedral at all.

  Shaking her head, Diane closed the file and opened her father's email account. She attached the document file and then started typing a short message to the society members.

  “You must not tell.”

  This time the voice was unfamiliar, high-pitched, yet somehow menacing. It hissed in her ear, and she felt cold breath on her flesh. A hand reached over hers and pushed the power button, blanking the screen. Reflected in the black rectangle she saw her own face, and beside it another that was smaller and deathly pale. The strange face's mouth and eyes were featureless blurs of darkness. As she watched, paralyzed in terror, other white faces appeared.

  Small bony hands began to clutch at her, sharp nails cutting her flesh through her clothes. Diane Maspero leaped out of the swivel chair, heart pumping, desperate to flee. But between her and the half-open study door were seven creatures of nightmare.

  ***

  John Carr hated last-minute call outs that came at the end of shift, spoiling his plans for the evening. He hated messy suicides even more. When he arrived at Diane Maspero's apartment block, the woman's body was already being loaded into an ambulance. There was a patch on the pavement, darker than the rain-wet concrete slabs. Carr did not look at the patch too closely, but gaze
d up at the broken third-floor window.

  Busy day the morgue, Carr thought. What a bloody awful thing to happen.

  “Okay,” he said to Jen Deighton. “Your turn to go up to the scene, I'll liaise down here.”

  The female detective made a face. She hated the boring routine of crime scene work, preferred to talk to people and engage in amateur psychology. But she did not argue. Deighton, Carr knew, would not want to linger near the dark patch.

  The usual crowd of gawkers was being held back by a couple of uniforms and two Community Support Officers. Carr approached one of the CSOs and showed his ID.

  “Any eyewitnesses?” he asked.

  The CSO shook her head.

  “Lots of people heard the window break,” she said, “but nobody saw her fall.”

  Carr nodded.

  “The window – you don't happen to know if it's the sort that can't be opened?”

  The CSO frowned, looked up.

  “I don't think so,” she said. “I mean, these are old buildings, converted Victorian town houses. And look, there.”

  Following the woman's finger, Carr saw a half-open sash window on the second floor.

  “So why not open it before jumping?” he asked.

  Another shrug from the CSO.

  “If you're going to kill yourself, do you worry about a few splinters?”

  “Fair point,” conceded Carr. “Okay, I'll be back in a minute to check on statements.”

  He walked quickly into the building and got to the apartment to find Deighton standing in the corridor talking to a neighbor.

  “No,” the old lady was saying, “I didn't see her come back but I heard her shouting, then the crash. Terrible thing, that poor man! And now this. She must have been distraught.”

  “Yes, thank you. We'll be in touch about making a formal statement,” said Deighton.

  The detectives entered the Masperos’ apartment. Carr led the way, flicking on all the lights.

  “Let's take a good look, work it all out. I admit it seems clear cut but–”

  Deighton rolled her eyes.