The Stolen Ghosts

by Icy Sedgwick

  “It’s like that movie, Monsters, Inc. The monsters have to scare kids because human screams are a power source in their world,” said Sarah.

  Fowlis tutted. Apparently HQ knew about computers, but was yet to discover cinema.

  “We do work to suppress stories of occasions such as this, when a mortal discovers the truth. I’m sure that you can understand that the continued success of our enterprise rests upon humans never knowing that they are being haunted in an organised way. Once they know that, they may never feel fear again, and thus the Veil would disintegrate.”

  “Isn’t there another way to keep it in one piece?”

  “That is not for me to know. The Managing Director is no doubt working on alternative solutions, but for now, the goal is to maintain the Veil. Our system, balancing ghosts, assistants and anchors, has been working well for a very long time.”

  “Do you have an assistant?” Sarah tried to imagine the application process to become an assistant.

  “I do indeed. A young man named Handle. He is most capable. We all have them. The assistants are the only ones with the power to recall their masters, but they can only do so with the authority of a higher ghost,” replied Fowlis. “Now, here is where the problem at HQ comes in. Someone is recalling ghosts, and it seems that the ghosts, the anchors and the assistants are all going missing. No one can trace any of them, and naturally the council are somewhat perturbed by this.”

  Sarah sat back in bed, struggling to absorb all she’d been told. That was a lot to take in, and Sarah couldn’t help but feel that it sounded like the plot of a particularly far-fetched film.

  “How does this affect you?” she asked.

  “Right now, it doesn’t. I cannot be recalled for reasons I have previously explained, and while I cannot be recalled, my assistant is making enquiries of his own. He will report back to me at the first available opportunity with his findings, and we shall proceed from there. However, the highest personage of all has requested my presence, so as you see, I need to complete this assignment and return to HQ as soon as I possibly can.”

  “How long has all this been going on?” asked Sarah.

  “It only started just after I came down here, but before that confuses you, I might point out that time moves differently in our realm, since Time has no real jurisdiction over us. The Managing Director ensures that her brother stays firmly out of our world,” replied Fowlis.

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “Take me to your parents. It is time that we discussed just how intelligent their daughter is.”

  Sarah smiled and her cheeks burned. She pulled her sleeve around her hand and picked up the pendant. Dropping it into her pyjama pocket, she took a dressing gown off the peg behind her door and headed downstairs.

  Chapter 20

  Sarah pushed open the door and Dr McKenzie looked up from the computer. He pushed his glasses back up his nose and gestured for her to sit down. She pulled a battered chair out from under the desk, smoothed the duct tape covering the torn seat and sat down. He softened as he looked at his daughter. She chewed her lip and cracked her knuckles.

  “Did you have a nightmare? Has all this talk of ghosts been bothering you?” he asked.

  “No, Dad. It’s nothing like that. Dad…he wants to talk to you.”

  Without warning, Sarah leaned over and pressed the pendant into his palm.

  “My God! It feels like ice!”

  “I told you it did. Can you see him?” asked Sarah.

  “Yes. He’s standing right beside you. I can see through him!”

  Her father cocked his head on one side and listened. Fowlis must be introducing himself. A flicker of envy rippled through Sarah.

  “Sarah, he wants you to touch the pendant too so you can see him,” said Dr McKenzie.

  Her father put the pendant on his desk, and rested his fingertips on one side. Sarah leaned over and did the same. Fowlis strode around to stand in front of them.

  “Sarah, I’ve asked your father to share my anchor with you so that you may both see and hear me,” he said.

  “Why can’t I hear you like I did upstairs?”

  “Because the anchor makes things awkward. Anyway, you can both see me now.”

  “Why are you haunting us?” asked Dr McKenzie.

  “Why must everyone always seek a reason? Why can mortals never accept that there are larger forces at work that are not beholden to yourselves?” replied Fowlis.

  “I’m a scientist. It’s my job to question these things.”

  Fowlis narrowed his eyes and looked him up and down.

  “I’m sorry. What exactly do you need from me?” Dr McKenzie spread his hands wide.

  Sarah fiddled with her dragon ring with her thumb—her father’s social interactions with the living were often fraught with faux pas, and she wouldn’t be at all surprised if he made even bigger mistakes with the dead.

  “It is not so much a question of what I require from you, but more a question of what we can do for each other. As the situation stands, I must return to HQ as quickly as possible, and to do so, your daughter needs to deposit my anchor in its given location. However, as a result of various things which I have taken into consideration, I am prepared to perform a level-7 haunting before an audience.”

  Fowlis straightened his hat and pulled himself up to his full height. Sarah guessed he must stand at around six feet tall.

  “I recommend that you issue a public statement to the effect that you did not know the house to be haunted upon acquisition, but you have now experienced the strange phenomena for yourselves. You therefore invite members of the media to spend an evening in the house in order to experience the strange events, and decide for themselves if the tales of a ghost are indeed true.”

  “Do you think anyone will buy that?” asked Dr McKenzie.

  “I am given to understand that you have an entire industry dedicated to the investigation of the paranormal. We are well versed in your television programmes at HQ. Please do not look startled that we understand the concept of television, Dr McKenzie. We make a point of keeping up to date with modern developments, and John Logie Baird is a popular member of the Scottish quiz team,” replied Fowlis.

  “Okay. So what will you do to them?”

  “I would rather keep the specifics of my work to myself. It is heinous enough that a mortal should be party to my work process in the first place, let alone allowing one to be a part of it as well,” said Fowlis.

  “Does that mean you’ll do it, Dad?” asked Sarah.

  Dr McKenzie patted her hand. “Has this ever happened before?”

  “I confess, I do not think it has. At least, word of it has never reached my ears in the last few centuries, and it is the sort of thing that would rapidly be passed around were it to happen. Of course, something similar may have happened prior to my own demise, but I never found any mention of it in the archives.”

  “You have archives?”

  “Of course we do. Why wouldn’t we?” Fowlis frowned at Sarah’s dad.

  “I just didn’t expect such a level of organisation, especially given our understanding of the spirit world on this side of the veil.”

  “How did you know about the Veil?” Fowlis raised an eyebrow into a perfect arch.

  “It’s just what my grandmother used to call it. She was forever talking about the spirit in the kitchen, and chattering on about the Veil in between the worlds. It was only after she died that my grandfather admitted she’d always had an interest in witchcraft but he made her hush it up. Of course, in their day it was still illegal,” replied Dr McKenzie.

  “Did you know about this?” Fowlis looked at Sarah.

  “No, this is the first I’ve heard of it! Why didn’t you tell me that before?”

  “It never seemed relevant. Anyway, about these archives, why do you have them?”

  “We need somewhere to record our history, our lore and our legends. There is a lot of information and we cannot simply leave it
lying around in cardboard boxes. It would clutter up HQ and it would be hell to retrieve if we did not keep it organised.”

  “I’d kill to see that.” Her dad sat back in his chair.

  Sarah knew that expression—his eyes always shone with longing whenever he thought of archives. She could only imagine what experiments he could do and the essays he could write with access to ghost lore. It could change the entire field of paranormal research. He might even drop physics for it.

  “You won’t need to do that. You’ll get to see it one day,” replied Fowlis.

  “Do you know…when?” Dr McKenzie gulped.

  “No one can know their time as it is not for them to know, but I feel certain you have a long time here yet,” replied Fowlis.

  Silence descended on the room. Sarah fidgeted in her chair and twisted a lock of hair around her finger. Her gaze roved the room in an attempt not to look at her father after such an awkward moment. Fowlis straightened his coat and the scientist cleared his throat.

  “Well, I’m feeling very tired now, and I think I have a press release to write. I wonder if there are any websites with guidelines on how to do it properly.” Dr McKenzie stifled a yawn.

  “It’s the anchor, Dad. It drains your energy so you can see Fowlis. Here, give it to me,” said Sarah.

  Dr McKenzie handed the pendant to her. He sat up straighter and opened his internet browser.

  “How come you get decent access and I have to use that wi-fi dongle?” asked Sarah.

  “Not now, I have work to do,” replied Dr McKenzie.

  His fingers jabbed at the keys, one hand straying to the mouse to click through web pages. Sarah turned away from him and looked up at Fowlis.

  “What kind of stuff will you do to them?” she asked.

  “If I’m entirely honest, I have not thought that far ahead yet, although this will require a judicious degree of planning on my part. In order to make this endeavour at all worthwhile, I shall need to ensure that even those among the party who possess less psychic ability than a lettuce will be able to walk away saying that the house is haunted,” replied Fowlis.

  “Will it help you out too?” asked Sarah. She glanced at her father. Fowlis nodded.

  “The more individuals present, the better. I do not think that any fear generated will be recorded on my file as I am, to all intents and purposes, invisible to HQ, but I am sure that the levels will still register with the Veil itself. I feel confident that the Managing Director would have designed the system thus.”

  “I’ll have a look online later to see if there are any groups in travelling distance who might want to come up. I’m pretty sure we could accommodate them all,” said Sarah.

  “I hate to interrupt but would you be so good as to put down my anchor?” Fowlis kept looking towards the door, his head cocked on one side as though he could hear something that Sarah could not. Sarah laid the pendant on the table and Fowlis vanished.

  * * *

  Handle’s voice echoed along the corridor. A day or so must have passed at HQ and Fowlis hoped his assistant had some new information for him. He hadn’t expected to feel such a crushing sense of abandonment after learning that no one at HQ could see him. True, there was a certain sense of liberation, but the loneliness persisted all the same. Past hauntings had been characterised by regular reports to HQ and the knowledge that whatever he did was meticulously recorded and judged. He did not like to think that all he did or said at the present went unnoticed. Naturally it helped his case when he spoke to the mortals, but he still liked to think that someone was appreciating his work when he managed to sneak in some actual haunting. The business with the mother’s dream would have been a marvellous addition to his record, and he hoped to transmit some of Sarah’s photographs of his football armour sculpture to HQ for the archives.

  He found Handle in the same corridor mirror that he had originally used. Handle now wore a neat pinstriped suit and bowler hat, which he doffed to Fowlis. The cavalier raised an eyebrow at his assistant’s new attire. He wondered if Handle had a matching cane hidden away somewhere.

  “Do you like my suit, sir?” asked Handle. He turned around so Fowlis could see it from all angles.

  “It is most impressive. Where did you get it? Why are you not in your uniform?”

  “Templeton gave it to me, sir. He says that as I’m the only assistant who can’t disappear, he wants me to make more official enquiries for him, and he said I’d need to be attired appropriately. I’ve just been down to the archives and everything.”

  “And? Did you manage to find anything of value? Did Seth tell you anything useful?”

  “I did, sir, and he did. Do you still have the book?” asked Handle.

  “Yes. It’s in my sleeping quarters,” replied Fowlis, careful not to reveal the location, even to Handle. He trusted his assistant but he could not guarantee that others were not listening in to their conversation. Perhaps the mystery second haunter from the library could eavesdrop on the mirrors.

  “Forgive me for speaking plainly, sir, but leave it there. I told Templeton you found it, but I didn’t tell him how you came across it, since there’d be hell to pay if anyone found out a mortal had looked at it. He wanted you to bring it back for the archives. Actually, no, he begged me to get you to bring it back,” said Handle.

  “Templeton never begs for anything,” replied Fowlis.

  “Exactly. So when I went down to the archives, I asked Seth about it. He wouldn’t tell me too much, I don’t think he was allowed. Kept looking around as if he was scared he was going to get caught,” said Handle.

  “I know how it feels to think someone is watching you.” Fowlis turned around to look up and down the empty corridor.

  “But he did tell me that The Ghostlie Manifestoe was deliberately split up in volumes a few centuries ago. He said something about the fact that the book gained too much power on its own, and the different volumes were distributed to stop anyone putting it back together. Seth didn’t think anyone would ever know what they were for, so when three of them came back, he hung onto them in the archives. They were all locked up individually, but the worrying thing is that they’ve disappeared as well.”

  “What? Why?”

  “Seth said something about the book’s true purpose, but then he clammed up and wouldn’t tell me anything else. He made me leave, and I didn’t think there was anyone else I could ask. I was going to ask Templeton about it, but Seth’s new assistant Verger advised that I didn’t. I haven’t spoken to Templeton since this morning. If truth be told, sir, I’m avoiding him.”

  “That’s a shame about Seth—such a pity that he did not feel he could be more forthcoming. Yet how peculiar is it that Templeton should want a blacklisted book for the archives. I would have thought that he should have known better. Have your enquiries into the missing haunters turned anything up?”

  “No one is talking about it, but I think I know where they’re going, sir. The banshee hasn’t returned from the Beyond, which is very strange, so I think she’s being kept there to prevent her coming back to tell us anything,” replied Handle. “It’s a shame since we’ve lost fifteen more haunters. You need to come back to HQ, but don’t do it via your anchor. I’m afraid that if the girl puts your anchor back, you and I will be the next to vanish.”

  “How else do I get back?”

  “There is one other route, sir. Few people know about it because they try to keep it quiet, but I managed to get it out of Seth before he hurried off back into the archives. HQ has an entrance on the physical plane, and if you walk through the door with your anchor, you’ll walk back in here under your own steam. You wouldn’t need to report to anyone or do anything with the charts,” replied Handle.

  “Really? I say, how strange. Where is this physical entrance?”

  “London.”

  “That might prove to be a problem,” replied Fowlis.

  “I know, sir, but I thought you should know about it anyway. If you do manage to get to Lo
ndon, then you need to get to number seventy-three on Dalrymple Street. Apparently it looks like a high society house, but if you walked through the front door, you’d walk in here,” said Handle. “At least consider it, sir.”

  “You make it sound so incredibly easy, Handle. I daresay it shall prove to be utterly tiresome and in all likelihood rather difficult. How am I supposed to get to Dalrymple Street in the first place? It is not as if I may summon a motorised coach. No, Handle, don’t answer that. I shall have to think about it. I shall certainly leave the book here, though. Did you manage to find out anything on previous owners of the house?” asked Fowlis.

  “A little. Sir Mathius Cransland of Fyrestone built the house in the fifteenth century, and it stayed in the family for several generations, until it passed to Padraig O’Culloch in 1768, who was a distant relative in the Irish branch of the family,” replied Handle.

  “Good God!” exclaimed Fowlis. Padraig O’Culloch had been an infamous occultist in haunting circles, acting as both a good friend and terrible foe to HQ for many years.

  “During one of his more helpful periods, HQ gave him the first volume of The Ghostlie Manifestoe for safekeeping, knowing that it would most likely become lost amid his other books on supernatural subjects. It must have been in the house ever since,” continued Handle. “He clearly never learned how to use the book, or surely we would know about it.”

  “Indeed, Handle. This gives me much to ponder. Will you be all right on your own?” asked Fowlis.

  “I’ll be fine, sir,” replied Handle with a smile.

  “Well, until next time: watch your back and keep me informed.”

  Handle walked out of the frame and Fowlis saw only the reflection of the corridor around him in the mirror. Sarah and her father seemed so keen on the idea of using the media to repair the damage to both Mrs McKenzie’s reputation and the Veil. He didn’t feel confident they would take him to London, but at the same time, it couldn’t hurt to ask. He strode back towards the lab.