The Unhappy Medium, page 11
On full alert, the tattered remains of the village network had warned the old curator of Ascot’s arrival and he was more than prepared for whatever the property developer could throw at him. He sat impassive in reception, his dancing fingers the sole outside manifestation of his deep agitation.
The old bell rattled as the door swung open, revealing Ascot McCauley in thin silhouette against the weak winter sunlight. He entered, motes of dust and stray cobwebs falling gently around him.
‘Admission is 50 pence,’ said the curator curtly.
‘Fifty pence!’ said Ascot disdainfully. ‘Oh I shall have to dig deep for that!’
‘It’s not about money,’ said the curator defensively.
‘Good job it isn’t,’ said Ascot cackling. ‘A bloody good job it isn’t.’
‘What do you want,’ said the curator, sharply handing Ascot a doctored bus ticket.
‘I’ve come to see the museum.’
‘No you haven’t McCauley,’ said the curator, peering over his glasses. ‘I’m not an idiot. I presume this is yet another attempt to buy me out?’
‘Buy ... you ... out?’ said Ascot, slowly and deliberately. ‘You make it sound like a bad thing.’
‘It is. I’m not selling.’
‘Not now maybe, but you will.’
‘Not now and not ever. You will never get this building. Never.’
‘The building? Oh dear me, you don’t understand, do you? It’s not just the building I’m interested in. That would be toooo simple. Too dull by half.’
‘Then what do you want?’
Ascot waved his hand theatrically up the stairs past the Zulu shields and the moth-eaten battle standards. ‘Why all this of course. The relics ...’
‘Relics ? What do you mean relics?’
‘Did I say relics, I’m so sorry, I meant ... exhibits. ’
‘Don’t waste your time, this is a collection. It can’t be broken up.’
‘Who said it would be broken up? I’m going to have it all.’
‘It’s for public display, for the education and enlightenment of the masses.’
Ascot snorted.
‘Ha! And just how many of the masses have you had in this week then? Shall I check the visitors book?’ He leant forward and jabbed his sharp index finger onto the paper before the curator could slam the ledger shut. ‘Well look at that!’ mocked Ascot. ‘The masses you’ve been enlightening can be summed up thus: one entry from four months ago. Oh the British Museum would be just blown away with footfall like that.’
‘I’m here when they need me. I’m a public service.’
‘Oh are you? Are you really?’ laughed Ascot. ‘It’s a pity none of them needs you then isn’t it? Oh go on, sell it to me! With the money I give you, you could visit a real museum.’
‘How dare you, this is a real museum.’
‘Is it buggery. I doubt you even know what you have in here you old fool. This for instance ... this spear.’ Ascot put his hand out to a primitive feather lance, its tip holding a rusted oval point. The long fingers closed around the shaft with a vile relish. His eyes closed and he inhaled again, sensuously.
‘This weapon ...’ He spoke the words as part of a long-drawn-out sigh. ‘This weapon has killed many men, many of them white men in fact. Missionaries. Some of them were begging quite pitifully by the end.’
‘What are you talking about?’ blurted the curator. ‘Stop touching the exhibits.’
‘Why? Isn’t it a hands-on exhibition?’ snorted Ascot, and with indifference to the curator’s protests, he reached out to rub an old life preserver, the name SS Gurdon written in faded letters around the loop. ‘Ahhhhhhhhhh, nice,’ said Ascot, his eyes closing once again as if he were savouring a fine wine. ‘This witnessed a few nasty little moments I can tell you. Oh yes, I can see it all quite clearly: the Irish Sea, a dark November night, the ship floundering in a force twelve. The storms broke her back in the end and when they all ended up in the freezing black water there was only one survivor. Pity he didn’t tell anyone he’d grabbed this life ring from a woman and child. And why would he? Dreadful. His own wife and child I think, judging by the guilt,’ said Ascot, adding the last detail matter of factly as if it were of little importance.
‘You don’t know that ... you can’t know that,’ said the curator, somewhat rattled.
‘Oh you’d be surprised what you can pick up along the way,’ said Ascot, rummaging through the exhibits. ‘Oh these knives ... These are particularly nice, I’ve got a real feel for blades you know.’
‘You’re mad.’
‘Mad? Maybe,’ Ascot answered nonchalantly, ‘but successfully mad, and that’s the important thing. Money is so wonderful, don’t you think? When you have money, well, there’s nothing you can’t have ... eventually.’
‘Well you can’t have this museum,’ snapped the curator angrily.
‘I admire your defiance. I really do. But you see, I’m also very, very patient,’ said Ascot, as he turned back with a pantomime villain’s grin spreading across his chops. However, before he could fully elaborate on his many vile attributes, he abruptly stopped.
His dark senses tingling, there was something on the edge of his awareness asking for his attention. It was somewhat stronger than the background grimness drifting off the main exhibits and he raised himself up upon his toes like a meerkat, feeling for the vibrations.
‘What is that ?’
‘What is what?’
‘There’s something here ... something unusual, I can sense it!’ Ascot’s head rotated close to 360 degrees and then spun back elastically, the nostrils shotgun wide.
‘Sense it? What are you talking about?’
Ascot sniffed the air again, eyes closed and his body swaying gently like a cobra. Like a compass, he gradually rotated on his brogues until he pointed towards the far room where until recently, the carved figure had sat malevolently in its case. ‘There’s something here – I can’t quite fix it.’
‘The museum is closing now,’ said the curator, impatiently cutting Ascot short in mid flow.
‘Closing ... what?’ said Ascot, angrily snapping out of his fixation. ‘But it’s only 10.30!’
‘Staff holiday. I’m going to have to ask you to leave.’ The curator slammed the visitors book shut and a storm of dust exploded towards Ascot through the weak light.
‘How dare you!’ barked Ascot, coughing. ‘I’ve paid to see this museum! I demand to see it! I could get you for consumer rights violations!’
‘Take it up with head office,’ said the curator. ‘Off you go.’
‘But I haven’t had a chance to talk business with you!’
‘Well we’ve both saved time then, haven’t we? I was going to say no anyway. Goodbye.’
For emphasis, the curator fished out a caribou jaw from under the counter, where it had been kept for emergencies. He let it fall repeatedly into his hand like a cosh.
Ascot sighed wearily. ‘OK I’m going, I’m going.’ He jangled noisily back through the old door into the street. Turning, he saw the ‘closed’ sign slam hard against the glass. He walked back to his car where the Brigadier was still banging away on the tank with his tools.
‘Don’t know what you’re smiling about,’ he shouted down at Ascot. ‘I’m sure he told you to sling yer hook.’
‘He did,’ said Ascot smugly. ‘It was no more than I expected though. He’ll come round eventually.’ He waved his thin hand arrogantly around the empty square. ‘They all do ... in the end.’
He was still gesturing to the dead village when he was hit by an egg, thrown with commendable accuracy from the barricaded cottage opposite. It smashed messily upon Ascot McCauley’s navy blue blazer in a spectacular explosion of yolk and albumen. Infuriated, Ascot pulled at the mess, strings of shiny glob stretching like webs from his fingers to his lapels.
‘Not all of them McCauley,’ said the Brigadier. ‘Not all of them.’
CHAPTER 11 – Ghost walkin g
The past few weeks with Viv had been a long-overdue departure from the omnipresent horrors of Newton’s troublesome past, and already he was feeling the benefits. They had spent wonderfully daft afternoons in bed talking the world to rights, planning over-complicated driving holidays costing way more money than either of them possessed and, when they weren’t stark naked, they had haunted the bars and restaurants of Greenwich where Viv had a modest but pleasant enough little flat.
In his newfound bliss, Newton had to fight hard not to neglect work or his residual parenting duties with his daughter. Gabby was every inch the sulky teen, dabbling endlessly with ever-darker clothing and engaging in a running battle with the outside world, the frontline being her reluctant interaction with her estranged parents. Newton’s ex-wife loathed Gabby’s blossoming Gothic fantasies and sniped endlessly at her poor daughter with barbed digs about femininity. So Gabby lurked like her own shadow up in her blacked-out room, only venturing forth to eat. What soulmates she had were kept firmly out of view as she increasingly revelled in being an outsider, a loner or a tragic heroine.
Gabby hadn’t inherited her father’s attitudes. Instead, she sank herself in a world of Gothic novels and dark dreary music. On the black walls of her bedroom, a rogues’ gallery of sunken-cheeked teenage vampires brooded and smoked with dead-eyed sexuality. Her modest IKEA shelves began to amass a small library of books featuring the supernatural, the paranormal and the plain weird; deep into the night she soaked up tales of wraiths, tarot and death.
It was the only thing that seemed to make her happy.
Rowena had ripped spectacularly into Newton on the phone when, due to an unaccustomed state of relaxation, he overlooked his monthly visit to Gabby. His ex-wife’s voice was so loud and sharp that Viv heard the shrill barking even as she was showering.
‘What a bitch,’ gasped Viv as she dried her hair. ‘What are you going to do? ’
‘I’d probably best get going,’ said Newton, dressing. His recent euphoria had been swiped off him like chalk on a blackboard. Viv turned off the dryer and put her arms sympathetically around him.
‘See you soon, yeah?’
‘Ooooh yes,’ said Newton with feeling. ‘Try and stop me.’ He kissed her gently on her forehead.
******
For once, the Citroën was behaving, content with mere grating noises and a trail of oily smoke on the motorway. In a record-breaking three hours, Newton was pulling gingerly up at Rowena’s Cambridge town house. The slab-like Chelsea tractors parked haphazardly up and down the street were a sure sign that Rowena’s coven was gathered on site. Plucking up courage, Newton rang the bell.
‘What time do you call this?’ hissed Rowena.
‘I’m sorry,’ he grovelled, flattened under the weight of six cold shoulders as he entered the kitchen. The air was heavy with a cocktail of Estée Lauder, Chanel and loathing. ‘I’m really sorry.’ Rowena looked Newton dismissively in the eye for a long, long moment. Her nostrils flaring in disgust, she called upstairs for their daughter.
‘Gabriella dear ... your ... father has arrived, finally.’ She snarled the last word in his face and there was a bubble of tsks from the kitchen table. Eventually, and with every muscle of her black velvet body oozing reluctance, Gabby stumbled blinking down the stairs from the darkness of her bedroom.
‘Hi Gabby,’ said Newton, sheepishly.
‘Snorf,’ mumbled Gabby from under her white foundation, as she flounced melodramatically through the door.
‘Back lunchtime tomorrow Newton, I mean it,’ Rowena warned, playing to her tribe in the kitchen.
‘Yup, lunchtime ... for sure,’ said Newton. As he turned to go, he awkwardly waved and smiled at the ladies and immediately the temperature dropped even further. He was hustled outside onto the street to where Gabby, her face like thunder, slouched against the Citroën.
‘Can we go now?’ she huffed.
With Rowena’s eyes burning neat laser-like holes in his back, Newton inched the car slowly down the street and away towards London, his sullen daughter folded up like a deckchair in the passenger seat.
‘Sorry Gabby,’ he offered, ‘I’m a bit distracted at the moment.’
‘Whatever,’ came the predictable reply.
******
‘What would you like to do then?’ Newton said, after twenty minutes of teenage silence.
‘Dunno,’ Gabby replied, pulling her hood up.
‘You can do anything you want. Well, within reason,’ he said. Sensing her father’s eagerness to please, Gabby thought hard for a second and cautiously lowered her hoodie.
‘What? Literally anything?’
‘Er ... yes, I guess.’
‘OK ... I’ll have a think then,’ said Gabby, and she plonked her Dr Marten boots up on the dashboard.
As they drove along the leafy roads leading to Crouch End, Gabby suddenly exploded with a burst of enthusiasm.
‘Got it!’ she shouted sitting upright, animated in a way her father hadn’t witnessed since she’d been five or six.
‘What ... what!’ he answered as he checked all the mirrors. ‘Got what?’
‘What we’re going to do while I’m here!’
‘Err ... yes?’ asked Newton, sensing it was likely to be painful, expensive or humiliating.
‘A ghost walk,’ said Gabby, ‘I want to go on a ghost walk.’
‘Oh terrific,’ sighed Newton, realising it would be all three.
******
For Dr Newton Barlow, one-time scourge of all things irrational, there were some things he simply couldn’t be seen to do. But times had changed. With his reputation first eviscerated and then widely forgotten, he faced the stark realisation that there were few enemies, if any, still interested in him enough to point the finger, should he be caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. It comforted and smarted in equal measures. Keen to build bridges with his sulking Gothic daughter, he acquiesced. So that evening they found themselves in the heart of old London, waiting patiently outside a pub for a guide .
In a city with as much grisly backlog as London, it’s not hard to weave a theatrical yarn or two for the benefit of paying tourists. After all, London has always produced more history than it could locally consume. Its plagues, riots, wars and disasters give it a million stories, most of them horrific and messy to clean up afterwards. Ghost walks tap into this dark underbelly, and as you wind your way between London’s haphazard mix of the old and the new, you can spook yourself up and either enjoy yourself before finishing up in a pub or scare yourself so much you need to return to your hotel urgently for clean underwear.
Newton didn’t object to the theatre of these walks, but he couldn’t ignore what he felt to be their utter failure of logic. Gabby, knowing this about her father, felt the need to state the rules of the evening from the outset.
‘Look Dad,’ she hissed through her clenched teeth as they waited for the guide. ‘I hope you’re not going to spoil this.’
‘I promise I’ll enter into the spirit of things, no pun intended.’
‘I don’t care whether you intend a pun or not,’ sneered Gabby. ‘Why can’t you just drop all that science stuff and have fun for once?’
Newton winced, recognising the faint echoes of some of his wife’s criticisms.
‘Sorry, look, OK, I promise,’ he said, holding up his palms. ‘I’ll be good, let’s have fun. I promise, really.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes really, honest. Cross my heart.’
‘No sarcasm? No analysis?’ She narrowed her eyes and the threat of an award-winning sulk hovered above Newton like a kestrel.
‘Yup, really honest.’
But keeping this promise as they followed the guide through the cobbled back streets was never going to be easy. The group, some twelve or so, lapped up the theatrical tales with obvious delight while the guide, almost certainly a major player in amateur dramatics, turned all Shakespearean beneath the streetlights. Despite the cape and top hat, he was no Vincent Price. As Newton endured his fanciful tales of phantoms, ghouls and apparitions, he had to bite ever harder into his already lacerated lip.
‘Imagine if you dare!’ the guide pronounced with a flourish outside The Two Hands pub in Goiter Street. ‘Picture that late night in 1806 when there was a knock on the old pub’s door, the very same door you see before you tonight!’ The cameras began to flash wildly. ‘Picture the landlord, one Frederick H. Hodgkin. He’s in his nightshirt and holding a candle, his hand cautiously fumbling with the locks in the flickering light. As the door creaks open, there is a sudden ... sickening ...’ He went silent for a badly timed second of suspense. ‘CRASH!’ With the guide’s shout, all the tourists except Newton obediently jumped. Newton merely raised a sceptical eyebrow.
‘Yes my friends,’ continued the guide, ‘an unknown assassin rushes forward with a sharpened knife! He lashes poor Frederick, not once, but twice across the throat, then, with cruel deliberation ... he thrusts the blade deep into the publican’s heart!’ The crowd around Newton all visibly shivered, a wave of suggestibility washing over them with lamentable ease. Newton rolled his eyes and tutted beneath his breath. ‘And yet,’ the guide continued, holding up his index finger like a TV lawyer, ‘the assailant was not finished. Oh dear me no! He rushed on up the stairs to the rooms at the top. It was there, friends, there in those very rooms, that the landlord’s wife and daughter lay sleeping. And then ...’ He looked up and took a deep and sorry breath for emphasis before blurting out his macabre prose. ‘Then, in a frenzy of blood, bone and mangled mucous membranes, he slashed and stabbed the poor women until they lay blood-soaked and still upon their beds.’
‘Oh gosh,’ whimpered a middle-aged Canadian woman, visibly shaken. Newton looked over at his daughter who seemed to be smiling for the first time that day. She stopped abruptly when she caught her father’s eye.
‘So who was it that brutally killed these poor innocent people that cold November night?’ The guide scrutinised the surrounding faces, hesitating slightly when he met the unconvinced sneer of Dr Barlow. ‘We may never know,’ he went on. ‘But what we do know is that to this very day, these grizzly events still play out in this pub late at night. When the drinkers have gone and the bar falls silent, something stirs. Bar staff tell of cold hands on their shoulders, steps upon the flagstones and creaks on the old staircase. But when they search ... there’s no one to be seen!’
