The Unhappy Medium, page 15
‘Yeah, whatever,’ said the image of Dr Sixsmith. ‘Look, I guess we’ve got to work through all this denial to get you used to things, but it would help me a lot if you’d just drop the voice of reason and get on board. We’ve got bit of a deadline.’
‘That’s the last drink I’ll ever have,’ said Newton.
‘Yes I should steer clear of the spirits if I was you!’ laughed the hallucination.
‘Not real, not real, not real!’ Newton chanted, head in his hands. He opened his fingers. It was still there. ‘Arrggghhhh ... go away damn you!’
‘Blimey you’re stubborn Newton! I said you would be though. I told them you’d have to be worn down over months, but would they listen?’
Newton circled the apparition, checking the angles and looking for hidden projectors.
‘OK “ghost”,’ said Newton, changing tack. ‘It’s bloody clever, I give you that. You’ve got Sixsmith down to a tee. The mannerisms, the banter; it’s him alright. But if you really were the ghost of Alex Sixsmith, which you are most definitely not, you’d be able to tell me this. What colour was the cricket bat we played with in the back garden?’
‘Yellow,’ said the vision. Newton clenched his fists.
‘You could have guessed that one or found an old picture.’
‘Granted,’ it agreed. ‘Try another.’
‘OK, Sixsmith was a scientist, so you should be able to answer some proper scientific questions ... without hesitation.’
‘I should, and I can,’ said the vision gleefully. ‘Fire away! ’
‘Tell me the name of the heaviest fundamental particle in nature.’
‘Easy, it’s the top quark. Heavy old thing, more than 170 times as massive as a proton. Discovered at Fermilab near Chicago – 1995 I think it was?’
‘Doesn’t mean much, you could be a science graduate.’
‘Well I was a science graduate, a long, long time ago, admittedly.’ The apparition began to play with the flowers again. It grew frustrated and tried unsuccessfully to swat the whole vase away. ‘Damn it this is hard – you’re meant to be able to start moving stuff around within a month or so, but I’m buggered if I can do it. Look, I’m barely ruffling them. I say, Newton old boy, any chance I can use your place to practice? It can cause all sorts of mayhem out there in the big wide world when you start shifting objects about.’
‘I’m sorry? Oh sure, ghost away as much as you like, just don’t leave the toilet seat up.’
‘Funny you should mention that!’ it laughed. ‘Up there ... there is no toilet! Can’t say I miss it. Some do, oddly, but not me. Oh, and you never have to change your underwear, that’s the other great thing.’
‘Look, let’s keep on topic shall we,’ said Newton, exasperated. ‘I know that you can’t be a ghost, that’s impossible. So ... I’m going to prove it.’
‘Oh you are, are you?’ The ghost removed his glasses and looked up at Newton. ‘You know, you could save us both a lot of time if you just accept what you’re seeing. I know it’s hard; it will probably make you feel like a bit of a hypocrite, but there’s not much I can do about that. But, you are simply the best man for the job, we’ve all agreed that. So we just have to work you round as best as we can in the time available.’
‘Yeah, yeah,’ said Newton, waving the apparition away. ‘All very mysterious I’m sure. OK, let me think ... has to be something personal or something specific to your career. Go on, tell me something personal, something only Sixsmith and I knew.’
‘Something really personal?’
‘Yes,’ said Newton. ‘If you are what you claim to be then you’ll have to know something. Something unique.’
‘OK, well, how about the fact that you were late for my death?’ Newton went still. The spirit’s comment was bang on the factual button, and painfully so.
‘Whaaat? Hang on a second, how can you know that?’ Newton gasped. ‘No ... wait a minute!’ he said, trying to regain his composure. ‘The sister! Sixsmith’s sister could have told you! Oh good try.’
‘Good point,’ said the hallucination. ‘OK let’s see,’ he continued, removing his glasses and chewing one end of the frame. ‘It’s harder than I thought. I can’t talk about the car journey today, even though I was there. They’ve done a great job on the old banger haven’t they? No I can’t use that because you’ll quite naturally assume that both events are part of the same hoax, ditto the bank accounts. Hope the extra cash is helping by the way.’
‘The car? The money? That was you as well? What the hell! Who are you people? Why are you doing this to me?’ Newton looked angry, his calm ‘just in case I’m on camera’ stance failing him utterly.
‘Oh, just trying to help things settle down for you,’ the manifestation said, mildly reproachful. ‘You can’t honestly say you don’t need a bit of a leg up. And you won’t be much use to us with a knackered car, empty bank accounts and a flat straight out of Withnail and I . Oh, and on the subject of the flat. Don’t forget to say thanks to your grandmother. I say, that woman can really clean, impressive! So, any more questions?’
‘Bugger the questions!’ protested Newton, pointing his finger back through the vision’s head to where its brain should be. ‘Look, I don’t know what your game is, but I’ll tell you this much, it’s not funny.’
‘Sorry, it must feel a little invasive,’ the vision said, trying unsuccessfully to rest its hand on Newton’s shoulder. ‘It’s just there’s no easy way of doing this – honestly, I’ve been through it from one end to the other. I’m just glad I was never confronted with an apparition when I was alive! I think I was the only person on earth more sceptical than you.’
‘If you think I’m going to get taken in by this,’ said Newton angrily, ‘you’re wrong. I haven’t worked out how the bloody projection is done, but I will! I’m guessing it’s something like those high-definition holographic things.’
‘Newton, Newton,’ said the supposed projection wearily. ‘Just supposing such a technology existed, one that was this good, you have to ask yourself: why are you being used for its first demonstration? A bit of a waste, don’t you think? They’d probably roll it out at a huge pop concert. And why a vision of me in particular – in the privacy of your flat? Why on earth would anyone want to do that?’
‘Publicity, obviously!’ Newton snorted. You fool a big rational physicist, film him being taken in like some sap and away you go! Even better, choose a disgraced sceptical scientist and it’s way, way better. You can have a right laugh like that. I’m thinking Piltdown Man here.’ Newton started checking the windows and walls again.
‘Maybe, but why go to the trouble of creating a projection of a fat sixty-something old buffer with spectacles when you could have had an alien, a zombie or a headless coachman? I’m a pretty tedious illusion if you ask me. I wasn’t exactly a head-turner when I was alive, why would I be one as a ghost?’
Newton was highly vexed now. He let out a long growl of frustration. ‘Look you bastard. OK, so I have no idea how or why it’s being done – but, if you think you can make me go mad, well then you are 100 per cent wrong! And what’s more ...’ He was about to really tear into the vision when he was cut short by the doorbell. Both he and the hallucination froze.
‘That’ll be your lady friend,’ said the vision.
‘Damn it,’ said Newton, ‘she can’t see you here. Turn yourself off!’
‘Turn myself off?’ replied the image. ‘I’m not a PlayStation!’
‘She can’t see you! She mustn’t!’
‘Oh, she won’t,’ the vision declared. ‘I get to decide who sees me. Very neat little feature!’ Newton shhh’d the hallucination. It mockingly made a zipping motion across its mouth.
‘Hello?’ Newton asked the intercom, trying to sound composed.
‘Hi Newton, it’s me.’
‘Viv ... hi, come up.’ As he buzzed open the main door, Newton turned to shoo the vision away.
‘OK, OK ... I’m going,’ it said, beginning its journey back towards invisibility. ‘Oh by the way ... about Viv, she’s lovely.’
‘What?’ Newton replied. ‘Yes she is, but what of it?’
‘Nice legs!’ said the vision, now barely visible against the blinds.
‘Nice legs ?’ said Newton, outraged. ‘Have you people been spying on us together? In bed?’ But the hallucination, projection, whatever it was, had completely vanished leaving Newton alone. There was no sign of anything weird, real or imagined, and so with Viv knocking insistently, he belatedly opened the door.
‘You OK sweetheart?’ she said, looking into Newton’s wild eyes.
CHAPTER 13 – A suitable bo y
After the awkwardness of the whole Northumberland business, Chris Baxter struggled to regain his reputation. Just why he’d been in northern England was never really established. It was one of several questions that had baffled health professionals, police and his employers, not to mention poor Christopher Baxter himself.
In an attempt to unravel events, Baxter had consented to hypnosis at the local psychiatric unit, but his confused stories of earwigs, full English breakfasts and the last Snow Patrol album did little to clear anything up. Inevitably, his delighted colleagues muttered, none too silently, about nervous breakdowns and burn-outs. Long jealous of his stunning sales successes, they gleefully seized the opportunity to finally unseat the great Christopher Baxter from his place at the big table.
But Baxter was no quitter. Oh no. He’d refused the medication the quacks had offered, said a big NO to counselling and defiantly, heroically, hitched himself back on the horse. No one, nothing, was going to stop Chris Baxter.
He was fired the same week.
At first, still brimming with Dale Carnegie over-confidence and homespun affirmation, Baxter was optimistic that he could use the sudden downturn in his fortunes to his advantage. After all, he told himself, bad luck can make you reassess yourself and help you move on to better things. Well not this time. The credit crunch plus his now-soiled references decided otherwise; he was firmly prevented from replacing like with like and his Olympic-sized ego was kicked like a child’s football over the playground wall. For the first time in years, he fretted about his finances and, horror of horrors, he even considered selling the Lexus, his lovely wonderful Baxter wagon. This awful concept drove him half mad with panic, for all the world like a desperate father fighting to save his child’s life. So Baxter began searching for work beyond London’s western fringes. Eventually, this one-man diaspora led Baxter to a job vacancy at an obscure property developers – McCauley Bros – way out west in Dorset .
He’d had a brief telephone interview a few days earlier with one Miss Dryer. That had been bizarre in itself. Firstly, with a strangely seductive tone, she wanted to know if he had a working knowledge of Latin. ‘Oh, enough to get by on holiday,’ Baxter bluffed.
‘Do you regularly visit a dentist?’ she continued, her voice deepening as she spoke. He could heartily reply in the affirmative; after all, physical appearances were everything to Christopher Baxter and his perfect teeth were a shade whiter than that of a head cheerleader. Baxter’s insincere smile could probably be seen from space. Oddly, the remaining questions all seemed to be mere padding and they barely touched upon Baxter’s considerable qualifications or sales experience, but with the clock ticking on both his flat and the Lexus, he decided to overlook the peculiar introduction and drop in salary in favour of a desperate leap of faith.
So now, here was Christopher Baxter driving across Dorset’s blasted heathlands on a cold and misty Monday morning, faint outlines of straggly ponies watching from the gorse and heather as he sped by towards his early appointment. To boost his now-threadbare confidence, life-affirming anthems were thumping out from the Lexus and away across the scrub.
The McCauley headquarters at Hadlow Grange came as something of a shock to Baxter. The gates were so Gothic and imposing that he wondered initially if he’d accidently arrived at a cemetery. The ornate ironwork towered high above the Lexus in agonised Victorian swirls, the blackened metal twisting around itself, with evil-looking hooks and vicious points, hinting at a desire to prevent both access and exit in equal measure. To each side of the imposing entrance, a long perimeter wall stretched away, topped with razor wire and thorny growth, an unsightly barrier draped liberally with old carrier bags, dew-covered cobwebs and grey wool from the dirty sheep in the nearby fields. Baxter got out of the car and discovered an intercom on the gatepost, half drowned in ivy and thorns. He cautiously parted the leaves and pressed the button.
‘Hadlow Grange, can I help you?’ a haughty squawking voice answered.
Hello, it’s er, Christopher Baxter.’
‘Who?’
‘Christopher Baxter. I’m here for an induction.’ There was an awkward pause .
‘Who are you seeing?’ demanded the voice, as Chris began to wonder if he’d got the right address. He checked the headed letter.
‘I’m here to see Mr McCauley.’
‘Which one?’ came the voice.
‘Um, I was just told to ask for Mr McCauley.’ There was another pause followed by a series of electrical pops and clicks.
‘Come in then,’ said the voice. The conversation was terminated with a burst of whistling feedback so loud that Baxter recoiled from the intercom in alarm, snagging the cuff of his favourite suit on a wicked-looking bramble.
‘Bollocks!’ he cursed, as the gates creaked jerkily open. Baxter jumped back into the car and rolled forward onto the gravel as the gates closed behind him. As he crawled up the driveway, the building remained resolutely hidden behind rampant foliage until finally, Hadlow Grange revealed itself. It was a classic Victorian country house with a profusion of turrets and attic windows, smothered in dark ivy. In the gravel car park, three identical black Land Rovers sat side by side beneath a vast old yew tree with massive gnarled branches.
Baxter was thinking how it could have made a good hotel or a country club, until suddenly he noticed that there was another more monstrous building looming massive behind the Grange. This was something a lot less leisure industry. Why he hadn’t seen it immediately, he was unsure; perhaps it was the early-morning mist or its pallid bulk of gull-grey Purbeck stone, blending seamlessly into the overcast. There was no softening ivy on this behemoth. It was just an endless parade of small barred windows and guttering, and it could have been easily mistaken for a high-security prison, had it not been for the bizarre flourishes of some demented Victorian architect. There were cathedral-like pimples here, gargoyles there. There were buttresses and towers with tiny sinister windows, elaborate mock-Tudor chimneys and a paranoid array of lightning conductors. Its windows were all boarded up and clearly had been so for some time, hinting at a protracted vacancy.
Chris Baxter looked past the huge building to its neglected gardens, a mess of broken gazebos and summerhouses, invading gorse and rhododendrons. The whole scene, probably once a triumph of philanthropic attention to detail, gave him such a feeling of hopelessness that he seriously thought about turning on his heels and leaving. An eddy of fetid air forced its way past his collar and into his Armani vest.
‘Christopher Baxter?’ came a husky female voice. He turned quickly to see an austere, pouting woman in tweed and sensible shoes. She could have been anything from 30 to 60 years old, Chris couldn’t tell; with her lack of modern flair she would have looked perfectly at home in a wartime public library. She took a deep breath that made her restrained breast heave noticeably as she scrutinised him with dilating pupils from behind her horn-rimmed spectacles.
‘Yes,’ replied Chris, forcing a smile. ‘I’m here for the induction. Are you Miss Dryer? We spoke on the phone.’
‘Please, do call me Wendy. Let’s not be ... formal with each other,’ she sighed. ‘Now, if you’ll follow me.’ Baxter followed, and as she led the way, he looked furtively from her tweed pencil skirt down to her legs as she strutted purposefully towards the entrance, her thick tan tights and sensible footwear triggering a not entirely unwelcome memory of female prison dramas. She held the door open leaving barely enough space for Baxter to pass, forcing him to brush intimately past her into the reception.
‘Take a seat ... Christopher,’ said Miss Dryer.
‘Welcome to McCauley Brothers – Estate Agents and Developers’ said a sign next to a sickly, dust-covered rubber plant. Baxter shuffled through some magazines; none of them was less than ten years old and they had nothing at all to do with property. There was a copy of Handguns and Assault Weapons , and an aged National Geographic with a cover feature on Aztec death rituals. Beneath them were several copies of History Today , all with clippings about the plague, wars and famines cut out. Baxter looked up to the small reception hatch. Miss Dryer was scrutinising him a little too personally as she snipped away at something historical with her scissors.
After ten minutes, she suddenly reappeared at his side. ‘Follow me please Christopher,’ she said, the words released half as speech and half as a slow, erotic exhalation.
‘Err right, yes ... of course,’ he said, collecting his things and following her down the badly chipped oak-panelled corridor. Baxter had never seen such an odd building; he was used to clean sterile business parks and affordable office ‘solutions’. Hadlow Grange offered no solutions to a visitor at all – he couldn’t fathom the purpose of any of the rooms off the haphazard corridors, which reeked of dry-rot and cheap disinfectant. ‘What is that place?’ Baxter asked as they passed a window looking onto the monstrous building next door, leering out of the misty shrubs.
‘It was a mental institution,’ Miss Dryer said, without turning. ‘Of course, you’d have to call it something else now I expect. But a nuthouse is a nuthouse.’ She stopped walking briefly and looked seriously into his eyes. ‘And I should know.’ She didn’t elaborate, nor, on reflection, did Chris want her to.
‘Right, yeah,’ Baxter said uneasily. They walked on in silence. She showed him into a wood-panelled boardroom, once again forcing Baxter to brush uncomfortably close to her as he entered. The smell of cheap make-up and coal-tar soap caught in his nostrils, her lined skin visibly cracking beneath thick foundation. Reluctantly, Miss Dryer then closed the door behind her with an abrupt slam, leaving Baxter alone.
