Spookshow V: Half-Boys and Gypsy Girls, page 16
“That’s it.”
He read the notice again. “According to this, Archibald Crump is a clairvoyant holding a seance in a high end tea room. There’s no way a child is putting on a séance.”
“That’s what I thought. I suppose it would be too much of a coincidence if there were two people with that same name.”
He scratched the stubble on his chin. “Unless they’re related. The boy in your apartment might be Archibald Junior.”
“Maybe.” Billie took the page and read the notice again. “I’m going back to the library tomorrow. There’s got to be more to this.”
Mockler scrolled through the contacts on his phone. “Do you know the bookshop over on Ottawa Street? The rare book dealer above the beauty supply place?”
“The one with the weird sign? I’ve never gone up there.”
“The owner is a guy named Armand Barrow. He’s a historian, big into local history. Talk to him. He might know about this Crump character.” Scrounging up a pen, he scribbled the number into the margin of the page. “Call him first. He keeps odd hours.”
The food came and they tucked into their plates. Between bites of a clubhouse sandwich, Mockler asked “Have you talked to your friends about what happened?”
“I called them to apologize,” Billie said. “Jen’s a little pissed. She thought it was a prank.”
“Do you want to try this? It’s really good.” He cut a piece and put it on her plate. “Jen still doesn’t believe in your ability?”
“We just don’t talk about it. It’s awkward.”
“Do you think she’ll ever come around?”
His phone chirped before she could answer. Checking the message, Mockler looked up at the entrance and waved at someone.
“What’s going on?” she asked, turning to see a woman making her way to their table.
“I had an idea, if you’re up for it.” He rose to greet the woman. “Liz, thanks for coming.”
“I don’t normally make house-calls, but you said it was important.” The woman was small with long grey hair scrunched into a high ponytail. She had a large sketch pad tucked under her arm and she turned to Billie. “Hi. I’m Liz.”
Billie shook the woman’s hand. “Billie. Have a seat. Are you hungry?”
“I ate already.” Liz settled into a chair beside Mockler and looked around for the waiter. “I might have a glass of wine though.”
Billie glanced at her date, waiting to find out what this was about. Mockler smiled. “Liz is a sketch artist. She works with the force a lot.”
“That must be interesting,” Billie said, glancing at the woman’s sketch pad again.
“It is, but it can be difficult too, asking someone to describe the person who hurt them.” The woman placed a number of pencils on the table and turned the pad to a fresh page. She looked at the detective. “So? Who are we sketching?”
“I thought it might help if we had a visual,” Mockler said to Billie. He reached out and put his hand over hers. “Do you think you could describe your friend to Liz?”
Billie leaned back in surprise. “Is that necessary?”
“No,” he said. “But sometimes it helps to have a sketch to use as a guide.”
Billie set her fork down. “I’m not uncomfortable. I’m just not sure I can describe him all that well.”
“There’s no right or wrong,” Liz said, selecting one of the pencils from the ones on the table. “Just do your best and we can adjust as we go along. Start with the basics. Sex, age, height.”
Billie folded her napkin in her lap, wondering how best to describe the boy to the artist across the table. She started with his approximate age and his small size. She described his threadbare clothes and natty cap, the features of his face. She told Liz of the amputated legs, but omitted detailing that the wounds were always fresh and how the severed stumps never stopped bleeding. She spent a moment describing the way the boy held himself, his constant slouch. She glanced at Mockler and he gave her a wink as they watched the woman work the sketch with different grades of pencils.
“I gotta say, this is one of the more bizarre renderings I’ve done.” She laid her tools aside and handed the sketchpad across to them. “Is this the boy you saw?”
Billie took the pad and Mockler leaned into her to see. The rendering was finely detailed and seemed to capture the essential sadness of the tragic little boy. It wasn’t so much the features of his face, but the boy’s posture, the way his shoulders hunched and his head dipped as if in eternal shame.
“Wow,” Billie said, looking up at Liz. “That’s really good.”
“Thanks.” The woman packed away her pencils. She took the sketchpad back, tore the drawing out and handed it to Billie. “I hope it helps.”
“It will,” Mockler assured her. “Thanks for meeting us, Liz.”
The artist finished her wine and said goodbye. Billie couldn’t stop staring at the drawing.
Mockler propped both elbows on the table. “What do you think?”
“It’s so odd seeing a picture of him. You’re friend is really talented.”
“She’s good at teasing out the details from people.” Mockler held the sketch at arm’s length to gain perspective. “Sad little guy, isn’t he? Like something out of a Dickens story.”
“I gotta run,” Billie said, checking the time on her phone. “Will you make me a copy of that?”
He handed it to her. “You keep the original. Just photocopy it for me.”
“Okay. Thanks.” She leaned in to kiss his cheek. He needed a shave. “How do you feel about giving me a lift to work?”
“I’d love to.”
Chapter 21
“ARCHIBALD CRUMP,” STATED the man behind the desk. “Clairvoyant and showman. Exposed as a fraud.”
“Fraud?” Billie asked, looking up with surprise at the man. “How do you know?”
“There are two threads to every history,” said Armand Barrow. “The official history of the public record and then the obscure, often darker truth stitched underneath it. One just needs to know where to look.”
Barrow’s Rare Books was a cramped space above a beauty supply shop on Ottawa where the musty smell of old books was mitigated by the aroma of hair product from the shop below. Proprietor Armand Barrow, a short man in his late 50s, was a curious study of contradictions. The glasses hung around his neck from a chain and his grey beard gave him a grandfatherly charm, but the tattooed forearms and Cannibal Corpse tee-shirt made him seem like a biker misplaced inside a book shop.
Heeding Mockler’s advice, Billie had called ahead to book an appointment with the book dealer. When Barrow had asked what it was about, she had said she was trying to find info on Crump, adding that Detective Mockler had referred her. Barrow asked her to spell the name of the individual and then told her to come by after noon. Clearly, the rare book dealer had done his homework.
Still parsing the man’s riddle about twin histories, Billie chewed her lip before venturing another question. “Was Archibald Crump a child clairvoyant?”
Barrow arched on eyebrow. “Child? No, he was in his 30s when he set out his shingle here in Hamilton. Why?”
“No reason,” Billie said. “You said he was a fraud?”
“He was exposed as one. The exact details are obscure but he was quite successful for a time holding séances and private divinations. Then in 1906, something happened and he was chased from stage one night and almost murdered by a mob.”
“What did he do?”
“That part is still a mystery,” said Barrow.
Billie propped an elbow on the counter. “So, he was a fortune teller?”
“Yes. Spiritualists and séances were all the rage in the early part of the century. Crump was a Scottish emigre who claimed to come from a long line of diviners back home. He even claimed his ancestors were seers to the court of George the Third. Here, have a look at this.” Barrow reached under the glass and unfurled a small poster. ‘An Evening of Spiritualist Wonder and Cabinet Seance with the astounding Archibald Crump’, read the headline in archaic font. The lurid illustration showed a man in black tails and trim moustache gesturing over a skull.
Billie lingered over the illustration. The man pictured was clearly not the Half-Boy. So, what was his connection to the child? “Where did you find this?”
“The curse of a collector, I’m afraid. A wee bit of everything in here.”
She ran her finger over the lurid poster. “So Crump ran séances for a while, but was proven to be a fake?”
“Either that or he gave a bad fortune to the wrong person,” Barrow grinned, scratching his belly. “I think he was run out of town in 1906, during the riot.”
“Riot?”
“Rail strike. The local workers were in a labour dispute with their bosses and shut down the trains. The mayor called in the army to break the strike. All hell broke loose, city in shambles. Crump disappeared during the chaos, never to be seen again.”
Billie pursed her lips in thought. “How do you know all this stuff about Crump?”
“The spiritualist movement of that period has always been a hobby of mine. There was a fair bit of it here in town. In fact, there were even chapbooks produced during that era.” Barrow turned to the shelf behind him and produced three small hand-printed pamphlets and laid them across the counter. “Sort of an early newsletter produced by the adherents of the spiritualist movement.”
Billie fanned the brittle chapbooks across the glass. The covers were yellow with garish typography in red and black. The Eye of Horus Society.
Barrow tapped the third booklet on the end, with its crude rendering of a dove over a pyramid. “There’s a few references to Crump in this one.”
“How much?” Billie asked, picking it up gingerly. The cover was loose, straying from its interior pages.
The book dealer looked at the young woman and then looked at the chapbook in her hand. “Fifty?”
“Dollars?” Billie protested. “There’s barely 50 pages in here. And it’s falling apart.”
Barrow shrugged. “It’s a rare document from a curious period of local history,” he said, as if that countered any dispute to its value.
Billie scowled, but dug into her pocket all the same. Working bar usually meant having wads of cash, but all she came up with were two wrinkled $20 bills. “Forty is all I got.”
Armand Barrow shook his head in dismay, but took her cash anyway. “You’re practically robbing me blind, young lady. Maybe I should call that detective friend of yours and inform him of a robbery in progress.” Winking at her, he slipped the purchase into a brown paper bag and handed it to her. “Happy reading.”
~
“So that’s it?” Tammy asked. “It’s over?”
Kaitlin nodded slowly. “Yeah. I think so.”
They were seated on the couch in Tammy’s apartment, where Kaitlin had crashed the night before. This incident hadn’t been the first time Kaitlin had sought refuge after a fight with her boyfriend. When she had shown up late last night, Tammy didn’t press her for particulars of the quarrel, she just got the extra bedding out and the two of them killed a bottle of pinot noir.
When Kaitlin asked to stay a second night, Tammy knew it was serious. A night away from Kyle was usually enough for Kaitlin to cool off and go back with a clear head to sort things out. Camping out on her couch for a second night was new territory and it troubled Tammy.
“And this is all because of what happened at Billie’s?” Tammy asked.
“That was the tipping point.” Kaitlin picked up her glass and looked at the dark vino within. “We’ve been having problems for a while now.”
That was news to Tammy. “You two always seem solid to me.”
“We’re good at keeping it private. Putting on a good show for everybody.”
“Clearly.” Tammy reached for her glass, wondering if she should order in some food. Neither of them had eaten since getting home from work and it looked like they were about to repeat last night’s decimation of red wine on the couch. “But what was it about Billie’s that tipped it over?”
“Kyle can be so condescending when he wants to be,” Kaitlin said. “Especially about anything I have an interest in. He used to, at least, be respectful of it, but, now, whenever anything comes up about the paranormal, he just gets nasty with me.”
“He kinda has reason to,” Tammy pointed out. She backtracked when she saw anger flash in her friend’s eyes. “That came out wrong. I’m not saying he’s right, but maybe it scares him. You almost died because of it, remember?”
“Don’t take his side,” Kaitlin snarled. Then, she smiled. “Bitch.”
“I’ll never be on his side, dumbass. I’m just saying maybe he’s scared and it comes out all wrong. Dudes are shit at saying what’s really eating them. Instead, they pick ridiculous things to bitch about.”
“That I can recognize, but then it turned mean. I know he never believed in any of that stuff but he would at least tolerate it. But, now, he taunts me with it, going out of his way to belittle me for being gullible. I’m just sick of it.”
“I’m sorry, honey. I had no idea it was that bad.” Tammy patted her friend’s hand. “Well, you can stay here as long as you want.”
“Thanks. I’ll find a place soon, I promise.”
“Don’t sweat it. I miss having a roomie.” Tammy rose from the couch with a grunt to retrieve her phone from the table. “I’m gonna order some takeout from across the street. You okay with burritos?”
“Sure,” Kaitlin said as Tammy went into the kitchen. She looked at her glass, thinking she should probably slow down, but took another sip anyway. When a chill passed through her, she looked for a blanket to wrap over her shoulders, but there wasn’t one. Tammy was simple in her furnishings. Functional with few comforts. She rose to get her sweater from the chair, but an abrupt pain shot through her abdomen like a hot blade. It stole her breath, but she managed to set her glass down without dropping it. Her first thought was the wound in her belly, but it was healed over. Had something internal ripped loose, a stitch below the surface? It had been weeks now.
The second pain ripped across her back like a bone-studded whip flaying the flesh. She gasped to call Tammy, but the third flash stole her voice. A stroke, she thought. I’m having a stroke. Then, she thought, I’m too young to be having a stroke.
Kaitlin shut her eyes against the pain and, when she opened them again, she was somewhere else. Not Tammy’s warm apartment, somewhere cold and damp and very dark. The ground under her was frigid stone and grimy with muck. A small light filtered in through a crack in the wall and something passed before the dim light, blocking it. When her eyes adjusted, she saw a dark figure before her. The face was covered by a hood, two dark eye-holes cut through the material, but she could see no eyes within. The cloaked figure held a flail in his bloodied fist, with leather thongs that rattled from the sharp studs embedded in each string.
Her tormentor was fast, lashing out again with the flail. Kaitlin felt it tear across her cheek, flinging her across the floor, almost colliding into a tin bucket against wall. The water within the bucket spilt and she saw her face reflected in its rolling surface, but it wasn’t her face that looked back, it was a man’s face. His cheek was split and blood dripped into the water where it dispersed. Kaitlin blinked twice before recognizing the face in the water’s surface. If only she could remember his name.
“What was that noise?” Tammy said, coming back into the living room. Kaitlin was on the floor, thrashing in some kind of seizure. Tammy dropped to her knees and tried to hold her still.
“Kaitlin, what’s wrong?”
Kaitlin’s jaw worked up and down, the teeth snarling as she uttered one word over and over. Tammy strained to listen but, it didn’t make any sense.
A name.
Owen.
~
The desk in the corner, untouched for months, was a graveyard of old interests and abandoned hobbies. There was an old Hasselblad camera that Billie had found at a yard sale two years ago. Alongside it were three rolls of shot film waiting to be developed and two contact sheets of older test photos. Tammy, who had inspired the interest in photography, had helped her learn the basics of the trade and mechanics of picture developing. The old Swedish camera, a precise and beautiful piece in and of itself, had sat untouched for almost a year.
Next to the camera was a vintage sewing box of pink wicker with a coiled handle. The clasp was broken and the lid didn’t close properly anymore. This inspiration had come from Jen, whose talent and skill with material Billie had always envied. Further crowding the desk were re-purposed baby food jars filled with beading, spools of wire and small tools. Kaitlin, when Billie had first met her, made her own jewelry.
These artifacts of lost interests had gathered dust when Billie realized that what had inspired each of them was not the craft in itself, but the passion of those schooled in them. Tammy, with her photography; Jen’s love of creative design and Kaitlin’s patient skill with wire and bead. The passion was what Billie had been after in her search for her own vocation and now the sight of these relics and unfinished creations was simply depressing.
Gathering up the detritus of her old pursuits, she packed it away into a box and slid the box under the desk. Cleaning the desk with a rag, she set up her cranky laptop, a notebook and three books from the library on the history of Hamilton. Squared up atop the pile of books was the small chapbook from the book dealer that had cost her 40 clams. The wall above the desk was cluttered with postcards and pictures torn from magazines. These came down and the push-pins reused to fix a small map she had photocopied from a library book showing the layout of the city in 1904. Next to this map she tacked the pencil rendering of the Half-Boy from the sketch artist.
She took a moment to approve the set up. She was now ready to tackle a new pursuit but there was one critical aspect that separated this pursuit from the others she had boxed away; passion. She was determined to unlock the true identity of the lost boy who had become a part of her life. Eager to dig in, she started with the pricey little booklet titled The Eye of Horus.
