Poor Jacky, page 15
“Ticket, please!”
Paul shrieked. He leant across the table, willing Pong to repeat himself.
The ticket inspector cleared his throat. Paul turned to him and registered his presence for the first time. He reached into his pocket.
The other seats were empty.
Queasy, he handed up his ticket. The inspector scrawled on it with a biro. Disappointing. Did they not bother with hole punches anymore?
He moved away. Someone further up the carriage whispered something. The inspector looked back at Paul significantly.
Paul shifted uncomfortably. He forced himself to look through the window. Hedges flitted by beneath a grey, foreboding sky. He kept his gaze averted. He didn’t want to make eye contact with any of the passengers. Moreover, he did not want to see if Pong and Darren were occupying the supposedly empty seats.
Why was it always Pong and Darren?
Why was it never Steven?
Paul wanted to call Rick again. It would have to wait until he got off.
The train plunged into a tunnel so there was only darkness and the artificially illuminated faces of the passengers reflected in his window. Paul closed his eyes and tried to remember if he had taken a tablet.
***
Rick trawled through the catalogue of events collected in Miss Beamish’s notebook. None were as detailed as Elizabeth’s journal but all were perplexing. Some hinted at unexplained occurrences: why would dogs never set foot in the Hall? Others detailed accidents and disasters - falling masonry, holes in the ground swallowing unwary workers - and there were many unsubstantiated accounts of a ghostly child being seen at an upstairs window, ruining many a photograph. None of these photographs had been added to the notebook but Miss Beamish had printed in her neatest hand a series of numbers in the margin, whenever a photograph was mentioned. Rick assumed these referred to records in the archive for the reader to cross-reference.
There was a webpage address, peculiar to see it written in that careful penmanship. It was for the wedding video Rick and Paul had already seen. Commentators either deemed it to be the most or least convincing bit of ghost footage in history, depending on their view point. The sceptics dismissed it as an easily reproducible stunt. Similarly, the holes in the ground could be attributed to the subsidence of old coalmines. Believers would replay the clip in awe, pointing out various aspects that established, beyond all doubt, the clip’s authenticity: the shadows spoke volumes - the boy cast none where all around him were affected by, presumably, clouds moving across the sun. The ‘fact’ that the boy’s feet didn’t appear to touch the ground. The ‘fact’ that if you paused the playback at just the right frame, his eyes flashed yellow and looked like a goat’s...
But there was no direct pattern. A sighting of the boy was not necessarily followed by a tragic event. Conversely, awful accidents befell the residents and staff and the boy was not reported as ‘present’.
Rick decided it would take a mind more used to plotting a sequence, causes and effects - a mind like Paul Beecroft’s - to make sense of it.
He scribbled a few notes on his pad but the rumbling of his empty stomach seemed likely to get him turfed out of the library for noise-making. He gathered his things and headed out for chips.
It occurred to him to check his phone.
Fifteen missed calls from Paul Beecroft but no messages. Damn. How cool would it be to play his friends: Listen to what my friend the bestselling author said to me!
As he headed to the chippy, Rick pressed ‘CALL’.
He almost dropped his phone into a puddle.
All he could hear was the dragging sound of the night before. He disconnected as fast as he could. A mistake! His mind playing tricks! It was interference, a bad connection, or something...
He looked at the screen. Three words lit it up.
PUT IT BACK.
Suddenly, Rick didn’t feel like chips anymore. Steeling himself, he redialled Paul Beecroft. His hand shook as he held the phone to his ear.
“Hello?” said Paul Beecroft.
The bestselling author sounded scared out of his wits.
***
Rick got to the station half an hour before Paul’s train was due - it was delayed by another half an hour, cranking up the strain on their nerves. What if something had happened on the train? What if something happens to me on the platform while I’m waiting?
Suddenly, the world seemed a lonely, scary place. Rick was jumpy, afraid to look into shadows and around corners and into the eyes of anyone else.
At long last, the train slowed into the station. Not many people got off and Rick didn’t blame them. Who would want to come to Dedley at the best of times?
And there was Paul. Looking dishevelled and anxious, with his head down. Rick waved him down. The relief was evident on both their faces.
“Things have taken an urgent turn,” Paul began, without pleasantry. “We must find some way to lay the spirit to rest.”
“Yes,” Rick nodded. He wondered if he should offer to carry the writer’s bag but Beecroft was hurrying towards the Queequeg’s on the forecourt. He ordered a pot of tea - how perverse in a coffee franchise! - and directed Rick to a table in the corner.
“The child,” Paul ripped open a sachet of sugar, “He needs to be put at ease. So he can move on... Honestly, I sound like a right twat talking like this. It’s all very well in a book but this is supposed to be the real world, damn it.”
“The child must be stopped,” Rick agreed.
“That’s another way of putting it.” Paul stirred his tea. “He seems to have recruited old friends of mine to get my attention.”
Rick nodded but said nothing. Paul recounted his encounter on the train. For some reason, Rick was reluctant to reveal what he had experienced in his room. Talking about it made it real somehow. It was far more palatable to listen to the writer’s crazy talk and the implications of that, than to deal with his own... demons? Is that what this was?
“Are you listening?” Paul snapped, bringing Rick out of his thoughts. “I think the child was disturbed when the archive was moved into town. And now it’s all to be moved again, he doesn’t like it. He wants to go back to the Hall.”
This didn’t sound right to Rick. It didn’t tally with the incidents he had read about in the notebook.
“I think it’s the other way round. I think the others - your friends - are urging you - us - to put a stop to this kid before he is moved again. They are here to warn us, like Jacob Marley.”
Paul frowned as he thought this through.
“I don’t get that at all. The child is the victim in all of this. Look.” He pulled out his volume of Miss Beamish’s notes and flicked through it. “See. The doctor found bruises, old injuries, all over him. Child abuse, pure and simple.”
“The Earl didn’t do it. He doesn’t seem the sort.”
“They don’t. Well, if not him, who?”
Rick shrugged. “Beats me.”
Paul laughed bitterly.
Rick pulled out his volume of notes. “I haven’t finished but it’s clear from the off, the kid is considered malevolent. But he’s tied to the Hall in some way. He seems to have transferred this ‘attachment’, I suppose you’d call it, to the archives building in town. Now, with the removal of all the records to the new-build, someone or some thing is eager to put a stop to it. All the ‘put it back’ messages -”
“You’ve had one?”
Rick considered denying it but he nodded. He told Paul about the bed.
“But you saw nothing?”
“I didn’t look!”
“Either way, in order to put a stop to these visitations, we have to find a way to put Poor Jacky to rest.”
Rick shuddered. He glanced around the cafe, as though fearing the child would appear, summoned by Paul’s invocation.
“What do you suggest?”
Paul sipped his tea. It had gone cold.
“I think the papers I helped move from the Hall all those years ago, need to go back. I think that’s what the ‘put it back’ messages mean. Something among those documents, something in one of the boxes, perhaps, will lay the ghost.”
Rick mulled it over.
“Worth a try, I suppose.”
***
The archive department was closed. All the shutters were down but the gates were open and the car park was a hive of activity. Large yellow council vans were swarming around the rear entrance. Geoff the archivist, sporting a Parka over his cardigan, was supervising the loading of the vans with thick plastic containers, as though he was organising packed lunches for a giants’ school outing. He checked the numbers on each lid and cross-referenced it on his clipboard before allowing the container to be lifted onto a van. He noted down the registration number of the van for good measure.
Paul and Rick hurried up and asked what was going on.
“I’m baking a cake,” said Geoff. Then his shoulders slumped and he apologised. “I’m a bit frazzled, a bit fraught, as you can tell. Busy times, busy times.”
“You’re packing up!” Rick exclaimed.
“Are you a detective? You should be a detective. Sorry, sorry. There I go again.”
“We are sorry to disturb you,” Paul adopted a sympathetic expression. “You’re obviously a busy man. But we have something of an emergency. A research emergency.”
Geoff pulled a face. It didn’t seem likely. Paul persisted.
“The papers from Dedley Hall. Are they still here? Or...?”
Geoff riffled through the pages on his clipboard. He shook his head.
“First lot to be shipped out,” he shrugged. “Truth be told, we made it that way. The packing up seemed to go a lot smoother after he - after that lot had gone.”
“Where did you send them?”
“The new build, of course. Across town. By the so-called living museum, which, if you ask me, sounds like a horror film. You know: Night at the Living Museum.”
Rick nodded and said it did a bit.
“Would we be able to have a look at them, if we went there?”
Geoff turned from the task in hand and gave the writer the onceover. The man looked like he could do with about a fortnight’s sleep. And a shave. And, probably, psychiatric assistance.
“Doubtful... They’ll be getting things ready for the grand opening. If I had my way, those boxes will be put somewhere they will never be opened. If I had my way.”
“And why do you say that?”
Geoff opened his mouth to say something and then closed it again.
“Go on.”
He told them.
***
Following Carol’s hospitalisation, a series of accidents occurred to reduce further the staff available at the archives for packing up the documents and cataloguing the containers. At first, it was the female staff that fell foul of these unfortunate events: a twisted ankle here, a sprained wrist there; they started calling in sick, often from the car park - waves of nausea would overwhelm them as they got closer to the building and they would be unable to enter. There was an odour that hadn’t been there before, permeating the old school from the basement upwards. It was an earthy smell, like dung and old straw. Indeed, Paul and Rick could detect it emanating from the open doorway just as Geoff told them about it.
A look passed between them; they both made the connection at the same instant: farmyard... goat...
Geoff explained how other employees were drafted in from branch libraries around the borough. It fell to him to train these up in the proper handling of delicate materials and how to record what had been packed where, thereby slowing the process even further.
Paul asked to what Geoff attributed these occurrences. The archivist’s shoulders rose and fell. Geoff hadn’t a clue.
“If I was that way inclined, I might be tempted to say something didn’t want us to leave.”
“Something?”
“Some of my colleagues are too afraid to come to work. They’re terrified. And they worry about this, um, phenomenon following them home.”
“You’re not worried?”
“I have a job to do, Mr Beecroft. I am custodian of these records. I will ensure their safe transport to the new building. I will supervise their installation in their new accommodation. I am not going to let some pong stop me.”
Paul quailed.
“Excuse me?”
“What?”
“You said Pong?”
“Yes; you know. The smell. From an old drain, most likely. People, my colleagues included, forget how old this place is. Even a sturdy Victorian sewer has a smell-by date.” He chuckled at his own witticism. “And the drop in temperature, well, there’s a lot of old stone in the foundations and the heating system’s not what it was.”
“What about the injuries?” Rick challenged. He was in no mood to have his experiences rationalised away by a man in a cardigan.
Geoff awarded his questioner a patronising smile.
“You wouldn’t believe the amount of Health and Safety training these people have received. There’s a lot of heavy lifting in this job; people don’t realise. One false move and you’re off for months.”
“You blame them?”
Geoff looked the younger man in the eyes.
“Of course. Who else is there?”
Paul put a hand on Rick’s arm to prevent him from launching into the story of Poor Jacky.
“Do you think,” the writer addressed the archivist, “we might be able to get a look at the records from Dedley Hall up at the new building? Before the opening?”
Geoff sucked in his breath.
“I don’t know about that.”
“I am a wealthy man, Mr, um...”
The archivist looked shocked to the core.
“Mr Beecroft! I will not be bought!”
“I wasn’t suggesting - Look. Listen. I can make a substantial donation to your department; that’s permissible, isn’t it? And, furthermore, I can donate several first editions, the original manuscripts even with my handwritten corrections - I’ll even chuck in my teenage diaries if need be, but we need to see those records. Right away!”
Geoff looked from one man to the other. The urgency was written on their faces. He kept them waiting, savouring his moment of power and influence.
“I would have to be present -”
His words were interrupted by both men seizing a hand each and shaking them with gratitude.
“We’ll meet you there!” The writer clapped him on the shoulder.
“Good man!” Rick enthused.
Geoff watched the pair spring back to their car like Batman and Robin. He resumed his supervision. He couldn’t leave a van half-loaded.
***
Alan Hodge was looking forward to his break. This was his fifth trip to the new build, carting tubs of old paper in the back of his van. He’d already eaten the cheese and pickle sandwiches his Pauline had prepared and now, as he waited at a red light, he munched the mini Scotch egg she’d included as a treat.
I’ll drop this little lot off and then pop into the shop for a pasty, he resolved. And a packet of crisps. And a can of pop - diet, of course. Doesn’t pay to be greedy.
The lights changed and he pulled away. Behind him, the contents of the van shifted as he performed a hill start.
The van trundled along, bypassing the town centre with its pastry shops - perhaps he could take a detour now, just pull over and nip in. No one would know.
He was under the strictest instruction never to leave the van unattended. His cargo was extremely valuable, he’d been told, had had it drummed into him by some git in a cardigan. Yeah, yeah. Mouldy old bits of paper. The things some people value! The world’s gone bloody mad.
A sound from the back of the van startled him: a metallic thud as though something heavy had fallen over. Bugger it. Let the folks at the other end sort it out. Wasn’t in his job description, messing about with papers. He wasn’t trained for it, wasn’t qualified. Wasn’t his fault if the git in the cardigan hadn’t secured things properly.
Alan almost veered off the road.
There was a child sitting beside him in the passenger seat!
A child!
Bloody hell!
He fought to keep the van off the kerb. Other drivers sounded their horns in anger.
The child was still there. Alan could see it in his peripheral vision. It was just sitting there, dressed like something out of an old film or a Sunday afternoon drama.
The van came to another red light.
Alan turned to the child. The child turned its head, slowly, to meet Alan’s terrified gaze.
The eyes!
Like a - like a goat’s!
Suddenly, the child sprang at the van driver. So strong for such a little boy! Alan thought as tiny hands squeezed around his neck.
Poor Jacky slammed Alan’s forehead against the centre of the steering wheel. Alan lost consciousness. He slumped forwards, sounding the horn in one continuous note. The traffic blared its outrage at the van’s failure to move away. Drivers swore and made offensive gestures as they passed.
The passenger door opened and closed again. Unseen, Poor Jacky made his way to the entrance of the nearest building, from which a couple of members of staff were hurrying to address the source of the noise. Bloody van driver, asleep at the wheel. Didn’t he know they had residents who needed peace and quiet at all times?
As they came out, Poor Jacky went in. The receptionist at the Dorothy Beaumont rest home didn’t see a thing.
***
Miss Evadne Beamish was in her room. She was sitting at her desk although the desk was bare. She was waiting. Waiting for those two idiots to finish reading her notebooks so they would come back with their questions. Waiting for - Waiting for the visitor she had known all along would come. She had studied the creature for decades. She knew the move to the new build would go awry. Poor Jacky wanted out and he would get out. It was a matter of time.
The door creaked open, swinging slowly, but no one came in.
The time was now.
Miss Beamish gripped the handle of her walking stick, preparing to lift it in a defensive move at any second. The door slammed shut. The room was colder. Miss Beamish adjusted her cardigan, her eyes darting around all corners. Every part of her that wasn’t already taut with arthritis tensed.
