Poor Jacky, page 17
“Oh, he had everyone fooled. Apart from that meddlesome old maid. Silly woman should have been my ally. It was she who beat the child, not I. No one would listen to me. I was no longer master in my own house! Can you imagine?”
“Why did she beat the child, my lord?” Paul tried to keep the Earl focussed.
“To get him to turn, of course! Reveal himself! Or be beaten all the way back to Hell whence he came.”
Paul could feel Phil’s sweaty paw trying to pull away. He gave it a sharp wrench towards him. Buggered if he was going to break the circle now!
“Attend my words with care, gentlemen,” the Earl lowered his voice to a whisper. “You must put it back before that fiend becomes too strong.”
“Put what back exactly?”
“You will find it where my bones are resting.”
“Find what?”
“You must be quick to act!” Miss Beamish’s eyes were rolling wildly. “Find it! Put the bloody thing back!”
There was a rush of air as the Earl left Miss Beamish. The candles were blown out and the air freshener was knocked over. Miss Beamish slumped forwards, hitting her forehead on the table. Her hands slid from Paul’s and Rick’s. The circle was broken.
The men blinked at each other in darkness.
Phil pushed his chair away and stood up. He muttered something about the lights and moved to the reception desk. Seconds later, the overhead tubes buzzed and flickered into life.
Rick and Paul were staring at each other. They waited for Phil to return before they broke the silence. The security man came back but lingered at his chair rather than sitting on it, reluctant to have the experience repeat itself.
“Is she okay?” He nodded towards the old woman.
As if in answer, Miss Beamish let out a resounding, cloth-rattling fart.
“She’s okay,” Paul and Rick said in unison.
The old woman stirred and sat up. She smacked her wrinkled lips as though parched. Phil scurried away, digging in his pockets for change for the vending machine.
“What did he say?” Miss Beamish croaked. “It feels like he said a lot.”
Paul recounted what the Earl had said, as verbatim as he could make it. Miss Beamish nodded. Phil returned with bottles of water and fizzy pop, which he doled out indiscriminately around the group.
“He said you was a meddler,” he nodded across the table. “What did he mean?”
Miss Beamish sipped her bottled water - Rick had had to twist off the cap on her behalf - and looked up at the security man, her eyes twinkling.
“Gentlemen,” she smiled at each man in turn. “A quick history lesson and then we must get to work deciphering the Earl’s somewhat cryptic message.”
***
The photographers from the local newspapers were hit first. With their backs to the road, they didn’t see the bright yellow council van bearing down on them. The people posing for yet another photo-opportunity heard it before they saw it. The fixed smiles dropped from their faces and were replaced by open-mouthed cries of horror. They broke the formation the photographers had taken such care to organise and scrambled to get out of the van’s path.
Some sprawled sideways and escaped with minor injuries: a few bruises and scrapes. The rest were not as fortunate.
Many rushed the entrance - some were trampled before the van reached them. Those who made it into the building found to their dismay that the glass frontage of the shiny new building was not enough to stop a bulky vehicle hell-bent on destruction. The glass broke into large, deadly pieces, flying across the atrium, crushing some and slicing others. The van kept coming. Its wheels skidded on the newly laid floor and on the limbs and heads of the fallen. It ploughed into the welcome desk, pushing it backwards into the far wall. Those who had sought refuge behind it were squashed utterly.
The van came to rest when it struck a supporting pillar.
An eerie stillness covered the scene. The soft sound of sobbing arose from the wounded. Those who still could started to move. They crawled across the debris, confused and distraught.
They didn’t get far.
An ominous creak heralded the collapse of the pillar. With its downfall came a huge proportion of the ceiling. It was like dropping a slab of stone on an ants’ nest.
A cloud of dust obscured the carnage but only temporarily. Those outside who were still standing peered in at the devastation, not daring to step closer but unable to look away.
The dust began to settle, making the bodies look like the victims of Vesuvius at Pompeii.
The driver’s door of the van, buckled and battered, opened. Onlookers watched in astonishment as a pair of tiny feet appeared and dropped onto the rubble.
It was a child! A small boy in fancy dress had caused this disaster! A joy rider!
Kids today!
Poor Jacky looked across the destruction and waved at his horrified audience. From that distance, they couldn’t be sure of it, but his eyes looked yellow. Inhuman.
Jacky’s pale face cracked into a malevolent grin.
And then the van exploded.
***
“So, you can see, gentlemen, I did not become an archivist by accident.”
They were wheeling Miss Beamish down that blasted ramp - they being Paul and
Rick; Security Man Phil was at the reception desk, keeping a lookout via the CCTV cameras.
“But how did you know about Jacky?” Rick was still puzzling through Miss Beamish’s story. She had studied for her archivist qualification and had lobbied for the post, which had been in the depths of Dedley Hall all those years ago.
“Old Sally was of travelling stock and well-versed in things ordinary folk wot not of. She recognised Jacky for what he was. She was also a relative,” Miss Beamish clarified. “She passed the story on to her daughter and she passed it to hers and so on, all down the line. I am childless so I wrote the notebooks. I knew years ago, when the archive was moved from the Hall to the old school, things would be disturbed. I fought against it but the council would not be dissuaded. And now with this second move, Jacky’s taking his chance to get free.”
“But if we retrieve this - whatever it is,” Rick continued, “and we ‘put it back’...”
“Then Jacky will be defeated. Forever, I hope.”
Paul was deep in thought. Miss Beamish’s revelation made him feel like his entire life had been a lie. The old biddy wasn’t who he had thought she was all this time. She wasn’t just the borough’s archivist, she was the last in a long line of women who had kept a watch over the Hall and its strange inhabitants. All of that was mind-boggling enough, but not all the pieces were falling into place.
“Miss Beamish,” he was surprised how timid he sounded. “What about my friends? You were there that night, twenty five years ago. What happened?”
The old woman lifted a mottled hand as a signal for him to stop pushing the chair. She looked up at him and there was sadness in her eyes.
“Ah,” she said. “The chickens have come home to roost. It was...regrettable. Regrettable but necessary. The lies we told their families, I mean - or rather the omission of the truth. They are still recorded as missing, I believe. Rumoured to have run away to London all those years ago, as so many young people do. Easy to fall off the radar - even easier in those days before the mobile phones and what-have-you. And it was easier - more palatable - to keep the truth to myself.”
Paul pressed for more.
“But what is the truth? What actually happened?”
Miss Beamish looked him up and down and appeared to decide he was old enough now to handle the facts.
“It turns out that His Lordship’s temper is stronger and more volatile in death than it was in life. He took objection to your trespass in his house and by some means I know not of, he was able to tear them to pieces. You would no doubt have met the same sticky end had I not arrived at that moment.”
“You saved my life?”
“I suppose I did, yes.”
“They come to me, you know,” he blurted out. “Pong and Darren. I’ve seen them. But not Steven. Not yet at any rate.”
“I’ve seen them too,” Rick chimed in. “I think it was them. Well, I didn’t so much see them as...experience them, if you know what I mean. What’s all that about?”
Miss Beamish mulled it over.
“Do they say anything to you, these apparitions?”
“’Put it back’,” said Paul and Rick together.
“Hmm,” said Miss Beamish. “Hmm.”
They had reached the limits of the security lamps. Ahead of them were blocks of shadow. The neatly trimmed hedges that formed a perimeter around this particular part of the grounds, were blacker than the night sky, a total absence of light.
“Who has the torch?” Miss Beamish swatted at Rick until he handed over Security Phil’s standard issue flashlight. She flicked the switch and a dim beam of light with a patch of shadow at its centre travelled across the length of the hedge. It came to rest on a door of dark wood. “Here we are!” she announced, incongruously cheerful.
Paul and Rick exchanged glances, each relieved and dismayed to see that the other man was as nervous as he was.
“Bring the tools!” Miss Beamish commanded. An owl hooted as if in response. Rick hitched the canvas bag Phil had found in a grounds man’s cupboard higher up his shoulder. Inside it, shovels and picks rattled together.
Paul was experiencing a peculiar detachment from the unfolding scene. It was like watching a film through a television shop window. There was a dreamlike distance, a removal, he felt from the actions he was taking. It couldn’t be real - how could it be real? - He, a hotel barman and a dotty old archivist were about to desecrate the Earl of Dedley’s grave.
It was madness, truly.
He shuddered. No, please; not madness.
He didn’t want to go through that again.
***
The hedge bordered a square of garden, bisected by a path of large flagstones. At the centre of the square a miniature version of Dedley Hall loomed in the darkness, barely catching any moonlight. Miss Beamish played the torch across the front elevation of this rather grandiose mausoleum.
“A doll’s house?” Rick gave voice to what had also been Paul’s first impression.
“Funereal tastes were somewhat different in those days,” Miss Beamish explained. “We must find a way in.”
“Must we?” Rick glanced around nervously. There was nothing but the surrounding darkness and the sky above. The feeble beam of the flashlight gave small comfort.
Miss Beamish held the torch as steady as she could while Paul examined the ornamental doors of the tomb. They were too small to enter without crawling. He discovered they were for decoration purposes only.
“There’s no way in,” he concluded, relieved that their outlandish plan would have to be aborted.
“Bollocks,” said Miss Beamish. “Check around the back.”
“It’s too dark!” Paul wheedled.
“Bloody hell. Come on.” She beckoned to Rick to take over wheelchair-pushing duties. She kept the torchlight on the scaled-down mansion as the three of them made their way around to the far side.
There too the doors and windows were not functional. In Paul’s mind, that clinched it. They would have to give up and go home. He could hide under blankets until his mind settled down again and he could forget he ever came to Dedley...
“Hmm,” Miss Beamish stroked her chin. “Do you see how it is not quite symmetrical along the edges? One would think, given the otherwise accurate attention to detail, such a glaring error would not have been overlooked. Unless, of course, it is not an error but is quite, quite deliberate.”
“Eh?” said Rick.
“The edge of the building there, seems more bulbous don’t you think, in regular intervals all down the side?”
Rick and Paul followed the beam as it pointed out these anomalies.
“You’re not wrong, Miss B,” Rick ran his hand down the edge. “It’s a hinge!”
They repositioned themselves to face the side of the mausoleum. It became apparent that the entire side of the structure was the door.
It became equally apparent that it was locked.
“Oh well, that’s it, then,” Miss Beamish shrugged her bony shoulders.
“We give up?” suggested Paul, hopefully.
“We break in!” Miss Beamish clapped her hands together. “Come on; get a wriggle on and grab a shovel!”
***
In reception, Security Phil had watched the trio move away from the Hall until the shadows of the grounds swallowed them up. He kept his eyes on the other monitors, looking out in case anyone pulled up at the gate or some local took it upon himself to walk his dog across council property. He was to call the young lad’s mobile if anyone came. He would give them fair warning, might even stall any new arrival, if he could, but he would not join in with their unsavoury and illegal activities. The séance had been bad enough. Grave-robbing was a step too far.
A creak sounded on the staircase. Phil froze.
The silence that followed was somehow worse.
Phil decided he didn’t like being on his own. He flicked one of the monitors to show the BBC news and was startled by what he saw.
A live report was underway, coming from Dedley itself! Phil turned up the volume, not just to drown out any further creaks from upstairs.
A reporter at the scene of a burning building was shouting into her microphone, struggling to get herself heard above the din of the sirens of the fire engines and ambulances. From what Phil could gather from her garbled message and the headlines scrolling across the bottom of the screen, a van had been deliberately crashed into the town’s new archive building. The mayor and several council bigwigs, press photographers and innumerable bystanders had been killed. The emergency services were working flat out to control the fire and get the wounded away to hospital. It was not known how many lives had been lost.
There were unconfirmed reports that a child had been seen climbing out of the van. It was not known if the child had been driving or had been accompanying an adult driver. So far, no child had been retrieved from the rubble, alive or dead.
“Police are keen to discover this child,” the reporter was shouting, “because he may have some answers as to why this terrible event took place.”
The picture cut to the studio where the newsreader recounted, in calmer circumstances, the main points of the story. It was assumed the crash was deliberate - forensic examination would confirm this. Or it might turn out to be an accident. And it might be terrorists. Or it might be an individual with a grudge against the council. Or -
Phil switched it off. A chill ran through him. The temperature in the lobby seemed to have dropped.
Bugger this, he decided. Fastening his coat, he hurried from the building to tell the others about the news report.
***
Using a shovel as a crowbar, Rick forced the mausoleum door open just wide enough to admit him and Paul. Miss Beamish’s wheelchair would not fit. The old woman said she would remain outside. She would make the noise of an owl if anyone approached. They didn’t know if she was serious on this point. She handed Paul the torch and he led Rick into the tomb.
Paul almost fell down the flight of stairs. Rick managed to catch him. The mock-up of the Hall was merely a shell, covering the entrance to an underground crypt. Coughing in the stale air, Paul and Rick exchanged nods and began their cautious descent of the slippery stone steps.
Rick stayed as close to Paul as possible. The dim beam from the torch seemed vulnerable in the darkness yawning beneath them.
At the foot of the steps, Paul stopped and let the torch play in all directions. It was a dank and musty place, of stones and earthy moisture but it was undeniably a sepulchre, ornate and yet somehow anonymous.
“Hello, Edmond,” Paul muttered.
Rick started and glanced around, fearing the Earl’s spectre had put in an appearance.
“In there.” Paul nodded towards the decorated box. He stepped towards it and Rick followed closely, like a particularly clingy shadow.
There was no inscription on the lid.
“How do we know it’s him?” Rick’s voice tickled Paul’s ear.
“We don’t - he could be in any of the underground crypts around here.”
“You’re being sarcastic.”
“I am. Now, get that shovel of yours to work. We’re going to open this thing.”
Rick swallowed. The torch flickered. Paul gave it a smack. The light intensified a little. Paul stepped aside, keeping the beam trained on the edge of the lid. Rick lifted the tip of the shovel blade. And then let it drop again.
“I can’t do it. This is wrong. This is weird! I can’t do it.”
“Give over.” Paul snatched the shovel and handed Rick the torch. He positioned the shovel and attempted to lever off the lid. His breath escaped him in a grunt. The bloody thing wouldn’t budge. Paul felt a bruise to his ego. Yeah, I’m not as manly as I thought I was. Rick joined in. Together they got the heavy lid to lift, by less than an inch. They pushed. There was a grumble of stone against stone and then a crash as the lid hit the floor. It broke into pieces. There was no going back now.
Shaking, Rick shone the torch into the sarcophagus. Both men covered their noses at the stale rush of air that assaulted them.
The remains of the Earl of Dedley gazed blankly at them, grinning with the insincerity of the dead. His garments were rank with mildew but remarkably well preserved. His hands, crossed over his chest, were folded around an object.
“Poo...” Rick spluttered.
“That must be it,” said Paul.
“What is it?”
“One way to find out.” Paul reached in and tried to take the object, but the Earl’s bony fingers held on doggedly. Paul had to use both hands. A macabre tug-of-war ensued. Edmond was reluctant to surrender his treasure. At last, with Rick’s assistance, Paul pulled the object free, accompanied by a revolting cracking sound as the brittle bones snapped.
“You’ve pulled his arm off!” Rick gasped.
Repulsed, Paul shook the detached limb free and focused his attention on the object now in his palm. It was a silver cylinder about five inches long and intricately decorated. Moulded patterns wove in and out of each other like something organic, like vines, like snowflakes. The cylinder was bulbous at one end, suggesting a head, like a hammer has a head, or a doll. Or a child. Paul turned it over, ordering Rick to keep the light steady. The patterns seemed to converge on this head. There was a suggestion of a face, and holes that might have been eyes... It made a sound as Paul turned it.
