Mean Spirit

by Phil Rickman

  ‘So how does he feel about it, your father?’

  Callard shrugged. ‘I don’t know how he feels now. I haven’t seen him in two years. He’s over seventy, spends most of the time in Italy, studiously avoiding the kind of English newspaper that might contain items about me and … what I did.’

  ‘He’s embarrassed?’

  ‘He’s glad I’m rich and going my own way. I don’t think he’s really wanted to have anything to do with me since I turned twelve. I was the only woman who reminded him of my mother at her ripest and also the one woman he couldn’t fuck. Hardly remind him of her now, would I? Look at me!’

  ‘Why are you doing this to yourself?’

  ‘Maybe I want to die,’ Callard snapped. ‘Maybe I want to die and find out if there’s any truth at all in the kind of shit I’ve been feeding people for the past fifteen years.’

  As always when she lay alone in strange beds, sleep receded like the tide on a long beach, leaving Grayle cold and tense and thinking, Why am I here? On every level of the question.

  She knew – because he’d said so several times – that Marcus firmly expected her, at some stage, to leave her rented cottage in the village of St Mary’s, on the border of Herefordshire and Monmouthshire, to take up a real career.

  She kept telling herself she wasn’t going to do this, at least until The Vision was making enough money for Marcus to hire another writer and maybe a sub-editor too.

  So perhaps she was destined to be there all her life.

  There should, of course, be a man. There always used to be a man. And yet she’d been faintly horrified when her old boyfriend, Lucas, the Greenwich Village art-dealer, had written to her saying he’d be over on a buying trip in the spring and maybe they could like get together. Cool, refined, Ferrari-driving Lucas, who talked all night about the need for an inner life and would just hate ever to have time for one.

  Lucas, Grayle decided, had his place in history and that era had been covered.

  It was hard to find a man with an inner life. Maybe this was what drew her back to Marcus. Not in that way, of course, but Marcus, even though he raged and threw things, was certainly the father she kind of wished she’d had.

  Grayle also thought sometimes about Bobby Maiden, the English cop. Who’d died in the hospital after a hit-and-run incident – and then been resuscitated and come out of it different. Events had tied them together. Losing loved ones to the same killer.

  It was Bobby – mercifully, not Grayle – who had been there when Ersula’s decaying body came to light.

  ‘Why do you say it’s shit?’ Grayle had asked eventually, when the candle was burning low in the pewter dish. ‘Why do you think you were feeding people shit?’

  And the woman had bowed her head, her tobacco hair falling forward.

  ‘It’s a gift. It is a gift. You can’t believe it yourself at first. Dead people out there, just queuing up to talk to you. So many of them that you have to appoint an agent over there to filter them.’

  ‘Agent?’

  ‘Spirit guide. I’ve had several. Even a Red Indian. A Native fucking American. I said, “Piss off, Mr Running Bear, whatever you call yourself, you want to completely ruin my credibility?” But he stuck around, the poor old sod. He was very friendly in his gruff way, I quite took to him. All the clichés – you get all the bloody clichés. Table-rapping – that works as well. I’m not saying scores of people didn’t fake it, but … it happens.’

  ‘Ectoplasm?’

  ‘Why not? Not in my experience, but there’s evidence for it. And it’s a word that sounds good, isn’t it? Sounds scientific. That was the big thing when all this started in the mid-nineteenth century. It had to be seen as another great scientific leap forward, like electricity and photography. All these huge developments were linked into spiritualism – it wasn’t religion, it was human scientific knowledge crossing the final frontier. Man was becoming so clever so fast that it was obvious we were going to solve the mystery of death, sooner rather than later.’

  ‘I did a piece on all that once,’ Grayle said, ‘but the evidence was that it was nearly all one big scam.’

  ‘No.’ Callard blinked balefully. ‘That’s not the scam. Or rather, much of it was, but it’s not the one I’m talking about. I haven’t produced ectoplasm, but I’ve had materialization. Visuals. Energy forms.’

  ‘Ghosts?’

  ‘You believe in ghosts, perhaps?’ Callard eyeing her thoughtfully.

  ‘I … think so.’

  ‘You’ve seen?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘You do know, Grayle. No-one who’s seen has any real doubts.’

  ‘So why is it shit?’

  Callard stretched her long neck. She was looking firmer now, less sick. OK, beautiful; no getting around that.

  ‘For a number of years, I’d go into trance and receive these clear, comprehensible messages from what I had every reason to believe were departed spirits. The fact that the messages were mainly banal in the extreme was neither here nor there. One day Einstein might come through and it would be different. Meanwhile, I relayed the trivial messages to my well-heeled clients – sort of people who would never consult Mrs Higgins in her council flat – and everyone was happy.’

  Grayle on the edge of her chair by this time, never having heard a medium putting down the profession. Callard was something else.

  ‘And then Einstein did come through,’ Callard said.

  ‘Oh boy.’

  ‘Albert Einstein. The Albert Einstein. Saying just what you’d expect from him. How disappointed he was that modern physicists had failed to develop his ideas. How he was full of regrets at the way he’d treated his first wife, but they were blissfully reunited now. He also said that, from his present position, he was able to see where some of his theories fell down.’

  ‘How was that?’

  ‘You have scientific knowledge?’

  ‘Not to speak of.’

  ‘Me neither. I offered him automatic writing to explain, and the results looked like the authentic minute calculations of a mathematical genius. Lots of little brackets and bubbles and algebraic symbols. My agent, Nancy, got frightfully excited and had them photocopied and dispatched discreetly to a certain professor in Munich or somewhere. Who said, of course …’

  ‘That it was complete horseshit?’

  Callard sighed.

  ‘Why does that always happen?’ Grayle wondered sadly. ‘The psychic artists produce Van Gogh plastic sunflowers, and the psychic composers … you’d think Mozart would reach sublime new heights, being dead and gone to heaven and all, instead of … some pale, music-school imitation. Why?’

  ‘I don’t know why. Or, rather, I think I do now. It’s because mediumship, as it’s usually practised, is a low-level art … mundane and mediocre. It attracts low-level, inconsequential dross. Psychically speaking, the pits. Spirit shit.’

  ‘But still from like … out there?’

  ‘Who knows whether out there is really in there? In the end, I can’t tell you where the messages come from – perhaps some area of the brain we don’t yet understand. I just don’t believe they come from where we think they do when we first start to receive them. One comes to realize that the challenge is to separate the truth from the random disinformation.’

  Grayle had drunk some more whisky from the greasy glass, journalistically excited, spiritually disappointed.

  ‘But it’s all soooo plausible when you need it, Grayle. When you’ve lost someone.’

  ‘I guess.’

  ‘So.’ Persephone Callard leaning on an elbow, hunched up in a corner of the Victorian sofa in that state of drab sobriety that comes after long days of serious drinking. ‘Would you like to speak to your dead sister, tonight?’

  Grayle’s mouth was suddenly parched in spite of the Scotch. She shook her head, alarmed.

  The woman grinned at her discomfort, displaying white, perfect teeth in the candlelight.

  ‘What have you got
to lose, Grayle? You might get some special insight. You might achieve peace of mind.’

  Grayle shaking her head.

  ‘Perhaps there’s something you’d like to have told her before she died.’

  Grayle staring into the crimson cinders.

  ‘… something you wish you’d shared.’

  ‘We didn’t have too much in common outside of parents,’ Grayle said tightly. She looked up. ‘And anyway … you don’t think it really would be my sister.’

  ‘Who am I to say? Only you would know that.’

  Grayle said nothing, feeling trapped. God damn it, why couldn’t Marcus just have written, told Callard he’d come see her when he was over the flu.

  ‘You’re afraid, aren’t you, Holy Grayle?’

  ‘Maybe I just don’t want to learn something which may, if what you say is correct, have no basis in truth.’

  ‘Too close, eh?’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘I mean, it’s OK when it’s somebody else. When it’s journalism.’

  ‘You are very astute,’ Grayle said hoarsely.

  ‘Family connections, where there’s been a difficult death, are usually the strongest. Things which need to be explained. I can feel she’s near you. Some of the time. Now. She wants to come, I think.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You know, when I said there’d been manifestations … the strongest one, the one which everyone in the room saw, was a mother of twins who died in childbirth. Both sisters were there, grown up now. And we had the seance in the room – I didn’t know this at the time – where she’d actually died. She had the babies at home – she’d had two already – and she was … Anyway, this was a bungalow, and it was the living room now, not a bedroom any more. And there were photos of the mother all around the walls, and her favourite things scattered about … clothes, handbags. And all the family – the husband, the twins, another sister – all of them there. And the room was dense with her before we started …’

  ‘I don’t think I want to know about this,’ Grayle said.

  Well, of course there were things she wanted to say to Ersula. Things she wanted to ask.

  Grayle stared at the ceiling. There were times when the dead, unhappy Ersula had appeared to her in dreams. Or what had seemed, with hindsight, to be dreams.

  How very close we all were to madness.

  And yes, she’d been afraid.

  From the next room Persephone Callard, sorceress, con-woman, cried out crossly in her sleep. Maybe turning over, in her subconscious mind, all those things she wouldn’t tell Grayle but might just tell Marcus.

  Dark stuff. Grayle wasn’t sure she wanted to know about it.

  Like, what had really happened to make her conclude that the Spirit World was not to be trusted? It surely went beyond the Einstein incident; there were so many well-documented cases of earthly genius failing to survive death, great talent coming back half-assed.

  ‘So this just came over you, this fit of conscience about misleading people – it just hit you, and you couldn’t do it any more?’

  ‘Something like that.’

  No way. It was more than some kind of crisis of faith. Something more personally traumatic.

  Grayle went to sleep thinking about it and dreamed of a cavernous, candlelit ballroom, empty but full of noise … a clamour of voices, a hubbub of the unseen. Occasionally she would catch a phrase which seemed to make thrilling sense, then it was gone and unremembered. And then the mush of voices was pierced by the purity of a thin scream, and Grayle was awake in a much smaller room with no candles.

  And no voices, only another scream.

  What?

  VIII

  SHE WAS STILL LYING ON TOP OF THE BED, AND THE HEATING HAD gone off and she was freezing, hands and legs numb, and all she could think about was the dormitory in the private school somewhere in the south Midlands, the night the big window exploded, all the girls screaming. Paranormal things happened around Persephone Callard, Queen of the Unseen.

  But this was just one scream. It came from downstairs. It was a real scream. Grayle went into foetal position for warmth, rubbing her shins, and the next thought she had was:

  Scam. Persephone Callard faking some psychic-shock drama.

  Don’t respond. Don’t do the obvious.

  What time was it? She couldn’t see her watch, only the pinprick red light of the mobile phone charging up at a power point in a corner. It didn’t matter what time it was; this had to be a scam, aimed at Grayle to scare her. Why else had Callard wanted her to stay the night? She was a manipulator, a conjurer, a stager of effects.

  Grayle lay there for maybe half a minute, trying to rationalize it, to will away the fear. But fear was what screaming was all about and when it started again it was instantly contagious.

  She heard, ‘Get the fuck—’

  Callard.

  Those were the only intelligible words – Callard’s voice, rising, then cut off, muffled into a squeal of outrage. Oh Jesus. Grayle was rolling off the bed, pulling on her skirt, feeling for her shoes, seeing a beam of light bounce from the window frame.

  She stumbled over there, barefoot on pine boards, recalling that the bedroom overlooked the rear of the lodge and the woodland. A light from the woods? A poacher, a lamper of hares?

  The bedroom seemed to be directly above the kitchen, this window right over the back door. Through which she saw someone entering Mysleton Lodge, following a flashlight, its beam like pale grey tubing in the night mist.

  Someone coming into the lodge. Someone big. A man.

  Grayle reeled from the window, hand at her mouth.

  JUSTIN, JUSTIN, JUSTIN.

  The name going on and off like a neon sign in her head. Hadn’t she picked up all along that he was a bad guy, a small-time psycho on the prowl? If he was back, she was scared, sure, but – damn it – angry, too. That bastard.

  She located her shoes, squirmed into them, moved quietly in the darkness to the bedroom door, turning the handle slowly, holding her breath. Because Justin would have no idea that she was still here. Justin would think she was in a hotel in Stroud.

  Justin would think that Persephone Callard was here alone.

  He’d come after her?

  Struts around Stroud in her fancy clothes and her nose in the air … nothing worse than coloured girls when they reckon they’re a cut above … You know what her mother was, don’t you?

  He’d broken in. Callard had heard him and gone downstairs and—

  Grayle stood at the top of the narrow stairs, discovering she was panting. Discovering that she did not want to go down. Flattening herself against the wall, beside a small landing window, through which she could see nothing but dark mist.

  And so cold. Jesus, help me.

  Calm down. Go back upstairs, find the cellphone and call the cops. Right. That makes sense. That makes sense.

  Unless, of course, there is a reasonable explanation for all this and you just had a bad dream after an uncomfortable night following a stressful day.

  Fuck it. Check it out.

  Vague scufflings from downstairs, but no more screams. Grayle went down one step.

  Clack.

  No carpet; she’d forgotten that. She sat down on the topmost stair, pulled off her shoes. From below, she heard, mmmm, mmmm, mmmm, and what sounded like the skidding of a chair across a hard floor. Grayle stood up slowly and began to edge down the stairs, her back to the wall. Wishing there was some kind of weapon to hand, but all she had was her shoes with two-inch wooden heels. She gripped one by its toe, raising it over her shoulder like an axe.

  The stairs came out directly into the parlour with its low ceiling, its blue window – curtains pulled back now – and its sour aroma of old alcohol.

  There was no movement in here. No glimmer from the remains of the fire. What she ought to have done was bring the phone with her – damn all use plugged into the wall up in the bedroom.

  Grayle stepped into the room.

  Noises
to the right. A closed door. The kitchen. A line of yellow light appeared underneath the door. Behind it, a man said, ‘I don’t want to hurt you. Can you hear me? Are you listening to me, you slag?’

  Grayle froze up. Oh … my … God!

  It was not Justin’s voice.

  Which drained away the anger, leaving the fear. Grayle felt a trembling in her bowels. Justin was scary and repulsive, but at least he was a known danger. She sucked in a lot of air, went back hard against the wall …

  … the one with all the rustic implements on it, and her shoulder hit the bowsaw, pushing it into the wall with – oh no, oh no … this loud shivering twang.

  And another of the tools was dislodged and it fell against the bowsaw and she tried to catch it and failed, and then there was, in the silence of the lodge, this huge, strident clash of collapsing metal.

  No place to go. Grayle just shrank into the wall.

  In dreams, in nightmares, there was usually an inevitability about a situation. It would descend into ultimate blackness and then you would wake up. Some part of your subconscious knew there was a fail-safe, a trip mechanism, and so you’d find yourself kind of beckoning the blackness: come on, come on, let’s get this over.

  In reality, you knew there would be no awakening, so you always held out that hope, right up to the end, that it was going to be all right. That there was something you didn’t know – like, in this case, that Callard had an ex-husband or an estranged partner, and what was happening here was some overblown domestic incident, loud and emotional but just between the two of them, and that when they saw you standing there they’d just be embarrassed as hell.

  The kitchen door was opened. Not flung open; it was done without hurry, real casual.

  Two men came in with the yellow light.

  For a moment, they were standing together in the doorway, looking at her in silence. And these two men, they were wearing kind of army camouflage trousers and dark green army jerseys and their hands were in these tight, black leather gloves and their heads in these dark woollen hoods with eyeholes.