by Neil Spring
Now, once again, those deceptions were creeping into my life.
‘Sarah?’
The questions were brewing in Vernon’s eyes. He had taken off his reading glasses and was watching me with uncomfortable scrutiny. I turned away from him, feeling the eerie stirrings of déjà vu. The last time he saw me like this I had paced the house for days before barricading myself in the study, where I finally took up my pen and scratched out a manuscript: the account of how a young woman accepted the dubiously privileged position of confidential secretary to the most fascinating, infamous figure in psychical research, only to fall hopelessly into his orbit.
When I finished writing, I took that manuscript to London and locked it safely away on the eighth floor of Senate House Library – along with the rest of Price’s great library, his equipment and possessions. What would I do now? Write about this night’s visitation? Speak of it?
Yes. I decided Vernon had a right to know: this concerned him as much as me. And my husband was hardly a stranger to manifestations some would call ‘supernatural’.
‘I’ve seen something.’ I heard my voice, thin and quavering. ‘Him.’
A fearful glint in Vernon’s eyes. After a long moment: ‘We’re not going to do this again. We agreed never—’
‘I saw him, Vernon!’
He didn’t need to ask me who.
‘Sarah, he’s dead.’
I shook my head. ‘It was Harry. He was trying to tell me something. He whispered a name to me, Vernon. Her name. Why?’
Vernon’s eyes found mine, only for a second but long enough for me to see they were full of sudden pale fear at the dreadful secret we shared. Then they shifted away.
We had agreed: we would move on, forget about the ghosts of our past, live out our days in peace. Only now did it occur to me that perhaps words couldn’t banish old ghosts. Perhaps words even brought them back.
Vernon sat in silence for a few moments longer, then reached to turn up the radio. A static, high-pitched whine, then the newsreader’s voice came through. His words put ice in my veins:
‘Skeletal human remains believed to be those of a child have been unearthed by soldiers training in an uninhabited village in part of the British Army’s training grounds on Salisbury Plain.’
My hand reached out and found the doorframe. I clung on as the newsreader went on.
‘Frozen in time, abandoned hastily long ago, Imber is a ghost village, and has been the army’s battle school since early in the Great War, when its residents were evacuated. There is currently no information available regarding the person’s identity or cause of death, but police are treating the discovery as suspicious and are appealing for anyone with information to come forward.’
Vernon’s mouth had fallen open. He snapped it shut, and glared at the radio. My heart was pounding so hard I could feel my pulse behind my eyes.
‘The name, this discovery. The village. What if they’re connected? Oh, God—’
‘Sarah,’ he said heavily, ‘I am not doing this again.’
‘You can’t just distance yourself from this. You were as guilty as anyone else!’
That did it. With a flash of anger, he threw down his newspaper, stood up and strode out of the room.
Swear to me, Sarah, never to tell . . .
I had given my promise, a long time ago.
But it was a promise I could no longer keep.
*
On too many occasions I have been asked to talk about the most sensational, most disturbing incident in Price’s lifetime of inquiry into the unknown – but how to choose? His investigations took him to hundreds of alleged haunted houses, thousands of séances. And I was the one who assisted him, out in the field and at his laboratory on the top floor of 16 Queensberry Place, South Kensington, where we attempted to peer beyond the curtain that separates this world from the next.
And what a time we had. Together, we saw objects hurled around empty rooms – objects that couldn’t possibly have been thrown by human hands. Together, we watched astounding mediums join hands with misty human forms. And together, huddled in the abandoned rooms of the remotest houses, we shivered as the mercury mysteriously plummeted.
But only once did Price see what he was convinced really was a ghost.
In private letters to his contemporaries – letters leaked to the newspapers but which were never supposed to be published – he describes a séance where something cold and soft touched his hand. He wrote of a spirit that materialised before him and sat on his knee.
Plenty of his critics demanded hard evidence, but Price never provided it. Not the location of the house, not even the names of everyone else present. Later, Price admitted he should never have written about it. The whole affair came at a cost to his reputation: most concluded the story wasn’t true, that Price had simply made it up. They called him a liar.
They were only half right.
What Price described in his letters didn’t happen as he portrayed it, but it wasn’t made up either. More accurate to say he created a story only half true, drawing on earlier events. Events so traumatising he felt the only way he could write about them was to wrap them up in something false. But Price and I shared the knowledge of what was true, what we saw deep in the winter of 1932, at the bottom of a remote valley in Salisbury Plain, in the abandoned ghost town of Imber.
That dreadful village, as quiet as death. Full of cold dismays and bitter despairs. From the start, Price resisted making the trip to that stark and lonely place. I am doomed to remember the state of him afterwards, in his long black coat and flannel suit, eyes wide and pleading. Behind him, the boarded-up mansion raging with flames. His face smeared with blood as he reached out to me with a deathly pale hand, shaking. ‘Swear to me, Sarah, never to tell,’ he had pleaded. ‘Promise me.’
I was twenty-eight then. For forty-six years, I kept my promise. But reality has a way of intruding.
*
When Vernon left the room, I stood for a long moment and stared at the radio, trying to decide what to do. Skeletal remains unearthed?
I could try ignoring this, but for how long? I had been ignoring it my whole life, but now memories, long buried, were surfacing. Shapeless terrors. They could not be interred again; they needed to be faced. Confronted.
With a sinking dread, I went into my study and sat down at the desk – this desk, my hand trembling as I took up my pen.
I will do the one thing I promised Price I wouldn’t do. I will disentangle the relics of my guilt. I will write the story of what happened in the lost village of Imber in 1932.
The matter did not begin in Wiltshire, but in London. In a deserted picture house after dark. As I uncap my fountain pen, I can see it clearly: my gaze roams through the darkened auditorium across to the black pit of the orchestra, up to the gilded boxes, up to the domed ceiling and down to the balcony rails.
I should never have gone. Just as I should never have made the trip afterwards, to the dismal village that I had first glimpsed at my father’s side on that snowy Saturday in 1914.
But then came the spirit child.
And the soldiers’ nightmares, and the tragic church service. The horror and sorrow. And the black, cold, evil.
My name is Sarah Grey. And I need someone to know that the lost village remembers.
The lost village has a secret that must be told.
– 2 –
GHOST LIGHT
London, October 1932
‘Who’s there?’
The man’s voice – urgent, commanding – seemed to reach me distantly, as if I were underwater. I was not, though; I was in a vast field of swaying grass with the sun on my neck, watching a mill wheel turn as I waited.
‘Who’s there, I say!’
Dazed, I opened my eyes, and grimaced as pain throbbed at the back of my head.
Where the hell am I?
Not in a field, but on the floor, at the foot of a stage. Before me lay a scatter of discarded ticket stubs, and I caught the acrid scent of cigarette smoke. An old converted theatre . . .
The Brixton Picture Palace.
‘Show yourself now. I’m warning you!’
I held my breath, listening.
The gruff voice was coming from the back of the auditorium, where a door was ajar, letting through a shaft of light from the lobby. Who was this man? Some of it was coming back to me . . . According to my research, the cleaning ladies didn’t arrive until nine in the morning. I had chosen this time for a reason: there was supposed to be no one here after midnight.
My stomach tightened as more alarming possibilities ran through my mind. The picture house owner? Private security? Or worse, a policeman!
What a pitiful figure I must have looked: a young woman in her Sunday best, crumpled at the foot of the stage.
No time for self-pity. Think!
I tried to sit up, but a sharp pain in my left ankle stopped me. So did the pain in my head.
What happened? Think. Try to remember.
Forcing myself to breathe deeply, I sifted through jumbled fragments of memories.
Torch failed. You heard something . . . a voice calling out. Got lost in the dark, went looking around . . . in the auditorium . . . No. You were walking across the stage. Then you . . .
Fell. I had stumbled. Something had made me turn round too quickly. A figure . . .
‘I know you can hear me,’ called the man, ‘because I heard you.’
I could hear, perfectly well, but I was struggling to focus on anything. Well, except my ankle. The pain seemed to be getting hotter with each second. It was almost certainly sprained.
That meant trouble on Monday. And what’s more, if I were caught, Mr Addison would have questions – quite legitimate questions – about what I was doing trespassing in a picture house after closing time. That was assuming on Monday I would be sitting in my office, and not in a police cell.
‘All right,’ the man yelled, ‘I’ll find you myself!’
Perhaps luck was on my side. If my pursuer worked for the picture house, as seemed likely, he might think I was locked in by accident. He might sympathise when he saw a young woman on her own, injured. But – and here was the chief problem – the moment he found my pocket electric torch and the plans of the building I had dug up at the Lambeth public library, any concerns about my well-being would rapidly give way to suspicion. He would probably think I’d broken in to commit a robbery.
Footsteps crept nearer.
I chanced a peek out from behind the row of dark mahogany seats. I couldn’t see my pursuer clearly, just a vague outline, a thin dark figure taking apprehensive steps. The circular spotlight from his torch bounced off the barrel vault ceiling and bobbed over the seats, before playing on an enormous pipe organ of silver and gold a few metres away.
Concealed in the shadows at the foot of the stage, my face pressed against the floor, I pulled in a shaky breath.
Held it.
How – how – had I come to this?
The evening had begun innocently enough, despite my mother’s asking that I stay at home, it being a damp and cold night. Maybe that was a genuine reason in her mind, but what was certainly true was that Mother’s eyesight wasn’t good and she appreciated me reading to her.
‘I’m sorry, I can’t disappoint Amy,’ I lied. ‘Not at this short notice – she’ll wonder what’s happened to me. You see that, Mother?’
A thin smile. A nod.
When I arrived at the picture house at eight thirty, the lobby was packed with men in suits, neckties and fedoras, and women in fur coats. Gliding behind them, I passed into the auditorium and quickly dropped into a seat at the front. After the lights dimmed there was a brief animation, then a newsreel. Unemployment soaring, the Depression and a man called Oswald Mosley had founded the British Union of Fascists.
Then for the main attraction: London After Midnight, a silent mystery picture. Just the sort of film my former boss would have loved – grimy bats swooping about, a house haunted by its memories. Actually, one of the characters rather reminded me of Price: a detective from Scotland Yard who hypnotised his suspects to investigate a murder, cajoling them into confessing. Or something like that. In truth, the finer aspects of the plot were lost on me, but I had been somewhat preoccupied during the show by the thought of what lay ahead.
I hadn’t come to watch the film. I had come to remember. To relive what I missed. The thrill of the chase.
Six months previously, I had quit my old job. Turned my back on Harry Price and his magical ‘ghost factory’ at 16 Queensberry Place, and not just because his gusto, his immense energy and magpie mind had ceased to be charming. As one who was intimately acquainted with his investigations, it had proven impossible not to be frustrated by his pretensions, his secretiveness and his frequent disappearances, his thirst for publicity. There was, however, a greater problem of abject betrayal, after he wilfully embarrassed Velma Crawshaw, a medium under his scrutiny, before a public audience. Exposing fraudulent mediums was the reason Price was famous, the reason I could pay Mother’s debts, but this had been a step too far, even for him. Velma had cancer. She would have terrible days to come. And Price knew; yet he had humiliated her. After that, I didn’t care about ghosts so much as people. People mattered. Especially the child I had concealed, two and a half years ago, then been forced to give up for adoption.
Price’s child.
After walking away from the laboratory, I didn’t go looking for similar positions with the Society for Psychical Research. I didn’t continue my subscription to Psychic News. Instead I accepted a position at a film-publishing house in Soho. The work was mundane, secretarial duties mainly. Now and then there were meetings about promotions, advertising, even cocktail parties – mostly there weren’t. Mostly, my thoughts lingered on the job I had left behind. Lately, I had caught myself wondering whether I had been too hard on Price. I had enjoyed that job more than I had been willing to admit.
I had hoped the thrill of the chase would dissipate over time. I had hoped to push down the memories of Harry Price. But, like I said, reality has a way of intruding.
*
The Picture Palace had fallen silent – and entirely dark.
I lay still, cursing myself for not staying at home with Mother.
You would have been perfectly all right, if only you hadn’t fallen. If only the ghost light had been lit.
The ghost light. In those days, every theatre – even the grander picture houses – had one: an exposed bulb standing on a pole at the centre of the stage. Empty theatres are pitch-black places where it’s all too easy to stumble off the stage and break one’s neck. The ghost light was supposed to be lit by the last person to leave the theatre, and then extinguished by the first person to arrive in the morning.
Why was it extinguished now? At night?
A common belief amongst anyone working in unoccupied theatres was that the ghost light protected against restless or resentful spirits who might play havoc in the auditorium after dark.
Well, no spirits tonight. Just me. Playing havoc.
All was quiet, no sign of my pursuer. But I wasn’t near to feeling relief.
Carefully, silently, I lifted myself onto my elbows, keeping my head down, and shuffled forward. A bolt of pain shot up my leg, but I kept moving. If I could just drag myself away from the stage and in between the next row of seats, I might avoid detection, along with all the difficult questions that would entail.
I had barely touched the green velvet trim of a seat when a beam of light dazzled me.
‘What do you think you’re doing here?’
My breathing stopped. The tall figure of a man loomed over me.
– 3 –
TH
E PICTURE PALACE AFTER DARK
I recoiled. ‘Don’t touch me!’
He was towering over me, but flinched and stepped back when I spoke.
He raised his head. Something not right. His face? It was impossible to see clearly beyond the glaring circle of his handheld torch.
‘Why didn’t you answer when I called out?’ he asked.
‘Do you normally answer voices in the dark?’
‘I’m asking the questions, miss.’
‘And I don’t have the first idea who you are!’
‘Well, I bloody work here.’ He sounded affronted. ‘Now, explain yourself.’
I had to squint then, as he brought his torch closer to my face – a blinding white circle of interrogation.
‘Sir, please, is that absolutely necessary?’
I was trying to sound confident, but this stranger’s imposing stature was not of the sort that normally inspires confidence in a young woman, afraid and alone in the dark. Worse, because of the intense torchlight, I could see very little of him.
At last he said, ‘My apologies, miss, I was expecting . . .’
‘A man?’
‘Actually . . .’ He paused, but then shook his head and said, ‘Follow me. You shouldn’t be in here.’
Because the threatening edge in his voice had now been replaced by a more reasonable tone, fringing on concern, I took his proffered hand and allowed him to help me to stand. The pain in my ankle was still acute, but to my surprise I found I could walk, even if with a limp.
But I wasn’t the only one walking oddly. As the stranger led me out of the auditorium, I noticed he did so with short, shuffling movements, almost as if he were uncertain of the route.
A short while later we were in the resplendent art deco foyer, with its sumptuous carpets and the elegant curved staircase. The ceiling was an impressive dome, lit around the edges. Another light was thrown by a solitary lamp at the ticket desk. I saw two signs on the wall nearest me. One indicated the way to the smoking room; the other simply read, ‘Ladies, please remove your hats.’
The stranger clicked off his torch, gave me a long measuring look. From the cobweb of lines around his eyes I guessed he was somewhere in his middle age, and he looked very far from healthy. His face was pale and painfully thin, with sunken cheeks so hollow, especially on the left side, it was as if someone had dealt him an almighty blow and left a permanent dent.