by Neil Spring
And there was something else. Something that twisted my stomach into an uneasy knot.
One eye, his left eye, was unmoving, and seemed to look flatly past my shoulder. His other eye shifted towards me. Strained. Watchful. Wondering.
‘So, what were you doing in there?’ he asked.
‘I fell asleep when the picture ended.’
‘Of course you did,’ he said, with obvious sarcasm. ‘With respect, miss, the ushers check the auditorium at the end of every perform—’
‘Yes, and when I woke up there was no one else here.’
He raised an eyebrow.
‘And then, you see, I tripped and fell.’
‘Off the stage?’ he said, measuring me with his good eye. Self-consciously, I smoothed my bobbed hair into place. ‘But what were you doing up there in the first place?’
‘With respect, sir, that’s not the question you should be asking. Is it?’
‘It isn’t?’
I put more confidence into my voice. ‘Why was the ghost light extinguished? I wouldn’t have fallen if it had been on. And it’s supposed to be left on all night.’
The eyebrow climbed higher. ‘You work in the business? In theatres?’
‘Yes,’ I lied, offering a smile, but he only angled his head away from me, gazing at the lobby doors as if half-expecting them to bang open. The side lamp on the curved ticket desk lit the right side of his pallid face, throwing the left into shadow.
Just then, I felt the faintest pull towards him. I hesitate to use the word ‘recognition’, because I was almost sure we had never met. Even so, the sensation seized me for a second and heightened my interest.
‘Forgive me, but do we know each other?’
‘No, I don’t think so.’ He turned back to me. ‘You are free to leave.’
‘Thank you,’ I said, but I didn’t move.
I wasn’t intimidated any more; I was curious. His voice was even as he spoke, but his gaze darted around in agitation. I had the feeling there was something he wasn’t telling me. Something, perhaps, he wanted to tell me. Perhaps, if I was lucky, he might even help with my peculiar mission, for I had come here seeking answers.
I had come to hunt ghosts.
‘Your ankle’s bleeding,’ he said.
I looked down; my stocking was torn and the skin over my ankle bone was grazed.
‘There are some bandages in my room. I’ll get them if you’re happy to wait.’
I should go home, I thought. But if I leave now this whole trip will have been for nothing.
‘Where is your room?’ I asked, and followed his gaze to a nearby staircase, which climbed into shadows. ‘Up there?’
‘Yeah, that’s where the magic happens,’ he said flatly. ‘Stillness and flicker, light and shadow.’
The penny dropped. ‘You’re a projectionist.’
He nodded, looking curiously troubled.
I tried picturing the inside of his projection booth, but what came was a melancholy memory: Price in his white lab coat, hunched over his materials for lantern-slide making in our – his – workshop; Price surrounded by batteries and plugs, screws and gadgets; his racks, print-washers, measures, printing frames; his stereoscopic reflex cameras and their many lenses; his projection lanterns.
Seeing all that for the first time, four years earlier, I had thought these had to be the playthings of a vastly intelligent man – a skilled engineer, but also a lonely man, single-mindedly devoted to his interests . . . to his obsessions.
‘Actually, I’d very much like to see where you work – if that isn’t too much trouble?’
The projectionist looked at me uncertainly.
‘Really,’ I insisted, ‘I take an interest in illusions. Cameras and projection equipment.’
‘Uh . . . if you say so.’ He sounded dubious.
‘Bolex Model C,’ I said confidently.
‘Pardon me?’
‘That’s the model of projector you probably use here. Yes? Sturdy construction, grey enamel finish with reel arms strong enough to take, oh, I don’t know, four hundred feet of reels? The threading system isn’t much good, but the rapid motor rewind is still pretty useful. So is the draught ventilation and cooling system for the lamp. Oh, and the adjustable base – of course!’
He looked impressed.
I gave him a wide and winning smile. ‘Like I said, I take an interest.’
*
As we took the stairs, I became aware of a faint odour. Sulphurous. I sniffed the air.
‘Something burning?’
The projectionist paused, nervously, on the step ahead of me and drew his head back. ‘I don’t smell anything.’
Before I could reply, the main doors into the foyer behind us shook suddenly and violently.
I caught my breath. This narrow stairwell was poorly lit, and as accustomed as I had become to unexpected events and empty dark buildings, the spontaneous movement of objects could still rattle my nerves.
Again, the double doors in the foyer shook – more urgently. Turning, I glimpsed figures silhouetted in the glass, and then came raucous laughter. Teenage boys, I guessed, now running off.
The projectionist sighed heavily, then continued his heavy tread up the stairs, and I followed, passing playbills on the left wall, and on our right, a storage area for the usher’s uniforms: white spats and gloves and smart blue tunics.
At the top of the steps the projectionist opened an unassuming steel door, and immediately I was struck by the distinctive aroma of film and a hot smell from the carbon lamps. I hesitated, thinking it might be wiser to wait outside, but he promptly motioned for me to follow him into the cine-chamber.
Almost at once I had the strangest feeling, the strangest impulse to walk right back out again, but I forced myself to stay and look around.
A solitary, dismal place; a tin box, with only just enough room for two people. Most of the space was taken up by two very imposing Ross projectors, fuelled by copper-coated carbon rods, and a record player with a huge notice plastered on the underside of the lid: ‘Operator Beware: it is imperative ‘pick-up’ arm needle is changed after each disc has been played once.’
Fixed to the wall was a humming mercury-arc rectifier contained within a metal cage-like cabinet, and in its eerie, ultraviolet glow I saw that the rest of the walls were covered with switches and buttons; rows of fuse boxes; lens cabinets; input sprockets; fireproof cabinets stocked with reels of film; a fire extinguisher; and, on the bare concrete floor, a pail of sand.
Uneasily, I found myself thinking of Price again.
From behind me, I heard a thud. I knew what it was even before I turned and looked.
The metal door had shut.
My gaze shifted from the door to the projectionist beside me. The alarm must have shown on my face because he quickly said, ‘The door self-closes. Fireproof. Regulations . . .’
I nodded, feeling a stab of self-reproach. What the hell was I thinking, coming up here alone – with a stranger? It would be easy for him to do anything he wanted to me . . . I just had to hope he had no ill intentions.
‘Can you switch the light on?’ I asked, and noticed that he paused for a moment longer than was comfortable.
‘Light,’ he said, in a voice that was very distant, almost a whisper. ‘The light from the projector has the power to entrance, truly. A bright beam cutting through the smoky darkness. A spectacle. Sometimes that beam is all you need.’
‘For what?’ I asked, feeling nervous now.
‘To see the past,’ he said slowly, ‘present and future.’
He was staring hard at me.
‘Anyway,’ I said, clearing my throat and nodding at the light switch.
He blinked, then with a sigh he flipped a switch and a stark bulb overhead flickered on, washing us with a cold, bright ligh
t.
‘Thank you,’ I said.
He advanced towards the largest projector and stationed himself beside it, motionless, staring silently through a tiny window down into the deserted auditorium.
Perhaps it was the thickness of his hair, perhaps it was the line of his jaw, but it struck me then that he was younger than I had assumed. I saw now that his left eye wasn’t just unfocused but had a glassy, dead sheen; his voice had the hoarse and cracked quality of an older man; and he moved with the measured gait of someone on whom the years had worked their toll. But all of this, I was sure now, was only an illusion. He was young, perhaps no more than thirty-five.
‘You actually work in here?’ I asked. ‘In these horribly cramped conditions? If I were you, I would complain.’
Something in his eyes gave out a warning as he touched the side of his face. ‘Men like me, we may as well have no opinions.’
I wondered what he meant by this as I glanced over the canisters of film hanging on the wall and the heavy-looking projectors, all the time conscious of his gaze on me.
It struck me that this poor man’s occupation wasn’t just depressingly solitary, but extremely unsafe. That narrow staircase we had just climbed had to be a fire hazard. How many times had Price warned me about nitrate film exploding into flame and releasing clouds of noxious smoke? Nitrate film easily caught fire because of the heat from the lamps. That was why projection booths like this one were built to shut down like a prison in the event of a fire – but God help anyone trapped inside.
‘It must get unbearably hot.’
‘You would think so,’ he replied rather gloomily, and just then I felt a chill pass over me. But from where? The metal door was shut flush.
Then my gaze travelled from the door to the projectionist, and I saw the unique device at which he was staring. A projector, much older and smaller than the rest, fashioned from mahogany and brass and adorned with a crucifix and a winged skull. It was a thing of exquisite quality, eerily beautiful; it looked as if it belonged in a museum of rare Victorian curiosities.
‘It’s from Germany,’ the projectionist explained. He ran his hand lovingly along its smooth surface. ‘A very early projector, powered by candlelight, primitive but extremely effective. See here, the adjustable lens, the moveable carriage system – all designed for a very specific purpose.’
‘What purpose exactly?’
‘Wonders,’ he whispered, not taking his gaze from the machine.
It was like watching a young child enraptured with a gift on Christmas morning.
Next to this projector was a small wooden box, open and packed with lantern slides painted with indiscernible, colourful images. I reached out to examine one.
‘Hands off!’
I flinched back.
‘My hobby,’ the projectionist added. For a moment, an oppressive sadness seemed to gather on his face, like a black cloud. ‘The slides . . . I paint them when I’m alone.’
Perhaps if I had asked just a few more questions about the painted glass slides and the antique projector with its intricately carved base, crucifix and skull, I would have spared myself from the sea of abnormality that would soon swallow me at the lost village of Imber. The first murmurs of those waters were surging around me then, and I heard them over the lonely silence. It wasn’t just the projectionist’s unease, his defensiveness – after all, he didn’t know me, so why should he trust me?
The truly unnerving observation was the dark hollowness of his face; there was a formidable dent in the side of his head and around his left cheekbone – not quite as though someone had bashed it in with a hammer, but almost. And that single eye with the glassy sheen; it didn’t look like an eye at all, I realised now. More like a dusty marble.
‘Sir, why are you here, alone, so late? You seem somewhat – forgive me – agitated?’
He breathed out heavily. When he next spoke, something of the old sternness in his tone had returned. ‘You seem very interested in me, for someone who was just accidentally locked in, Miss . . .’
‘Grey. Sarah Grey. And your name?’
He blinked, and for a moment his eyes were blank. ‘Albert.’
I was sure I had never known an Albert. Still, though, a faint familiarity bothered me. Why didn’t I ask him his surname? I’ve asked myself so many times. Perhaps he wouldn’t have given me the name, even if I had asked; but if he had told me, so much of what was to follow could have been avoided.
‘May I enquire how long you have held your position here?’
‘Too long,’ was his reply. He glanced out of the window, at the dark auditorium, then back at me. ‘Miss Grey, why don’t you tell me why you really came here tonight?’
There was no need to share the truth – that the history of the picture house had become a consuming passion for me. I replied, simply, ‘I’m doing some research on the building. A private history project.’
He looked suddenly afraid. Appalled.
‘Which aspect of its history, exactly?’
That was harder to answer. On one level, the reason was simple: three weeks ago, the Standard had reported that while the picture house was locked up, deserted, passers-by had heard its organ playing. An interview with Lyndon Clarkson, the picture house manager, was published as well. On the narrow stairwell leading to this very cine-chamber, Clarkson claimed to have seen a blue light hovering in mid-air. Then, when he climbed the stairs and shone a torch on the door of the cine-chamber, he saw the ominous shadow of a man – though nobody else was there.
Of course, I was sceptical. Superstitions run riot: there’s barely an old theatre in the country that isn’t the setting for stories of spooks in the stalls and goosebumps in the gods, and so it’s always been.
But the truth was that over a year earlier, months before I walked out on him, Price had attempted to treat an escalating nervous condition that had been making my life unbearable. Looking back, the reason I was suffering was very clear, even if I hadn’t wanted to acknowledge it then. The shadow of guilt at giving my baby up for adoption had lengthened. Rarely would I make it through the night without waking in fitful sobbing gasps. Each morning, the face of a mother, and yet not a mother, looked back at me from the mirror, heartbroken, ashamed and questioning.
I had lied to Price; told him I was in low spirits, that was all. He had attempted to help me with hypnosis, and it seemed that ever since then I had felt drawn to this building, without any clear reason. I still sometimes dreamt of Harry Price – I’d see him sitting in his favourite armchair, speaking to me in a slow, velvety voice. Perhaps it was more than a dream. A memory. Whatever it was, I couldn’t access it all. Price was asking me questions, and I was answering, but the detail was lost.
‘You’re here because of the stories, aren’t you? The legends.’
‘Actually, yes,’ I replied. ‘This theatre does have a history, you know.’
He said nothing, but the disturbed look in his one good eye told me he did know.
I had read all about the history of the largest and most luxurious cinema in South London. I knew that the first theatre on the site was a conversion of a Baptist chapel, which had become a warehouse; that the subsequent theatre was called the Arcadian and that it was consumed by a fire on a Sunday night in the middle of the last century. Apparently an illusionist from Germany tragically ‘miscalculated’ his act. That had to be the understatement of the century. Hundreds of children aged between eight and ten were inside when smoke began to billow into the auditorium, and panic erupted.
Eighty-six little bodies were pulled from the building. Charred. Asphyxiated. Many trampled to death.
That didn’t necessarily mean the Brixton Picture Palace was haunted, though, did it?
No, but there’s an atmosphere, I thought, a distinctly bad atmosphere. And now I thought about it, perhaps I did remember why I had fallen from the stage.<
br />
Hadn’t I glimpsed a small figure, moving in the dark? And heard a child’s voice calling for help from somewhere below?
Hard to be certain. I could quite easily have imagined such things. I needed more to go on.
‘The reports of strange happenings here,’ I said, leaning forward. ‘True?’
‘One man’s truth is another man’s undoing,’ the projectionist said. ‘Gotta be careful what you say. You hear about people being locked up in Bedlam these days for seeing all manner of things.’
‘Albert, whatever you tell me will remain entirely between us.’
He looked at me fixedly.
I smiled and said, ‘I promise. And if is within my power to help, I will certainly do so.’
Something glimmered in his good eye; I thought perhaps it was hope. His breathing quickened, his fists clenched. ‘You asked me earlier about the ghost light on the stage,’ he said, ‘why it was turned off.’
‘I did.’
‘You want the truth? The ghost light does not keep spirits away. It attracts them.’
I admit, I was taken aback by this. Not so much the revelation – that would come later – but more that a witness should be so forthcoming. I thought back to Price and our first visit, three years earlier, to the haunted rectory in the hamlet of Borley in Essex. When we met its troubled residents, Mr and Mrs Smith, Price had performed astonishing conjuring tricks over lunch to compel the poor couple to confide in us. He had wanted to test their reactions, smiling as he studied them, as though they were mere experiments to him, playthings. And yet here I was, with none of Price’s charisma, winning a complete stranger’s trust purely through offering a listening ear.
‘Tell me what you have seen, Albert.’
‘When you’re in here alone late at night after a show, when all the customers have gone home and the only thing left is the ghost light on the stage – I challenge anyone not to be unnerved. Sometimes on the stairs I feel a presence behind me, a woman; I hear the steps creaking and groaning. And I find boxes of flyers and materials moved between rooms.’