Haunts

by Stephen Jones

  “I have nothing to live for,” she said then. “Absolutely nothing.”

  Dr. Volker didn’t respond, but felt a tremor of excitement in himself. He’d been waiting for this.

  He gazed at the young woman lying on his office couch. She was staring at the ceiling. What was she thinking? He wondered. He didn’t dare to speak. He didn’t want to break in on those thoughts, whatever they might be.

  At last, Maureen spoke again. “I guess you didn’t hear that,” she said.

  “I heard,” Dr. Volker replied.

  “No reaction then?” she asked, an edge of hostility in her voice. “No sage comment?”

  “Like what?” he asked.

  “Oh, God, don’t start that again,” she said. “Respond with an answer, not another goddamn question.”

  “I’m sorry,” Dr. Volker said. “I didn’t mean to make you angry.”

  “Well, it did make me angry! It made me—!” Her voice broke off with a shuddering throat sound. “You don’t care,” she said then.

  “Of course I care,” he told her. “What have I ever done to make you think I don’t care?”

  “I said I have nothing to live for.” Maureen’s tone was almost venomous now.

  “And—?” he asked.

  “What do you mean and?” she snapped.

  “And what does that make you feel like?”

  The young woman shifted restlessly on the couch, her face distorted by anger. “It makes me feel like shit!” she said. “Is that precise enough for you, God damn it?! I feel like shit! I don’t want to live!”

  Closer, Volker thought. A shiver of elation laced across his back. He was glad the young woman was turned away from him. He didn’t want her to know how he felt.

  “And—?” he said again.

  “Damn it to hell!” Maureen raged. “Is that all you can say?!”

  “Did you hear what you said?” Volker asked as calmly as he could.

  “About what? About having nothing to live for? About wanting to die?”

  “You didn’t use the word die before,” he corrected.

  “Oh, big deal!” she cried. “I apologize! I said I don’t want to live! Anyone else would assume from that that I want to die! But not you!”

  “Why do you want to die?” Volker winced a little. He shouldn’t have said that.

  Maureen’s silence verified his reaction. It became so still in the office that he heard the sound of traffic passing on the boulevard. He cleared his throat, hoping that he hadn’t made a mistake and lost the moment.

  He wanted to speak but knew that he had to wait. He stared at the young woman on the couch. Don’t leave me now, he thought. Stay with it. Please. It’s been such a long time.

  The young woman sighed wearily and closed her eyes.

  “Have you nothing more to say?” he asked.

  Her eyes snapped open and she twisted around to glare at him. “If I said what I wanted to say, your hair would turn white,” she said, almost snarling the words.

  “Maureen,” he said patiently.

  “What?”

  “My hair is already white.”

  Her laugh was a humorless bark of acknowledgment. “Yes, it is,” she said. “You’re old. And decrepit.”

  “And you’re young?” he asked.

  “Young and…” She hesitated. “Young and miserable. Young and lost. Young and empty. Young and cold, without hope. Oh, God!” she cried in pain. “I want to die! I want to die! I’m going to see to it!”

  Dr. Volker swallowed dryly. “See to what?” he asked.

  “God damn it, are you stupid or something?” she lashed out at him. “Don’t you understand English?”

  “Help me to understand,” he said. His pulse beat had quickened now. He was so close, so close.

  Silence again. Oh, dear Lord, have I lost her again? he thought. How many sessions was it going to take?

  He had to risk advancing. “See to what?” he asked.

  The young woman stared at the ceiling.

  “See to what, Maureen?” he asked.

  “Leave me alone,” she told him miserably. “You’re no better than the rest of them. My father. My mother. My brother.”

  Oh, Christ! Volker clenched his teeth. Not the goddamn litany again!

  “My father raped me, did you know that?” Maureen said. “Did I tell you that? Tell you that I was only seven when it happened? Tell you that my mother did nothing about it? That my brother laughed at me when I told him? Did I tell you that?”

  Volker closed his eyes. Only about a thousand times, he thought.

  He forced himself to open his eyes. “Maureen, you were onto something before,” he risked.

  “What do you mean?” she demanded.

  Oh, no, he thought, chilled. But he couldn’t stop now. “You said you wanted to die. You said—”

  The young woman twitched violently on the couch, her head rolling to the right on the pillow, eyes closed.

  “No!” Volker drove a fist down on the arm of his chair.

  One more failure.

  *

  When the young woman sat up, he handed her a glass of water.

  Jane Winslow drank it all in one, continuous swallow, then handed back the glass. “Anything?” she asked.

  “Oh…” He exhaled tiredly. “The usual. We’re right on top of it, but she backs off. She just can’t face it.” He shook his head. “Poor Maureen. I’m afraid it’s going to be a long, long time before she’s free to move on.” He sighed in frustration. “Are you ready for the next one?”

  She nodded.

  At three o’clock she lay back on the couch and drew in long, deep breaths. She trembled for a while, then lay still.

  “Arthur?” Dr. Volker said.

  Jane Winslow opened her eyes.

  “How are you today?”

  “How should I be?” Arthur said bitterly.

  Dr. Volker rubbed fingers over his eyes. Helping them was difficult. My God, how difficult. He had to keep trying though. He had no choice.

  “So, how’s life treating you, Arthur?” he asked.

  <>

  *

  Inheritance

  PAUL McAULEY

  BEFORE HE BECAME a full-time writer, Paul McAuley worked as a research biologist at various universities, including Oxford and UCLA, and for six years he was a lecturer on botany at St. Andrews University.

  His first novel, Four Hundred Billion Stars, won the Philip K. Dick Memorial Award; his fifth, Fairyland, won the Arthur C. Clarke and John W. Campbell Awards. His latest novels are The Quiet War and Gardens of the Sun.

  He lives in North London in an early Victorian house that, so far as he knows, contains no ghosts.

  “This story was written while I was living in Oxford,” recalls McAuley, “and two things in it are true: the lost village with its ruined mill and burned-down manor house (although I’ve changed the name), and certain details about the railway accident.”

  THERE WAS NO DOUBT about it: he was lost.

  Richard Tolley tossed the map onto the backseat, levered himself out of the rented Volkswagen, and walked back to the T-junction and looked at the signpost. Sure enough, the fingerboard pointing in the direction from which he’d just come indicated that South Heyston was a mile away, and Upper Heyston three miles.

  According to his Ordnance Survey map, Steeple Heyston was situated between these two villages, but he’d now driven through both villages from east to west and back again, and had seen no trace of it. He knew there wasn’t much left of the place, but there was a church clearly marked on the map, and a river and a railroad. How had he missed it?

  He’d parked the car in front of a gate in the hedgerow, so that he wouldn’t block the narrow country road. He leaned against the gate now, a tall, bear-like man in a white Burberry raincoat he’d purchased in London two days ago, twisting his signet ring around and around the middle finger of his right hand as he wondered if he should give up the search and try to find his w
ay back to Oxford.

  The car, cooling, ticked behind him. A fine rain only slightly heavier than a mist hazed the cold air, the kind of rain the English called a “mizzle.” That quaint way with words they had, like calling an elevator a lift, or fall autumn, or the way the peppy red Volkswagen was badged as a Golf rather than a Rabbit. Like, but not like. The way the fields, vividly green even in the middle of December, were subtly different from the New Hampshire pastures of his childhood. Softer, nature’s rawness blurred by centuries of human history.

  Three in the afternoon, and it was already growing dark. He would try again tomorrow, Tolley decided, and was about to get back in the car when he saw two figures leave the cover of a clump of leafless trees in the far corner of the field.

  Their dog, a black-and-white collie, raced across the field ahead of them and wriggled under the gate and barked at Tolley, who held his hands out of reach of its sharp white teeth and murmured, “Good boy, good boy,” afraid that it would jump up and muddy his brand new Burberry.

  One of the walkers, a man, whistled sharply, but the collie didn’t stop barking at Tolley until the man had clambered over the stile and clipped a lead to its collar. He was in his sixties, small and wiry and sharp-featured. A flat cap was pulled low over his springy white hair. An expensive camera was slung over the shoulder of his Norfolk jacket and a walking stick with a heavy carved head was tucked under his arm.

  “Sorry about that,” he said. “He’s young and excitable, but he rarely takes a bite from strangers.”

  “Maybe you can help me,” Tolley said. “I guess I’m a little lost.”

  “Ask away,” the man said, as he turned to help the woman—Tolley assumed she was his wife—over the stile. She was a short, plump woman with glossy black hair bound back in a girlish ponytail. Heavy amber earrings, silver rings on every finger of her hands and the magenta silk scarf that peeked above the top button of her fur-collared coat gave her an exotic, gypsy-ish air.

  Tolley said, “I was looking for a place called Steeple Heyston. You know it?”

  “You must have missed the turn,” the man said. “It’s about two miles back, past South Heyston. There’s a wood, and a sharp bend in the road. Steeple Heyston’s off to the left of that bend, down a rough track.”

  “I think I remember the sharp bend.”

  “The track isn’t signposted. No one lives there anymore, you see.”

  “Isn’t there an old manor house, something like that? That’s what I’ve come to see—my family on my father’s side used to live there. Tolley. The name mean anything to you?”

  The man and the woman shared a look.

  The man said, “There’s a bit of the old manor house still standing.”

  The woman said, “You’re American, aren’t you? We have a son over there, in Boston.”

  “Harvard University,” her husband said.

  “He’s a professor in the Medical School,” the woman said.

  Tolley told them that he’d heard of Harvard, but he was from New York. The man introduced himself as Gerald Beaumont, a retired mining engineer, introduced his wife, Marjorie, and the dog, Sam. Marjorie Beaumont studied Tolley for a moment, her gaze unnervingly direct as he said that he was some sort of academic himself.

  “I work in a picture library,” Tolley added, slightly flustered.

  “Give her another minute,” her husband said, with a fond twinkle, “and she’ll tell you your age, how long you’ve been married, and how many children you have.”

  “Actually, I’m divorced. Or rather, I’m getting divorced. That’s kind of why I’m on holiday, to get away from all that. And take a look at the place my folks came from.”

  And to spend as much of his money as possible in one glorious jamboree before Rachel and her lawyer got their hands on it. How she’d started the divorce, she’d phoned him at work one day, after the latest in a series of rows about money, and told him not to come home. Which he’d done straight away, of course, to find she’d changed the locks on their apartment—strictly speaking it was her apartment, but they’d been living there as man and wife for two years.

  He’d hammered on the door; she’d called the police; two days later a process server had handed Tolley divorce papers and a court order forbidding him to go within five hundred yards of his soon-to-be-ex’ wife. That’s when Tolley, who’d been couch surfing in the apartment of an increasingly grumpy workmate, had decided to take the holiday of a lifetime, and go check out his roots, the place in England his family had once owned.

  After he’d told the old couple something of this (leaving out the humiliating bits about the rows, being locked out of his own home, the court order), Marjorie Beaumont asked if he knew anything about his family history. Tolley said that all he knew was that they had once owned the manor house at Steeple Heyston and a good deal of farmland around it, that his grandfather had sold up and moved to the States in the late 19th century.

  “I know the manor house burned down around then,” Tolley said, “but I don’t know much else. I think there was some kind of scandal, but my family’s papers have been lost over the years. I’m hoping to look in the local history archives and find out about what would have been my inheritance, if things had turned out different.”

  Marjorie Beaumont said, “It’s a terribly sad place. The saddest place I know.”

  “Now, Marjorie,” Gerald Beaumont said.

  “Even people without my gifts know that Steeple Heyston is an unquiet place,” his wife said. “Even you think it’s haunted, dear.”

  “I don’t know about ghosts,” Gerald Beaumont said, “but it is a lonely place with a lot of history. The manor house and the mill burnt down, and before that there was the railway accident, of course.”

  Tolley said, “There was a railway accident?”

  Gerald Beaumont told him that it was a very famous one that had happened over a hundred years ago, that more than forty people had been killed, that some thought it was why Steeple Heyston was haunted.

  “He should hear the story properly,” his wife said. “Perhaps, when you’ve visited Steeple Heyston, Mr. Tolley, you would like to have tea with us. I can tell you all about it then.”

  “I don’t want to put you to any trouble,” Tolley said. He was amused and charmed: the Beaumonts were like two eccentric supporting characters from that Agatha Christie detective show Rachel used to watch on Masterpiece Theatre.

  “He doesn’t want to be bothered with these old stories,” Gerald Beaumont said.

  “It concerns his family,” Marjorie Beaumont said firmly, “and it’s no trouble, is it, Gerald?”

  “Of course not,” her husband said, with fond patience, and told Tolley that they lived in South Heyston. “Glebe Cottage, two doors down from the pub. You can’t miss it. Come and see us when you’ve done at Steeple Heyston, and we’ll tell you what we know.”

  He repeated his directions to Steeple Heyston, and his wife told Tolley that he shouldn’t stay there too long because it would be dark soon.

  They watched as Tolley fitted himself into his rental car and awkwardly turned it in the narrow road, grinding gears because he wasn’t used to the stick shift, and then the Beaumonts and their dog were dwindling between the hedgerows in the rearview mirror.

  Tolley found the turning and steered the car, its springs complaining, down a rough, unsurfaced track that ended in a small turnaround with trees on one side and an unkempt hedge on the other.

  He switched off the motor and clambered out into the unnerving stillness of the unpopulated countryside. There was a farm gate half-buried in the hedge, held shut by a loop of orange twine.

  Beyond was a wide, rough meadow backstopped by a steep railway embankment, with a line of bare trees on one side and a small river on the other.

  As Tolley unhooked the gate and stepped through, a train hurtled out of the misty gloom, the lights of its passenger cars like a string of yellow beads, dragging a dull roar behind as it dwindled away.


  There had once been a narrow road or street here; there were grassy humps on either side where houses and cottages had once stood, although not a stone showed now. Tolley followed its line towards the trees and realized, as he wandered beneath them, that here were the ruins of the manor house his family had once owned.

  The moment was curiously disappointing; perhaps it was because there was hardly anything left of the place. A low hummock, narrow and straight, was all that remained of a wall; a huge briar patch might have once been a rose garden; ragged shoulders of red brick fell away either side of a tall cluster of octagonal chimneys.

  Tolley used his pocket Olympus to take a few photographs in the doubtful light; as he framed the last, he noticed the small church that stood a few hundred yards beyond the ruins, its square tower not much higher than the railway embankment behind it.

  The hedge around its graveyard had grown tall and wild; long briers trailed from it like unkempt hair. Tolley found an iron gate, saw headstones standing in waist-high grass obviously untrimmed since spring, saw a bramble bush that had rooted in the shoulders of a headless stone angel. Yet the gravel path was free of weeds, and a handsized hole in one of the stained-glass windows had been patched with hardboard, suggesting that although its congregation had long since deserted it, or lay under the long grass, someone still cared for the place.

  It was growing dark, the sun a bloody smear in clouds low over cold fields where mist was beginning to gather. Too dark, Tolley thought, to examine the inscriptions on gravestones or look in the church for relics of his family.

  He walked back through the overgrown ruins of the manor house, and in the last of the light crossed the hummocky meadow to the little river. Where it passed beneath a steel railway bridge, the water dropped in a glassy rush over the step of a weir; on the far bank were the remains of a big, square building that had to be the mill Tolley’s family had once owned.

  As Tolley framed in his camera’s view finder a broken wall that stood amongst a clump of leafless trees, he thought for a moment that someone was lurking in the shadows there, a man with an oddly shaped head. Or no, he seemed to be wearing a top hat.