Pastworld

by Ian Beck

  There was another silence, which went on for a minute or so, and then came the sound of a young child’s voice. It came from nowhere that Caleb could identify. It just floated into and around the room. The texture of the voice was distant, and it was surrounded with a flicker of other unidentifiable sounds.

  ‘Hello, help me. Are you there? Help me, help me.’

  Everyone became agitated; Caleb watched as they lifted their heads looking around the darkened room for the source of the crackling, whispered voice.

  Leighton spoke again. ‘Keep the circle now. How do you require us to help, Miss Burgess?’

  Again the scratchy flicker around the voice, the same phrase: ‘Help me, help me.’

  The audience were disturbed, one woman began crying quietly. A woman in a plum-coloured velvet dress said, ‘It sounds like my Amy,’ and she too cried quietly. ‘It sounds just like my Amy.’ A man sitting beside her gave her his handkerchief.

  ‘Do not break the circle. We have the manifestation of a voice, a miracle in our midst,’ said Leighton.

  ‘I want my mother,’ came the voice distinctly. The woman in the plum velvet broke the circle again and suddenly brought her hands up to her face and sobbed. Leighton spoke then, clearly and slowly, and with a certain weariness of tone, as if this were a familiar occurrence. ‘Mr Brown, I wonder if you would raise the light levels for us. Our experiment must now conclude, just for the moment.’ Caleb snapped out of his own reverie and raised the flow of the gas jets. The room jumped into semi-brightness. The audience stretched in their seats. There were audible mutterings of disappointment.

  ‘I think we shall take some refreshment now, and we shall attempt another contact. Perhaps our Miss Burgess may even materialise this time,’ Leighton said.

  Caleb stood by the door and watched the Gawkers wait patiently while Leighton poured glasses of sherry from behind an occasional table. The woman in the plum velvet dress stood apart in obvious distress and finally Leighton asked Caleb to show her out.

  Caleb held her cape for her in the hallway and she shrugged herself into it. She turned to Caleb and said through her tears, ‘It’s all silly tricks, isn’t it?’ She held her head high. ‘Cruel, nasty conjuring tricks.’ Then she stepped out into the street and Caleb shut the door behind her.

  The Gawkers were back around the table upstairs. Leighton asked Caleb to dim the gaslight back down. Caleb adjusted the glow until the gloom was established again. They all joined hands in a circle once more, and Leighton cleared his throat and said, ‘Are you still with us, Miss Burgess?’

  ‘I am here,’ came the crackling voice.

  Caleb stood and waited by the gas bracket.

  ‘Shall you materialise?’ said Mr Leighton into the gloom.

  This time there was a loud tap on the table.

  A milky white light appeared in front of the door. It flickered on and off, back into darkness for a few seconds then settled as a shifting, white glow like the fogs outside but brighter. A figure appeared, very faintly, in the centre of the light. There were gasps from the table, and audible intakes of breath. Caleb realised at once that this was just the sort of illusion that his father was always boasting about. The very thing he claimed to have developed back in the early days of Pastworld when he had devised ghosts and such things.

  ‘Don’t break the circle,’ said Leighton. ‘Concentrate now on the manifestation. Are you with us, Miss Burgess?’

  The room felt colder. Caleb could clearly see his breath in the air now and the figure in the light raised its arms wide.

  ‘Help me, I want my mummy.’ It was the girl’s voice again but subtly different this time as if from far away. The figure in the light seemed to be a girl wearing a long white nightdress.

  ‘Miss Burgess, thank you for joining us. We can see you very clearly now. Have you a message of comfort for anyone here?’ said Leighton.

  ‘I would like to touch my poor mummy, to feel her kind hand again.’

  In the silence that followed the room felt colder still. Caleb knew for sure that what he was watching was something fake – very clever, but fake. He guessed that it was some sort of holograph projection. It was very well done but certainly not a real ghost, and yet the people around the table seemed to have completely fallen for it. There was palpable emotion in the room and Caleb shivered, not just from the cold. Hadn’t his father been banging on about ghosts and illusions and machines when they were walking near Clapham Junction station?

  ‘I fear that your mother may not be here,’ said Leighton.

  ‘Then I should like to feel any hand at all. I should like to make a contact with someone from your world who has suffered a grievous loss. I want to comfort someone once more before I go back for ever into the darkness.’

  There were some sighs and sobs from around the table at this.

  Caleb recognised the voice; it was Bible J, either speaking into a special distorting device or cleverly putting on a girl’s voice. That broke his own tension and for the first time in days he was tempted to laugh out loud, but he controlled himself.

  Leighton replied, ‘I will send someone to hold your hand, Miss Burgess. Mr Brown, knowing your sad history as I do, I wonder if you would go and take comfort from our revenant, our lost soul, for you are grieving too, I think.’

  Caleb looked over at Mr Leighton. Was this a sick joke on his part?

  Mr Leighton gestured for him to walk forward. Caleb brushed at the front of his uniform as if to prepare himself. ‘It’s true, but I don’t know,’ he said quietly, embarrassed, hesitating.

  ‘Go forward, please, go to her. No harm will come to you. Take her hand, take comfort from this poor lost child.’

  Caleb stayed where he was.

  ‘I’ll do it,’ said a woman, standing up from the table. She squeezed past the chairs and walked nervously towards the light. She reached out nervously toward the ghostly white outstretched hand.

  A loud bang came from outside the door and with it a sudden flash of bright light which stabbed its way under and over the closed door, and flickered around the gloomy parlour, like a flash of lightning. There was shouting followed by instant confusion around the table. The image flickered off and the room was plunged into dimness once again, and a wind of cold air swirled in from below.

  ‘Lights, lights, Caleb,’ Mr Leighton snapped.

  Caleb went over and turned the gas jet up too high, too quickly and the room flooded with bright, greenish light. The Gawkers were caught awkwardly holding hands and blinking, fearful of another thunderflash.

  The door burst open and Bible J was pushed hard into the room. Caleb saw that one of his arms was covered in a white sleeve and white glove. A ragged man, his face mostly hidden by a tattered scarf, had Bible J by the throat, and held a pistol to his temple. Behind him came another ragged man, who strode right into the middle of the room, stretched his arm out straight and levelled his own gun directly at Mr Leighton’s head.

  .

  Chapter 37

  The ragged man stood in the centre of the room with an army revolver held straight out in his hand.

  ‘Nobody move. Stay just where you are. Now, very slowly, all put your hands up in the air where I can see them.’

  The Gawkers raised their arms, as did Caleb and Leighton.

  Bible J was pushed further forward and he stumbled across the floor. Another ragged man came in, carrying a large carpet bag held wide open. The man with the gun said, ‘All of you are to put any valuables – cash money, jewellery, watches, anything and everything – into the bag, and you are to do it slowly. Leighton, you will put all of the entrance money in this bag now.’

  ‘I haven’t got it here. My houseboy will have to fetch it.’

  ‘Send him to fetch it then.’

  ‘Would you be so good as to go to the room upstairs young man and bring down the cash box? Mr Japhet has the key.’

  Bible J stood with his arms in the air as Caleb fished the key out of his waistcoat pocket.
He nodded his head almost imperceptibly as Caleb took the key.

  ‘Hurry,’ said the ragged man.

  Caleb went to the stairs. Another armed man stood guard outside the door and watched him as he went up to the next landing and as he unlocked and opened the door. It was the gun room. The cash box was on the table. He looked at the cabinets and the rows of darkly gleaming guns. He quickly opened one of the cabinets and took out a Remington revolver. It was already loaded. What am I doing? he thought, but he was suddenly too nervous to answer his own question. He tucked the gun into the waistband of his trousers and draped his waistcoat over the bulge. He took the cash box with him and locked the door, then went back down to the seance room.

  The ragged man emptied the box contents into the bag, which was now stuffed full of jewellery and cash. Then he spoke to the assembled Gawkers. ‘Ladies, gentlemen, Gawkers and thieves, you have contributed tonight to the funds of the mighty Fantom, and you can be sure those funds will be put to a very good use.’ There were mutterings and murmurings from the Gawkers.

  Mr Leighton said, ‘Your employer will pay dearly for this.’

  ‘I doubt that, mate,’ said the ragged man. ‘You’ll have to find him first, now he really is supernatural. He comes from a “no where” and he goes to a “no place”.’ The ragged man picked up the carpet bag and backed towards the door. He looked at Caleb, reached forward and pulled the revolver out of his waistband. ‘Nice try,’ he said, ‘brave lad.’ He pocketed the gun, and backed out of the door, slammed it shut and turned the key.

  Mr Leighton kept his hands in the air after the door had shut.

  ‘Stay as you are,’ he counselled. ‘Don’t move anyone, wait. I don’t trust them.’ There was the sound of a door slamming below and the sound of hooves and wheels on cobbles.

  ‘They’ve gone,’ he said, lowering his arms.

  He was at once surrounded by querulous Gawkers, demanding he send for the police. They were outraged, and they were embarrased for allowing themselves to be robbed so easily. Angry and disillusioned, they jostled around him, some of the women were in tears, their voices broken with fear.

  Bible J had slipped the white sleeve and glove from his hand and hidden it under the table.

  ‘Their object was to frighten you,’ said Leighton. ‘I will see that you are all financially recompensed. Caleb, see that everyone has their coats and show them out of the house. I too am in distress; my aura has been damaged. Leave me until next time, my friends, when all shall be well.’

  The confused and angry Gawkers eventually left and Leighton ran up the staircase to the gun room.

  ‘Key,’ he snapped out.

  He stepped into the gun room, lit the lamp and pulled Caleb and Bible J in with him.

  ‘I’m not blaming you, it’s not your fault. I should have explained about the Fantom and myself and the danger that he represents to me personally. Caleb, that was a good idea taking one of the guns. We might have had a chance of taking one of the bastards with it or getting one on the way out. Shame there was no time.’

  He looked around at all of the precious guns. ‘It’s a good job you didn’t use it. They would have finished you off like that.’ He snapped his fingers. ‘It will soon be time to rally to the cause properly. That was an act of provocation. One of these days, and soon, we will load up and go and find him and deal with him once and for all.’

  .

  Chapter 38

  The Fantom made his way quickly down the dark brick tunnel. The low light did not bother him; he could see perfectly in any light and his feet found their way automatically beside the rail tracks. A rat scuttled towards him, not a real one, which he would have expected, but a straying mech. It stopped in front of him barring the way. It looked up at him, its eyes seemed to glow red. It lifted its head and opened its mouth and showed two rows of even, sharp teeth set in a fixed grimace, and then the rat said menacingly, ‘No entry. Restricted area. Restricted.’ The Fantom looked down at the rat, at its spiky, greasy fur standing on end. ‘Hello, brother rat,’ he said, and there was even a trace of sympathy in his voice. He lifted his foot high in its shiny black boot, and brought it down hard on the little creature’s back. He felt the sad and detailed crunch of its destruction through the sole of his boot. He moved his foot away and knelt down and looked at the rat, peering with curiosity into its shattered little eyes as the red light dimmed and faded out. That would have alerted them, he thought, but it’s too deep – too far underground for a signal.

  The Fantom’s cloak swished out behind him as he turned the last curve. At this point the tunnel went straight for the last few hundred yards and the old disused station soon swam into view. Oil lamps were hung on wires above the platform and their light showed disembodied fragments from the old advertising posters pasted over the curved walls. Smiling faces showed off their once whiter than white teeth, or proudly brandished their toothpaste tubes, or their swirls and spirals of oiled hair, as they loomed out of the darkness and grinned down on to the silent tracks.

  A ragged man sat guard on the edge of the platform with a rifle across his knees. He leaped up when the Fantom appeared out of the mouth of the tunnel.

  ‘Asleep again then, Mr James?’ the Fantom asked.

  ‘No, sir,’ said the ragged man, standing as much to attention as he could. ‘Are the others with you?’

  ‘No. They have been out rattling punters somewhere. They’ll be here soon enough.’ The Fantom hopped up on to the platform and made his way quickly into the staircase hall. More oil lamps were strung on wires above the escalator steps. The metal treads were rusted and thick with dust. He heard a noise behind him: the sound of echoing laughter and little whoops from his gang of ragged men some way away down a tunnel.

  The Fantom went through a door into the old ticket hall. The light was stronger here from a concentration of oil lamps. A couple of armed men sat on a battered chaise longue against the wall while Lucius Brown sat upright, tied with rope to a hard chair in the middle of the space. A tray of food and scattered cutlery lay at his feet.

  Lucius watched the Fantom as he crossed the floor into the circle of lights. The Fantom doffed his hat and threw it at one of the ragged men, who caught it clumsily. The Fantom peeled away the black face mask and took off his silvered glasses. His features were pale, his skin smooth and his eyes a bright sea-blue.

  ‘I understand that one of my teams put paid to an example of your handiwork tonight,’ the Fantom said.

  Lucius stiffened visibly in the chair. He tugged at the ropes.

  ‘Relax, Lucius, it wasn’t what or who you think. It was just one of your ghost-effect machines, the projection of a spectral little girl, a cheap seance apparition. One of your own illusions, I am told. They got a good haul from the rich Gawkers and suckers who all fell for it too.’

  ‘You must be very proud of yourself,’ Lucius replied in a measured voice.

  ‘Surely it is you who should be proud,’ the Fantom replied. ‘Imagine making such a thing and seeing it work. It’s just like magic really, but then you are something of a magician, aren’t you? Well, it apparently fooled them well enough until my men went in and burst their bubble.’ The Fantom smiled a rare smile. His face was pleasant enough when he smiled, except perhaps for his very white wolfish teeth.

  ‘You must be tired,’ he said to Lucius. ‘I see that they have offered to feed you and yet you have not eaten. Was it not to your taste? Sadly, I know so little about you. What do you normally eat? Do you have a favourite dish?’

  ‘I was not hungry. A man in my position does not think of food. Where is my son?’

  ‘Now that is quite a question, and an ironic one too, given our circumstances. I have no idea where that boy is, but I wish I did, for I have every intention of meeting him. You and your son would have been here together if my minions had not bungled things so badly. I have so long wanted to meet you both. And of course there is just that one other.’

  ‘What about Jack?’


  The Fantom spread his hands and shrugged. ‘Another crime statistic, I am afraid. I examined him, you know, after death. I took the opportunity and looked right inside him. Poor old Dr Jack, he was not long for this world in any case. He had a weak heart.’

  Lucius looked at the vicious young man standing opposite him with his arms folded proudly across his chest. ‘You will please leave my son alone,’ he said, ‘should you find him. He at least is innocent in all of this.’

  ‘No one is an innocent, not to me. Look at all those hordes of people who come crowding in here paying their pathetic shillings to Mr Buckland and co. They eat the cheap food. Smoke the cheap cigars. “Ooh let’s watch a hanging”, “Oh a terrible accident”, “Oh look, George, the brutal arrest of a tiny child felon”, “Ooh a real amputation and with such a dirty-looking authentic old rusty-toothed saw too.” Then there are the other ones, aren’t there? The ones who come here just to see my special work.’ The Fantom’s face was fixed on Lucius and his eyes seemed even brighter as he delivered his mounting outburst.

  ‘Is that all you see here?’ Lucius said quietly. ‘No achievements, other than base criminality, squalor and profit?’

  The Fantom changed tack, and a different kind of light came into his eyes. ‘She ran away from your old friend Dr Jack, her keeper, didn’t she? He sent you a letter after she broke cover and took off out into the world, that brave, beautiful girl. She’s out there now somewhere, you know, trailing round with some travelling acrobats. All very authentic, I am sure, but hardly what she was meant for, wouldn’t you say?’

  ‘I personally couldn’t say anything about what she was meant for. That was not my idea.’

  ‘No, I doubt you would. I doubt you have much to say about either of us. It’s quite something, you know, for me to actually have you here, sitting in front of me, powerless and tied with a real authentic rope, to a real authentic chair. I wonder if you have ever feared this moment. If you have ever woken from your blameless sleep out there, wherever it is you live. Shelley Avenue, is it not? Have you lain in a cold sweat in Shelley Avenue, in quaint old Poet’s Corner, remembering me and my face, and what I might be up to while you listen to the sound of the sweetly twittering mech birds or whatever they are in your clean and tidy garden, and have you feared this very moment?’