by Dean Cole
‘What I was wondering, Mr Strange, was … well, can’t you talk to him? Get him to give up the shotgun somehow? It might work better coming from you, a man, than little old me. There’s still time before you leave. I popped round the back just now and saw the lights on in the cottage. Or you could have a word with him first thing before you leave.’ Her tired eyes blinked at me beseechingly. ‘It’s just a temporary measure. I’m going to talk to a doctor friend this week, ask her if there’s anything she recommends, you know, to get Stan some proper help. But you’d be putting my mind at rest like you couldn’t imagine.’
I hesitated before saying, ‘Sure, I’ll speak to Mr Crouch.’
The anguish in Mrs Brown’s face rearranged into a look of mild surprise, as if she hadn’t expected such willingness. ‘Oh. Well, thanks.’
I forced a smile. ‘It’s no problem.’
The little Scotswoman got up to leave, straightening her coat. ‘I might as well sort a couple of things in the kitchen before I leave, make things a bit easier for the cook. We’ve got a busy week ahead, what with Halloween coming up.’ She checked the gloves and handbag were still in her hand, gave me a small bow and scurried to the door.
But when she reached it, she stopped and paused, turning her head as if bothered by a thought. I smiled at her again and she let the thought go, stepping into the corridor and closing the door behind her.
The second she was out of sight my smile instantly faded. I had no intention of going to see Stan Crouch to ask him to hand over the shotgun. My mind was busy coming up with another theory for why the caretaker had made such a strange comment. And, if I was right, the threat of Stan killing himself was going to be the least of Mrs Brown’s worries.
* * * * *
‘Reminds me of being a teenager, all those bedrooms I used to sneak into,’ said Will, slipping out from behind the changing screen with a smirk on his face. But I wasn’t paying attention as I sat on the bed, my mind racing.
Mouse … I had heard the word before. At the seance. It was the name of the spirit that made contact with us. A coincidence to say the least. Had Stan, contrary to what Mrs Brown thought, meant to say he wished he was dead like Mouse? Mouse being the name of someone he knew? Someone who was now haunting Hilderley Manor?
I recalled the vision I had in the cellar, Stan standing over me with the shotgun. It felt erroneous. Something about the room wasn’t right. What was it? I glanced around me. The bed was different. There had been no fourposter in the vision. And the clock that told me it was past midnight was nowhere to be seen here. Stan, too, even if his face had been half hidden beneath the hood and difficult to see, looked different from the wizened creature who currently stalked the house. He was younger, more robust. He was the man he would have been years ago …
The realisation hit me with disorienting force. ‘Oh my God.’
‘What?’ Will had opened the door to check the corridor. There mustn’t have been any shotgun-wielding madmen coming down it because he closed it and came over to sit down beside me.
‘Remind me what it’s called when you can see and feel other people’s emotions?’ I said.
‘Clairsentience.’
‘Do you think it’s possible that a clairsentient person could see another person’s memories?’
‘Quentin, with you I’m starting to think anything is possible.’
I shook my head. ‘I’ve got it all wrong. The vision wasn’t from my future. It was a memory from the past. Someone else’s past.’
Will watched me blankly as my mind sifted through the events of the last couple of days. Arriving at the manor and seeing a figure standing in the window of the very room I was staying in. Mrs Brown, showing us the room, had said, “It used to accommodate lowly staff many moons ago.” Had the figure been the ghost of someone who worked at Hilderley Manor, a worker who had stayed in this room?
Memories continued to flood my mind. I thought about the apparitions I had seen. The young man in the cellar who looked so much like me. The young man walking down the corridor before he vanished out of sight. I recollected that distinctive walk he had, the way he dragged it along the ground. And that’s when the conversation with Mrs Brown in the sitting room came back to me. ‘He wasn’t all there, this lad. What people used to call backward years ago. You know, retarded. Had a funny walk that people used to pick on him for.’
I leapt up from the bed and rushed to where my blazer was folded on the coffer. I reached inside the pocket and pulled out the piece of paper that I’d picked up off the carpet runner. I looked at the child’s drawing again. There were two stick figures; one was wearing a flat cap, just like the one the young man was wearing when I saw him, and the other was holding a rake. Behind them stood a water fountain, identical to the one in Hilderley Manor’s garden. It was the young man himself and Stan Crouch. And there, in the bottom right hand corner, was the signature of the picture’s artist in capital letters: MOUSE.
‘He’s dead,’ I whispered. And, like a stage cue, a thunderclap followed by a lightning flash returned a menacing reply.
Will gazed up at me. ‘Who’s dead?’
‘Joe Maguire.’
‘Joe who?’
‘The young man Mr Crouch took under his wing, the one who worked as an apprentice at the manor.’ I glanced around the room. ‘This was his room. He found a way to show me how he died. It was him who Stan killed with the shotgun.’
Will blinked up at me, suspending disbelief.
‘We have to stop Mr Crouch before he harms himself.’
Will got to his feet and gripped my arm. ‘Quentin —’
‘We haven’t got time, Will! It all makes sense. Stan killed Joe. He’s a murderer. And if he kills himself we’ll never find out why he did it.’
Seconds later we were dashing out of the front door, on our way to the caretaker’s cottage. A relentless torrent of rain was lashing the gravel driveway and battering the roofs of the visitors’ cars as we ran.
‘Can see where the surname comes in now,’ said Will, as we rounded the side of the estate and the garden came into view. ‘Life with you is certainly frigging strange!’
We rushed down the steps, past the bench and the fountain, up the gravel path, past the weeping cherry, until we had reached Stan’s cottage. Will banged the stable door three times with his fist. ‘Open the door, Lurch. We need to talk.’
The rain sounded more like hailstone as it continued to pour down, soaking my hair and blazer, running in rivulets down my cheeks as I kept a wary distance. There was a dim light on inside the abode. I thought I glimpsed a shadow move in one of the grimy windows. I nodded for Will to check. He went over and cupped his hands against the glass. He rapped one of the panes with his knuckles. ‘We know you’re in there. Open up, old man, or I’m breaking that weak as shite door into splinters and dragging you out of there.’
‘He has a shotgun,’ I reminded him.
‘Shit. Forgot about that.’
There was an unlocking sound. The stable door opened. Through a slim crack, Stan’s face appeared, concealed inside the hood of his raincoat. At first I thought he was frightened, intimidated by Will’s threats. But then the door swung wide and he stepped out, holding the shotgun. He lifted it and pointed it directly at my face.
‘Step away, boy,’ he growled. ‘Or I blow a hole through your head.’
I stood there, blinking through my rain-speckled glasses down the barrel of the weapon. I didn’t move. I couldn’t.
Stan took a step closer. ‘I said step away!’
A voice came from behind me. ‘What in the blazes is going on?’
It belonged to Mrs Brown. I didn’t turn, too petrified to make a move in fear it would get my head blown off. Stan, distracted, let his eyes flit from mine to where she must have been standing over my shoulder.
My life flashing before my eyes, I had momentarily forgotten that Will was feet away. But then, just like Superman, he flew in from the side, bringing Stan crashing to
the floor. The shotgun exploded with a flash. I ducked, dodging the bullet by inches. Mrs Brown let out a scream.
Will and Stan struggled on the ground, Will trying to remove the weapon from Stan’s grip. For such an arthritic looking person, Stan could certainly put up a fight. Will finally managed to prise the gun from his hands, hurling it into a nearby flowerbed. He pushed himself to his feet, hauling the wriggling senior up with him. Then he stood there, his prey restrained against his chest in a headlock, looking dishevelled but proud of his catch.
It had been a close call. But he had kept to his word and just saved my life.
- CHAPTER SEVENTEEN -
Stan's Story
‘JUST STOP RESISTING and it’ll be less painful for both of us.’
Will had finally got Stan inside the kitchen after much difficulty getting through the hallway. But even he had misjudged the elderly man’s determination to resist capture, evident from his wheeze and the disarranged quiff cascading over his forehead. Stan edged towards the table as I ushered Mrs Brown through the door and shut it behind us. Will flicked a switch and the candelabra light fitting came on, bathing our soaked faces in its amber glow.
With nowhere to run and realising any further attempts at escape would be futile, Stan finally relented and dropped into a chair at the table. He unburdened himself from the hood of his raincoat. Underneath, he was red and clammy. He looked even older under the artificial light, his knobbly chin frosted with white stubble beneath his purple-veined nose. And he sounded as battered as an old tractor, his chest rasping and wheezing from exertion.
There was a beat of quiet as everyone calmed down from the struggle that had brought us into the room. Mrs Brown, still dressed in her drenched coat and hat, her handbag dangling from the crease of her arm, was staring heedfully at her friend, hoping he would offer an explanation for his impromptu capture. But Stan was purposely avoiding eye contact with the captors standing around him, averting his rheumy eyes to the grainy surface of the table.
Mrs Brown looked at me, her eyes imploring. ‘What is it? What’s this about?’
‘It’s Joe Maguire,’ I said. ‘He didn’t leave. He’s still in the manor. Isn’t he, Mr Crouch?’
Stan’s edgy eyes drifted sheepishly from the table. They twinkled for a second in the light. Was it rheum or the first sign of tears? He didn’t answer, but he didn’t have to: the guilt was written all over his face.
‘Joe’s here? Wha — how?’ faltered Mrs Brown.
‘He’s dead, Elspeth,’ said Stan. ‘Joe’s dead.’ There was a lightness in his voice. A man unburdening himself of a secret that had haunted him for many years.
‘Dead? But —?’
‘I killed him, didn’t I?’
The starkness of Stan’s words smarted as they lingered in the quietness of the kitchen. And as they released from the old man, so too did a single tear, running in a rivulet down his flushed cheek and vanishing into the whiskers on his chin.
Mrs Brown had turned a deathly white. So much so that she looked as if she was about to pass out. Seeing this, I reached out and guided her over to the table, pulling out a chair for her to take the weight off her feet. She lowered herself into the seat, which was directly across from Stan’s. I removed her hat and set it on the table.
Mrs Brown placed her handbag near the hat with a shaky hand. ‘You killed Joe?’ she whispered.
‘It was Billy Crowley’s fault, the evil bastard,’ Stan blurted. ‘He caused this, not me!’
‘Billy?’ Mrs Brown recollected the name. ‘The relative of the Blackfords?’
‘He were a bully, a rotten snake. Not just bad, he was bleeding evil. He got off on hurting others, enjoyed it. He set his eyes on Joe and like a wolf with a baby lamb the poor lad didn’t stand a chance.’
Stan hunted a wallet out of his raincoat. He pulled out a dogeared black and white photograph and dropped it on the surface of the table. I stared at it. It showed a younger Stan Crouch, the same age he was in the vision, standing in what looked like Hilderley Manor’s garden with his arm around the shoulder of a young man in his early twenties. A young man who bore more than a striking resemblance to myself. The same young man I saw naked and sobbing in the cellar before falling and blacking out. But he wasn’t sobbing here. He was beaming with a joy that was radiating off him like light. It was Joe Maguire.
‘Just look at the lad,’ Stan implored Mrs Brown. ‘I told you what he was like, how he didn’t see the world the same way others did, how he was slow in that way, childlike. And sensitive. He’d smile at flowers, at a summer sky, be in his glory watching a ladybird crawl across his hand. If my traps killed rats and mice around the manor he’d get upset and ask if we could bring them back to life. The lad wouldn’t have hurt a fly. Billy Crowley sniffed out that vulnerability like a shark sniffs out fresh blood.’ Stan’s face turned mottled purple with a seasoned bitterness. ‘When Crowley befriended him he was flattered. Of course he was, he’d never had that sort of attention before. Folk weren’t so keen on being associated with what they called a ‘freak’ back then. But it was all a ruse. Crowley was just taking advantage of Joe’s naivety, grooming him. He wanted to use him for his disgusting urges. Crowley was a pervert, just like them two.’
Stan had jabbed his gnarly finger at me and Will. Instinctively, Will stepped forward, eyes narrowing threateningly. ‘Watch your filthy gob, old man.’
I held my arm out in a conciliatory gesture. Reluctantly, Will flattened his shoulders. ‘You mean Billy was gay?’ I said.
Stan bared the few teeth left in his mouth. ‘A filthy queer is what he was! And the reason I hate the perverts as much I hate the arthritis that rots the bones in my legs. If Billy Crowley’s anything to go by, it’s proof being queer is the curse of the Devil.’
I could feel Will’s urge to retaliate as he stood beside me, but he managed to restrain himself despite Stan’s derogatory insults. Mrs Brown was staring at Stan with a look of dread on her face.
‘What did Billy do to Joe, Stan?’ she said, her voice so frail she sounded childlike.
‘I caught them down in the cellar. Doing that filthy stuff queers do. Poor Joe, with no clothes on. Billy forcing himself on him. I know he did because Joe was terrified, wouldn’t stop crying.’
I recalled the sight of Joe Maguire down in the cellar, naked and crying. So that’s what I was seeing. But what was it? A sort of visual echo of his memory?
‘Joe was never the same after Billy started messing with him.’ Stan looked pained as he spoke. ‘If the bastard hadn’t done that, if I hadn’t caught them, then none of this would have happened.’
Mrs Brown blinked at her wizened friend. ‘You killed Joe because Billy Crowley abused him?’
Stan shook his head. ‘It got complicated. After I caught them, Billy got angry with me. He knew what the consequences were of a secret like that getting out. Back then you were in serious trouble if you were caught buggering another man. And I only went and made it worse. I threatened to tell on him if I caught him anywhere near Joe again. I should never have said that. Because it was a lie. I never would have put Joe at risk of getting locked up. I was just angry.’
Stan’s face twisted with regret. I saw Mrs Brown brace as he raised his hand, about to hammer it on the table. But then he let the hand relax, shaking his head despairingly.
‘That threat was what made Billy do what he did. The conniving rat came to see me with his cronies. Told me he was going to blame it all on Joe, play the victim, get ‘the freak’ as he put it sent away to be abused where all the other queers were locked up. And he’d have done it, too, wicked gremlin he was. He knew people would believe him over anything Joe said. Joe was a laughing stock, summat to be jeered at like a circus freak. And how would he stand up for himself in court? He’d cry and beg for forgiveness if he did summat as innocent as break a glass. He didn’t have the brains to defend himself against an accusation like that. And Crowley was clever enough to lie, twist and manipulate himself o
ut of the truth. He had the entire house wrapped around his finger, cowards they were, intimidated by the grandiose facade that was nothing but an act. The flying monkeys would have backed him up and poor Joe wouldn’t have stood a chance.’
Stan lifted his bloodshot eyes, looking at the faces watching him. He looked boyish for a brief moment, the pleading face of a child hoping his accusers would forgive his wrongdoing.
‘They’d have sent Joe to prison! And the poor lad wouldn’t have survived a place as brutal as that, types they have locked up in there. The things they would have done to him if they found out he was in for …’ Stan shook his head, more tears leaking down the ravine-like wrinkles in his cheeks. ‘Being queer then wasn’t what it is now. People were disgusted by it, they feared it, thought it was an abomination. Men got locked up for life. I couldn’t let that happen to Joe. Not that sweet, innocent lad. I just couldn’t.’
A realisation had crept into Mrs Brown’s face. ‘Stan, are you saying that … that —’
‘I killed him to save him from that,’ Stan confessed.
Will and I exchanged a dark glance. Sensations of shock, regret and sadness churned inside my chest all at once. Will, too, looked surprised by the unexpected motive, but the look he was giving Mr Crouch still held a measure of distaste.
The harrowing revelation was too much for Mrs Brown. The kindly housekeeper pressed her hand to her mouth and emitted a wave of small, anguished sobs. Stan’s emotions spilled over in response to seeing the impact his confession had had on his closest and only remaining friend.
‘I was saving the lad, Elspeth!’ he sobbed. ‘I was saving him from a life of hell. I might have hated what he’d done, what that monster had turned him into, but I knew he didn’t deserve punishment as brutal as prison.’