A Spookies Compendium

by David Robinson

  He closed the gates, pushing home a large, metal bolt. Alongside it was a small, sliding hatch. Slightly larger than a man’s hand, it was not large enough to stick his head through, and Kevin wondered briefly about its purpose. He slid it back and peered through to a view of Melmerby Woods again. Again, he thought he saw movement in them but dismissed the idea as another figment of his anxious imagination. Still, he had solved the mystery of the sliding hatch. It was there so those on the inside could look through and see who was on the outside.

  He turned to rejoin his colleagues.

  Sceptre and Pete had gone into the ramshackle stables. With thoughts of the cellar and shadows lurking in the woods beyond the grounds dancing through his mind, Kevin hurried to catch up to them.

  Sceptre was just explaining the stables’ current use to Pete. “They keep one stable going in the summer and have the staff dressed in period costume running it, but the rest, like this one, are warehouses for catering supplies.”

  To Kevin’s relief, Pete pressed the switch by the entrance and flooded the place with strong, fluorescent light.

  They could see instantly what Sceptre meant. There were huge freezers (empty when Kevin checked them) a large racking system containing half-pallets of toilet paper as well as odd, catering-sized cans of fruit, vegetables, tea and coffee. There were stocks of cleaning materials, and in the centre of the floor, five pallets of new, unmarked cartons, with a forklift standing by.

  While Sceptre moved to different corners of the room, checking with her thermometer, Kevin studied the cartons. “Wonder what’s in these?”

  Pete gauged the size of the boxes. “Paper towels, I’ll bet.”

  Kevin tested the weight of one box. “Too heavy for paper towels.”

  “They pack a lot in them... Kev, leave ’em alone.” Pete’s protests fell on deaf ears.

  Kevin dragged one of the cartons from the pallet and slit it open with a pocketknife.

  “You are a rotten tealeaf, Keeley.”

  Kevin waved away Pete’s protest. “Ex-coppers. Who’d have ’em... Hey! Look at this. They’re DVDs.” He grinned broadly. “Pirate DVDs. More copies of Mind Games III.”

  His interest aroused, Pete joined his pal and opened another case to find that it, too, contained the same title. “What price Bilko got his copy here?” He made a quick count of the cartons and pallets. After some mental arithmetic, he murmured, “What’s 50,000 quids’ worth of pirate movies doing here?”

  Slipping a copy into the inner pocket of his fleece, Kevin made ready to leave. “Maybe the stately home business doesn’t do so well and the Melmerbys top up their income with a bit of warehousing work.”

  Sceptre snorted derision. “Rubbish. Jonathan Melmerby, the present earl, is a millionaire financier. He wouldn’t get mixed up in criminal activity.”

  “Interesting that I should find one of these last night, and now a load more turn up here,” said Pete. “Still, it’s nothing to do with tonight’s efforts, so hadn’t we better get the gear set up?”

  Kevin was ahead of him, almost out of the door already.

  “Hey.” Pete had a gimlet eye on the square bulge of the DVD in his pal’s pocket, “Put that back.”

  Kevin grinned. “I will. Just as soon as I’ve watched it.”

  Chapter Six

  For the next hour or so, they were far too busy to watch DVDs. Under Sceptre’s direction, they began to set out their equipment at key locations, concentrating particularly on the upper landing and master bedroom.

  “This is where Sir Henry Melmerby was laid out after his death on the moors,” said Sceptre, “and it’s reputed to be one of the most haunted rooms in the house. That bed,” she gestured at the giant four-poster, “has not been used since Sir Henry was laid out there.”

  After setting up a digital video camera and EMF sensor, she led them back out onto the dark, oak-panelled landing, through a side door up to the top floor, and the cold attic rooms where servants had slept during their years of service at the house. On entering each room, Sceptre checked the area with her thermometer, magnetometers and EMF sensors before backing out.

  In one room they found a cache of toys.

  Using her flashlight to study the plan more closely, she announced, “This, apparently, used to be a servants’ room, and Aggie Devis slept here. Later, it was divided in two and this half became a nursery.”

  At the far end of the room, Pete tapped on the walls; instead of the usual, solid thud associated with bricks, the sound was hollow and resonant. “Wall boards,” he said, “used to create a partition. And this has been partitioned off in the last fifty years, never mind a coupla hundred years ago.”

  Sceptre pushed a rocking horse so that it swayed gently. “The spirits of children often come back to haunt their old rooms, and Fishwick told me there is the ghost of a child here, so we’ll set up some equipment in this room, and because Aggie used to sleep here, we’d better set up next door, too.”

  While Kevin set up another EMF sensor and an infrared motion sensor, Pete asked, “How do you know all this stuff, Sceptre? I got the impression you’ve never been here before.”

  “I haven’t. I told you, I did a piece on the family when I was in university, and I’ve done considerable research since, albeit from third party sources. Books on notable ghosts, and so on. Sir Henry and Aggie may be the best known ghosts in this mansion, but there are many others here and in the immediate area.”

  “Like the woods,” Kevin commented as he set up a video camera.

  “Correct,” said Sceptre. “At least you were listening earlier. Well done.”

  Kevin blushed and returned to setting up the camera.

  “What’s wrong with you?” Pete asked. “Why so shy? Was there any other reason you remembered the ghosts in the woods? Have you seen one?”

  Kevin blushed again. “No. I –er– I’ve been to Melmerby Woods before. When I was a teenager. With a girlfriend.”

  Sceptre pursed her lips in disapproval. “I’ll bet she wasn’t frightened by a ghost.” She focused on Pete again. “I learned the history of the house at university, I followed up with various books that included tales of Melmerby Manor, and naturally, Fishwick has confirmed many of them.”

  “Oh. Right. I forgot Fishy.” Pete shook his head in mild amusement. “All I can say, Sceptre, is make sure you’re living in the real world if anyone hassles us tonight.”

  She smiled back. “You’ll see, Pete. Mark my words, that rocking horse will move tonight.”

  Night had come down over the moors as they moved back through the attics, down the stairs to the first floor landing, trailing cables behind them. Near the top of the staircase, Kevin busied himself, hooking the cables into a complex switchboard, while Pete worked back along the landing, tucking the cables close to the wall.

  Sceptre watched them. Kevin, working without a diagram, connected a complex series of colour-coded wiring with the practiced ease of a computer engineer. Pulling various tools from a utility belt as he needed them, his intense concentration and the swift, accurate movements of his hands reminded her of nerdy college kids she had seen solving Rubik’s Cube. Further along was Pete, the professional policeman, the safety expert, almost hiding the cables in the tight joint of floor and wall, running them behind items of furniture or, ensuring that they were kept out of harm’s way so that they would not trip over them, his skilled eye tracking back and forth along the narrow bundle to make sure the cable did not move out of place as he worked along its length.

  The landing was a jumble of dark shadows interspersed with pools of light from the wall-mounted lamps. Sceptre’s eyes strayed frequently from her colleagues to the darker recesses, seeking signs of activity. Was that the hulk of a man standing at the far end, or just a trick of the poor light? A blink, and the looming shadow had become the body of a bear; another blink, and it was no more than a shadow.

  Focus, Sceptre, focus. Tonight was too important to let her senses start deceiving her
.

  Once Kevin was happy with the landing, they worked their way down the staircase, under the mean eye of the Melmerby family lineage, Kevin playing out cable from a 50-metre drum, Pete carefully taping it to the walls at stair level.

  When they reached the cafeteria, Kevin set a large control board on a table and hooked his various video and audio feeds into it. Finally, he linked the panel to his laptop computer, booted the machine up and ran the specialist software. The computer’s main screen was divided into ninths: one small view from each piece of equipment and a centrally located control menu giving access to data coming from any of the motion, temperature and magnetic sensors. In addition, he could drive and monitor the performance of any piece of their equipment anywhere in the house.

  “Where did you learn all this stuff, Kevin? Really?” Sceptre wanted to know.

  “I’m self-taught, mostly,” he replied, running the mouse across the screen and testing the various pieces of hardware, “but I took a college course a few years back to fill in the gaps.” He smiled cheekily. “I’m the best there is. Trust me.”

  “If you’re trusting him,” Pete observed, “keep a careful eye on your purse.”

  Satisfied that everything was fine, Kevin sat back. “There you go. Everything’s tickety-boo. I can do whatever you want now: focus a camera, start and stop it recording, start up an audio recorder. We’re just waiting for something to happen.” He left the computer and crossed to another table, where he plugged in his CD player and inserted an Abba disc. “Nothing wrong with a bit of music, is there?” he asked when the other two frowned at him.

  “Something a bit less noisy, Kevin,” Sceptre suggested.

  “They don’t come much quieter than Abba.”

  Sceptre reached into her own bag and withdrew a whalesong CD. “Put that on. It’s more soothing.”

  Kevin took the disc. Huffily, he crossed to his CD machine and pressed the eject button. There was a momentary delay, after which the drawer snapped open and flipped the Abba CD into the air, where he caught it. “Bad-tempered piece of junk. One of these days, I’ll dump it in the canal.”

  He inserted Sceptre’s CD, and presently the room was filled with the soothing sound of whalesong augmented by the gentle rush of the ocean.

  The evening dragged on. Kevin dozed, Pete dozed, Sceptre read, then Sceptre dozed while Pete read and Kevin dozed, then Sceptre read, drinking occasionally from a bottle of apple-flavoured water, while across from her, Pete and Kevin dozed. The CD player continued to pour its mournful cries into every corner of the cafeteria: a simple song that surrounded and immersed them in a sea of ambient sound, inducing Kevin and Pete to doze some more, and making Sceptre’s eyelids heavier and heavier until she too began to drift...

  *****

  “Milady?”

  Sceptre woke and became instantly alert. She checked on her colleagues, both still sound asleep, and in deference to them, kept her voice down.

  “What is it, Fishwick?”

  “The presence is here, Milady,” her butler said.

  Sceptre’s heartbeat increased. “The one from last night?”

  “Yes, Madam. He has only been on this side a short time, but his fury is giving him the strength to manipulate matter. He may very well vent his anger on you.”

  “Thank you, Fishwick.” She checked her watch and read 10:00 p.m. “Time for work, boys,” she announced.

  Across from her, Pete and Kevin stirred.

  “We should take another tour of the house.” She chuckled at Kevin’s obvious display of fear and held up a battery-operated lantern. “We’ll carry lights for all those dark corners.”

  Kevin’s face grew paler. “Can’t we just let Pete do it?”

  “While you sit here snoring your head off?” Pete demanded with a yawn. “I was never too keen on this gig in the first place, but if you’re gonna make me do all the work, I’ll go home now.”

  “And if you remember, I didn’t want to come here, either,” Kevin said. “I could have driven it all by remote from home.”

  Sceptre made an effort to calm the argument down before it could gather steam. “It’s all right, Kevin, we’ll stick together this time.”

  Kevin did not think it was all right. “This place gives me the willies. I didn’t imagine all that in the cellar, you know. Even if they were rats, they were still scratching to get in.” He continued to mutter as they left the cafeteria for the entrance hall. “And rats are just as bad as ghosts. Go for your throat, they do. Don’t...”

  “Shut up, Kev,” snapped Pete, “I...”

  “Quiet,” Sceptre interrupted urgently. “I thought I heard something.”

  With the total blackness of a foggy night on the outside and the meagre lighting on the inside, the hall had taken on a new, more sinister aura. Faces on portraits lining the grand staircase had developed a Baskervillian air, as if they were ready to leap from their frames and tear out the living hearts of anyone foolhardy enough to pass. At the top of the curving staircase, distant lamps cast elongated shadows of banister rails, like the grotesque bars of a supernatural prison that held unspeakable horrors for the unwary inmate. Silence hung in the tense air: a spine-chilling stillness, broken only by the cry of the moorland wind and the sound of whalesong from Kevin’s CD player.

  Then, into the night came a distant bump that might have been a rumble of thunder or the movement of furniture closer to home.

  Pete strained his ears. “Will you shut that row up?”

  “I haven’t said anything,” Kevin protested.

  “Not you; that crap on your CD player.”

  The immensity of the entrance hall, its age, grandeur and dark corners (particularly its dark corners) gave Kevin the jitters. Glad to be out of it, he hurried back into the cafeteria, and made for the CD player. He was halfway there when the machine ejected the CD and threw it across the room at him like a razor-edged discus, its polished surface glittering in the half-light of the room.

  “Aargh!”

  “Now what?” asked Pete as he and Sceptre hurried back in.

  They found Kevin cowering near the cash register at the end of the service counter.

  “What’s up?” asked Sceptre.

  “Th-the C-C-CD. It came out of the machine and nearly cut my head off.”

  Pete picked up the disc. “Well you always said that machine was a bit iffy.”

  “I was nowhere near it,” Kevin cried. “It was as if someone picked it up and threw it at me like a Frisbee.”

  Sceptre was delighted. “Sir Henry! The poltergeist!”

  “What?” Kevin demanded, taking instant umbrage. “He doesn’t like whalesong either? Maybe I should have left Abba on. Maybe he’s got a thing for blondes with big bubs too. Or maybe he just didn’t like my face, and decided to cut my head off!” As he spoke, his voice became wilder, closer to the edge of hysteria.

  In an effort to calm him down, Pete pointed out, “It’s a CD, not an axe.”

  Kevin scowled and held up his hand. “I’ve cut my finger on them before today.”

  His best friend began to lose his cool. “Well, if he did cut your head off, at least you’d lose twenty pounds of unsightly fat.”

  “Will you two shut up?” snapped Sceptre. “You’re like children fighting over an ice cream.” She concentrated on Kevin. “Tell me exactly what happened.”

  “I just told you,” Kevin insisted. “I came through the door. The music stopped, the CD ejected and flew at me. What more can I tell you? It only just missed me.”

  Sceptre raised her eyebrows at the doubting Pete, who shrugged his broad shoulders and said, “I think he’s talking out of his backside, as usual. It makes no sense. I think that business in the cellar and things going bump in the night are getting to him. He was never the bravest man in the world, and this place is giving him the heebie-jeebies.”

  Sceptre mulled over Pete’s words for a moment. “You think Kevin ejected the CD himself?”

  “Yes.”

/>   “Pete,” Kevin pleaded, “I tell you, I was nowhere near it.”

  “You think you weren’t,” said Pete, “but I think your imagination’s playing you up.”

  “Quiet, the both of you.” Sceptre’s authoritarian tones cut them off. “I shall consult Fishwick.” She paused a moment and then called into thin air, amusing both men. “Fishwick, are you there?”

  “Here, Madam.”

  “Fishwick, there has just been an incident here in the cafeteria, with a compact disc. Was it anything to do with any of the entities here?”

  “I don’t know, Madam, but it’s possible. There are several spirits abroad right now. I was at the other end of the house when I heard you call.”

  “Thank you, Fishwick. I may need you, so I’d be grateful if you could stay close by.” Sceptre brought herself back to the real world and confronted her partners’ stupid grins. “Fishwick doesn’t know what happened here. He was at the other end of the house.”

  “Well, that’s it, then,” chuckled Pete. “If old Fish Slice doesn’t know, who does?”

  “Pete, your scepticism is becoming tedious.”

  “Sceptre, your games are becoming dafter.”

  “You could try to be more constructive,” she suggested.

  Pete remained obdurate. “I’m trying to be realistic.”

  The computer emitting a loud beep ended the argument. They rushed to it and studied the display, where a red warning was flashing ACTIVE, ACTIVE. Kevin clicked on it, and the main menu came up, highlighting zone four.

  “Sensor triggered,” he said, studying the other menu items, all of which remained passive. “It’s in the master bedroom.”

  “Check the video image,” said Sceptre.

  Kevin shifted the mouse to zone four and a view of the old bedroom. When he clicked on that quadrant, it shifted to the centre of the nine images, replacing the menu, and expanded to fill two-thirds of the screen.